Everything You Know About Silicon Valley Might Be Wrong
Test your Silicon Valley knowledge by taking a quiz from Harvard Business Review. The first question is below.
But how much do you really know about the real Silicon Valley? Take the following test and record your answers. At the bottom of this page, you’ll see how you did.
1. Silicon Valley was founded when (select the best answer):
a. Steve Jobs and John Wozniak invented the Apple II in 1977
b. David Packard and Bill Hewlett started business in a garage in 1939
c. Frederick Terman set up the Stanford Industrial Park in 1951
d. Federal Telegraph Company was established in 1909
e. Silicon Valley was never founded
The More You Enjoy Your Work, The Better You Will Do At It
Over one hundred years ago Phillips Brooks stated a truth that should be central to the process of considering and pursuing a vocation. Though Brooks addressed this to preachers, this correlation between enjoyment and effectiveness applies to all vocations:
I think, again, that it is essential to the preacher’s success that he should thoroughly enjoy his work. I mean in the actual doing of it, and not only in its idea. No man to whom the details of his task are repulsive can do his task well constantly, however full he may be of its spirit. He may make one bold dash at it and carry it over his disgusts, but he cannot work on at it year after year, day after day. Therefore, count it not merely a perfectly legitimate pleasure, count it an essential element of your power, if you can feel a simple delight in what you have to do as a minister, in the fervor of writing, in the glow of speaking, in standing before men and moving them, in contact with the young. The more thoroughly you enjoy it, the better you will do it all.
This is true of all preaching. Its highest joy is in the great ambition that is set before it. , the glorifying of the Lord and saving of the souls of men. No other joy on earth compares with that. The ministry that does not feel that joy is dead. But in behind that highest joy, beating in humble unison with it, as the healthy body thrills in sympathy with the deep thoughts and pure desires of the mind and soul, the best ministers have always been conscious of another pleasure which belonged to the very doing of the work itself. As we read the lives of all the most effective preachers of the past, or as we meet the men who are powerful preachers of the Word today, we feel how certainly and how deeply the very exercise of their ministry delights them. -Phillips Brooks, Lectures on Preaching.
The Only Risk is To Waste Your Life
I was always a good adventurer. I was never afraid of risks. I always had a good philosophy about risks. The only risk is to waste your life, so that when you die, you say, “Oh, I wish I had done this.” I did everything I wanted to do, and I continue to.
Entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley, and The American Job Market
Thomas Friedman writing in The New York Times:
…Look at the news these days from the most dynamic sector of the U.S. economy — Silicon Valley. Facebook is now valued near $100 billion, Twitter at $8 billion, Groupon at $30 billion, Zynga at $20 billion and LinkedIn at $8 billion. These are the fastest-growing Internet/social networking companies in the world, and here’s what’s scary: You could easily fit all their employees together into the 20,000 seats in Madison Square Garden, and still have room for grandma. They just don’t employ a lot of people, relative to their valuations, and while they’re all hiring today, they are largely looking for talented engineers.
…[Reid] Hoffman argues that professionals need an entirely new mind-set and skill set to compete. “The old paradigm of climb up a stable career ladder is dead and gone,” he said to me. “No career is a sure thing anymore. The uncertain, rapidly changing conditions in which entrepreneurs start companies is what it’s now like for all of us fashioning a career. Therefore you should approach career strategy the same way an entrepreneur approaches starting a business.”
To begin with, Hoffman says, that means ditching a grand life plan. Entrepreneurs don’t write a 100-page business plan and execute it one time; they’re always experimenting and adapting based on what they learn.
It also means using your network to pull in information and intelligence about where the growth opportunities are — and then investing in yourself to build skills that will allow you to take advantage of those opportunities. Hoffman adds: “You can’t just say, ‘I have a college degree, I have a right to a job, now someone else should figure out how to hire and train me.’ ” You have to know which industries are working and what is happening inside them and then “find a way to add value in a way no one else can. For entrepreneurs it’s differentiate or die — that now goes for all of us.”
Finally, you have to strengthen the muscles of resilience. “You may have seen the news that [the] online radio service Pandora went public the other week,” Hoffman said. “What’s lesser known is that in the early days [the founder] pitched his idea more than 300 times to V.C.’s with no luck.”
Read the whole thing.
Nine Things Succesful People Do Differently
From Harvard Business Review:
Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren’t sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.
1. Get specific.
2. Seize the moment to act on your goals.
3. Know exactly how far you have left to go.
4. Be a realistic optimist.
5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good.
6. Have grit.
7. Build your willpower muscle.
8. Don’t tempt fate.
9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won’t do.
Read the whole article for the explanation of these nine points.
HT: Matt Perman
Silicon Valley Has Two Speeds
A fascinating article in The Wall Street Journal Magazine by Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn. A few excerpts:
Silicon Valley has two speeds: full speed ahead and not going anywhere. Now we’re in full-forward motion. There is a lot of interest and a lot of capital out here. And there are a lot of companies being created. When you have a thousand companies getting started, many of them hope to become billion-dollar companies, but a number of them won’t play out in that direction. So in that respect, sure, there is some frothiness. On the other hand, many of them have solid fundamentals. Maybe it won’t be a billion-dollar company, but it will be an ongoing value proposition where the business model works, consumers use it, and it fits in with other services and websites.
What’s happening today with the whole Web 2.0 movement is that everyone is familiar with the Internet and how it works. Back in 1999 and 2000 it was this weird thing called “cyberspace.” It was kind of an adventure as opposed to being part of your everyday life. The Internet has become a medium in which we are all participants. And then our mobile devices enable all kinds of abilities to communicate, search, collaborate and socialize our experience in the electronic medium. That’s a lot of the basis for the current boom. We also have a deeper stack of expertise as to what works and what doesn’t. The playbooks are better. There are clearly more substantive ideas…
When we are evaluating new business pitches at Greylock, we look for product people and deeply passionate people. To make a great product, you have to be passionate about it in order for it to become something that will improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people…
When the idea is on the back of a napkin, the only difference between a madman and a visionary is that the visionary’s idea works. So when you are investing at very early stages, you’re picking the one you think is the visionary…
Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. Facebook is ego. Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed.
Read the whole thing.
How to Discover Your Calling
1. Figure out what you’re passionate about.
2. Figure out what other people say you’re good at.
3. Figure out what’s wrong with the world.
4. Shake and stir.
That’s your calling.
The Entreprenurial Journey is Not For Everyone
But the entrepreneurial journey is not for everyone. Yes, the highs are high and the rewards can be thrilling. But the lows can break your heart. Entrepreneurs must love what they do to such a degree that doing it is worth sacrifice and, at times, pain. But doing anything else, we think, would be unimaginable.
-Howard Schultz, Onward. p. 9
Help For You and Your Work
Here are two must-read posts by Matt Perman:
-Does it Really Matter if You Love Your Job?
-Is it Smart to Allow Your Job to Involve A Lot of Things You Don’t Like Doing?
Seven Thoughts on Time Management
It would be a good use of your time to read Doug Wilson’s post, Seven Thoughts on Time Management.
Here are the seven points:
- The point is fruitfulness, not efficiency.
- Build a fence around your life, and keep that fence tended.
- Perfectionism paralyzes.
- Fill in the corners.
- Plod. Keep at it. Slow and steady wins the race.
- Take in more than you give out.
- Use and reuse. State and restate. Learn and relearn. Develop what you know. Cultivate what you have.
My biggest take-away/reminder from the post came under point six:
If you give out more than you take in, you will . . . give out. Your lake should have snowmelt streams running into it. Every vocation requires constant learning, constant development.
