Gary Vaynerchuck

Amazing video of Gary V. One of my personal heroes. The guy is an absolute machine.

Apologies in advance, but I’m a brown-nosing Vayniac. I’ll get that out in the open right now. However, I have learned a ton from this guy, have watched dozens of his speeches, was sitting in the front row of this presentation, actually got mentioned in the speech between 33:00 and 33:30, and can tell you that this talk was one of his best ever. Watch this presentation.

I speculate that he really brought his A-Game because he was amongst peers. The room was filled with 1,000 (?) of the best entrepreneurs in the world, and that’s who he is. Even though most of the attendees are not doing social well, or not doing it at all, Gary and these folks still share much of the same DNA. They build businesses. I think Gary felt like he was talking to a different crowd here than one he might address at Big Omaha or SXSW, and that this required something different. All I can say is…. watch the whole thing, including the last question he takes during Q&A. He brought the house down!

Check it out here.

Cultivating frugality

This is the one in a series of (at least) 30 posts I’m going to write this month as part of what Wesley Zhao and I have dubbed No-Blog-Sloth November Challenge. One post will appear here a day from now until the end of November.

A big problem I’ve had ever since high school is spending money. Sophomore year of high school I started a company selling BlackBerry and iPhone apps. This was right at the beginning of the app craze and I made several thousand dollars doing it. By senior year all of that money was gone, and I couldn’t really point to any large purchases that had sucked it away. I had literally spent it all on gas, food, and other consumables for which I have nothing to show. 

Working that hard and having it all go down the drain on things which don’t really drastically improve your quality of life is a really bad feeling. 

When I got to college I had the same issue. It was so easy to go to Wawa and blow $10 on a sandwhich and a drink that I was constantly running out of money on my debit card. So I finally decided I had to do something about it.

After reading Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow I decided to track my expenses. Chernow says that throughout his life Rockefeller kept meticulous records of his finances, and not only did that help him save money through the years, it also gave him a good sense of where his money was going. This helped him make better business decisions, because it allowed him to see clearly where his money was going in his business. 

How does tracking your expenses lead to spending less? Well, as Sebastian Marshall always says, “what gets measured, gets improved.” Or something like that. But I really do see a difference.

I’ve struggled with consistency over the time that I’ve been doing it, but in general I carry around a small black notebook in my back pocket every day. Right after I buy anything, I take a second and jot down the price and the item. I also keep a running total of the amount spent for the day. This has the added benefit of improving my mental addition skills.

Looking back I can tell you that on August 22nd I spent $9.29 all on food. On October 4th I spent $8.69 at Chipotle. On November 2nd I spent $12.75 on coffee, food and ATM fees. 

Doing this every day has been a really eye opening experience into showing me where my money is going, and where I can get the best value for what I’m buying. For example I know that I will never again go to a Penn dining hall and buy sushi. A few days ago I bought sushi and a drink for lunch it totaled to $9.98. If I went to a great food cart near the gym I could have gotten the same amount of higher quality food for $3.50. 

Compounded over months or years, small decisions like that end up addding to a lot of money. And building up even a small amount of savings allows you to make decisions that you otherwise probably couldn’t which can in turn bring a lot of value to your life. So my theory is that if I can make a decision that will cost less, but won’t significantly affect my present quality of life I will make that decision.

Until tomorrow. You should follow me on Twitter or check out my project DomainPolish.

Great design is all around us

This is the one in a series of (at least) 30 posts I’m going to write this month as part of what Wesley Zhao and I have dubbed No-Blog-Sloth November Challenge. One post will appear here a day from now until the end of November.

Yesterday I was sitting in my design class (ironic I know) and just sort of looking at the table we were all sitting around. It’s a reasonably small class so we all just sort of congregate around this conference table of sorts and talk about what we’re working on.

As I was looking at the table, I noticed it was oddly shaped. Basically the table was slightly wider around its middle, and slightly shorter at either end. What a useless piece of design I thought. What’s wrong with making a rectangular table? Clearly someone was just trying to make a more expensive version of their regular model of table, and so decided to slightly change the shape for no good reason – maybe to make it a little more “sleek”. 

Just as I was getting becoming satisfyingly self-righteous, the “Aha!” moment came. And I have to say, that table design is absolutely genius in its subtlety. The slight tapering of the table meant that the widest point of the table is right in the middle. Which also meant that people sitting on either end of the table could see eachother, instead of being blocked by the people in the middle. It’s kind of like stadium seating for tables. 

I was so struck by this because it’s one of those little tiny functional design elements that are present in every day things that we don’t really notice. It makes our lives massively better, but with such a small tweak that unless you were paying attention it would be very easy to miss it. In my class I sit at one end of the table and never have to lean forward or backward to see who I’m talking to because everyone is in full view.

See you tomorrow 🙂

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

This is the one in a series of (at least) 30 posts I’m going to write this month as part of what Wesley Zhao and I have dubbed No-Blog-Sloth November Challenge. One post will appear here a day from now until the end of November.

If one searches for any kind of bliss or joy, the realization of one’s imagination and dream, then, equally, one is going to suffer failure and depression. This is the whole point: a fear of separation, the hope of attaining union, these are not just manifestations of or actions of ego or self-deception, as if ego were somehow a real thing which performed certain actions.

My Goals for November

This is one in a series of (at least) 30 posts I’m going to write this month as part of what Wesley Zhao and I have dubbed No-Blog-Sloth November Challenge. One post will appear here a day until the end of November.

October was a pretty interesting month. I decided to stop releasing projects at such a hectic pace, and instead started working on a project that I think has a lot of potential. That meant that I was spending a lot less time on DomainPolish but I think it’s worth it. So because it’s a new month I went to set some targets for myself, and start to think about the things that I’m going to have to do each do to hit those targets.

1. Write one blog post every day in November.

2. Sign up 20 paying customers for my new project. This means I would be generating about $200 a month in revenue.

3. Bring one new team member aboard to work with me – preferably one that has a lot of coding experience.

In terms of accomplishing these goals, I’m not particularly worried about 1 and 3. I think those are things that if I continually remind myself that they are my goals, they’ll just sort of come. 

Number 2 is something that I have to specifically concentrate on. That’s because my tendency is to want to build more features before signing up new customers. But that’s flawed thinking, this product is ready to go for most companies right now. So what do I have to do every day to get 20 paying customers? 

Let’s be conservative and say that 20% of the people I approach with my idea will like it, 10% will agree to use it and 5% will pay for it. Those seem like relatively realistic numbers, although I suspect that the actual percentages will be at least slightly higher. Given that my goal is 20 customers, that means that I have to approach 400 companies/people with the idea to get 20 of them to sign up. I have 30 days to do this – so that’s 13 cold pitches a day. 

Luckily I can do at least some this through my network, or through forums like my blog (if you have a startup, or small business or are trying to build a startup I have an awesome product for you and you should email me at dshipper [at] gmail.com) – but I really want to get better at pitching customers and the sales side of this so I’m going to try to pitch at least 13 people every day. Thank god for Tout. 

The other really great part about doing these pitches is that I’m expecting to get great feedback from the people I talk to about the idea. Hopefully I’ll be able to learn more about the problem I’m trying to solve, and be able to add features that really matter instead of just features I think will matter.

I’m curious to see how this goes. See you tomorrow. And feel free to find me on Twitter at @danshipper if you want to know what I’m working on.

What Makes Life Worth Living: A List of Beautiful Things

This is the first in a series of (at least) 30 posts I’m going to write this month as part of what Wesley Zhao and I have dubbed No-Blog-Sloth November Challenge. One post will appear here a day from now until the end of November.

There’s a great scene at the end of Woody Allen’s late-1970’s masterpiece Manhattan where the main character, Isaac Davis, reflects on the things that make life worthwhile. You can watch the clip, which is probably one of my favorites from any movie I’ve ever seen embedded below. 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKTQ4a3BR5c]

I love this clip because of how unbelievably personal and heartfelt its contents are. Although Allen is playing a fictional character in the movie, I think at a certain point it becomes crystal clear that he is in fact talking about himself and what makes his own life worthwhile. And that’s what makes the clip so beautiful.

There’s a lot to be said about the definition of beauty, and whether the experiencing of beautiful things is actually what makes life worthwhile (in fact I would argue that there are other things that do so in addition) but for now I’d like to start where Allen left off and list a few of the beautiful things in my life that I think make it worthwhile. Continue Reading

DomainPolish 2 Months Later: $3,000 in Revenue

Interviewing At Y Combinator Part 1

This is part one of a series of posts describing my experience interviewing at Y Combinator this past summer.

Interviewing at YC is a lot like the first time you have sex. You’re trying very hard to convince the other person that you know what you’re doing, and it’s all over much too quickly.

During the middle of my freshman year at UPenn two friends, Wesley Zhao and Ajay Mehta, and I created a weekend app called WhereMyFriends.Be. It was a very simple Facebook API/Google Maps API mashup that just mapped all of your Facebook friends on a map. After we created it we cold-emailed a bunch of tech blogs about it and waited to hear back. To our complete surprise Mashable agreed to cover it, and it was our first taste of real success.

Continue Reading

How To Get Covered In a Major Tech Blog

Hi my name is Dan Shipper I’m a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania and over the past 7 months I’ve been covered in TechCrunch (here), Mashable (here), TheNextWeb (here) and others for projects I’ve built both as a solo developer and with a team of my friends. 

1. Email everyone you know

The absolute best way to get coverage from any media outlet is to know someone who works there, or know someone who knows someone who works there. Journalists, especially tech journalists, get pitched every single day by hundreds of people. Their inboxes are overflowing with emails talking about “amazing,” “world-changing,” “life-altering” startups. That means that your absolute best chance to get coverage for your project is to email everyone you know and ask them if they know anyone who writes for a big blog. Don’t be afraid to ask – the worst anyone can say is no.

2. Email every tech site you can think of

If you don’t know anyone who knows anyone that writes for a tech site, don’t worry. Compile a list of every tech site you can think of, write a pitch and email all of them. The chances of success are low, but you may get lucky. This is how we got covered in Mashable. If you have a product with traction, excited users, funding, or a really good story you’ve just beaten out 90% of the other cold emails that these blogs get. The most important part is showing in your email that you have a great story to tell that would appeal to the blog’s audience. And keep it short – generally your emails won’t be read past the first few sentences.

3. Do something outrageous

We got on TechCrunch by creating a Twitter account called YC Y U NO and making fun of a bunch of YC startups. Seriously. Now, we had no idea when we did it at first that it would lead to getting on TechCrunch. We did it on a whim just for fun. But for some reason people really seemed to like the tweets we were coming up with, a bunch of YC founders started following us as well as a few TechCrunch writers. From there we DMed one of them and they agreed to write a story about us and our new project.

4. Use Facebook and LinkedIn

Get the names of some writers that you admire, or think would be interested in covering you and see if you have any LinkedIn or Facebook connections. I know a lot of people who use this as a first step in getting coverage. You might be surprised at how many connections you have that you didn’t know about.

5. Concentrate on design

A journalist isn’t going to risk their reputation or their site’s reputation covering an app, or startup that doesn’t have amazing design. If anything is even a little bit off with how your site looks, if it doesn’t look professional and current, they won’t cover you. The design doesn’t even have to be complex. My design for WhereMyFriends.Be which was covered on Mashable was actually really minimalist. But it has to inspire enough confidence from the writer to go out on a limb for.

I think the most important thing to realize is that it’s not some insurmountable feat to get coverage. Tech sites are run by real people too, and if you show them that you have a great story, and a great product your chances of success increase exponentially. Persistence doesn’t hurt either.

That being said, don’t pin your hopes on coverage. It’s a huge rush to get it, but the road to success doesn’t always start with TechCrunch and in fact often doesn’t.

You should follow me on Twitter.

Why Social Proof Matters To Your Startup

A few days ago I put together a small app in Rails called DomainPolish. When I was finished with it I posted it to Hacker News. It made the bottom part of the front page for a little while – at one point there were as many as 30 people concurrently on the site. I waited for the sales to roll in.

None came that Friday night. On Saturday too, there was a fair amount of traffic coming onto the site but, still, no sales. Then Sunday came. It was about 4 in the afternoon and I was thinking about what kind of project I wanted to work on next. The first sale came in. I went nuts. Then another sale came in and I was happy as can be. I had set a goal for myself to make $5 that weekend and I had fulfilled it. And then the person who made the second sale emailed me. He wanted to write a blog post about the service. I said “Sure!” and waited to hear what he had to say.

Well the blog post came out in about an hour, and he loved the service! I was so happy. And then he submitted it to Hacker News. Suddenly I was getting emails left and right saying that I had made sales as it climbed the front page. By the end of the night the blog post had referred 1500 people. I had sold 32 plans. That’s cool. But what was even more cool was to look at how that conversion rate changed (and ultimately number of products sold went down) when I had far more traffic but without social proof.

Two days after the blog post I decided to write an account of my experience creating the site. After I wrote it I posted it to Hacker News. Soon the visitors were pouring in, and it stayed as the number one story for at least a few hours. By the end of the night my blog post had referred almost 3000 people – 49% more visitors coming to the site from my blog post, than from the blog post written by someone else. But the number of products sold from a blog post written by me was actually 50% lower than the number of products sold from a blog post written by someone else. When someone wrote about me I sold 32 plans. When I wrote about myself I sold 15 plans.

What does this say? Social proof matters. Your traffic will convert better if there’s someone credible on the other end saying they love your product. Ad campaigns and blogging about yourself are very valuable tools, but in the end they can’t compete with the power of social proof.

You should follow me on Twitter.