The YEC Mafia: the youth’s answer to unemployment.

The YEC Mafia

 

I’ve always believed that, with the Internet being the gift that it is: nobody can ever not know anything for too long.

Staying true to this belief, shortly after starting ZooLoo Concepts in 2012 I went on an endless mission find out everything I needed to about starting and running a startup business. More over, what I needed was: a support structure that I could use as sensu-beans for my “entrepreneurial nerve”. Very often after you’ve taken that first step towards moving closer to your dream; you are held back by old habits, disbelief, lack of self-confidence and a lack of support.<,/p>

The YEC, aims to keep this flame forever lit and forever growing by delivering tips and hints from its members. Members, who have been/are leaders behind some of the many LOUD startups including: Reddit, Airbnb, 2Tor, Klout and a lot of others.

This is what is signed onto the bottom of every fulfilling email I get from my free subscription :

“The YEC, an invite-only membership organization, promotes entrepreneurship as a means to overcome youth unemployment and underemployment. Our mission is to spark an entrepreneurial revolution in America–and help rebuild the economy in the process. Today, with 1 out of 2 new college graduates unemployed or underemployed, young Americans must find a new way forward. To that end, the YEC seeks to put the tools and resources aspiring young entrepreneurs need directly in their hands, so they are empowered to create thousands of new businesses (and jobs).”

I really hope that more and more young people out there become a part of the mafia.

Follow them @theYEC

 

Like them on Facebook:  facebook.com/theyec

 

“Get outta that ship before it stinks!”

Courtesy of luckyasianfeet.blogspot.com

So, you’ve built your magnificent and lucrative cruise-ship with an equally brilliant business model to support it but… thing is: no one seems to actually want to go on a cruise-ship.

Yep, you finished developing your BETA/MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and have given it to many other people who will be able to test it and later give feedback on the product. Great idea.

However; 3-weeks have passed and no one seems to be rushing towards your doorstep overwhelmed with interest about the product and good faith.

You’ve built a product that nobody, not even any of your own relatives, has the desire to use. But you’re still truthfully and thoroughly convinced that The Problem imminently exists.

You can then come to the (honest) conclusion that the error wasn’t really in ‘the need’ but rather: your proposed ‘solution/resolve’ for this need was not adequate. Are you a then a, Failure?

Nope!

You just need to

PIVOT IMMEDIATELY

Image courtesy of Chris Ducker

 

I call this, “the art of thought-evolution“.

It is the entrepreneur’s responsibility to have the foresight to reckon with a failing business model/failing project. And begin to find out:

Why it is failing?

• First, you’ll need to reassess your problem. What is it that you’re trying to solve or make better with the commissioning of this product?
• Getting back to the basic question will begin the process of  re-opening the various routes to resolve before you decided on the current one. Perhaps, give yourself some time alone like Christ Ducker did when he had to decide on a pivot. In this time, you can do some “creative soul searching”… Look within yourself for the solution; get away from the hype of “let’s push-on” from your team.
• Sometimes, our “selves” are inspired by the resolve of others. In which case, you could always look to the past and learn about how the masters of business shifted towards success
• Naturally, because you “failed” before. You are now going to be a bit nervous about putting-in as much energy and passion into this attempt. You’re afraid of being disappointed… again. But you need to understand that “failure” does not exist, in life and neither does it exist in business. Every “failure” is just another Pivotal chapter in the book of “Life”. Go For It!

As an entrepreneur, pivoting can be an exercise in being egoless. It means: accepting that you may have had a shitty idea before. But it’s also an acceptance of the fact that you can always come up with another idea. An even better and more mature idea, that has various lessons learnt from experience backing it up

#KeepMoving

 

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What Would Peter Thiel Do?

Peter Thiel is a very well known name in Silicon Valley for his major contribution to the current internet-revolution. He co-founded the giant online payment service PayPal in 1998 and got thoroughly immersed inside the tech-business world that is Silicon Valley. Immediately after selling PayPal to eBay for $1.5-Billion he started a global macro hedge fund, Clarium Capital.

In 2004, he became the first outside investor for Facebook- investing $500 000 into the company for a 10.2% share and a seat on the board of directors. In 2012, he managed to sell over 16-million of his shares totaling in a sale of more than $1 billion in shares.

But other than just Facebook, he’s made various early-stage investments in companies/startups such as: Asana, Big Think, Friendster, LinkedIn, Quora and many others.  Most of these companies have played their own individual and significant roles within the greater startup -ecosystem that currently exist: “From” Friendster spawned Myspace which was then superseded by Facebook. Also “from” Friendster spawned a new kind of social networking website, aimed at professionals : LinkedIn.  And from Facebook came… well everything else! I guess it’s safe to say that Mr. Thiel has or has had his finger in almost every pivotal-startup-pie.

So I’ve given you a brief introduction as to who Mr. Theil is- but why mention him today?

I have recently started to read a collection of class notes in the form of “startup essays” taken from his StartUp Classes. I found that Judicata, the blogger/student delivers his lessons in an easy, comprehensible and vivid “study-guide”  manner that makes learning from these paraphrased essays a breeze .

If you go on to Blake Masters you’ll be introduced and directed to the first of these notes and essays from the StartUp classes.

He also offers some great insight on:

• Secrets
• War and Peace
• “Thiel’s Law”
• The Mechanics of Mafia
• Founder as Victim, Founder as God

Check out this light, startup-friendly learning base on Blake Masters

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The stupidest thing Elon Musk could ever do.

Image courtesy of Treehugger.com

In a recent keynote discussion at the D11 Conference, Elon Musk admitted that deciding to get into the electric car business was “one of the stupidest things that you could do”. This is how a lot of people felt about the industry before Tesla was founded. Not many imagined that electric cars could adequately co-exist and even compete with the gasoline-binging machines.

The thought of this being a reality was very optimistic and perhaps a bit delusional but this is the same with all new technology isn’t it? Look at 3D televisions: I’m basically expected to pay a large fortune to see, on my TV screen, what I would have normally seen if I just stepped out of the house and opened my eyes. And I wouldn’t have to walk around with those ridiculous looking spectacles. But these televisions are really selling at the moment.

Musk said it best in a blog post:

New technology in any field takes a few versions to optimize before reaching the mass market and in this case it is competing with 150 years and trillions of dollars spent on gasoline cars.

Since his decision to found Tesla back in 2003, the company has managed to produce a car that is actually twice as efficient as a Toyota Prius (the Tesla Roadster) and an all-electric sedan with a single-charge range of 426km (265 miles). The Tesla Model S.

The car won the 2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year, the 2013 World Green Car of the Year; Automobile Magazine’s 2013 Car of the year and it appeared on Time Magazine’s Best 25 Inventions of the year 2012. It also sold over 4,900 units during the first quarter of 2013, surpassing the top two cars in its class that are cheaper and are from manufacturers that are more reputable and have existed for a far longer time than Tesla (the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf).

Oh, I almost forgot: the company has more than doubled its revenue from $204.2-million in 2011 to $413.3 million in 2012

So much for the “stupidest” thing Musk has ever done

 

 

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Verified Accounts on Facebook… What took so long?

Image taken from TechCrunch Article

Hey LOOK! Facebook finally caught up with the “Verified” hype!!!

That took a while though, right? I mean, how many times have you heard someone saying: “Dude, I’m so cool. I have David Beckham as a friend on Facebook”. And you just knew that this naivety was the result of a fake celebrity account.

Personally, I’ve been hearing people speak like that ever since I started abusing using Facebook. Once I started using Twitter, I wondered why Facebook couldn’t also “authenticate” celebrity accounts?

But I guess good things come to those who wait? Who knows, maybe they’ve found a way to not only add but maybe even improve the feature? Only time will tell… Again.

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The Swanky Offices of Mojang, Creators of Minecraft

These offices look so incredibly comfortable!

The perfect work environment for the avid “pool-hall-nerd”

 

See more on Lifehacker.com

Speakers at the Tippy-Top

Image courtesy of TechCrunch.com

 

“One night this past fall, the three were in Walker’s room discussing ideas and music. Thompson was surfing Kickstarter for inspiration, while Walker sat at his desk; Brody lay on the floor looking up at the ceiling, when using the corners of the room struck him. They held the speaker up to the corner to test the sound and loved it.”

This startup launched some time ago and has recently caught my minimalist eye.

Space is such an interesting concepts once you truly try and realize its potential. We normally look at unoccupied rooms as empty. But really they’re just filled with limitless potential, especially if you have a purpose.

In this case, I was thinking about my bedroom/office at home. Currently, my set-up doesn’t really have any shock-appeal but it works- for me. I’m a writer. That’s what I love doing. Creating a world of possibilities and truths through words; so all I really need is a desk big enough to accommodate my netbook and the occasional pad and pen.

The space stills feels major cluttered though. And it’s because of my cheaper-than-cheap laptop speakers that are just too big considering the fact that the best that they can possibly do is whisper VERY LOUDLY.

Image courtesy of TechCrunch.com

The TipTop speakers, however, utilize the ceiling corners which normally conjure up spider webs and give them a sound purpose. Taking advantage of room gain, “these speakers use the natural acoustics of a room to make the sound richer and more appealing”.

Check out the full story on TechCrunch.

 

Company Eco-Systems

Google Offices

Instilling a good core company culture within your startup will help align (perhaps, realign) your team’s vision for the future. Improving the company culture is like improving the ecosystem of a certain area of vegetation. Once that is done, then the plants; the insects and everything else living within that “community” can be afforded the chance to grow stronger, faster and healthier.

Like an ecosystem, your startup team is basically a community of “living organisms” that have all their efforts combined towards a specific goal: the fruition of the mission.

But a company culture isn’t merely about goal-setting; it’s more about setting the kind of environment from which such goals can be achieved. Google has a company culture focused on spawning the creativity and innovation of its employees through their environment. The office culture is as such that you wouldn’t want to leave the office.

The company’s offices are fully equipped with cafés, pool houses, game rooms, zen gardens and much more. All in the attempt to present to their employees, an environment where they feel comfortable enough to become creative and spark up inspired conversations amongst one another, thus improving the overall movement of the company.

There’s a reason why such a big company like Google, is still incorporating the startup-culture philosophy within their company policy-

It Works!

The usual “come to work at 9am, sit at your desk, have an hour’s lunch, go home at 5pm” routine doesn’t really give you the chance to become creative. The monotony in itself will kill your dreams.

Innovation, no: Continuous Innovation, requires a degree of ease and flow between one iteration and the next.

So your goal as the founder/co-founder is to make sure that you do all that is possible to fuel this transition. The most effective way for this transition to occur indefinitely is by having a constantly engaged staff. A staff that feels like the office is an inspirational palace that is suitable enough to afford them a chance to truly shine within their comfort-zones…

HubSpot Offices

…Whatever those may be.

And when your startup’s ecosystem is aligned with its vision statement and mantra, then the possibilities become endless, in terms of the chances for constant ideation and development.

Check out this article on the companies with the best office culture

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The Offices of Shopify

Colorful interiors for a “colorful” company

Click on the image for more pictures

The Combustive Mind Mixture

Taken from MindMixer.com

There is definitely an advantage in collaborative thinking. The results of such thinking are substantially intelligible and fruitful. This might ring reminiscent to the truism that: two minds are better than one.

The one thing that separates collaborative thinking from the conventional “I’m going to lock myself in my room and figure it out all by myself” type of thinking is: perspective.

When you are merely listening to the sound of your own voice all the time then you won’t really be able to relate the idea to the next person. You’ll then be stuck with a situation where no one understands your idea/product. And thus, you’ve created a great product… that nobody actually wants. People, are the best books that we can turn to for more information, inspiration and for further development on the information that we may already possess. This collaborative thinking allows us to build a house upon the foundation of a single idea.

MindMixer, is a startup that allows for communities to interact with each other and collaboratively help municipal decision makers make the best decisions for their communities!

Check it out on TechCrunch.  

 

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