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In The Media

What Do The 63,010 Losers Do?

by Larry Chiang on September 27, 2014

Larry Chiang focus is on the first 17 steps for starting up a startup and first four steps in starting up a FICO over 750. After Chiang’s Harvard Law keynote, Harvard Business wrote: “What They Don’t Teach You at Stanford Business School“ (the same title as his NY Times best seller). If you read his scandalously awesome “What a Supermodel Can Teach a Stanford MBA”, “How a Stanford Engineer Works Hard and Smart at SXSW“, “What EUTWMPPM is”, and “How to Get Man-Charm”, you will like his latest post that leverages CS183B “How to Start a Startup“:

“What Do The 63,010 Losers Do?”

By Larry Chiang
When I was an undergrad, I became fascinated by what winners do.
You see, I was a loser. A 100% failure athletically, because I wouldn’t accept Hall of Fame, Augie Garrido coaching. I parlay’d my athletic frustration into making sure my next mentor would not see me as a “high school hero, college zero”. Yes, I study mentorship in a method, magnitude and depth that few can match. Plus, now I get to go to sporting events because I count “Mentor Mentions Per Press Interview” #MMPPI

Anyway, after I got rich because of Mark McCormack, I became morbidly curious about why losers, lose.

Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
63,030 Students for #CS183B Distribute WINNERS to LOSERS in a Bell Curve Pattern duck9.com/blog/uncategor…

Do the math. 63030 take CS 183B.

20 winners
63010 losers.
I wrote the post “Ivy Hero, Life Zero” but am too lazy to link to it. In the face of massive advantages, tier one college students manage to still sometimes lose. Now, here is the punch line: I can guess what the 63,010 losers will do.
They fall into a few cliche patterns of seemingly well-meaning behavior and much effort. Here they are:
-1- Warehousing Knowledge.
Startup tips compiled 140 characters at a time, don’t help.
Rajen Sanghvi (@RajenSanghvi)
I just published “65 Quotes from @sama on Startup Teams, Co-Founding and Hiring” medium.com/@RajenSanghvi/… via @Medium


63,030 Students for #CS183B Distribute WINNERS to LOSERS in a Bell Curve Pattern. 

 
-2- Bookmarking Sam Altman’s YouTube.
 
Just because it is free and forever doesn’t mean you should procrastinate. The 18 classes will all be on the Twitter app here at the hashtag “#CS183B”
The opposite of procrastination is my next point
 
-3- Accelerate
 
Fast forward your knowledge of “How to Start a Startup” by PQRST 
 
Preview CS 183b
Question by quizzing yourself on the pre-readings
Review the lectures
Summarize parallel content (for example, every CS183B speaker [like Marissa Mayer who I had speak at eBootcamp 2011] has videos and blog post coverage.
 
Failure to extrapolate will land you in the middle of the bell curve. Fail to do all the pre-readings will land you on the left side of the bell curve. 
 
-4- 63,010 will execute and do nothing. Sell nothing. Code nothing. Promote zero.  
 
Super majority will get an “A” or B+ but that’s not the bell curve. It’s Stanford University grade inflation, for sure. But 63,010 will suffer from analysis paralysis.
 
63,010 students with an IQ over 120 will attempt to perfect entrepreneurship. The 20 people on the right side of the bell curve practice entrepreneurship. Bell curve, right students value action over collecting volumes of knowledge.
 
{Practicing = doing]
 
Pay close attn to what Sam Altman said during lecture #2 (at appx the 22:11 mark?), “Get a small ‘W’ under your belt”, but then jets off of this point faster then his skimming over “Being James Bond-like as a founder is more important than domain expertise”. What  I hear and heard = win a small startup win
 
What I hear are the components to…
 
-5- 63,010 don’t realize they’re getting taught by an unconscious competent.
 
An unconscious competent is a person who is super talented but doesn’t exactly know what they know. 
They flow.
 
Michael Jordan was great but kinda a dick coach. 15 minutes into coaching Kwame Brown, the lottery pick had a mental meltdown.
 
Bill Gates business advice = just steal it from Xerox cuz it’s SO EASY so-you-should-too.
 
Sam Altman and the 11 billionaires are unconscious competents
 
-6- 63,010 will refuse to perform real world work.
 
Look at the mind-set and mental makeup of a Stanford (non scholarhip athlete) student. Never worked a part time job and was solely focused on school and extracurricular, resume building activities.
 
Doing real world work is “Doing work that doesn’t scale” https://bit.ly/pgrahamCh6. {You like what I did there?! I quoted a CS 183 recommended reading while also memorizing a bit.ly I made for that…, WHILE ALSO WEAVING THAT TITLE’S POST INTO MY RAP.
 
RAP-GENIUS THAT FOOLZ.
 
-7- The Hardest Part About the Hardest Part, all 63010 won’t do.
 
When you’re in lecture ask yourself: “does this snippet of advice apply to the first 17 steps out of the batters box?”
 
I argue that the hardest part about starting up’s hardest is starting.
 
I argue that the super majority of classes at Stanford (or anywhere 2-10 steps behind Stanfurdh) teach entrepreneurship’s steps 18 and beyond.
 
Let me repeat: classroom class on startups foci on Steps 18+. You see, starting up is so painful. Giving birth IS SO PAINFUL THAT WE RELEASE A CHEMICAL TO MAKE US FORGET.
 
Forget the pain. And if we are unconscious competents, the pain was faster than a sweaty band-aid during a game, which we are winning by 30, up 3 games in a best of 7. Pain. It makes startup postmortem’s really just a form of advanced postpartum.
 
So.
 
So what are the 17 steps en route to first base? What are the first seventeen steps?
I call them Gua Gua Guacamole and “Lemonade stand business”. After having taught ENGR145, “Technology Entrepreneurship”, they’re referred to as LCMCC (Larry chiang mini company concept)
#LCMCC
 
 
CS 183B isn’t a “Firehose” of startup knowledge. Its a confusing set of mentorship focused on steps #18 and beyond by billionaires that have long forgotten.
 
*Kwamme Brown never recovered after the mentorship he received.
 
Engineering 145 has a hashtag (#ENGR145), four books, 3 blog posts and two videos. The 2, 9min58sec videos boil down what 20 of 63,030 will execute.
These outside the classroom, street smart works are done using signature startup moves via specific business subroutines. Every business “recipe” is like making banana bread or gua gua guacamole and labeled a subroutine in the form of a curated hashtag.
For example, #CTCFTR
Dont think I’m weird, but I did an exercise called “gender reversal founder exercises”
And blogged as a woman on Woman2.0 https://www.Women2.org
Don’t think I’m weird but I taught this kid how to do a verbal contract at club level NLCS game
These CS183(b) notes by Rajen about Sam Altman are great, but what percentage are what I call startup steps 1-17?
Rajen Sanghvi (@RajenSanghvi)
I just published “65 Quotes from @sama on Startup Teams, Co-Founding and Hiring” medium.com/@RajenSanghvi/… via @Medium

Startup steps one to seventeen are critical #CS183B. They are here:

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