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GREG ISENBERG
@gregisenberg 3 years, 3 months ago 688 views

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I interviewed 5 billionaires this week

I asked them to share their lessons learned on startups, life and entrepreneurship:

Here's what they told me:

A startup idea isn't "one" idea

It's a 10000 ideas, 100,000 decisions and 1,000,000 headaches

You will lose some friends. Kiss most of your high school friends goodbye

Certainties of life:

- Death
- Taxes
- Losing friends

A sign of wealth:

No longer needing an alarm clock to wake up

When in doubt, please don't send that angry email response

Wait 24h. Go for a walk

Angriness makes you drunk. Send emails sobers

Career advice:

Quit your job if it makes you exhausted (if you can)

Be grateful for your job if it fills you up with energy

Likable people win

People sense those good vibes. It does wonders for your startup, career or life

You will doubt yourself a million times

It's only natural

Constantly cut your losses

Harmful in the short term, lucrative in the long run

A sign of wealth: no envy, no fear

You can't build great products without being "at one" with the niche you're building it for

It's almost impossible

Deeply understand your niche or expect disappointments

Enjoy the process

Building a startup should never feel like a grind

Building a startup is a privilege

A satisfying life doesn't require much

Wonderful health, enjoyable work & a caring family & friends.

Success is inevitable.

Follow me on Twitter @gregisenberg to learn more about startups, internet communities or niches

It's free to follow 😝

More from GREG ISENBERG

GREG ISENBERG
@gregisenberg

My guide to startups:

I've lost millions, hired hundreds, raised millions and sold companies before the age of 30

Read this to become better:

Venture capital & PR are like drugs

Drugs can kill you or save your life

Use accordingly.

If you’re lucky: your startup will be copied. Don’t be mad

The best startup revenge is overwhelming product/market fit

Okinawa is an Island in Japan with the highest life expectancy. It's called "the land of immortals"

The secret: almost everybody gardens

Entrepreneurship is a marathon not a sprint. Be sustainable

Find your gardening.

A wonderful online course is so valuable its like you’re stealing from the teacher

A bad online course is a teacher stealing from you

Tip: scout out for wonderful online courses

A few dollar investment will completely change a life

GREG ISENBERG
@gregisenberg

Life is crazy. Today is a good day to stop and reflect

10 simple questions that CHANGED my life

(startup life, personal life)

Here they are:

Q: Can you really control that?

Smart people know what they can and cannot control

If you're living in the past, you're nostalgic
If you're living in the future, you're anxious
If you're living in the present, you're at peace

Q: Did you start today with a victory?

Starting every day with a victory sets you up to win

I don't care what it is:

- Make your bed
- Make a wonderful coffee
- Hug your wife or children

No such thing as a small win. It's a win!

You'll win more, if you start winning early

Q: What are you optimizing for?

#MFSA
1. Money
2. Freedom
3. Stability
4. Ability

The world rewards those who are focused

Perfectly prioritize

Are you being optimistic?

Guaranteed: more luck when you're optimistic

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GREG ISENBERG
@gregisenberg

THREAD: Most advice is garbage

Here's some advice you shouldn’t listen to on startups, careers and life:

“90% of startups fail”

If you’re building a startup for the money, please quit

You’re probably better off working for FB or AMZN and rising the ranks

A successful startup isn't just about the valuation. It's about impact on your team, the world and yourself

The journey is 🔥

“You'll sleep when you’re dead”

If you don't sleep, you'll BE dead

Sleep is crucial to a happy mind and body

Without sleep, you become "foggy drunk", unable to take control of your life, startup or career

Beware of hustle culture and sleepless nights

“Become a doctor, lawyer etc”

This is probably some of the most undercover toxic advice parents can give to their children

The internet has opened the doors for anyone to become anything

Discover WHO you want to become before you decide on WHAT you want to become

“Don’t talk to strangers”

- You can't make lifelong friends if you don't talk to strangers
- You can't really discover who you are if you don't talk to strangers
- You can't get the benefits of the internet without talking to strangers

BE CAREFUL, but please talk to strangers

GREG ISENBERG
@gregisenberg

10 reasons why I think now is the greatest time to launch a startup

You should probably consider starting something

Just listen to this:

You can start with the community

I’ve identified ~8000 communities that could be unbundled from Reddit

- They are thriving
- They could make you ~$1m/year of revenue
- You often need $400 max to build MVP to tap that untapped value
- It's fun

Sounds like a dream job to me

People in Silicon Valley don’t have an edge on you

SF held the monopoly on startups for decades. Now, being in SF doesn’t matter for 99% of businesses

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise

The world is flat and is staying flat

Hell yeah. That feels good to say

You have 10x the amount of funding sources

You used to have to rely on VCs. Not anymore

To name a few:

- Fund via your community
- Fund via NFTs
- Fund via pre-sales
- Fund via tokens
- Fund via accelerators all over the world
- Etc

All of a sudden, you have 10x the options

Niche businesses can be worth billions

People used to laugh at niche. Why “go small” when you could “go big”?

The way to go big right now IS to go small

Large tech companies can’t be everything to everyone

GREG ISENBERG
@gregisenberg

I built communities that created 83m new customers in 2020 with this marketing framework

I'm curious your thoughts

A startup marketing manifesto:

Connect the disconnected

1. Find people who want to pursue a goal (ex: new immigrants in the US, learn tennis etc)
2. Accelerate them

This will do more for your business than you can imagine

Customers need to feel lucky. Like the chosen ones

Lucky to be a part of the community. Lucky to buy the product. Lucky to be a part of your story

If you nail the “luckiness” feeling, you can drive your marketing costs to zero

How to jumpstart & structure community:

- Masterclass for X
- Clubhouse for X
- Q&A platforms
- Small virtual events
- Gaming events
- Text your community’s leader
- etc.

Have a design aesthetic. Own it

Make sure your niche is in love with it

Daring design aesthetics pay dividends

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Chaitanya Mehta
@cmehta85

Building an #MVP is the first step in building a #startup. Whether a feature should be added or not, better to launch early with less or late with more are questions founders struggle with. Below 👇👇👇 is a #tweetstorm on @mwseibel's 'How to plan an MVP'

Justin Kan
@justinkan

I just gave a talk to the W2021 YC batch. It's my favorite startup audience to talk to. Here are some of the highlights:

Finding product market fit is the critical thing to do in a startup.

Everything else: demo day, what investors you get, how much you raise, what press covers you -- it is all window dressing.

Many founders don’t want to talk to their customers because it makes them vulnerable, because it's hard work, because it's scary. Creating a tight feedback loop with customers is the one thing that will help you discover PMF.

If a customer isn't one of your cofounders, try to create a customer panel that allows as tight of a loop as possible. Call them daily. Put them in your Slack.

My Twitch cofounder Emmett Shear has a great analogy on PMF here: it's like rolling a boulder downhill.

1/ What is \u201cproduct/market fit\u201d? I\u2019m not sure I can give you a definition. But maybe I can share what the subjective difference is in how it feels when you have it and when you don\u2019t. Founding a startup is deciding to take on the burden of Sisyphus: pushing a boulder up a hill.
— Emmett Shear (@eshear) July 27, 2019

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Frank Rotman
@fintechjunkie

1/23: One #startup trap to avoid (founders and VCs) is to fall in love with a value prop that can’t be delivered IRL now. Good diligence will surface disconnects but they’re often brushed under the rug by #VCs who believe fixing delivery over time will be fine. Unpacked:

2/23: The foundational reason why this matters from day 1 is that building a franchise of loyal customers is difficult for any #startup to pull off but the challenge is amplified if the #startup has to rebuild its franchise as it scales.

3/23: Broken or unfulfilled promises lead to customer behaviors that have real consequences. Poor ratings and reviews. High customer service costs. High complaint volume. Low engagement. High attrition/returns/cancelations. Low organic growth.

4/23: Undoing damage takes time and sometimes is nearly impossible. Convincing inactive customers to “retry” your product isn’t easy. Overcoming bad reviews can be a Herculean task. And resources will be thrown at fixing past sins at the expense of new functionality.

5/23: And guess what happens when #VCs dig into questionable early performance numbers? These conversations tend to revolve around caveats, apologies and synthetic analysis that bakes in significant improvements (many of which are still “unknown” in nature).

DotComCJ
@DotComCJ

>> How To Start a Lead Gen Agency <<

This step-by-step process will help you sign $5K - $20K clients in NO TIME.

Learn how to:

✅ Find Leads
✅ Book Meetings
✅ Sign Clients
✅ Scale Processes

// 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃 //

1/ Make sure you understand the lead gen process.

You NEED to know your shit before you pitch ANYTHING.

A few services you can offer to generate leads:

> Cold email
> LinkedIn outreach
> Facebook ads
> SEO

The list goes on.

Just perfect one of them & you’re SOLID.

2/ Find a niche to pitch your services to.

NICHE DOWN.

Use this doc to find an “untapped” niche:

https://t.co/aYptSNsZw6

I’d suggest choosing 1-3 to start with.

& focus ONLY on these.

3/ Find leads for outreach:

Sign up for a free @IcyLeads account at https://t.co/mz2kYnEko1 to find key decision-maker contact emails for outreach.

You can find emails from the list of niches provided above & filter out job titles such as:

> CEO
> Founder
> Marketing

Etc.

4/ Once you have a list of leads to pitch your services to:

It’s time to write your cold email outreach sequences.

Your cold emails should speak DIRECTLY to the prospect you’re reaching out to.

You can find some winning cold email templates

Zeda.io
@Zedaio

In order to expand their business, startups need to identify and use efficient products (tools). We have listed down Top 5 Products for Startups, and what makes them the top products.😎👇🏻
#prodmgmt #productsforstartups

https://t.co/0IPd51VibU

https://t.co/hICowg9VvP

https://t.co/T3epyQXEoX

https://t.co/Sm8G1JNxx0

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One thing that makes this #Khashoggi story difficult to assess when it comes to who's responsible is that there are different factions within Saudi Arabia constantly jockeying for power. It's not one monolithic thing.

Bin Salman heads only one faction.

Mohammad Bin Salman [MbS] not only has to deal with states in the region that want to thwart his plans for Saudi Arabia [SA} & the Middle East [ME] such as Iran, Turkey, Syria, Russia, Quatar...he also has people inside SA itself that don't like his reforms or agenda.

So when the narrative gets presented that "The only way Khashoggi could end up dead is on the direct orders of MbS" you might want to keep this in mind.

There are SEVERAL ways Khashoggi could end up meeting his demise at the hands of Saudis not working on the orders of MbS.

Powerful factions within SA, several of whom do not like the Crown Prince's reforms or the fact he was promoted to his current position ahead of others in the royal family, could have done this in the hopes of pinning it on MbS.

Too many false/fake news stories came out of Turkey in the past week to say anything further. This latest news comes just after it was reported Pompeo heard an audio of the killing that was quickly walked back in less than a day.

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Kelly Ellis
@justkelly_ok

So, I want to talk about how sexual harassment and fair pay are linked at Google (and beyond), because I think that's an angle that isn't being highlighted enough in the coverage of these walk-outs. I'm going to frame it largely around my personal experience there. Thread.

When I was sexually harassed by the director of the area I was working in, I was afraid to report it because I was worried that "getting him in trouble" would result in the subtle retaliation of missed leadership opportunities.

I wanted to continue working on the team I was on, because I'd gained a lot of very deep knowledge and expertise in that area, as well as reputation and camaraderie with the other folks working in that area. I didn't want to make the situation more "difficult."

To get promoted at Google, several need to happen: 1. you need opportunities for ownership and leadership above your current level (basically, opportunities to show you're working at the next level you're trying to get promoted to). The work you're "assigned" has a big impact.

2. You need glowing reviews from peers, *at or particularly above the level you're hoping to get promoted to.* Basically, you need people a lot more senior than you to say you're doing awesome work.

Dr Catherine Pemble is...
@CatherinePemble

Right, screw it. Here's a thread on *that* FBLive by Alex Cairnie about #Govanhill. Lets do a watch-through shall we? (Mind, I'm a resident of Govanhill, and a sociologist. I'm also 5'3, and a visibly queer woman so if half his claims are true I should be living in terror)

00:30: Welcomes viewers and uses points out that his videos are only getting attention b/c they're 'horrific'. Directs folk to his Youtube page. So already clout hunting.

1:08: "I've been warned to stay out of Govanhill. I'm a marked man" (proceeds to use a beanie as a disguise)

1:30 "Laughing and joking aside, here's somebodys front garden." Proceeds to show litter and claim its thrown from windows and this is 'common'. I know a handful of streets with litter issues like this, but its neither common nor unique to #govanhill and other deprived areas.

2:10 "Don't be under any illusion I'm only showing you the bad bits" - only shows you the bad bits.

3:45: He's had offers of help, but hes said no because hes not responsible for 'anybody elses safety' Good lord.

5:01: "Its not that bad. But its not all good either" -Correct

6:00: TW: child abuse - He starts claiming to have been contacted by a health professional and told about child abuse 'in the area'. Huge ethical issues here as the 'professional' who has 'been in the game a long time' is reporting to Facebook Dude and not authorities.

Sahil
@sahilypatel

Want to do an MBA for free ?

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