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GREG ISENBERG
@gregisenberg 5 years, 5 months ago 1050 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

Anyone else love a useful how-to?

I put together a mega-thread of mega-valuable how-tos that can transform your startup, career or life

All you have to do is read these 10 how-tos:

How to write a cold email:

- Be short
- Humanize it. Record a 60s selfie video
- Write a cold DM instead of a cold email if possible
- Never follow up by saying “just following up”

How to write copy that isn’t boring (and that sells):

- Don’t write copy, write stories
- Can be long or short, but must take you for a ride
- Focus entire story on the problem the customer has
- Share credibility
- Use inviting, warm words
- Create a clear call-to-action

How to come up with compelling startup ideas:

- Framework #1: X for Y (Robinhood for Canada)
- Framework #2: Anti-incumbent (Anti-Spotify, Anti-Amazon)
- Framework #3: Unbundling of X (Reddit, Facebook etc)
- Framework #4: Ask your community, they’ll tell you

How to sell a company:

- Spend 5% of your energy building allies at incumbents
- Get them excited about what you’re doing
- Make them feel invested and jealous
- Get them to ask if you’d be open to selling
- Profit $$

I've seen this strategy work for $10k-10B size deals

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GREG ISENBERG
@gregisenberg

Here’s the story of how I (almost) lost everything building and selling my last company Islands to WeWork

I’ve never told this story publicly. Sharing it on Twitter because sharing is caring

Here we go…...

In June 2016, I was having tea in SF and realized “group chat is the new social network”

My thinking: everything would be verticalized

You’d have group chats around finance, around gaming, around work etc.

People want fluid, spontaneous communities/groups, not newsfeeds

I had previously sold a company. I created a short slide pitch deck

I raised $2m from some of the world’s best investors on an idea. From first pitch to money in the bank in 45 days

We had no product. No prototype. No users. Just a crazy idea

SF is sometimes magical like that. It was a privilege

We were off to the races

We built the product. We decided to focus on colleges

The idea: open up Islands on your campus, see group chats around you, form communities and create relationships

It was like Slack for communities. Focused on college

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

When I was 17, I was in a school shooting. It was traumatic

I'm convinced that overcoming fear is the secret to winning at startups, business and life:

Here's some tips and lessons on overcoming FEAR:

The greatest productivity tip of all time:

It isn't to drink coffee or get 8 hours of sleep or use Notion

It is conquering your fears. Period.

Life is too short for fears

"Adjusted for the subjective increase in how fast time passes, life is half over by 23 or 24. Don't waste time."
h/t @samaltman

Time is ticking

Beat your "amygdala"

Amygdala = the part of your brain that registers all your fear

When you have an experience that creates fear, it gets "coded" into your brain

For the rest of your life, your amygdala, is tainted with your past experience

Arm wrestle your amygdala and win

Rejection sucks. But it's one of the most useful ways to refine your craft

Mindset shift: use fear to learn & motivate, not run away & demotivate

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$\u1d1c\u0274\u1d0d\u1d0f\u1d05\u1d07\u0280\u0274$

ᴜɴᴍᴏᴅᴇʀɴ...
@UnmodernM

Your 9 to 5 job can transform you into a man of value.

Stop working for the money. Work for authority.

This is a lesson from my dad.

A life hack.

Thread

You spend at least 40 hours a week at your work to make money.

Thats over 2000 hours a year. If you want these hours to mean more than just money, & help you develop your character,

then your approach towards work must change.

Its an overlooked topic that industriousness has tremendous mental & psychological impact on men and their transformation of becoming high value.

Here's a step by step blueprint on letting your job mould your character.

If you want your job to infiltrate your personality and mould you into a man of value,

you need authority.

So the first step is to assess the landscape of your job & whether you are able to attain this authoirty.

If you're in a work environment that makes you a supplicant to every person, quit your job.

I never recommend rash decisions, but working in a place where you are NOTHING but a subordinate, with ZERO opportunity to move up,

is psychologically damaging to your manhood.

Brad Johnson
@Brad_Johnson

A Thread - What to read in 2021?

Wisdom via @EricJorgenson via @naval via @illacertus... from @Navalmanack a book I’ll be rereading in 2021.

Here’s why.

“I don’t want to read everything. I just want to read the 100 great books over and over again.” - @illacertus

“I think there’s a lot to that idea. It’s really more about identifying the great books for you because different books speak to different people. Then, you can really absorb those.” - @naval

It was a few years back I started thinking about the idea of rereading books vs trying to “keep up” with the constant consumption of new material rolling off the book publisher’s assembly lines.

I believe the consept first landed on my radar from that very @farnamstreet podcast where @naval shared the quote referenced above.

It immediately made sense to me.

It’s crazy to think about how much the world has evolved in just the last decade.

Technology is creating shorter attention spans with the constant bombardment of bite-sized “click bait” headlines and iPhone notifications.

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Brian Bourque
@bbourque

22 startup principles to scale your company in 2022:

1) The obstacle is the way

Every hard problem you solve is a moat that others will shrink from.

Most people don’t have the stamina for hard work.

Challenges completed are insurance policies against competition.

2) Sell your story, not your product

Your company isn’t a product, it’s a story.

Great stories attract great employees and great customers.

Sell your story.

3) Focus on leverage

Points of leverage are areas where inputs can disproportionally affect outputs:

- A better conversion funnel impacts all sales
- A better sales process impacts all revenue
- A better onboarding process reduces churn

4) Focus on customers, not competitors

Success comes down to whether people will pay you to solve their problems.

Competitive intelligence is useful to understand where other attempts to solve a problem fall short.

But the customer’s actions speak loudest.

$Devesh\u26a1$

Devesh⚡
@Devesh_wy

STEP BY-STEP

How to make a $10k/mon agency in less than 3 months

Thread:

The easiest way to start an online business is to make a service-based agency.

Let's get right into it.

1. You need to have some skills.

VALUE THAT YOU CAN PROVIDE TO YOUR CLIENTS SO THEY PAY YOU EVERY MONTH.

YOU NEED TO TARGET RETAINER BASED SERVICES TO GET TO $10k/mon fast.

Now, what can you charge a retainer for?

Not web design.
Not logo design/branding.

Try to sell a service which they need every month.

- Lead generation
- Email Marketing
- High ticket sales
- Cold email

Choose one and watch 25 hours of content about it on youtube dot com

Then buy a good course if you can

MARKET RESEARCH:

Don't sell anything to anyone

SEE WHAT'S WORKING

Cold email 50 people asking for a call
Pay 3 of them $20/hr and get to know all their pain points and problems

Growth Tactics
@GrowthTactics

Here’s how to double conversion on your startup’s homepage.

(From rewriting over 1,000 websites.)

A thread 👇

1/ Your "above the fold" (ATF) section is the part of your site that's immediately visible before scrolling.

When visitors see this, they decide to either keep scrolling or bounce.

In seconds, they attempt to assess:

• What you do.
• Whether you're a fit for them.

2/ If your ATF is confusing or uninteresting, visitors bounce.

This happens because of:

1. Weak messaging: Your product's purpose is unclear, uninteresting, or irrelevant.

2. Weak design: Your design is unprofessional or outdated.

3/ There are 3 things you can change on your ATF.

1. Header
2. Subheader
3. Design

Let's dive into each.

4/ Headers need to:

1. Identify how users get value from your product.

2. Include a hook—to get them to keep reading.

3. Speak directly to your customer personas.

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Aditya Todmal
@AdityaTodmal

MASTER THREAD on Short Strangles.

Curated the best tweets from the best traders who are exceptional at managing strangles.

• Positional Strangles
• Intraday Strangles
• Position Sizing
• How to do Adjustments
• Plenty of Examples
• When to avoid
• Exit Criteria

How to sell Strangles in weekly expiry as explained by boss himself. @Mitesh_Engr

• When to sell
• How to do Adjustments
• Exit

1. Let's start option selling learning.
Strangle selling. ( I am doing mostly in weekly Bank Nifty)
When to sell? When VIX is below 15
Assume spot is at 27500
Sell 27100 PE & 27900 CE
say premium for both 50-50
If bank nifty will move in narrow range u will get profit from both.
— Mitesh Patel (@Mitesh_Engr) February 10, 2019

Beautiful explanation on positional option selling by @Mitesh_Engr
Sir on how to sell low premium strangles yourself without paying anyone. This is a free mini course in

Few are selling 20-25 Rs positional option selling course.
Nothing big deal in that.
For selling weekly option just identify last week low and high.
Now from that low and high keep 1-1.5% distance from strike.
And sell option on both side.
1/n
— Mitesh Patel (@Mitesh_Engr) November 3, 2019

1st Live example of managing a strangle by Mitesh Sir. @Mitesh_Engr

• Sold Strangles 20% cap used
• Added 20% cap more when in profit
• Booked profitable leg and rolled up
• Kept rolling up profitable leg
• Booked loss in calls
• Sold only

Sold 29200 put and 30500 call
Used 20% capital@44 each
— Mitesh Patel (@Mitesh_Engr) April 12, 2019

2nd example by @Mitesh_Engr Sir on converting a directional trade into strangles. Option Sellers can use this for consistent profit.

• Identified a reversal and sold puts

• Puts decayed a lot

• When achieved 2% profit through puts then sold

Already giving more than 2% return in a week. Now I will prefer to sell 32500 call at 74 to make it strangle in equal ratio.

To all. This is free learning for you. How to play option to make consistent return.
Stay tuned and learn it here free of cost. https://t.co/7J7LC86oW0
— Mitesh Patel (@Mitesh_Engr) February 7, 2020

Noah Smith
@Noahpinion

Krugman is, of course, right about this. BUT, note that universities can do a lot to revitalize declining and rural regions.

One thing I've been noticing about responses to today's column is that many people still don't get how strong the forces behind regional divergence are, and how hard to reverse 1/ https://t.co/Ft2aH1NcQt
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 20, 2018

See this thing that @lymanstoneky wrote:

And see this thing that I wrote:

And see this book that @JamesFallows wrote:

And see this other thing that I wrote:

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$MAKE THE WORLD GREAT AGAIN \U0001f30d$

MAKE THE WORLD GREAT A...
@joyoftheawoke

The take down of the Cabal A-Z Charlie Freak & @djmarkdevlin

...In May 2017- Prince alwaleed tala sold his soul to the 13 bloodline families

Thread.. please retweet this truth 🙏

Trump visits the Middle East and receives royal Saudi welcome, highest Saudi honour by receiving the golden collar of abdulaziz al Saud
Not been seen with past presidents ...

When trump arrived in the summer of 2017 14/09/2017 he laid out all the documents, all the folders and they had all the photographs, disks, cds, dvds with all footage of them doing horrific things, the NSA has it all!

2 weeks later the richest men begun getting arrested...

They hand picked Obama, alwaleed tala decided to make Obama the linchpin of the us presidency. Barack has connections all over the cabal

Max Fagin
@MaxFagin

November is here, and that means a massive shift is coming. And by "massive" I am of course referring to the redefinition of the kilogram unit of mass that the world has been building up to for more than 100 years. Let me explain:

1/ I've had an unhealthy fascination with metrology (the study of measurement) ever since my 2nd year as a physics major when I took a class devoted to duplicating historic physics experiments, so please indulge me for going into heavy detail (get it?) about the kilogram.

2/ So what actually *defines* a unit of measurement? If you're American, you probably know a mile is 5280 feet and a foot is 12 inches and an inch is 2.54 centimeters etc. But where does this chain of definitions end? Is it turtles all the way down?

3/ It's actually not! For all units (even the imperial units used in America) the answers all end with the Système International (SI) unit definitions established and maintained for over 100 years by the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIMP) in France.

4/ At the base of this tower are the SI base units. Just 7 SI base units define every other unit in existence. They are:

Kilogram, kg (mass)
Meter, m (distance)
Second, s (time)
Kelvin, K (temp)
Ampere, A (electric current)
Candela, cd (luminous intensity)
Mole, mol (quantity)

Anastasis
@OrdersofM

https://t.co/6cRR2B3jBE
Viruses and other pathogens are often studied as stand-alone entities, despite that, in nature, they mostly live in multispecies associations called biofilms—both externally and within the host.

https://t.co/FBfXhUrH5d

Microorganisms in biofilms are enclosed by an extracellular matrix that confers protection and improves survival. Previous studies have shown that viruses can secondarily colonize preexisting biofilms, and viral biofilms have also been described.

...we raise the perspective that CoVs can persistently infect bats due to their association with biofilm structures. This phenomenon potentially provides an optimal environment for nonpathogenic & well-adapted viruses to interact with the host, as well as for viral recombination.

Biofilms can also enhance virion viability in extracellular environments, such as on fomites and in aquatic sediments, allowing viral persistence and dissemination.