Startups and Corn Bread

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Last night I was at Boston Market picking up dinner, the woman behind the counter was both extremely pushy and friendly.  I was in a good mood and I responded back to her friendliness.   After I made her laugh twice I asked her to hook me up with a bigger meal. They gave me double cornbread and almost double everything of standard portion.

On the other hand last January I was out in the Middle East in an incubator.  I wanted to meet an entrepreneur who was semi famous with big name investors and had a talented team behind him.  One day in the office, a friendly guy walks over to me and asks what I was working on.  I did not know the guy nor feel like speaking about what I was working on.  I gave him a one line response and went back to work.

Obviously as you can probably guess the entrepreneur who I wanted to speak to was the friendly guy.  I did not give him the time of day and almost blew my chances of speaking to him.  Was able to partially fix later with a phone call.

Both these stories taught me two items.  First being friendly almost always reaps returns and second you must ask for something, nobody will think to give it you (ie the double cornbread theory).

 

Startup? Move to Silicon Valley

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If you want to kill it in Hollywood become you move to LA (to become a struggling waiter).

If you want to kill it in finance you move to NYC the Investment Banking Capital of the World.

For tech make the move to Silicon Valley. Just do it!

Here is an email I got from somebody I met at an event who was visiting for a few days:

Hi Danny,

It was great meeting you last week at the startupweekend event at Google’s SF office.   After talking with you and other folks at the event, I think I have to move up to nor cal.  Being down here in the LA area just doesn’t have the network and startup culture like it does up there.  So I’m trying to look for any jr. development jobs up there and I was looking into angellist.co.  If you could recommend anything else, that would be great.

I took a look at your web blog.  Very interesting and inspirational stuff.  I especially liked the goals you set out for yourself of networking and meeting new folks.

 Oh, and while I was walking back to the hotel, I saw this.  I like the color scheme you used to highlight the classiness of the place:
Inline image 1
Keep in touch,
______________

 

Youtube/MegaUpload: It Is All About Who You Know

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It is not what you know, but who you know.

According to DailyFinance in 2006 over 70% of Youtube’s most popular videos were from copyrighted material. From Viacom’s lawsuit against Google you can see quotes from the founders taken directly from their email where they acknowledge all the copyright issues and create different ways to keep the videos despite future legal problems in order to keep page views and users increasing.  It is business and they knew in the early days that high quality television clips drove audience and without them they would loose all momentum and there ability for a quick sale would take a major hit.

Once Youtube reached a massive audience the founders started to get more concerned with at the minimum creating an appearance that they where trying to fight copyrighted material.

On the other hand is infamous Internet legend Kim Dotcom.  Dotcom was recently arrested during a raid on his house for his website MegaUpload.  MegaUpload was a massive video sharing website along the same lines of Youtube with a premium twist along the same lines as Dropbox.  Many of the studio/media heads learned there lesson with Youtube and wanted to make an example of Kim DotCom.

Hundreds of agents backed up by helicopters in full tactical gear swarmed his home in New Zealand and arrested him, took his possessions and froze his accounts. With his website shut down, house arrest in New Zealand, and looming extradition to United States most people would be massively depressed.  Not Kim DotCom.  He is fighting back and winning battle after battle.

Recently an article describes what Kim DotCom portrays as a massive conspiracy against him.  Kim DotCom was able to go through public White House visitor log books where he uncovers a meeting between top studio heads and Joe Biden.  Only 6 months after the meeting, a massive international commando raid was accomplished on Kim DotCom.

The head of the MPAA (lobbying agency for motion pictures) is former Senator Chris Dodd who is known to be good friends with Vice President Joe Biden.

The major investor in Youtube was legendary venture firm Sequoia Capital .  The Sequoia partner was on the board of both Youtube and Google. Erich Schmidt told the Google Board that Youtube was worth 600-700 million dollars. In the end Google paid 1.65 billion for Youtube.

In the end the Youtube founders knew Mike Moritz. Kim Dotcom knew celebrities which got MegaUpload major attention, which led to the MPAA head Chris Dodd looking to make an example by calling his friend Vice President Biden.

It is all about who you know.

 

SEO Live: Self Motivation

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I was just using Google Webmaster tools.  In Webmaster tools you can see search queries, impressions, and clicks back to your site.  I was able to see that “self motivation” was the most popular keyword on my site.  Over the last month 8,000 people have seen self motivation from legendarymoves on Google Search.  Although only 170 people have clicked on the link and visited legendarymoves .  The CTR (click through rate is 2%) which is 4X better than a well done display banner ad.  Difference is not only a higher CTR but of course search engine optimization is free and brings highly targeted users, not users who like bright images.

My hypothesis is that as I rise up on Google Search rankings for the keyword self motivation the higher the CTR will be and the more people will visit legendarymoves .  In addition it will be a great way to practice becoming a talented SEO guy.  Right now this is first result on Google Search for self Motivation . My goal is for legendarymoves to be a top 2 search result when Self Motivation is a keyword.  I have looked at Google Keywords tool and there is low competition for Self Motivation.  However, each month around 66,000 searches are done with the word “Self Motivation”.

Each week I will write a post on the steps that I have done to increase SEO for “self motivation” keyword.  I will also update you on what is working and what is not working.  I will be looking for some help from top SEO experts and will have them blog in legendarymoves as well.

Thoughts, ideas, tips?

Hitting Goals

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Last few weeks my goals have been ambitious and I have not hit them.  Part of the reason why is that I am getting caught up in Silicon Valley.  Every night there are meetups/parties/etc that although beneficial for networking are a huge waste of time for work. During Google I/O conference every night there was another big party.

I have missed 2 straight weeks of goals.  To make up for it, I have bought a pie of pizza and walked around downtown Palo Alto handing it out.  Surprisingly there are not enough homeless people in downtown Palo Alto to finish a pie.  If you have read other self motivation articles you would see that I have to donate money every time I miss a goal.  Now I owe a total of $60.   Going to list some short goals that if I do not hit, I will add $40 to what I owe charities.

1) Build something new

2) Finish learning front end programming

2 short difficult goals.  3 days to get it done.

The Social Video Wars: Who will be the next Instagram?

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For the last year, two companies have seen the potential in social video(quick video clips that can be uploaded to various social media accounts and can be followed by friends.) Two main companies are battling it out: Socialcam and Viddy. Once Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars, all attention turned to both companies as the next big thing, the “Video Instagram.”

Viddy which is based in Los Angeles with investors such as Jay-Z, Will Smith, and Shakira, would be characterized as a media company.  On the other hand, based at FoundersDen in the heart of SOMA (web 2.0 central) and backed by Valley heavyweights Tim Draper, Stewart Alsop and many others, Socialcam should be described as a technology company.

Rewind 2 months ago; it was a tight race between Viddy and Socialcam with Viddy having more users.  Fast forward 2 months and Viddy is now having there lunch handed to them.  As of Jun 29th Socialcam has 85,300,000 monthly users compared to Viddy with 18,600,000.  What was once a close race has now moved into a thrashing.  WOW.

How has Socialcam done it?  Nobody puts it better than legendary Silicon Valley operator Marc Andreessen in his article “Why Software is Eating the World“.

That is why I moved here  4 months ago.

Tuesday: Killer idea of the Week

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Although there is much debate who will be the next Steve Jobs.  Most people point to  either Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.  Elon Musk former cofounder of Paypal, current founder of SpaceX,and Tesla.  Musk shoots for the moon, and is willing to risk everything to follow his gut.

On the other hand Bezos built Amazon from nothing into a worldwide ecommerce machine that has put many retail stores out of business and is about to put another one out of business. Bezos can be considered the father of ecommerce.  Bezos style is different from Musk’s.  Bezos is more methodical, data driven, and all about solving real world problems for the average consumer.

Today’s killer idea of the week goes to Bezos.  A patent he filed for back in 2010 has been made public.  An airbag for cellphones.  Genius. The mobile phone thanks to Steve Jobs has quickly turned into the center of people’s digital lives.  Consumers spend billions on cases.  Consumers spend billions more on insurance.  An airbag would be an simple practical solution that would completely disrupt a major market that is central to consumers lives.

Jeff Bezos just killing the game.  Well done.

 

Rainmaker

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Previously at Nuqudy we have used the word Rainmaker to foster both competition and as a joke.  It started something like this “Danny you might be a Rainmaker, but I am the father of the Rainmakers”.  Naturally my response was “I am the grandfather of the Rainmakers”.

This conversation got me thinking of what a Rainmaker is.  Anybody can be a CEO.  There are tens of millions of CEO’s on every street corner.  Over the last 2 years, I have met hundreds of CEOs.  However, I could count on one hand the amount of rainmakers I have met.

In addition a Rainmaker does not have to be in charge and can be anybody from a janitor to engineer.  After searching here is a definition that I came across that I like:

“In everyday usage, the term “rainmaker” can apply to anyone – from the salesperson who always finishes first in sales to the engineer who consistently finds innovative ways to present a company’s products. In the purest sense, a rainmaker is a difference maker”

Recently a former investor at a top venture capital firm who saw my profile on LinkedIn wrote:

“danny, do you really have rainmaker in your profile?  obviously you’re new to the area.  word of advice.”

Although my definition of a Rainmaker is different than the commonly thought of definition, this guy had a solid point.  Over the years I have done some cool startups in a few different countries but now that I am in Silicon Valley it is sort of like being in the Major Leagues. So far I have done nothing compared to some of the people before me.  (Only a month ago a 19 year old raised 7 million Series A for his startup)

So now at 23 years young, I am changing the title on my LinkedIn to Rit.

 

Tech Agents: Silicon Valley Style

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Last Friday night I dropped by a Hackathon in downtown Palo Alto.  Standard Hackathon rules applied: food and programing into the late hours in order to build something new and hopefully cool.

However, something stood out at this event.  2 tables full of High School kids who where all there to build on on ideas.  A few of these kids started telling me what they where working on.  Some showed me sites they have built in the past.  After I finished speaking with one Junior, a woman approached me and introduced herself as the students mother. (Out here Friday Hackathons are the new movie nights for High School kids).

After introducing herself, the students mother, asked “what do I do”.  After I responded, the mother states:” you are speaking to the wrong son. You need to meet my younger son, he is in Middle School and sitting over there”.  She goes on to say even though her younger son has not graduated Middle School he is already a better mobile developer than her middle aged husband.

Obviously I spoke to her younger son.  After he finished demonstrating/explaining what he is working on I started thinking.  Although this kid could not be older than 13 or 14, he is already more articulate than 99% of people I meet on a daily basis.

 

Self Motivating Mondays:

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Last week I failed.  I had a list of 4 goals to get done or else I would donate $ 50 to a charity.  I failed on 2 out of the 4 goals.

To keep my promise this week I will buy $ 50 worth of food and distribute it to homeless people in the Palo Alto area.  I will videotape and post here so you can see.

New simplified list for this week.  Same penalty if I don’t accomplish goals but I am bringing it down to $ 25 donation.

1) Improve front end engineering ablities

2) Mobile version of this blog

3) Complete deal for side project I am working on