Learning - About Entrepreneur

2021-09-24

startups

  • TODO

  • lessons

    • Health, Love, and your mission, in the order

      • Nothing else matters
      • 弄好事业，找对爱人

    • the ultimate hack to become rich, own a business

    • Spend your time earning, learning, or relaxing, oursource or ignore everything else.

    • Train your mind always to think abundance

      • wealthy -> freedom & control
      • middle class -> comfort
      • poor -> survival

    • “我们做的是小本买卖，尽量不怨天尤人，努力顺应形势”

    • focused on creating things that make you come alive and the right people will find you

      • your family
      • your purpose
      • your goals/ambitions
      • girls

    • Entrepreneur mindset

      • a startup is a theory about something that market wants, but doesn't yet exist.

      • Entrepreneurhsip is about leveling up yourself. so you can level up your business.

        • Business is a microcosm of life; we rise in business to our level of personal development
        • Entrepreneurship isn't about the money, it's about owning your own life

      • Entrepreneurship is for everyone

        • it's training to live a better life
        • after studying survival, I'm not convinced of the "entrepreneurship isn't for everyone" argument anymore. you are drastically limiting your personal, psychological, and spiritual development by not learning to hunt in the modern world (business)

      • skills + leverage = wealth

      • ownership and result (责任和风险); 不是 insight, 也不是 execution

    • develop a founder mentality

      • learn some that people haven't quite figured out how to teach yet

        • a new and quickly expanding field
        • some fields that are circumstantial - where the details matter and it's always moving
        • apprenticeship

      • suffering

        • inside your suffering, you can find what matters most to you
        • inside your yearning for something more, you can find seeds of wisdom

      • find the part of the job with the steepest learning curve

        • try to be innovative in the context of your job
        • take on new challenges and responsibilities
        • avoid repetitive drudgery

      • develop a founder mentality

        • the knowledge and skills you gain by developing a founder mentality set you up to be a founder

      • Accountability is something you can take on immediately

        • find things that interest you and allow you to take on accountability

          • don't worry about short-term compensation

        • you can put yourself in a position to learn quickly

          • you offer to help and become the owner's solving their fundraising problem
          • 必须站在那个做事的人的立场才能体会到背后的规划
          • 能不能看见背后的规划很重要

        • you build specific knowledge by taking accountability for things that other people don't know how to do

          • people will line up behind you, and the leverage will come
          • you have to put yourself in positions where you can exercise judgement

        • scale your specific knowledge with appretices

      • Rich people get paid by the project and pay by the hour

        • getting paid by the hour puts you under someone else's control
        • Trade money for time, not time for money

      • Uncertainty, not outcome, is the root of stress

        • 不确定性，才是最大杀伤力

    • SELF

      • a taste of freedom can make you unemployable (an entrepreneur)

        • 对未知的恐惧 阻碍了你迈出脚步

      • 一亩三分地

        • not thinking bigger

      • if you want to go far, go together; if you want to go quickly, go alone

    • how you grow

      • study hard what interests you the most;
        don't worry about what others think of you, that's none of your business.
      • train your mind to think, doubt, and question.

    • create like an artist, sell like an entrepreneur

      • if you create it for yourself, it's art.
      • if you create it for others, it's business

  • reference

How Entrepreneurial Thinking and Acting

  • entrepreneur

    • 20% theory + 80% figure it out by yourself

    • steps

      • inception of idea 1-2
      • proof of concept 3-6
      • production of samples/prototypes/tools 7-8
      • conduct of trial schemes 9-10
      • use in public sector/launch into open market 11-12

    • work on your product and get product-market fit

    • you should be exercising and eating healthy

  • hero

    • 模仿，关键是你得找到自己的声音
      • be true yourself

    • 英雄是 凡人，却创下了远远超越凡人经验之外的成就，以至于死后留下不朽的记忆

      • 英雄未必是善的； 犯下了不可饶恕的罪恶的人也可以是“英雄”
      • 英雄是点燃你的生命热情的人； 英雄以一种非凡的方式践行你所珍视的价值

    • 深入研究一种既定的做事方式， 并探讨这些事能否以更低成本，更快速度和更能激动人心的方式来做？

    • 在开放环境下，只要迭代成长不被打断，就可以超越目标

  • Weekly self-reflection

    • help you digest or really think about your experiences, and relate them to general patterns

      • record your thoughtful analysis of the new insights or ideas

    • your intent should not be to merely describe what happened, but to explore WHY it happened, and what it means

      • "what new insights did you gain from the week's session? " "what new ideas did it provoke?"
        "how do these insights or ideas relate to your work environment and to your career goals and objectives?

  • Field Observations with Fresh Eyes

    • think like a traveler

    • look for unmet needs for consumers to identify new product opportunities, rather than design a new product based on pre-specified needs

    • observe your customers in their natural environment
      • their actions, interactions, wants and needs - and note what you find
      • what underlying need prompts this behavior
      • what alternatives exist for the customer to use

  • Deine your opportunity

    • the Business Concept

      • define your idea and what customer value it will bring
        • what is the product or service we intend to offer?
        • who are the potential customers?
        • how will we meet the goals and remain operational?

    • Personal Goals

      • understand the effort, cost and benefit

      • why you and why now and how you to develop and lead the initiative you are proposing?

        • why am I doing this?
        • what will this do to me or require from me?

    • Business Goals

      • how you will organize for success & competition

      • highlight the proposed business and revenue model and competitive advantages

    • insights

      • treat life as an experiment - Tom Kelley
        • when starting new ventures, you have to be willing to take risks, make mistakes, and learn from these mistakes
      • Opportunities are everywhere

  • Refine opportunity

    • TODO

  • reference

How to get Rich

  • Wealth is assets and business that can earn while you sleep

    • the purpose of wealth is freedom

    • ethical wealth creation makes abundance for everybody

      • it's a positive sum game but there are competitive elements to it
      • the modern industrial economies are much more heavily wealth-based societies

    • Overall capitalism (Free markets) are intrinsic to the human species

      • the notion of exchange, and keeping track of credits and debits is built to us as flexible social animals

      • keeping track of credits and debits lets us cooperate

        • who put in how much work?
        • who contributed how much?

      • Capitalism is actually good

        • it gets hijacked by improper yields, where you have corruption, or you have monopolies
        • 商人被污名化 - 官商 - （垄断+腐败）

    • Money is how we transfer wealth

      • money is social credits; it's the ability to have credits and debits of other poeple's time

    • Status is your rank in the social hierarchy

      • stauts is a zero-sum game; to win you have to put somebody else down
      • politics is an example of a status game

  • You won't get rich renting out your time

    • you can't earn non-linearly
      • your inputs are matched to your outputs
      • you are replaceable because you're now doing a set role
        • you're not being creative

    • they're just not gonna pay you enough

      • they pay you the bare min that thay have to, to get you to do their job
      • they take on the risk, the accountability, the intellectual property, and the brand

    • You must own equity to gain your financial freedom

      • the real wealth is created by starting your own companies, or by even investors

    • You want a career where your inputs don't match your outputs

      • Tools and leverage are what create the disconnection between inputs and outputs
        • look for things that are leveraged
        • the higher the creativity component of a profession, the more likely it is to have disconnected inputs and outputs

    • Ideally, make your money in discrete lumps

      • your own lifestyle does not have a chance to adapt quickly
      • have much more creative expression, and much less about money

  • You will get rich by giving society what it wants,but doesn't yet know how to get at scale

    • Society always wants new things, and society will pay you for creating things that it wants

      • But society doesn't yet know how to create those things because if it did, they wouldn't nee you

      • figure out what you can provide, figure out how to build that, and then they figured out how to scale it

    • Bring the high end to the mass market

      • distribute what rich people used to have to everybody

      • Entrepreneurship

        • predict that society will want it

          • you create it just because you want it

        • figure out how to scale it

          • how to get it to other people in a profitable way, in a self-sustaining way

  • The Internet allows you to scale any niche interest

    • you can now reach everyone

  • Play longterm games with longterm people

    • all the benefits in life come from compound interests

    • in a longterm game, it's positive sum

      • high trust will make it easier to play the game
      • important to pick an industry/city where you can play long-term games, and with long-term people

    • get traction, and never fall back

  • Pick partners with high intelligence, energy and integrity

    • some who is smart at that thing
    • some who is motivated (hard working)
      • delegation - someone wants to do what you want them to do

    • high-integrity

      • Integrity is what someone does, despite what they say they do
        • cheat

      • self-esteem is the reputation that you have with yourself

        • self-esteem is to your own internal moral code of ethics

      • pay attention to subtle signals

        • Signals are what people do despite what they say

    • Partner with rational optimists

      • you have to see the world for what it really is

      • you have to be optimistic about your own capabilities, and your capability to get things done

      • have an action bias towards getting what you want

        • just do things
          • figure out if sth is viable or not by doing it
          • at least do the first step, and the second step, and then decide
        • Either lead, follow, or get out of the way

      • Don't partner with pessimists and cynics

        • modern society is far, far safer
        • their beliefs are self-fulfilling
        • they just wanna tell you why the thing is not going to work

  • Arm Yourself with Specific Knowledge

    • Specific Knowledge is the knowledge that you care about

      • specific knowledge is found more by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion

      • your specific knowledge is often observed by other people who know you well and revealed in situations rahter than something that you come up with

        • look back on your own life and see what you're actually good at

      • look at what you have already built by that point, and then you can build on top of it

      • follow your own obsession, and keep an eye out for the commercial aspects of it

  • builder and seller

    • CTO
      • builder
      • understand enough
    • CEO
      • selling: marketing, communicationg, recruting, inspiring people ...
      • speaking skills - persuasive and communicative
        • writing skills
        • sales skills actually scale better over time

  • reading is the foundation for your self-education

    • you need creativity, you need the ability to feed your own brain to learn whatever you want

    • take your natural path and just read the things that interest you until you kind of understand them

    • read the original scientific books in a field

      • the foundations are Math and Logic
        • when you understand the scientific method, then you can understand how to separate truth from falsehood
      • you can absorb what is true, you can reject what is false, and you have a basis for even working that out that is logical and scientific and not purely just based on opinions

    • understanding that comes through repetition and through usage and through logic and foundations that really makes you a smart thinker

    • foucs on the foundations

      • basic concepts from game theory, psychology, ethics, math, computers, and logic will serve you much better

    • you can learn better by doing iterations on the job

  • Embrace Accountability to get leverage

    • accountability is results-focused

    • build up credibility to get following labors and money

    • in modern society, the downside risk is not that large

  • You need specific knowledge and accountability and you have a good name in that domain

    • then people are going to give you capital as a form of leverage that you can use to then go get more capital
    • Labor and Capital are old leverage

    • want the min amount of people working with you that are going to allow you to use the other forms of leverage

    • Capitcal as a leverage because it feels unfair, and nobody else around them or necessarily sharing in it

  • Software and media are New Leverage

    • tech startups

      • robot, and code lets you tell them what to do

    • coding, writing books, podcasts/youtubing, are permissionless

      • you don't need anyone's permission to do them
      • for labor leverage, somebody has to decide to follow you; for capital leverage, somebody has to give you money to invest

    • code and media turns into a positive sum game

      • creating wealth with product leads to more ethical wealth

        • those products are equally available to everybody as opposed to trying to create your wealth through labor or capital

      • with the largest budget, you get the highest quality

        • it's the nature of code and media output that the same product is accessible to everybody

  • Pick a Business Model with Leverage

    • Scale economies

      • the more you produce, the cheaper it gets

        • this builds up an automatic barrier to entry against competition

      • low marginal cost of reproduction

        • like media

    • Network effects - value grows as the square of the customers

      • you want to be in a network effects business, assuming you're not number two
        • create little hooks for users to add value to each other
        • how your customers add value to each other

  • Judgment Is the most important skill

    • get leverage
      • code or media (writing/language)
    • then your judgment really maters
      • know the long-term effects of your actions and then making the right decision to capitalize on that
      • judgment/wisdom comes from experience, and can be acceleated through short iterations

  • Find product-founder-market fit

    • search for what to do

      • your objective and skills converage to make you the best

        • keep changing your objective until it arrives at your specific knowledge, skill sets, position, capabilities, location and interests

        • "I want to be the best at what I do"

        • "What I do is flexible, so that I'm the best at it"

      • arrive at a comfortable place where you feel

        • "This is something I can be amazing at, while still being authentic to who I am"

      • "what should I be doing?"

      • "where is a market emerging?"
      • "where is a market emerging?"
      • "what's a product I can build that I'm excited to work on"
      • "where I have specific knowledge?"

    • pick the right people to work

      • surround yourself with the best people possible
      • pick the people with the hightest intelligence, energy and integrity that you can find

    • work hard and value your time

      • anything you have to do, get it done

      • If I discover a problem, I'll get on it, right then and there, and solve it

      • need free time and a free mind

        • being busy will destroy your ability to do great things
          • Outsource something for less than your hourly rate

  • Escape Competition through Authenticity

    • you have to adjust until you find product-market fit
      • at least lean towards authenticity, towards getting away from competition
      • the business and product they create are authentic to their desires and means
    • the masses are never right in entrepreneurship

  • apply specific knowledge, with leverage, with judgment, to get what you deserve

    • product-market fit

      • what am I really good at, accordign to observation and people I trust
      • the market wants it?

    • Avoid people who got rich quickly

      • they're just giving you their winning lottery ticket numbers
      • you have to examine everything, and have your own point of view
        • is it true?
        • is it true outside of the context of how that person applied it?
        • is it true in my context?
        • do I want to apply it?

  • A Calm Mind, a Fit Body, a House Full of Love

    • Money will solve all your money problems

      • Money buys you freedom in the material world
      • money lets you not do the things you don't want to do

    • your health, your mental health, and your close relationships

    • calmer internal state

  • Productize yourself and work for yourself

    • Figure out what you're uniquely good at, and apply as much leverage as possible

      • Am I productizing it?
      • Am I scaling with labor or capital or code or media?

    • Look up the value chain to find leverage

      • see how they are taking advantage of the time and work you're doing and how they're applying leverage

      • you want to manage more capital, products, meida and community

        • people want to move up naturally to manage other people

      • every founder has to lie to every employee

    • Work for yourself

      • the best relationships are peer relationships

        • if there's someone above you, that's someone to learn from
        • if there's somebody below you, it's because you're teaching them and enabling them

      • one that makes you money

        • reading and making money,
        • working with startups

      • one that keeps you fit

      • one that makes you creative

  • Being Ethical is Long-Term Greedy

    • Trust leads to compounding relationships

  • Principal-Agent Problem: Act like an owner

    • A principal is an owner; an agent is an employee

    • A principal's incentives are different than an agent's incentives

      • you have to get the incentives right to get people to behave correctly
        • almost all human behavior can be explained by incentives
        • People are much more honest with their actions than they are with their words
        • the good ones are not just looking for money, they're also looking for things like status and meaning in what they do
      • when you do deals, it's better to have the same incentives

    • Train yourself how to think like a principal

      • the best way to operate is to ask "What would the founder do?"
      • think like the owner and act like the owner

    • Deal with small firms to avoid the principal-agent problem

      • the agent doesn't care much and you end up getting substandard service
      • work with boutiques; the accountability is extremely high

    • Think big

      • it takes as much effort to create a small business as a large one

    • Don't bet everything on one big gamble

  • Compounding Relationships make life easier

    • Turn short-term games into long-term games

      • Negotiation is about not wanting it too badly

      • if someone is taking advantage of you in a negotiation, your best option is to turn it from a short-term game into a long-term game

      • "i'm going to do this project with you, and I have three friends who want projects done who are waiting to see the outcome of this project."

    • relationships offer a good example of compound interest

      • mutual trust, you know that person's got your back

      • it's better to have a few compounding relationships than many shallow ones

  • Finding Time to invest in yourself

    • try to be innovative in the context of your job, take on new challenges and responsibilities

      • find the part of the job with the steepest learning curve
      • avoid repetitive drudgery

    • develop a founder mentality

    • take on accountability

      • take on accountability and solve problems on the edge of knowledge that others can't solve, people will line up behind you. The leverage will come.
      • "Hey, I'll take charge of this thing that nobody wants to take charge of"

    • Scale your specific knowledge with apprentices

      • Specific knowledge comes on the job, not in a classroom

  • reference

make one friend

  • nurturing a relationship with one person
    • don't view the friendships as a barter trade
    • find a person who you can learn from or who you appreciate truly
    • meetup, exchange ideas and become good friends
    • be a giver

have time to think

  • free yourself from the day activities as much as possible
    • put them on autopilot
    • Missing the big picture is a big sin in your business
    • when you have time to think, think long-term

greet first

  • greet firstly before they did
    • you always count on good manners to save a deal

how to hire the smart one

  • work with them before you hire them
    • a domain advisor for a short period
    • so you can know how they work with your team, and how good they get into your company's mission

bring in positivity

  • enter with a smile and with people

  • people draw energy from u

reference