trendpreneur

Yesterday I had the pleasure of listening to Reid Hoffman address a room of A-level students on entrepreneurship. The context was a NESTA event designed to get young people thinking about their career pathways and talents — as a Starter for 6 alum I was along for the ride. (Note, Starter for 6 is, er, starting back up — if you’re a young creative business in Scotland, definitely check it out.)

As founder of LinkedIn — described by a student in the room thus: “It’s more professional than like Facebook and stuff” — Reid’s had an interesting journey. Here are some of the key points he made to the teenage audience:

Know what you don’t know. On leaving academia, Reid realised he needed to learn how to ship stuff. Figuring the best place to do that would be in a large company, he joined Apple — but lesson number two, there’s more than one way to ship a product. In big companies, you have three types of product design cycle: version 0 to version 1, 1 to 1.1, and 1 to 2. Creating something from nothing, iteratively improving something, and redesigning something.

In a startup, you run through all three design stages, but the first is the most important — in a big company, you’re far more likely to skip this stage entirely. So if you’re trying to pick up a ’startup skillset’, don’t join a big company and learn how to do version 1.1 — join a startup.

Another reason to join a startup: brand matters. There are tons of smart guys in Silicon Valley. Smart guys with a proven track record are much rarer. Joining a startup that flops? No change. Joining one that succeeds? Suddenly you’re not Joe any more, you’re “Joe who was part of Facebook’s success”, or similar. Personal brand is paramount — even brand by proxy. Get networking. Know your options. Know your routes.

Doing a startup is like jumping off a cliff and trying to assemble an aeroplane on the way down. I love this simile. Don’t look down.

A few words of wisdom that need little explanation: Fail fast. Make decisions quickly — decisions can always be remade. Plan for both good and bad luck. Of course, if both your Plan Bs succeed, you end up very busy.

Finally, an audience member asked “What’s the best route, becoming an investor or an entrepreneur?” — Reid’s answer being that they required different skillsets. Entrepreneurs need total dedication and passion to their cause or it won’t happen. Investors need to be good partners, rather than good drivers. And which will make you richer, faster? That’s all a matter of risk versus reward. Investment (as a career) isn’t going to give you the biggest payoffs, but it’s safer; with entrepreneurship, you could lose it all, or win big.

Probably says far too much about me that I didn’t understand the question itself. “You mean, there’s an option to not be an entrepreneur?” :)

Yesterday I had the mixed pleasure of getting up at the crack of dawn to head to Aberdeen for my third NESTA Starter for 6 workshop. S46, as it’s affectionately known, is a scheme whereby aspiring creative and technology entrepreneurs get some solid hands-on training in the various skills needed to run a successful business.

This month’s session was on marketing, run by two seasoned professionals from The Value Innovators. Obviously defining and then approaching your target market in the right way is crucial to a young business’s success, as startups rarely have the cash or even the time to absorb wasted marketing efforts.

The session focused on four key aspects of marketing: product, customers, promotion and PR.
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One of the pieces of homework from the first NESTA session was this: create fake evidence to motivate yourself.

If you were to become supremely successful and achieve everything you’ve ever dreamt of, what would it look like in terms of physical evidence?

Would you be on the cover of Business Week? Frontpaged on TechCrunch, TechMeme and Digg? Interviewed by Jeremy Paxman? Speaking at TED? Would your designs be in London Fashion Week or perhaps someone might wear your scarves on Gossip Girl?

I was going to use my Photoshop ninja skills to mock up the TIME, Business Week, Wired and Vogue covers with myself on, but sadly I have too much to do. However, the idea of creating these imaginary success stories is a really enticing one, once I got past my initial scepticism and started really visualising what success might mean to me.

Even if you’re not being forced to do it for homework, why not spend a few minutes at least thinking on the subject — you might even find yourself smiling!