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.

By Larry Chiang and Marissa Louie

Holiday Party 2.0

Hosted by Bub.blicio.us, AD-Village.com, Zinette Magazine, and S1 Management

12/2 11:19pm: SPONSOR LIST IS NOW FULL
12/4 11:18am: SEE NOTES BELOW RE: AFTERPARTY

Fa-la-la-la-la, where’s the holiday moolah?? Show me the money.

In the old days, it was “Let’s set aside $50 grand of our $12mm b-round and effen host a holiday party.”

While we WILL miss the carving station, Cirque du Soleil ballet dancers and gift baskets, we are in a borderline depression. Chin up ol’ sport!, because we are architecting a party — a holiday party where we make money, build awareness of our start-up and wow our partners and sponsors with 10x ROI on their $100-200 sponsorship.

Remember, anything worth doing is worth doing for money. Why should holiday partying be any different= We fully expect surprises to be laced between now and FRIDAY (yes, four short days away).

The party is Dec 5th, 7-9pm at Roe Restaurant (651 Howard St.) in San Francisco.

Special Guests:

• Jackie Peters of Heavybag Media
• Sarah Lacy, Author of “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good”

Co-Hosts:

• Larry Chiang
• Marissa Louie
• Brian Solis
• Krystel Ariel
• Adam Jackson
• Tyler Willis
• Barney Pell
• Waleed Abdulla
• Yo Yoshida
• Max Schulze
• Paul Schleicher
• Michael Moradzadeh
• Halle Tecco
• Ryan Merket

Spotlight Sponsor: Sun Startup Essentials

Sponsors:

• AD-Village .com
• Asse9 link
• Founders Fund .com (solicited)
• Zinette .com
• Yoono .com
• Involver .com
• JS-Kit .com
• S1 Management .com
• Blog Networks on Facebook
• Rimon Law Group
• WordPress .com
• Workstir .com
• Ninne .de
• Whole Foods Market

Media Sponsors:

• Bub.blicio.us
  
• Future-Works PR
• Heavybag Media

RSVP via text message under 140 characters to:

@malouie | (510) 375-1941 | marissa@ad-village.com

@larrychiang | (650) 283-8008 | chiang9@duck9.com

or check the Facebook group.

In the spirit of Holiday 2.0, it’s “Let’s make some money hosting a holiday party by inviting co-hosts like Brian Solis, Jackie Peters, Barney Pell, Sun Startup Essentials, Founders Fund, Involver.com, Yoono.com, and Rimon Law Group.

Because we are ZOMG monetizing , we will invite you to come celebrate Holiday 2.0.

** Chiang SURVEY QUESTIONS: **
Should we tip, bribe, comp and tip bloggers to come?
Should we charge a $5 cover?
Should we charge a $15-75 cover to VCs?

Should we have an AFTERPARTY?
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=25107055702&id=811315726&index=3

Our guest blogger, Larry Chiang, is an instructive humorist and blogs at Business Week. If you liked “10 Things They Don’t Teach You at Business School“, How to Work a Cocktail Party and “10 VC Mistakes,” you’ll like this submission on some all-important mistakes VCs make when they become entrepreneurs themselves.

By Larry Chiang

Jumping from venture-capitalist-board-member to “start-up founder and CEO’ is near impossible for the HBSer / GSBer to successfully do. The b-school molded HBS-Harvard Business School / Stanford Graduate School Business (GSB) need to navigate eight pitfalls.

-1- Too self indulgent.

Being smarter than a billionaire you met during b-school show-and-tell, does not make you a better entrepreneur. This fundamental fact sinks many want-preneurs.

Stop the ego massaging and set aside all 170 IQ points and dumb it down. Robert Downey Jr recommends going, “partial retard” in his character from Tropic Thunder.

Look at the biggest hits:

“eBay” – pretty retarded selling beanie babies and Pez dispensers in the 90s

“Yahoo” – a dumb but cute-funny, pre-orgasmic sound upon discovering a search result on a Stanford server with the same name.

“Google” – please. The site (and campus) still looks like romper room time with Barney. No not that one…

THIS ONE

“Duck9″ – are you effen kidding? The whole site is a logo with a dumb riddle.

-2- Too focused on perfect formula vs market pain.

What do you call a mish-mash or under experienced payment executives doing peer-to-peer payments? The payPal founding team.

You can bet, the PayPal mafia (since their $1.5B exit) focuses on market pain.

-3- Too cerebral.

They do not pay you to be smart. They do not pay you for researching a silver bullet technology. They pay you to promote. They pay you to raise the $0.02/share stock price by promoting adoption of your
technology.

Another trapping of too cerebral-palsyness is knowing too much about too many things. Entrepreneurs hone in like a laser beam. Heck most entrepreneurs do not even know what a credit FICO score is or a credit crisis or have talking points on the impending Obama Presidency [insert pic here]

VCs read coverage and this rss habit needs to be KICKED when you put the CEO hat on.

-4- Too unproductive.

Why are VCs turned entrepreneur lame-duck?! Maybe it is the ex VC’s pedigreed family. Maybe it is the blue blood family money… Maybe criticizing and producing are too different from each other. Maybe consulting and executing are too different from each other.

Also, meetings taken by VCs for your new upstart can not be logged as productivity. Those charity meetings are taken as a hedge because they think you will fail and be a VC again.

Fire the wife. Fire the girlfriend. Your new wife and your new mistress have a new name… and it is called D-u-c-k-9. Or Asse9. Or Buck9. Or elephant9 if you are stealing my URL (yes “Elephant9″ is
registered to a Sand Hill Road squatter).

-5- Too talentless.

Academic talent does not usually translate into entrepreneurial talent — some would argue academic talent NEVER translates into entrepreneurial talent, but then they’ve never met Tom Chiang (dad).

SOLUTION. Re-gear, retool and start sandbagging for success. I mention sand-bagging because it is defined as deliberately misleading someone to think you NEVER did b-school. You can not ramp up entrepreneurial talent while clutching your tier one MBA status.

-6- Too inflexible.

Welcome to beta male-ness. You were an alpha (sort of) back when you were quoting the size of Fund XIX. Live, embrace AND WALLOW in your new tier two status.

Mr. Ex-VC, want an exercise in ego flexibility? Hand out slices of pizza at the next blogger meet-up that WordPress produces. Kiss blogger ass (or Asse9) right near the butt crack.

SOLUTION: sell your condo and go “native”. I own three homes but live in a dorm room on University Avenue… Eff you, because this advice is falling on deaf ears.

-7- Too non promotional.

Sell it. Rarely does something sell itself. I can not repeat this point enough.

Sell it don’t smell it

“The key to sales is to get them to sign on the line which is dotted,” Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross.

-8- Too historical.

Majors from the last war that are now Generals historically fight to re-win lost battles. B-school does something similar to us when we pour over HBS (Harvard Business School) case studies.

So you are damned if you know case studies, and you’re damned if you don’t. But the biggest factor VCs have in not making the jump to entrepreneur is…

-9- Too unable to weather a storm.

Entrepreneurship is 90% crap so weathering a first storm motivates most exVCs into “cutting their losses”. Get ready for a future storm with my litmus test…

TOUGH QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF.
Can you handle a mutiny?
Can you ramp up while 70% of your staff is severed?
Can you buy your assets back in BK court and restart?
Does the thought of that make you cringe?
Can you sell your way out of a wet paper bag?
Can you charm you suppliers and vendors for 2-10 net 90 terms after you
signed docs for net 30?
Can you negotiate your debts with collectors minutes before you go on a
Tony Perkins panel?

Most entrepreneurs wither-and-wilt during the third storm they face. The over-under on the number of “storms” a VC HBSer can handle: 1.3. Smart money bets the under. TRANSLATION. An over under but is when the “house” calls out a prediction that is eerily spot on. You place your “bet” and pick ‘over’ or ‘under’. Easy, weasy, Chin-easy. Gawd I just made that up.

The one hit wonder has an over under number of 1.8. Being more fragile than a one-hot wonder is NOT a good position to be in.

Stay tuned. When I cover (err crash) the SAG Awards and Oscars, I’ll cover the four mistakes of actors turned directors.

My focus is, “What They Don’t Teach You At Stanford Business School” and I have a book coming out 09-09-09. The next conference I am going to is Tony Perkins VC Conference

Larry Chiang is the founder of duck9, which educates college students on how to establish and maintain a FICO score over 750. He is a frequent contributor to GigaOm’s Found|Read. His earlier posts include: How to Work The Room; 8 Tips On How to Get Mentored ; and 9 VCs You’re Gonna Want To Avoid. You can read more equally funny, founder-focused-lessons on Larry’s Amazon blog.