Posts tagged as:

stanford

Star Fleet Academy is Exactly Like Stanford GSB

by larrychiang on May 11, 2009

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”

Post to Twitter

{ 0 comments }

Communication 2.0

by Brian Solis on February 19, 2009

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”

Post to Twitter

{ 3 comments }

Collection 101: Collecting for Your Start-Up

by Brian Solis on January 6, 2009

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

Post to Twitter

{ 4 comments }

10 Biggest VC Mistakes

by Brian Solis on October 3, 2008

Our guest blogger, Larry Chiang, is an instructive humorist. If you liked “9 VC’s You’re Gonna Want To Avoid,” you’ll like this submission on some all-important fundraising mistakes to avoid for entrepreneurs.

by Larry Chiang

Who is the biggest fundraising loser (ever)?

Me.

And you will benefit from my pain.  You are getting nearly ten years of fundraising mistakes boiled down into ten tips in ‘how to work a VC’.

** My fundamental thesis is this:  **

“Entrepreneurs need to get benefit while temporarily ‘failing’ at the fundraising process”.

These definitely fall into the category, “What They Don’t Teach You At Stanford Business School” – yeah I’m turning my pain into GigaOm blog posts and even a book coming out 09-09-09.

Why wait for the book, here are my 10 tips.

-1- Set aside your ego.

The business you gave birth to and nurtured into rocky adolescence will get hammered and torn to shreads by VCs.  It is time to learn the entrepreneur secret society method of justaposing pain and pleasure.

-2-  Know how knowledge flows.

It is like heat transfer and the three laws.  Knowledge flows from smart to dumb, experienced to inexperienced and some gets lost (so take some effen notes).

Entrepreneurs need to get feedback and advice but not get mentored by someone who just reads coverage.

Solicit granular advice.  Air dropped advice from 30,000 feet lands with a messy splat and scatters.  Sometimes it back-fires by landing on a founders head and killing his spirit.  Call out rudeness in your GigaOm blog post… oh wait, you do not blog for Om but I do.

-3-  Entrepreneurs should never be busy managing VC board member impressions OVER REVENUE GENERATION.

Building shareholder value can be a fart into your office max chair but sales are hard and real.  80% of founder mind share should be pointed answering the question, “How are we making money by solving a problem?”.

-4-  Skip the “9 VCs You’re Gonna Want to Avoid” by getting to 900k in revenue. And, learn from Robert Scoble’s Mr. No.

-5- How to close for a VC meeting via email.

When you get a good VC contact, the inclination is to draft an AIDA email. A-attention, I-interest, D-decision and A-action.  Skip the three paragraph email and send them one ping only.  The ping confirms the email address.

-6-  Close for a VC Meeting Via Voicemail It is similar to closing a new customer where I outline nine tools in a GigaOm post.

The key is to ask for ten minute conference call via voicemail.

-7- Entrepreneurs can get a soundbyte that advocates them using this hilarious technique I will ONLY tell you at a party.

This works parlaying VC probe meetings into hard-fast funding leads.

-8- How to charm an introduction.

Read my best stuff: work a party, man-charming + how to work a twitter party.

-9- Find and locate your balls.

This especially goes for female entrepreneurs and minority entrepreneurs (ie Asian).  Racial profiling is not kosher according to US laws, but character compassing has socio-economic background as a leading indicator of whether you will sack up.

Show some balls and tell them to take some notes during your meeting.

Remember!

No notes jotten…
Means your meeting went rotten

If you have it in writing, you’ve got a prayer.
If you don’t, you’ve got nothing but air.

-10- Press and speaking engagements don’t always help your start-up.

Remember, we treat VCs like the quasi hot girl who was popular with the boys at Stanford.  Once you leave the farm, its a rough world with much less deal flow.  We manage the VC similarly when;

- we politely disengage at the first sign of rudeness
- we don’t thank all meetings
- once you’ve shot your research load, you’re done. HOLD SOMETHING BACK
- NO reciprocity, no more meetings or emails

And remember. They’re ignoring you cuz they don’t think you are a winner so build your business while you are fundraising.

BONUS

-11- Pin the tail on the donkey.  Nothing will establish you better and faster than a well measure, well documented biatch slap.

Being mean back to a VC launched a community of entrepreneurs.  It is number 13 (not coincidentally crazy #13) in my GigaOm post – 13 o’clock in Shanghainese means crazy.

BONUS BONUS
VC HAWT High School GIRLS
1. They don’t get sold. They buy
2. They love the waitlist
3. They love community validation
4. They have a hard time thinking for themselves
5. They gossip amongst eawx other
6. They hate hate desperation,
7. They do not like false-ness
8. DDSS is like a tractor beam
9. Understated money/treasure/talent makes them 10. They listen with
significant preconceived notions.
11.  They love a good party.
12. Who do they wanna date?  Whoever the homecoming queen is dating?
13. Can they pick a rising star?  Do they make any carry… ever?! School is nurturing but fundraising is not.  I wrote about it in, “9 Things Stanford B-School Won’t Teach You”

Larry Chiang is the founder of duck9, which educates college student on how to establish and maintain a FICO score over 750. He is a frequent contributor to GigaOm’s Found|Read (if you couldn’t tell). 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.

Post to Twitter

{ 4 comments }

Got Luck? Eight BlogWorld Post Conference Tips (#bwe08)

by larrychiang on September 23, 2008

Our guest blogger, Larry Chiang, is an instructive humorist. If you liked 9 VC’s You’re Gonna Want To Avoid, you’ll like this submission on closing a deal after the conference.  We’re supporting his book project,“What They Don’t Teach You at Stanford Business School” that comes out 09-09-09.

by Larry Chiang

Yeah, you got lucky.

You went to Las Vegas for BlogWorld Expo and
(a) lost less than $200 at BlackJack,
(b)lost part of your bathing suit (Ashley) and
(c) did not come home with an STD

…that counts you as LUCKY in any book.  And you read the post, “How to Hack BlogWorld” before you went so your ‘luck’ was due to great preparation.

Here is how to keep that luck rolling with my eight lucky, post conference tips.

-1- Ping Via Email.  Close via Voicemail.  Confirm the email addresses in that stack of business cards.  One ping only.  After it, you can “Close a Deal Via VoiceMail”

-2- Tackle your ToDos compiled at TechSet Vegas party.  Lets say you meet Sarah Lacy and you offer to host her at your next book club meet up (after you gave her a drunk lap dance)– You now owe her a full blown email that includes details, venue and potential dates two to three months out.


Photo credit Brian Solis

Ok, truth: I asked for an intro to her lit agent (unfortunately, the lap dance I gave her really did happen).  I am using this link love to her book in lieu of sending an email request for another intro to her lit agent (Yes I sooo single task.  Single tasking is doing one thing and getting credit over and over.).

-3- Biz Cards in a Binder.  Or taped to a piece of paper.  Organize and highlight chronologically.  I also organize it by event.  To impress the intros I get from the host or hitter, I review those cards every so often.

-4- Send out thank you notes (the stamped kind).
Send out notes via snail mail or be SillyCon Valley and choose to NOT do it.  I do it.  Heck I really really really do it.  I thank via USPS, FedEx, UPS and even 1-800-FLOWERS.  For example, I will even send men flowers if they host me at a weekend long event and introduce me to ALL of their HITTER friends: #Foo08 and #Foo09.

-5- Write a Blog Post and link to your fave peeps.  TRANSLATION: WRITE AN ARTICLE AND PUT A CONNECTOR WEB SITE ADDRESS IN HIGHLIGHTED TEXT that promotes your favorite blog people (that transalation was for hawt Ohio Valley blogger girl that met me outside the men’s room.  See I can be a smart asse9 too)

My fave people I spent 60 or more minutes with…

Robert Scoble http://scobleizer.com/
Brian Solis http://www.future-works.com/
Cheryl Contee http://pdf2007.confabb.com/users/profile/Cheryl+Contee
Sarah Lacy http://www.sarahlacy.com/
Marissa Louie http://marissalouie.com/wordpress/
Rick Calvert http://www.blogworldexpo.com/blog/
Pete Cashmore http://www.mashable.com
Bambi Francisco http://www.vator.tv

And Man-Charm!  Men who charmed me.
Adam Jackson  http://twitter.com/adamjackson http://dailytechtalk.com/
Chuck Burke metromojo twitter
Ryan Hupfer http://hubpages.com/profile/Ryan+Hupfer http://www.hupandsteph.com/

-6- This is a One-Hit-Wonder-Free-Zone.  A one hit wonder is a guy who meets you for two seconds that adds you.  No adding people on facebook if you didn’t talk at least two minutes.  Remember, they call it Facebook friends.  Not Facebook ‘acquaintances’

-7- Damage Control.  Were you lewd and lascivious  towards a hottie?!  Or worse, were you non-reciprocal of her lewd and lascivious come-ons?!  Fix it all with a facebook gift!

If that elixir fails and there is still a cloud of sexually tense-ified grossie gross, send them link love in your next GigaOm post.  Oh wait, you do not blog for GigaOm, but I do! (and I have yet to use that get-out-of-Jail-free-card)
-8-  Host the Twitter (Post) Party on your blog.  Sending blog love in reverse chronological order…

@tristanHarris @malouie @ashleysays @vegasbill @allinenergy @srussollillo
@mashable @peteCashmore @BFrancisco @vatorTV
@LVCC-SOUTH-Lazy-Union-Workers @AshleySays
@patrick_fitfuel @cinevegas @michael_hoffman @allinEnergy
@vegasBill @KK @jbillingsley @janeHamsher @che3ryl
@claireYA @ajv @doverbey @morganB
@samBasel @acoolong @jeffRandall
@lisaettany @dorotheeRH @technosailor
@neenz @Msaleem @mashable @rabeidoh
@scobleizer @maryamie
@wingdude
@MattMullenweg @wordpress
@kevinboer @davidcubed @debng @trisHussey @1timstreet @garyrosenzweig @geekMommy @queenofspain @jasonfalls @timothy_jones @mta1 @stoweboyd @affilliatewarrior @chrisbaggott @gregarious

Phew. That was a hard post to crank on my sidekick III.  Am taking a long snooze in my flight back to SFO.  Look for me on the exit aisle seat in coach :-)

CONTEST:
In the comments section, list out your post conference follow up tips.  Best tip gets a duck9 fleece jacket (an $80 value)

Larry Chiang  founded  duck9 to graduate college students with a FICO over 750 using text messages in fourtune cookie sized tips.  He writes for GigaOm’s Found|Read. His earlier posts include: How to Work The Room; Man Charm; 8 Tips On How to Get Mentored ; and 9 VCs You’re Gonna Want To Avoid.

You can read equally funny founder-focused-lessons on Larry’s Amazon.com blog.  He recently did an 8 hour interview of Mark Cuban in a post called “How to Go From Millionaire to Billionaire.  Ten tips from 8 hours with Cuban.”

Post to Twitter

{ 8 comments }

← Previous Entries