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?” :)

I’ve run across several young entrepreneurs lately who are starting up businesses in Scotland (well, Edinburgh specifically). I keep mentioning the same resources to them, so it’s about time I put it all in one place.

• EPIS at the University of Edinburgh is a great opportunity to get started with a safety net. A loan from Scottish Enterprise, office space and hosting within the University, access to academic resources and mentoring, and tons of help and advice to boot. The programme won’t be accepting new applications for much longer, so get in fast.
• Scottish Enterprise is a fairly hard nut to crack. There’s a lot of support available and I, at least, found it hard to research online. The easiest way to get a rundown of the grants, co-investment and support (mostly financial) available is to get in touch with a human being; you might need to go through Business Gateway, who are dubiously helpful.
• PSYBT, if you’re under 25, is a nice source of very practical advice (eg. a bookkeeping course) as well as grants and loans.
• If you’re doing something disruptive with digital media, 4iP could help. They’re worth contacting to hash out ideas as well as to try and get financial backing.
• 38minutes is 4iP’s social network, which is a great one-stop place to find out what events are on and what’s hot in the world of social media. For example, it tells you about…
• …Edinburgh Coffee Morning, every Friday at Centotre. I am notoriously bad at going to this, but if you want to hobnob with social/digital meeja, startups and web devs, it’s the place to be. You might also enjoy…
• TechMeetup, now in both Edinburgh and Glasgow flavours. A monthly hackerfest with the odd spinoff gathering and a mailing list that cool stuff occasionally floats across.
• If you’re interested in more structured events, Informatics Ventures often throw great educational and networking-heavy events, from courses to expos. Recent highlights have included Guy Kawasaki and Doug Richard.
• A shameless plug for a new site started by startup types here: StartupCafe (which, when I visit it, has as its first post a listing somewhat similar to this one!). Any site with a competition to win pancakes is good in my book.
• Related, Edinburgh Uni’s E-club and Launch.ed — both a little dormant now due to the end of the academic year — are good organisations with great people. Events, networking, advice, support, etc.
• And, totally unrelated to the above, Hacker News is an excellent morning read, and applying to Y Combinator’s funding rounds is a very educational process. There are a couple of Edinburgh startup types in its irc channel (#startups on freenode) and others from the UK.

Enjoy, and do let me know if there’s more stuff I’ve missed!