{"id":1545,"date":"2013-09-14T13:02:38","date_gmt":"2013-09-14T17:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/?p=1545"},"modified":"2013-09-14T13:08:40","modified_gmt":"2013-09-14T17:08:40","slug":"executing-dan-shippers-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/executing-dan-shippers-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"Executing Dan Shipper’s Advice"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
By Larry Chiang<\/div>\n
(My remarks are in BOLD along w a link to tactics to help take baby steps towards executing Dan Shipper’s genius blog post https:\/\/bit.ly\/dshipper711<\/a><\/a> tip @techmeme. Tip @techcrunch <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n

By Dan Shipper<\/font><\/p>\n

When I got to college three years ago I set two goals for myself. By the time I graduated I wanted to:<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Be well read<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Learn how to build a real software business<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    By real business I meant a business that has paying customers from day one and that makes enough money every month that I could work on it full time when I graduated.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Although I wouldn\u2019t go as far as to call myself well-read (I don\u2019t think that\u2019s something to be achieved, just pursued) I can confidently cross goal number two off of my list:<\/span><\/p>\n

    In about 11 months we\u2019ve built Firefly up to well into the 6 figures in recurring revenue.<\/span><\/p>\n

    We\u2019ve done this primarily through two channels: on-site website signups and large partnerships.<\/span><\/p>\n

    In July we announced a partnership<\/a> with Olark<\/a> to roll our cobrowsing<\/a> out to their 5,000 paying customers. We\u2019ve also struck similar deals with much larger customer support companies as well as companies in other verticals like financial services.<\/span><\/p>\n

    What makes this somewhat special is that there\u2019s just two of us working on the business, we\u2019re entirely bootstrapped (except for 20k from the excellent Dorm Room Fund<\/a>), and this year I\u2019m going to be a senior in college.<\/span><\/p>\n

    IF YOU’RE AN ENGINEERING UNDERGRAD, I CAN TEXT INTRO YOU TO DORM ROOM FUND CECE CHENG (text me @6502838008 \ud83d\ude42 650-283-8008<\/span><\/p>\n

    Larry@duck9.com<\/a><\/a> is for spam.)<\/span><\/p>\n

    Because the past few years have been such a crazy ride, I wanted to take some time to write down some of the things I\u2019ve learned along the way.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

    \n

    This ain\u2019t your typical advice blog post<\/strong><\/div>\n
    There\u2019s a ton of startup advice out there from successful founders.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p>\n

    What separates my writing is that I was a beginner so recently that I can still accurately remember what it feels like.<\/span><\/p>\n

    (I LOVE THAT MR SHIPPER DOCUMENTS THE FIRST FEW STEPS OUT OF THE BATTERS BOX)<\/span><\/p>\n

    I remember seeing people building products, and getting them featured on blogs, and getting userbases, and giving speeches, and writing popular blog posts and feeling like I was seeing it all through a pane of impossibly thick glass: I could look but I couldn\u2019t touch. I remember finishing a product and feeling like I didn\u2019t even know where to start looking for people to show it to. It\u2019s a lonely, vapid, discouraging feeling.<\/span><\/p>\n

    YES! WOW (I FORGET. WAIT, I NEVER HAD THAT CUZ I HAD MARK MCCORMACK)<\/span><\/p>\n

    I\u2019m hardly a huge success yet, but I do have a thing or two to say about getting from there to running a real business with real customers that pay you real money every month. And about doing it while juggling classwork, a social life and maintaining a blog on the side.<\/span><\/p>\n

    (I PEAKED MY SOPH YEAR IN COLLEGE WHEN I PLAYED A SPORT, STUDIED ENGR, WORKED AT DAILY ILLINI, STARTED A BIZ , PLEDGED to OFFICER OF MY FRAT (Kappa Sigs!), super MODELLED, DATED A THETA)<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n

    Sticking a knife in the silver bullet<\/strong><\/div>\n
    If you sit in on a college philosophy class (particularly philosophy of mind) you\u2019re likely to hear a lot about what\u2019s called emergent phenomena: that is complex systems that arise out of simple components but that are not reducible to those components.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p>\n

    In other words, things that are more than the sum of their parts.<\/span><\/p>\n

    A business is a complex system that demonstrates emergence. And just like you\u2019re not going to find consciousness in any one particular neuron in the brain, you\u2019re not going to find \u201cthe secret\u201d to a business\u2019s success in any one particular place. There\u2019s no silver bullet.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Rather, a successful business is the result of thousands of different elements that interact together at the same time.<\/span><\/p>\n

    The problem with most posts like this is that they tend to focus on The 5 Things That Made Our Company Successful because it\u2019s easy to write about and easy to digest. Or they\u2019ll give you 5 Things You Should Do To Exit For A Billion Dollars.<\/span><\/p>\n

    At best this is either an oversimplification or a misunderstanding of success.<\/span><\/p>\n

    When you hear someone say: \u201cBusiness X was successful because they did Y\u201d take it with a grain of salt. When you really start to unpack how things play out inside of an actual business, you\u2019ll find that it\u2019s a lot more complicated than that.<\/span><\/p>\n

    We just tell simple stories because they\u2019re easier to digest.<\/span><\/p>\n

    (CROSS THE CHASM FROM THE RIGHT https:\/\/bit.ly\/buster14512w<\/a><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n

    Cargo cults and TechCrunch<\/strong><\/div>\n
    During most of my freshman year I looked at raising money and being in TechCrunch as a panacea for all startup problems.<\/span><\/div>\n

    <\/span><\/div>\n
    (PAY CLOSE ATTN HERE. VCs ARE NOT HAIL MARY’S)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p>\n

    I thought to myself, \u201cAll we have to do once we build the app is get it in TechCrunch and start getting some investor interest. That will legitimize us enough that things will start to take off.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

    Having been in TechCrunch (and almost every other tech-related publication) and having garnered lots of investment interest along the way, I can confidently tell you that while it certainly doesn\u2019t hurt, it\u2019s neither a necessary nor sufficient component of a successful business.<\/span><\/p>\n

    In his book, Surely You\u2019re Joking Mr. Feynman<\/em>Nobel-prize winning physicist Richard Feynman tells a (probably apocryphal) story about what he calls cargo cults:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u201cIn the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they\u2019ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas \u2013 he\u2019s the controller \u2013 and they wait for the airplanes to land.<\/span><\/p>\n

    They\u2019re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn\u2019t work.<\/span><\/p>\n

    (RE READ THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH)<\/span><\/p>\n

    No airplanes land.<\/span><\/p>\n

    So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they\u2019re missing something essential, because the planes don\u2019t land.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

    When I see inexperienced entrepreneurs focusing solely on getting press or trying to raise money it reminds me a lot of this passage. The unconscious thinking is this:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u201cSuccessful entrepreneurs tend to get lots of coverage and raise lots of money, therefore to be a successful entrepreneur I need to get those things.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

    As Nassim Taleb would say: This points the arrow of causation in a direction it shouldn\u2019t go.<\/span><\/p>\n

    It\u2019s true that if your business is taking off you\u2019re going to get lots of investor interest and lots of press opportunities. But lots of investor interest and press does not create a successful business.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Focusing on those external things instead of nailing down the value you\u2019re providing is like strapping on the wooden headphones and waiting for the planes to land. It looks and feels like starting a company, but it\u2019s missing something essential that dooms it.<\/span><\/p>\n

    (I BOIL DOWN WHAT WORKS IN A VIDEO THAT SOLVES THIS<\/span><\/p>\n

    https:\/\/bit.ly\/buster14512v<\/a><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

    I got it from STANFORD ENGINEERING #ENGR145<\/span><\/p>\n

    50-70% of my lecture time, I GOT A KID TO DO THE LECTURE. I MEAN DO U WANNA HEAR ME TALK FOR 90 MIN??)<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n

    Little white lies and vanity metrics<\/strong><\/div>\n
    What does the cargo cult entrepreneur lack?<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s very simple: honesty.<\/span><\/p>\n

    What I used to do is try to run from my mistakes. It was\u2019t overt; I wasn\u2019t deluded. Rather, I did it in small ways that were easy to hide from myself. I would tell myself little stories and look at things that happened in certain ways that would make it seem like we were doing better than we actually were.<\/span><\/p>\n

    It\u2019s the kind of thing that makes you say to yourself, \u201cWe\u2019ve had over 1,000 signups since launch\u201d instead of \u201cWe have 1 paying customer.\u201d Or what makes you say to yourself, \u201cWe\u2019re growing 50% week-over-week\u201d when you know that you\u2019ve only done that for two weeks in a row and you only have 10 customers.<\/span><\/p>\n

    These kind of little, up-to-a-point, white lies work in most aspects of life. But in rocket science and entrepreneurhsip they\u2019re killer. They\u2019re how you blow up on the launch pad.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Telling yourself, \u201cwe\u2019re growing 50% week-over-week\u201d when you have 10 customers and just concentrating on getting press and raising money is the equivalent of standing out on a freshly-minted landing strip with wooden headphones on and waiting for the planes to land.<\/span><\/p>\n

    (MORE LATER!)<\/p><\/div>\n

    Read the rest of Dan Shipper’s article<\/div>\n
    https:\/\/bit.ly\/dshipper711<\/a><\/a><\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    And his other B2B sales article<\/p>\n
    \n
    https:\/\/bit.ly\/dshipper710<\/a><\/a><\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    And Paul Graham’s similar advice “Do things that don’t scale”<\/div>\n
    https:\/\/bit.ly\/pgrahamCh6<\/a><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    ENGR145’s Anchor Concept: Lemonade and Gua Gua Guacamole <\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    It moves you to the right on the entrepreneur bell curve <\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    <\/a><\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    <\/a><\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    <\/a><\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    CEO of Duck9<\/div>\n
    Stanford University Entrepreneur in Residence, Emeritus<\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    Duck9 = “Deep Underground Credit Knowledge” 9<\/div>\n
    125 University Avenue\/ 100<\/div>\n
    Palo Alto CA 94301<\/div>\n
    https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/ass<\/a><\/a><\/div>\n
    650-566-9600<\/div>\n
    650-566-9696 (direct)<\/div>\n
    650-283-8008 (cell)<\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    ****************<\/div>\n
    Editor of the BusinessWeek Channel “What They Don’t Teach at Business School”<\/div>\n
    https:\/\/whattheydontteachyouatstanfordbusinessschool.com\/blog<\/a><\/a><\/div>\n
    CNN Video Channel: https:\/\/ireport.cnn.com\/people\/larrychiang<\/a><\/a><\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    Read my last 10 tweets at https:\/\/www.Twitter.com\/LarryChiang<\/a><\/a><\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    Author, NY Times Bestseller<\/div>\n
    https:\/\/whattheydontteachyouatstanfordbusinessschool.com\/blog\/?s=Ny+times+bestseller<\/a><\/a><\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    “What They Will NEVER Teach You at Stanford Business School” comes out 11-11-14<\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    https:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/embed\/c0d4562ea2049<\/a><\/a><\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    52 Cards. Two Jokers. What They DO Teach You at Stanford Engineering<\/div>\n
    <\/a><\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    Emergency swings and cutting deals as an 9 year old<\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    <\/a><\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    ##########<\/div>\n
    Duck9 is part of UCMS Inc.<\/div>\n
    https:\/\/www.ucms.com<\/a><\/a><\/div>\n
    630-705-5555<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    By Larry Chiang (My remarks are in BOLD along w a link to tactics to help take baby steps towards executing Dan Shipper’s genius blog post https:\/\/bit.ly\/dshipper711 tip @techmeme. Tip @techcrunch  By Dan Shipper When I got to college three years ago I set two goals for myself. By the time I graduated I wanted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}