BC STARTUPS

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Chris Hladczuk
@chrishlad 5 years, 3 months ago 913 views

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I just interviewed the man who invented Amazon Prime.

He started a business worth $40 billion today and served on Amazon's board for 15 yrs.

Here are lessons from Bing Gordon that'll save you years of mistakes:

When you have a business idea, take action now before it dies.

• Write 1 paragraph about the idea

• Write a 4 slide business plan

• Write your 1st line of code

When you start a job, ask your boss 2 questions:

1) Who is the best boss you've ever had and what does that mean for me?

2) What does top 10% performance look like?

Hold yourself accountable for high achievement.

If you're a cab driver, drive the most miles

if you're a fisherman, get on the best boat.

How to succeed

• Be a learning machine.
• Find a way to maintain high energy

In college, you don't take classes for content.

You take classes for great professors.

Same with your job.

Pick a company for a great boss.

The best interview question:

"What's your strategy for learning?"

How to set goals:

1) Clear and unambiguous

2) Stretch, but not impossible

3) Under your personal control

4) Time sensitive + context relevant

Don't invite someone to be on your board that you wouldn't pay to have dinner with.

When pitching your startup, your goal is to share 1 insight to investors that they didn't know before.

If you want to help the next generation of business builders, retweet the first tweet below!

https://t.co/IfjYJJnl48

I just interviewed the man who invented Amazon Prime.

He started a business worth $40 billion today and served on Amazon's board for 15 yrs.

Here are lessons from Bing Gordon that'll save you years of mistakes: pic.twitter.com/NatY4K3zlK
— Chris Hladczuk (@chrishlad) May 14, 2021

for more top-secret insights, follow me @chrishlad

if you really like this, check out my newsletter where I share frameworks, systems for success and wild business stories:

https://t.co/VxEW9G1YnK

More from Chris Hladczuk

Chris Hladczuk
@chrishlad

Frameworks are useless...

Unless you use them to solve specific problems.

Here are 10 frameworks that'll solve problems for you:

How to choose your next project:

If a project is successful, it should make the rest of your career look like a footnote.

@sama

How to write:

Your creativity is a backed-up pipe of waste water.

And the waste water must be emptied before you get to clear water.

The path to clear water (or great writing) is through bad first drafts.

@julian

How to build a network:

• ATTRACT interesting people to you with your content

• SEARCH for interesting people with your DMs

• STRENGTHEN relationships with Zoom

@chrishlad

How to send the perfect cold email:

• SHORT = keep it under 5 lines

• SPECIFIC to the person + their work

• SPACING = no one reads big blocks of text

@chrishlad

Chris Hladczuk
@chrishlad

There are over 30 million podcast episodes.

and you don't have time to listen to them.

So let me save you time with 7 that will make you smarter today🧵

My First Million with @ShaanVP + @theSamParr

Best Episode: #171 How to Generate Millions from Paid Events

Sam made $100k in 8 weeks hosting paid events with without any previous audience.

He gives a play by play to print money.

The @tferriss Show (the OG)

Best Episode: #341 with @nickkokonas

The most important concept in the damn world is asymmetric risk.

This episode was my first exposure to it.

Been a huge Kokonas fan ever since

20VC with @HarryStebbings

Best Episode: Jan. 4th, What happened in 2020? What can we expect looking forward to 2021?

He got Bill Gurley and Howard Marks... for the same episode.

Need I say anything else?

The @naval Podcast

Best Episode: First 25 episodes which are 2-5 minutes each

Ok, I'm cheating here

but when Naval breaks down the most popular twitter thread of all time: "How to Get Rich wIthout Getting Lucky"

...you stop and listen

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Chris Hladczuk
@chrishlad

I devoured 50 years of Warren Buffett shareholder letters.

The result?

12 timeless principles from the greatest investor in the world.

Here are the golden nuggets🧵

The Orangutan Effect

"If you sit down with an orangutan and carefully explain to it one of your cherished ideas, you may leave behind a puzzled primate, but will exit thinking more clearly yourself."

Teaching others actually teaches yourself.

2022

The Faulty Premise Framework

“A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse - not a remarkable mathematician.”

Beware your comparison set.

Are you judging crappy relative performance or absolute results?

1985

Pick the Right Business Boat

The business boat you get into is more important than how effectively you row.

“When a brilliant management team tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, the reputation of the business usually stays intact.”

1985

A Rising Tide Doesn't Lift All Bonuses

"Good performance should be rewarded whether Berkshire stock rises or falls.
Average performance should earn no special rewards even if our stock soars."

Judge for individual performance or risk free riding on group success.

1986

Chris Hladczuk
@chrishlad

Can't get a job at Facebook?

You can always sell your startup to Zuckerberg for $19 billion.

Here's the crazy story of WhatsApp👇

Jan Koum met Brian Acton in 1998.

They spent 9 years working together at Yahoo and became good friends.

But in 2007, they both left Yahoo with some cash and no plans.

At first Acton and Koum applied to Facebook

...and failed

they were proud members of the "Facebook reject club"

In January 2009, Jan Koum bought an iPhone and thought,

"Wow, this new App Store could be huge."

At the time, the App Store was 7 months old.

So he met with a friend named Alex Fishman to brainstorm app ideas.

Koum thought it would be fun to put statuses next to friends' names in your address book.

So he went to RentACoder..com to hire a guy to build the 1st version.

Chris Hladczuk
@chrishlad

If you use it right, Google is the most powerful tool in the world.

But the truth is most people suck at it.

Here are 8 Googling tips that you probably don't know👇

"Quotation markets"

Put quotes around search terms to let you search exactly for that word.

All results will have your terms in it.

Example: "James Clear"

Gives you all James Clear search results without just "James" or just "Clear".

- Dashes

If you want to exclude a term from your search, include a hyphen before that word.

Example: dolphins-football

You just want dolphins the animal not dolphins the professional football team.

~ Tilde

Use tilde when you want synonyms to appear in the result.

Example: music ~classes

Here you only get music classes, lessons, coaching, etc.

Site:

Use this to search within a specific website only.

Example: Kevin Ryan site:chrishlad..com

This searches for Kevin Ryan mentions on my website (chrishlad dot com).

More from Startups

Jon Yongfook
@yongfook

Candid and potentially controversial series of tweets coming up... (I hear twitter is good for that sort of thing 😅) read 👇🏻

Here’s what it feels like to launch something to the indie maker community:

Launching a free, open source tool:
“This is awesome! You’re awesome!”

Launching a commercial tool:
“TWO DOLLARS? You are literally Hitler”

I’m exaggerating for comedic effect of course. But there’s a lesson here...

I knew before I started working on Promomatic to be very wary of building a utility tool for makers. Makers are by definition problem solvers and their favorite hobby is finding a better / faster / cheaper way to do what your product does.

It’s so tempting to build things for makers because they seem accessible (thanks to PH, IH, Reddit etc) and you get an immediate feedback loop.

Freedom Designer
@FreedomDSGNR

How to Use Cialdini's Influence Principles to Grow On Twitter

// A THREAD //

Robert Cialdini took various kinds of sales/marketing/door-to-door sales jobs to figure out what techniques those "magician of persuasion" use.

Then he defined the 6 principles of INFLUENCE.

How to use them to grow on Twitter?

1. Reciprocity

Don't be afraid to give away.

Give away:

- likes
- RTs
- engagement

The bigger accounts will notice... and reciprocate.

It's human nature.

Action step: Write 20 comments a day (don't ask for anything).

2. Scarcity

is an enormously powerful weapon but make sure you use it well so it doesn't look sneaky.

You can use it for:

- Get beta testers
- Running limited sales
- Doing AMA (1hr) [bigger accounts)

Action step: Before a launch write you're looking for max 3 beta testers.

3. Authority

cannot be built by tweeting platitudes.

You'll have to show you know what you do and you understand it.

The reward will be sweet.

Action step: Post a thread from your field of expertise 3x per week.

PS. Even if you don't consider yourself a pro yet.

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Justin Kan
@justinkan

1/ Throughout my startup career, I’ve seen many founders have an aversion to sales. This is a mistake that can kill your startup.

2/ Sales is often viewed as either a saving grace or proof that the product isn’t good enough (because it should sell itself). Neither are ever true. Some common mistakes that result in...

3/ Mistake 1: Hire a sales rep before reaching product/market fit to get your initial batch of customers. This is a mistake because founders need to work through their MVP with early adopters to truly understand what it is they’re selling.

4/ Mistake 2: Reach product/market fit, need to scale, and rely entirely on self-serve. For enterprise products that require big commitments and internal shifts, almost no product is self-explanatory enough to sell itself.

5/ Mistake 3: Make a first sales hire who isn’t scrappy enough to help mold the sales process from scratch. Some salespeople are amazing at their jobs, but not cut out to establish the processes that others end up following. This skillset is what @rdedatta calls a “sales ninja”.

Julian Shapiro
@Julian

14 steps for acquiring your startup's first customers:

1. Pay to interview people who've successfully grown a startup like yours. You can find them via LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

2. Ask them which 3 channels (ads, SEO, etc.) you should prioritize for acquiring customers.

3. Ask for examples of companies who run these channels well.

Some channels to ask about:

• PR
• Ads
• SEO
• Influencers
• Sponsorships
• Organic social
• Word-of-mouth
• In-depth content
• Referral incentives
• Product-led invites (think Slack, Zoom, Dropbox)

4. Reverse-engineer how those companies run their channels well:

A. Map each step the customer takes between the channel and becoming a happy customer.

B. Study what makes each step great: its pitch, its design, and its user experience.

Here's an example of steps.

• Someone sees your Facebook ad ← Channel
• They visit your page
• Enter their email
• Trial the product
• Pay for the product
• Stay engaged
• Refer more users

(Tools like Ahrefs + FB Ad Library show you competitors' ads and landing pages!)

Jude Gomila
@judegomila

1/ If you want to find out what is in the Y Combinator S19 batch, @Golden has compiled (using public signals) a near complete list of truly exciting companies.

If we are missing any or you want to help improve the data you can edit the topics.

https://t.co/9QGLiEPsn3

2/ Here is the direct public query if you want to check it out:

https://t.co/aqb8qYN4y9

[Note: no off the record cos are in here unless they have been publicly launched already]

3/ Also, here are 2,000+ other YC companies we have generated information

4/ We used the Golden Research Engine to generate this information, which you can find out more about here and ping me if you want a

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@SaveToBookmarks Namaste! You can find it here. Original tweet by @AchuthArora: "@OllieEmberson @buzz_chronicles @rattibha @SaveToBookmarks save as Workouts". Thanks! ✌

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AHOBILAM NARASIMHA SWAMY KSHETRAM: KURNOOL (AP)
#andhratemples

Ahobilam is the place where Prabhu appears in his fierce form, called Ugra Narasimha, who is Svayambhu (self-manifest).
Ahobilam is one of the 108 Divya Desams. It has 9 shrines for different forms of Narsimha.

Ahobilam was the exact place where Sri Narasimha appeared and tore apart Hiranyakashipu to save Prahlad. At that moment, all the Devas appeared and praised him as Ahobala (Aho is mighty and bala is strength). So the place came to be called Ahobilam.

Out of the 9 shrines, most famous is the Ahobila Narasimha Swamy where Prabhu is seen as Ugra Narasimha.
In another shrine, Prabhu appears as Malola Narasimha Swamy. Malola means beloved of Lakshmi. Here Prabhu is in peaceful mudra with his consort Ma ChenchuLakshmi.

Jwala Narasimha Swamy shrine is the actual spot where the fierce anger of Prabhu reached its culmination when he tore Hiranyakasipu.

Ugra Stambham is the pillar from which Narasimha appeared with such force that the entire hill split into two.

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Enigma
@ainittomai

The Eye of Horus. 1/*

I believe that @ripple_crippler and @looP_rM311_7211 are the same person. I know, nobody believes that. 2/*

Today I want to prove that Mr Pool smile faces mean XRP and price increase. In Ripple_Crippler, previous to Mr Pool existence, smile faces were frequent. They were very similar to the ones Mr Pool posts. The eyes also were usually a couple of "x", in fact, XRP logo. 3/*

The smile XRP-eyed face also appears related to the Moon. XRP going to the Moon. 4/*

And smile XRP-eyed faces also appear related to Egypt. In particular, to the Eye of Horus. https://t.co/i4rRzuQ0gZ 5/*

foone
@Foone

An interesting set of games that I've been vaguely interested in since I was a kid, after seeing one at a friend's house and never being able to find it again, was the BATTLES IN A DISTANT DESERT/BATTLES ON DISTANT PLANETS series.

These are turn-based wargames for windows 3.x, sharing the same engine.
Battles in a Distant Desert is from 1992, and is based on the first Iraq war (Desert Storm)

and Battles on Distant Planets is from 1991, and takes place in SPACE!
I'm pretty sure this is the one I played as a kid.

They've got 3 options to play with:
* Player vs. Player
* Player vs. Computer
* Computer vs. Computer

So it's a 0-2 player game!

They also did a DOS strategy game called "STARDATE 2140.2: GALACTIC CONQUEST" in 1990, but it seems to be lost.
All the games share an experimental AI system based on neural networks.

Khatvaanga
@khatvaanga

Starting my 2nd thread on Sringeri Parampara. This will cover the Jagadgurus after Sri Vidyaranya to Sri Shivabhinava Nrisimha Bharati.

It is really very tough to match the brilliance and achievements of Vidyaranya. After whom came 15 - Chandrashekara Bharati [1386-1389].

The next Acharya was Nrisimha Bharati [1389-1408]. Harihara raya found a town for this Acharya - Narasimhapuram. Acharya helped the king by guiding him in political affairs. He also initiated the kind with mahamantras for spiritual development.

Subsequent Acharyas were
15-Puroshottama Bharati [1408 - 1448]
16-Shankara Bharati[1448 - 1455]
17-Chandrasekhara Bharati II [1455 - 1464]
18- Nrisimha Bharati II [1464 - 1479]
19-Puroshottama Bharati II [1479 - 1517]

20-Ramachandra Bharati [1517 - 1560]. Sadashiva Raya was emporer of Vijayanagara during this time.
21-Nrisimha Bharati III [1560 - 1573]
22-Nrisimha Bharati IV [1573 - 1576]
23-Nrisimha Bharati V [1576 - 1600]

24-Abhinava Nrisimha Bharati [1600-1623]. When he visited Malahanikareswara temple for first time he noticed there was no Vinayaka there so he took piece of turmeric and drew outline of Ganesha on a pillar and offered puja.