siberianfruit

[reposting this from my old Wordpress blog]
 

Uncertainty is at the core of human existence. We all deal with it. Most people take the route of minimizing the uncertainty of their lives as much as they can. Get a good college degree, get a secure job, pick your mate, settle down in a house, get your cars, save wisely, and you’re good to go.

Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, create more uncertainty in their quest for something else (more fulfilling life, more opportunities, more challenges, more money, etc.).

Here are some of the biggest aspects of uncertaintly for an entrepreneur:

• The problem: I’m going to create something that will solve a new problem, but I have no idea if there is a problem at all, if I’m looking at the problem the right way, if the problem is a problem for a large enough number of people, and so on.
• The solution: I think I got the problem, so now I will just solve it. But I have no idea if I have the right solution and there are so many different ways it could go.
• The market: I got the problem, I got the solution, but will I be able to get this in front of enough people? What if there’s a competitor who is able to do this faster and better? What if only a small number of people will care about my product? Etcetera.
• Me: Do I have what it takes? What if other people are better, younger, older, more talented, more experienced, have more resources, etc?
• The resources: Will I be able to get the right team, advisors?
• The money: How the hell am I going to pay for this? What if I burn through everything I have, or go in debt? What if I let other people down? How much is it going to cost to get to success? How long can I survive? If I raise funding will I be able to get the right terms?

Here’s the other crazy thing about being an entrepreneur: the challenges are endless! Within the lifespan of a startup, as soon as you overcome your current obstacle, you will be faced with the next. It’s just a ladder of freshly minted obstacles. Most likely, you’re doing something new and out of your comfort zone. On top of being forced to deal with challenges as part of your startup, chances are, you are also addicted to your challenges like crack and will seek them out as soon as the natural flow of challenges in a growing startup will slow down or end.

I think this explains why so many entrepreneurs love the topic of personal development, growth, life balance, productivity etc. To be an entrepreneur, you have to figure out some hopefully healthy way of dealing with the insane uncertainty and endless challenges.

STARTUP UNCERTAINTY IS DEMORALIZING

Startups are damn hard, emotional (everything is on the line for you) and low points are unavoidable. Paul Graham’s great essay “How Not to Die” breaks it down like this:

When startups die, the official cause of death is always either running out of money or a critical founder bailing. Often the two occur simultaneously. But I think the underlying cause is usually that they’ve become demoralized. You rarely hear of a startup that’s working around the clock doing deals and pumping out new features, and dies because they can’t pay their bills and their ISP unplugs their server.

Startups rarely die in mid keystroke. So keep typing!

If so many startups get demoralized and fail when merely by hanging on they could get rich, you have to assume that running a startup can be demoralizing. That is certainly true. I’ve been there, and that’s why I’ve never done another startup. The low points in a startup are just unbelievably low. I bet even Google had moments where things seemed hopeless.

Knowing that should help. If you know it’s going to feel terrible sometimes, then when it feels terrible you won’t think “ouch, this feels terrible, I give up.” It feels that way for everyone. And if you just hang on, things will probably get better. The metaphor people use to describe the way a startup feels is at least a roller coaster and not drowning. You don’t just sink and sink; there are ups after the downs.

Another feeling that seems alarming but is in fact normal in a startup is the feeling that what you’re doing isn’t working. The reason you can expect to feel this is that what you do probably won’t work. Startups almost never get it right the first time. Much more commonly you launch something, and no one cares. Don’t assume when this happens that you’ve failed. That’s normal for startups. But don’t sit around doing nothing. Iterate.

UNDERSTAND HOW TO MEASURE STARTUP PROGRESS

A critical event in my ability to understand and deal with the issue of extreme uncertainty in startups was coming across Eric Reis‘ talks and the Lean Startup movement. The Lean Startup philosophy describes a startup as a “human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.”

A startup lifecycle can be broken down into 3 stages:

1. Find your customer/market fit (i.e. build something people want)
2. Figure out your customer acquisition strategy
3. Scale

Because there is so much uncertainty, it doesn’t make sense to invest heavily into building a perfect product or technology or a big sales organization. What good are any of those things, if people don’t want your product? By following that route, you’re likely to waste your limited resources and fail. Instead, entrepreneurs in stage 1 need to focus on LEARNING and learning FAST. The faster a startup can learn about the problem it’s solving, the solution it’s creating and the customers, the faster it reduces the associated uncertainty and risk and increases its chances of success.

Why is this idea critical for the psychological well being of an entrepreneur? Because it shifts the focus away from measuring progress by some obscure and unrealistic unit of “success”. Here’s an example. Let’s say you launch a product only to learn that no one cares! If you think that the measure of your progress is success, then you can assume that you’ve failed. However, if you understand that you’re measuring your learning, you will think about this product launch entirely differently. Negative feedback or indifference is learning! Hell, you’ll probably not even launch in the same way! (But that’s a whole other post.)

The idea that my goal is to learn is grounding and comforting to me, and it puts all startup activities in perspective.

SUMMARY

1. Uncertainty is the name of the startup game. Expect it and when it comes, remind yourself that it’s expected. Leave your ego out of it.
2. Measure your progress in learning rather than “success”.

I’ve gone back and forth with Twitter, and a couple of weeks ago I decided to revamp my Twitter strategy entirely to take complete control of using Twitter as a tool. My strategy is three-fold: 

1. I’ve unfollowed most of my friends, acquaintances, and other legacy accounts I’ve accumulated over time. This brought me down to about 40 people. The reason I did this was that I asked myself the question of why I’m using Twitter and what do I want to get out of it. I’ve realized that Twitter is not about friends for me. Close friends I communicate with outside of social networks and sometimes on Facebook. So I don’t need Twitter for that. 

2. I’ve started following people based on two questions: (1) does this person/company provide information that is in line with my current goals? and (2) is this someone I’m potentially interested in developing a relationship with? My interests currently include startups and entrepreneurship, the Los Angeles tech scene, technology and startup thought leaders, people who appear to really get social media and do it successfully, no-nonsense women entrepreneurs, publicity figures who seem to be of special relevance to the subject matter of my startup.   

3. Don’t follow people as a favor, due to social pressure or just to be nice :) I will have a conversation with anyone who writes to me (within reason), but will not follow them back unless condition #2 is met. 

Following these strategies has immediately made my twitter extremely relevant to me. In the past, I’ve tried a complicated list strategy and I have to say that it really didn’t work for me. This is one of those cases where removing all barriers for yourself really pays off. It’s the same way that I think about my gym membership or exercising in general. Make it so that it’s an easy, free-of-obstacles experience and leave yourself no room for excuses. Now, when I jump to my Twitter feed I can’t help but get engaged right from my homepage. 

I’m up to following 93 people at the moment and I’m sure this list will keep growing as I find more and more highly relevant folks to follow. 

We have been successfully using Facebook as the main user acquisition tool for my startup Wanelo.com. I’ve been finding myself in frequent conversations with entrepreneurs about how to get the most out of Facebook ads and fan pages, so I thought it was time to summarize my experience and advice. 

Note that I’ve decided to not share the specific numbers behind our ads, such as the cost per click, our daily budget and the specific ad that works really well for us. I’m happy to share this information, but would rather do it over email or Twitter. Feel free to send me a private message or email me if you want to know our specific numbers.

1. Expect different results. 

You should expect different results from Facebook depending on the nature of your business and your target audience. “Shiny” mass consumer offerings, such as anything related to fashion (shoes in particular do great) or home decor, do much better on Facebook. If you’re looking to capture busy enterprise decision-makers expect to pay more. They are likely to be less interested in clicking on ads than a college student looking to pass time on Facebook while in class.

2. Drive traffic to your Facebook page, NOT your website. 

There are a couple of important reasons to drive traffic to your Facebook page over your website. One important reason is that it’s less effort for the user to “Like” your Facebook page, rather than sign up for your web service or fully explore your site. Once you acquire the “Like”, you now have a relationship and a tie to that user. You can now continue communicating and offering little bits of value to your fans, hoping to build the relationship over time until they have enough interest in what you offer to convert to using your site. A continuous slow building of a relationship makes a lot more sense than a sudden love-at-first-sight connection. 

3. Experiment until you find THE ONE.

It’s been my experience that finding the one ad that works is really worth it and can make a huge difference in how much you pay per click. In our case, this came down to finding a photo of a product that people find so appealing that the click-through rate is pretty high and the cost of the ad is much lower than anything else we’ve tried. The text of the ad matters as well, but seems to be less important than the image. The image is what grabs the attention initially. 

One thing to keep in mind is that Facebook allows you to create multiple versions of an ad withina  campaign, but then what happens is that if the Facebook algorithm finds an ad it thinks is performing well, it won’t even give enough impressions to the other ads for you to see if those could be more successful. So it’s ok to start with a handful of ad versions within a campaign, but utlimately you’ll want to test out your favorite versions in separate campaigns to ensure they get an equal chance. 

4. The effectiveness of your ad is likely to go up over time. 

Another important reason to focus on collecting “Likes” is that over tme your ad will become more effective as it builds up the social juice. As people “Like” a page, their friends will start seeing text that says “Deena and 12 other friends like this” and will be more likely to check the ad out and possibly “Like” your page.

Another reason this may happen is that people are likely to click on an ad after seeing it for a few times, rather than the first time. Actual Wanelo users have told me that they clicked after seeing our ad several times.

Lastly, and I don’t really have a good explanation for this, I’ve seen an ad really spike all of a sudden after running for more than a month. I don’t know why this may happen - perhaps it reached some sort of critical mass? - but it’s possible to see an ad become significantly more effective after some time. 

5. Create a landing tab. 

Facebook lets you choose where people go from your ad, so that you can send traffic to your Wall, or to a landing tab. I recommend using the landing tab as the first page new visitors land on. This tab should tell people what your site is, have something fun and visual to look at and explicity tell your visitors to click the Like button at the top (designs with arrows pointing to the Like button do well). One of the reasons this works, is that direct calls to action (“Like this page”, “Buy this,” etc.) are frequently more successful than indirect ones. 

6. Maximize the visual appeal of your Facebook page.

Even if you send new visitors to the landing tab first, many of them will check out your wall first to see if they want to connect to your page. This is why it’s important to have a fun, visually appealing page that shows recent content and an active community. 

There are different types of content you can post on your page: links, photos, text. In our experience, photos as content do best, even if you just want to send people to a page on your site. There are several reasons for that. Photos result in the largest images in your Facebook page stream. Links give you images too, but they feel more spammy and they are smaller in size. Photos feel more like you’re providing a value to the user because you aren’t looking for them to immeidately go somewhere outside of Facebook.

I recommend organizing photos into thematic albums to reinforce the consistency and the categorization of your content (on the Wanelo page, we have albums for Home Favorites, Fashion Favorites and Valentines Day Gift Countdown). If a user likes a particular photo, he or she can browse through all the other photos in that album as well. Make sure to think through all the relevant pieces of information accompanying each photo as well, and, of course, include a link to the content on your site.

7. Post content frequently and regularly.

As I mentioned above, people will evaluate your page based on the quality, quantity and timing of your content when deciding whether to “Like” your page or not. What they see at the top of the page is important because it makes the first impression. 

Think of your Facebook page as a micro-newsletter. Train your fans to expect entertaining content from you on a regular basis. You don’t want to overwhelm your users with content either, so keep your posts at least 3-4 hours apart. Our rule of thumb has been to make 2-4 posts per day.

8. Provide consistent positive reinforcement and encouragement.

Make sure people who post on your page understand that someone is listening to them and appreciating what they say. Not only should every single comment get a response, but you can “like” almost every comment made a by a user on your posts. Your fans should feel that your page is a safe and positive environment for them to share their thoughts. 

We constantly assess our own abilities against those of others. I know I do. What strikes me as incredible is how freaking random, self-created and only supported by facts after-the-fact these assessments are.

Here’s what I mean. For the second time in my life, I’ve started working with a life coach, this time on a much bigger commitment. 

(As a side note, read about Mark Pincus’ dedication to using life and other types of coaches: http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/06/mark-pincus-farmville-201106 For me, reading this was an external validation of something I’ve always believed in - which is giving myself the best tools I could possibly get to succeed).

With the encouragement of my coach, for the last couple of days, I’ve been consciously going through my beliefs about what I’m good or bad at. Initially, going through this exercise, it appears as though these beliefs are facts. But, after a close look and some helpful guidance, you can start to see your own BS. You’ve made most of it up!

Our beliefs are likely either unsupported by facts, or are a result of us acting on those beliefs in the first place until they come true. My so-called facts have included the following: I’m a natural entrepreneur. I’m great at product design. I’m great at operating independently. I’m bad at marketing. My independence is also my weakness and, I’m bad at bringing other people into my game. (Keep in mind that this being a public post, I’m keeping these observations on the safer side of things. Gotta maintain my awesome public image :-) ). And so on. 

Now here are the facts I’m beginning to collect. I can think of multiple instances when people have come to me and asked how is it that I’ve managed to do what I’ve done. Specifically, start and run a successful user experience design consulting company (http://dynamikagency.com/ - a company I put on hold to focus on my startup), finance and launch a startup (http://www.wanelo.com/), become really good at product design. 

People like to ask if I’ve gone to school for these things. The answer is a giant NO. There was no school involved. I simply did these things because I wanted to do them and I had an irrational, unsupported-by-anything belief (which I really can take no credit for) that I can do those things! It’s that simple. I believed that I could, that they were mine to claim and I did them.

We all know those people who think they can and those people who simply think they can’t. Some jump forward with zero preparation, make mistakes, learn, adjust, while others take classes, read books, read and research endlessly, feeling overwhelmed by the necessity to be “ready” and to build up slowly before starting on a task. 

Here’s some simple proof. When Wanelo first launched, the design was just plain bad. There’s no other way of putting. It was utterly horrible. And, in retrospect, I really didn’t care about how bad it was. I wanted to design it. I thought I could design it well. I liked the problem I set out to solve. And I decided that I loved designing enough to figure it out (i.e. make mistakes, learn and fix them). So I did it. But the reality is that I was not good at it and I had no idea what I was doing. 

On the flip side, looking at the things I believe myself to be bad at, it becomes obvious that the starting conditions for my strengths and weaknesses are actually nearly identical. In other words, I don’t know sh*t to begin with and it’s my beliefs about what I can and cannot be good at that is determining my ability to become good at that thing.

With all this in mind, I am now deciding that I am born to be ridiculously good at marketing and at bringing others into my game. Watch out :)

Startup culture encourages startup advice. Entrepreneurs want to write it. Other entrepreneurs want to read it.

You can read all sorts of things from people who know exactly what they are talking about. Don’t raise funding. Raise as much as you can. Build an amazing product and they will come. NO, don’t worry about your product, just figure out your distribution - it’s the only thing that matters. And so on.

This creates a temptation to learn by reading about other people’s experience. Now, I would venture to say that it’s unlikely that any of the people who are writing about their experience have gotten it from reading others’ advice. In fact, we are interested in these folks’ writing precisely because they have experienced the things they are writing about first-hand. They’ve made their mistakes and have put in the hours.

I started thinking about this because I realized that all this reading was actually slowing me down. It’s possible that this is highly personal and that for others reading is a good way to learn about various aspects of running a startup. Personally, however, I have started to see a negative impact in three ways.

1. Reading/research clutters up your digital workspace.
First, every day I would open and keep open literally tens of browser windows and tabs. It would not be unusual for me to keep 8 browser windows with say 10  tabs per window. And some of those, I would keep open for a week or more because I didn’t want to lose the valuable information that I haven’t had a chance to process yet.


As an entrepreneur, I’m working on several major aspects of my startup at once. So naturally, there is a lot out there that could be relevant for me to read. I would sit down at my computer and instead of working on the task I set out to work on, I would have to deal with all of the open windows/tabs, frequently getting distracted, or getting pulled back into my research. 

2. You’ll put yourself into the box of doing things the “right” way.
I noticed myself recently operating from the position that there’s some “right” way of doing things and that I should figure it out by doing all the reading I need, or talking to all the people I can or should talk to, and then I will know what it is. As soon as I started to let go of this desire to find the answer by reading, I have empowered myself to move forward with speed by being comfortable with NOT knowing the perfect answer, but instead by giving myself the room I need to try things on my own, to make mistakes and to learn from them.

3. The time spent reading or researching is the time spent not doing. 
Yes, sometimes you need to read and research to learn. But if you’ve done the work of identifying your highest value task for the day (I will write about this in the near future, but for now see my guest blog post at Women 2.0), it will rarely be to read or research. Most likely, it’s something about talking to people, designing, hiring, etc.

For the purposes of productivity, you can look at your time as a single track. You choose what the track is filled with, but there’s only one track, so you have to choose wisely. If you’re overdoing the reading or researching part, you simply don’t have the time to take other actions at the same time. So it’s a trade off.

4. There is absolutely no end to how much you can read or research.
I have long been comfortable with saying no to push sales. If you’re a marketer or a sales person who tries to call me, you will get a straight and simple no. I will not even give you a chance to speak because it’s clear to me that this is not how I want to find out about services under any circumstances. I know that when I need a service or a product, I will seek it out, do my research, call the right people and so on. The push approach to sales does not work in my world. 

I have realized that I can and should apply the same thinking to the reading/research I do. ENDLESS amount of startup reading comes my way on a daily basis. I’m coming to terms with the idea that it’s not possible to read it all, save it or organize it all and that, on the flip side, it is possible to seek out the specific information I need exactly when I need it. I may not be able to find that perfect source that would come my way in the previous approach, but -hey - that approach is simply unworkable. 

Entrepreneurs are known for inventing new ways of doing things. And yes, learning by reading can be good. But at best its role should be supplementary to your experience from doing. The focus and prioritization should always be on doing first.

As I became aware of all this, I have started to consciously pull back from the desire to read or research and am using the following guidelines:

• I no longer allow myself to keep browsers open unless they pertain to the specific task I’m working right now. I have on a couple of occasions simply shut down all of my open windows without worrying about going through them. It can be uncomfortable, but the benefits outweigh the costs.
• I consciously give myself permission to make mistakes. I’ve found this liberating and empowering and in tune with my natural way of learning. As soon as I do this, the pressure to be perfect goes away, and instead I’m just having fun doing what I love doing and learning from it.
• I am adopting a pull approach to reading and research. I tell myself that I will find this information if and when I need it. I first consider ignoring it, then, if it seems worth reading, I save it to my Instapaper account for possible future reading. I make an effort to not read it now because that would take me away from the task I’ve set out to work on. 

Of course, the irony is that if you’ve made it this far in the post, you’re reading. But, hey, that’s your choice :) 

Happy doing!

We’ve already established that startups are nothing but endless uncertainty. It’s natural for us to try to reduce the amounts of uncertainty we deal with by working with or talking to other people. 

It’s also no secret that you will get conflicting thoughts and advice any time you talk to someone about your startup. So what is a poor confused entrepreneur to do? How do you know who to listen to and what to do with it?

Here’s the deal. The reason there are so many opinions and so many different ways of looking at a startup situation is precisely that the situation can be seen and can go in any one of those ways (plus the ways that no one has even thought of yet). You can prove this to yourself by thinking of all the different success scenarios from the past. It’s actually possible to find proof that various ways exist to succeed and that some of those ways may even appear to be polar opposites. So it’s precisely the uncertainty of the situation that invites all of the opinions. 

It’s tempting to look for the one opinion that is correct. But, hopefully sooner rather than later you realize that the correct opinion simply doesn’t exist. Opinions are just that: opinions. And some of them may even come across quite convincing due to all of the impressive past experience of the person sharing the opinion. And although there’s some validity to the past experience, it’s actually helpful to look at the definition of an opinion here: A view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge. 

Pretty dead on. 

So with all this in mind, how do you pick who to continue working with or getting advice from? Because we are dealing with uncertainty of outcome with numerous variables, no one opinion will be right. That actually means you get to choose. You may notice that when you work or talk with certain people, you feel empowered. When you work with or talk to others you feel negative and dis-empowered. Although this is not something that’s set in stone for any individual, most people will have a default way of operating in regards to uncertainty. For some people this default is about minimizing their risks, looking for safety, security and known ways of doing things. Others will seek out a way of looking at each situation creatively, looking for solutions, and looking to make the most of what’s going on in creating the future.

I have experienced this in a very literal way in getting recent feedback and advice on Wanelo and having many conversations with really great people about our future. I have noticed that people have varying responses to our growth with some people getting really excited about it and others responding with caution. Our growth is good, but not at a point when there’s no room for interpretation. In other words, it’s up to us to keep going and get it to a point where interpretation is no longer necessary.

Initially, I, too, was in a place of trying to assess our growth as being either good or bad. I have now gotten to a point where I no longer see it as that, but I focus on what we can do with what’s going on and how we move forward rather than seeing our current results as a final destination. 

Back to answering the question. The most helpful way to choose who to surround yourself with and who to take advice from is by paying attention to which conversations leave you empowered to move forward and minimizing the conversations that don’t. The second kind of conversations will actually drain your energy and, in the end, assuming that our goal is to produce results, will largely waste your time. Meaning, you will not get results from those conversations. Worse, if you take them for the truth, you might give up altogether.

When you do find those people who leave you empowered, especially in situations of high uncertainty, hold on to them. Those are the people who you want in your support network and who will help you build your business.