Tag Archives: larry chiang

By Miiko Mentz (@miikomentz)

Geeks on a Plane (GOAP) are at it again and this time they’re off to Hawaii for a week of fun in the sun and great talks and networking around technology, business, sustainability and life. The GOAP team and friends are part of [re]think Hawaii, which starts today and runs through November 5.

[re]think Hawaii is a week of events that is bringing together an international group of people — who might not otherwise meet — to rethink technology, business and sustainability. One of those events is Share Your Table’s Farm to Table Lunch that’s an invite-only luncheon of green, tech and business leaders who will feast on a lunch that’s 100 percent sourced from Hawaii, which is quite impressive given 85 percent of Hawaii’s food is imported. Sustainability is a critical issue that affects all of us, and I hope that [re]think Hawaii helps raise awareness not only in Hawaii’s own efforts to support its sustainability, but also globally.

[re]think Hawaii participants will attend a host of other events this week from Venture Capital Secrets and Startonomics Hawaii to BlogWorld’s Social Media Business Summit and the What They Don’t Teach You At Business School workshop that will be given by Duck9 CEO and Businessweek Blogger Larry Chiang (@larryChiang). Larry is also a guest writer at Bubblicious.

One lucky [re]think Hawaii participant is Mugasha CEO and Co-founder Akshay Dodeja (@dodeja) who we caught up with recently at the TechCrunch50 conference. Akshay was the lucky winner of the Girls in Tech [re]think Hawaii raffle giveaway that was conducted during TC50. Proceeds from the raffle went to Girls Inc., an organization celebrating girlhood and inspiring and supporting young girls to become tomorrow’s leaders.

Check out our interview with Adriana Gascoigne (@afgascoigne), GOAP co-organizer and Girls in Tech founder, talking about Girls in Tech, Girls Inc., GOAP and [re]think Hawaii; and at the end of the video we captured a few comments from lucky winner Akshay.

GOAP organizers are Dave McClure (@davemcclure) of Founders Fund and Startup2Startup, Brady Forrest (@brady) of O’Reilly, Adriana Gascoigne of SGN and Girls in Tech (GIT), and many others. Dave McClure, Larry Chiang, and Flowtown Co-founder Dan Martell (@danmartell) are the hosts of GOAP Hawaii. And [re]think Hawaii is organized by Christine Lu (@christinelu) and a unique group of people from around the world.

#rethink #GOAP

By Larry Chiang

Star Trek is out and it rocks. History will look back and see it as the best movie adaptation of a TV show. Watching it make me think how Star Fleet Academy is exactly like Stanford GSB (Graduate School of Business).

Crash the Party.

If after graduating Star Fleet Academy you don’t get stationed on the Starship Enterprise, you have someone ‘plus one’ you. Remember, you have no chance of commanding a ship you are not on.

GSBers need to get a little entrepreneurial in crashing a company. If you’re not wedging yourself in, you can’t leverage all the CEO training inside your head.

I Will Be Your Best Friend Forever.

If you go where no man has gone before and make it back, you’re gonna need a BFF you met at Star Fleet Academy that is more talented than you are. Kirk needed his Spock because flying by the seat of your pants and constantly flirting with death is demoralizing to the crew.

Getting Recruited In is A Dirty Legend.

I’ve heard stories of secret handshakes and deals done to get someone into B-SCHOOL . The admission without application is a near myth

Star Fleet does not actively “recruit” and neither does GSB.

Book Smarts AND Technical Know-How.

Star Fleet teaches advanced science and technical evaluation techniques.
B-school does the same. The best graduates take those book smarts and pepper in large doses of street smarts to spruce up their talent mix.

The Best Professors.

Star Fleet’s best teachers are the ones who were just out in the field.
Learning about history and reading case studies are a necessary evil, but knowledge activates when visiting profs returning to the classroom.

Cross Training.

Learning fundamentals about engineering’s warp speed, reactor point of fail and transport physics is best done in a classroom. The purist technical innovation happens in the field.

Cross training pollinates your classroom skill-set with practical know-how (and necessity). In b-school, a chunk of the value and a large part of your education happens in a room of peers. Leverage your co-hort mentors that had to qualify themselves through multiple stages to get acceptance into Star Fleet academy.

Legacy Gets You In, But Won’t Make You a Legend.

Star Fleet looks favorably upon being a legacy. Having a parent as an alum, may help you get admitted but it will not make you a legendary Star Fleet commander. What was your life meant for?! James Tiberious Kirk knew in his soul – and it was not just to eek by and pay off his Star Fleet Academy school loan.

Larry Chiang is the founder of Duck9, which educates college students on how to establish and maintain a FICO score over 750. He has testified before Congress and World Bank on credit.

He is a frequent contributor to Business Week’s blog on “What They Don’t Teach You at Business School”

Larry is a guest blogger and if you’ve read, Hip Hop Schools Silicon Valley”, 21 Lucky Tips for Blogworld” or ‘How to Hack Twitter, Take 2″, then maybe you’ll like his latest: ‘Communication 2.0′

By Larry Chiang

Communication in Internet land is crazy, but with Web 2.0 (coined by my publisher friend, Tim O’Reilly), it is even crazier. Its under studied, sophisticatedly subtle and highly varied. Navigating the ins and outs of social media communication is some they definitely don’t teach you at business school.

Communication 2.0 is about using technology tools to communicate more effectively. Yes, these tips aren’t taught in business schools anywhere.

-1- One Ping Only.

Sub commanders used to ping to confirm sonar position in relation to target. The modern equivalent is to ping an email BEFORE a long email is drafted.

Insert cell number in the subject line.

Include the cell phone number of your receiver and your own cell IN THE SUBJECT LINE to pierce both their spam filter and their interest filter.

For example:
Subj; Lawrence, 650-651-1515, this is Larry-licious 602-369-9741
Body: “hi Lawrence, we met at Arrillaga’s basketball court. Is this the best email for you?”

-2- Twitter Force Follow.

Twitter only allows for direct messages if they follow you. There are two ways to force a follow

a) the Unfollow. Follow. Unfollow. Follow. Method.

This sends a new email message notifying them that @larryChiang “is now following them with an email. Time the Unfollow Follow maneuver at time where you think they’re seeing email subject lines.

b) Force a twitter follow by calling them or seeing them in person.

Walk them through it and wait for the follow confirmation.

-3- Jedi Voicemail Tricks.

Leaving voicemail is like a using a light sabre. Ever see Return of the Jedi?! Yoda can do more damage with a light sabre than a bunch droids with cannons and super spiffy force fields. Voicemail has been called dead. It ain’t.

I think you can not only send a message via voicemail, but also close deals. Read more on “GigaOm”

-4- Text Message Intro.

Email intros have been coached here and here. Good thing you mastered them. Communication 2.0 uses the text message intro. Hitters do. For example, “Lawrence, 650-283-8008, meet Larry-licious 602-369-9741. He’s got Sand Hill Road hardwired”

-5- Plan B for Phone.

Plan B for Fundraising is when you don’t raise VC but are progressing anyway.

Fail forward with the “Missed Call” manuver. Show your vulnerability with communications new “hail mary”: the phone call. A hail mary is a pass that is on a wing and a prayer but if you’re calling from a position of power, no vm is necessary so long as the missed call shows up in the log.

-6- Facebook Wall Markings.

A wallpost that says, “call me” pretty much means, I’ve left you a voicemail because I want you and this is a last resort to get “closure”. Dogs pee on walls to mark territory so in Communication 2.0, people do the same.

After your Facebook wall gets peed on, for all to see, you have one of two options.
A) erase it. That says eeew, I don’t want this (or you)
B) keep it. It means, “yeah you’re a hottie and you can pee on my wall all-day-long. In fact, I like you enough to flirt back on your wall.

-7- Google Alert Them.

A Google Alert is when you use gmail to email you when an alert if a phrase gets read (or crawled and cached) on the web. Every hitter has their name, company name, portfolio stock tickers, and name in a google alert. I said name twice because they get google alerts for mispellings too. When people mention but incorrectly spell “Larry Chiang” by juxtaposing the a” and the “i”, I know about it via google alerts.

A Google Alert is when your name gets read by Google (spidered) and it fires off an email to you. They used to text message alert me but that Google feature’s broken right now.

Google alerting people with something as innocent as a flickr photo caption prods them forward and gets you back on their radar. MBA kids do this to go from the waitlist to getting accepted.

Larry Chiang is the founder of Duck9, which educates college students on how to establish and maintain a FICO score over 750. He has testified before Congress and World Bank on credit.

He is a frequent contributor to Business Week’s blog on “What They Don’t Teach You at Business School”

By Larry Chiang

Congrats on getting to $900k in revenue, getting an angel round done and avoiding the 9 VCs you don’t wanna meet. Now you’re in the kill zone cuz you have a working shippable product but you hit a speed bump through no fault of your own: the rePression (recession + depression).

A symptom of your revenue and the speed bump (a.k.a. the financial crisis meltdown) is people paying slowly or not at all. A lesson not taught in business school is how to collect on accounts receivable.

Here is a crash course in collecting money…

-1- Team Effort.

By ‘team’ I mean get the effen CEO involved.

If you have a VP of Sales they should definitely be calling to collect. Compartmentalizing the collection by leaving it to a sole administrator is dooming your collection effort to fail.

If the CEO won’t call, email this article to the HBS/GSB graduate (Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Business). Lets get ‘em out of the ivory tower and on the front lines of collection.

-2- No Fake Bankruptcies.

Fake orgasms are to make your partner feel good about themselves. Fake bankruptcies are meant to make the collector feel a sense of hopelessness so that the collector will stop calling.

Do not fall for the faker.

-3- Sell to Collections Firm.

Before you give up completely, sell to a collections firm for 10 cents on the owed dollar. Me, I’m like a multiple personality CEO because I turn into a repo man and get 40 cents/dollar at the drop of a hat. A
repo man repossess cars for a living and is at the bottom of the collection food chain. The upside is they are at the top of the aggression ladder.

-4- Got Cash?! Borrow Against Accounts Receivable

Your accounts receivable (AR) is an asset you can borrow against. In good economic times you can borrow up to 110%. After the worse job report in 115 years relased Friday December 5th, 2008, you’ll be lucky
to get 15 cents per dollar on fresh, healthy AR.

No you cannot be unethical and unload your 120+ day paper on a rookie loan officer. Translation: it is not right to borrow against accounts receivable that are 120+ days late. It’s illegal to re-date and is blatent fraud.

-5- Pay As They Go.

Put them on a payment plan on money owed and / or curtail future services.

Have you heard of people that have a payment plan for their sofa?! The idea here is that lump sum payback is too far at the end of a rainbow.  Don’t believe the rosy forcasts and collect twice a month.

-6- Voicemail the Shitake Out of Them

Voicemail their cell, work and home phone. There is no such thing as over voicemail-ification during business hours when someone owes you money.

Collection calls need to happen 3-5x per week. I’ll ask start-up CEOs, how many times they’ve called and most people quizically look at me.

Call and voicemail them repeatedly to effen get your money.

-7- Time Machine to Go To the Present

There’s nothing that makes collection easier than getting the CEO to guarantee the purchase PERSONALLY.

Collecting on loans personally guaranteed is much, much more fun.

-8- Call High Up The Food Chain

The ceo of the company that owes should be called. The goal is to set up a payment schedule with small steps towards paying the debt down.

-9- Tell On Them

In the same way that TransUnion, Equifax and Experian compile negative information in a database, Dun & Bradstreet compiles negative information and payment histories.

D&B (as they’re called) usually doesn’t take infrequent submitters but they definitely gather information as it relates to court cases. A nice tip is to threaten reporting on a bad debt to D&B and threaten filing a
lawsuit. An advanced tip is to sprinkle in the fact that you’ll sell to a collections firm (tip #3) if they don’t make at least a nominal payment (tip #5).

-10- More Deal Flow.

Don’t get demoralized just because some bad apples aren’t paying. The key is to collect on a portion of money owed but still get more deals in the door.

This means get more sales. Studies have shown that companies with more sales tend to do better than companies with waning sales

Good luck collecting. If you have collection experiences to share, post them in the comments below

I founded http:/www.duck9.com, which educates college students on how to establish and maintain a FICO score over 750. I testified before Congress and World Bank in Beijing on credit.

My BusinessWeek blog

by Adam Jackson

Credit: Brian Solis

This year, the consensus was that there wouldn’t be any holiday parties or we would simply see a lot less. I’ve followed the Silicon Valley tech scene for a number of years and I remember the big parties – the parties with ice sculptures and rock bands. I remember when every event was open bar and catered. Ah, those were the good days.

The idea that holiday parties will be non-existent this month is incorrect. In fact, there are still plenty of parties going on. I’m adding 3-5 new parties every day to SocialCalendario. What I’m noticing is that these parties are drastically smaller than previous years. It’s easy to throw a holiday party for your employees, their families and for your users.

The first step is to cut the extras – no live bands, no performers of any kind. Every Silicon Valley geek loves a clown making balloons, but that’s an expense that isn’t feasible right now. You still have to offer something for free though. Music is a must and it’s best to make the alcohol free. It doesn’t have to be free all night and you don’t have to do an open bar. Drink tickets are a great way to budget the alcohol for a party and limiting guests to beer and wine will help save money.

Be very careful because however. Most venues have bar guarantees. Some venues will let you rent for free but then ask for $7500 in alcohol be sold that evening. It’s not impossible, but 50 employees can’t drink that much. Oh, but there’s another option too. Holding an event at a restaurant is great! Many restaurants have a full bar, will let you rent out a space and will allow you to setup some music either pre-recorded or a DJ as long as it isn’t too loud. The restaurant usually won’t have a minimum bar guarantee and won’t throw on fees like a venue would.

Let’s say your startup just started making money or you just scored a large round of funding. In economic times like these, where even Google is toning down its holiday party, it’s important to not stand out too much. Stand out with an excellent product or with adoption numbers but standing out by throwing a huge amount of cash into a sculpture of your company’s logo is not the right way to go about it even if the sculpture was donated.

Everyone is expecting small parties this year and that’s what we’ll have. I’ll simply be attending more of them instead of waiting for the big one. If you must attend a party this month, SFNewTech is up there.

Holiday Party 2.0 is another must attend. There’s another upcoming party from yours truly that I’ll make sure to tell you about in a few days. Any questions, hit me up on Twitter or Email and I’ll be happy to direct you in the right direction for planning a party or finding the right one to attend.