BC STARTUP
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

I interviewed 5 billionaires this week

I asked them to share their lessons learned on startups, life and entrepreneurship:

Here's what they told me:

 A startup idea isn't "one" idea

It's a 10000 ideas, 100,000 decisions and 1,000,000 headaches
You will lose some friends. Kiss most of your high school friends goodbye

Certainties of life:

- Death
- Taxes
- Losing friends
A sign of wealth:

No longer needing an alarm clock to wake up
When in doubt, please don't send that angry email response

Wait 24h. Go for a walk

Angriness makes you drunk. Send emails sobers
Career advice:

Quit your job if it makes you exhausted (if you can)

Be grateful for your job if it fills you up with energy
Likable people win

People sense those good vibes. It does wonders for your startup, career or life
You will doubt yourself a million times

It's only natural
Constantly cut your losses

Harmful in the short term, lucrative in the long run
A sign of wealth: no envy, no fear
You can't build great products without being "at one" with the niche you're building it for

It's almost impossible

Deeply understand your niche or expect disappointments
Enjoy the process

Building a startup should never feel like a grind

Building a startup is a privilege
A satisfying life doesn't require much

Wonderful health, enjoyable work & a caring family & friends.
Success is inevitable.
Follow me on Twitter @gregisenberg to learn more about startups, internet communities or niches

It's free to follow 😝

More from GREG ISENBERG

GREG ISENBERG
GREG ISENBERG
@gregisenberg
Startups taught me more about life and business than I ever could imagine

Thread: 20 tips I wish I could give to my 20 year old self

Startups are simple:

There are good times and bad times

Good times: enjoy the ride
Bad times: enjoy the ride

Beware of pessimistic people

Pessimism is the worst disease

Professional lies we tell ourselves:

1. Your email inbox is getting stuff done
2. A full calendar is positive
3. Big meetings are the answer

You know better

FAANG give you credentials
Startups give you education
ALL , CATEGORY
GREG ISENBERG
GREG ISENBERG
@gregisenberg
Marketing isn’t a scam

Marketing makes change happen. Marketing makes your creations known

I'll share some tactics & frameworks I use

How to get lucky in marketing in 2021:

How marketing has evolved:

Marketing used to be a contest for attention

But now, marketing is a contest for CONNECTION

Whoever owns the connection, wins

Turn your product into a social statement

Products that make you feel good or defend you from being cancelled, spread fast

Ex: Make clothes out of recycled plastic

Point: People want a chance to show they stand for something

Are you working with creators?

Some of the world’s biggest brands were catapulted in the 1960s via TV

Brands bought TV ads. Captured attention

Working with creators is like buying TV ads in the 1960s

Point: Co-building with the right creators is like fishing with dynamite

Avoid ads. Build media companies

Prediction: every public company will own a media arm

It’s a magical shortcut to building true fans

Ads just don’t hit the same way
MARKETING
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GREG ISENBERG
GREG ISENBERG
@gregisenberg
The billion dollar Google Chrome extension club:

- Loom
- Honey
- Grammarly

These companies started as Chrome Extensions and created billions of value

Here's why it works:

- People barely uninstall extensions
- Barrier to install is low
- Extensions are "always on"
- People pay for many of them

Chrome Extensions are underrated

The cool thing about Chrome Extensions?

You could make millions to billions from extensions

Tons of opportunities small and large

Chrome Web Store:

2 billion users: 200,000 extensions = 10,000 users : 1 extension

Apple App Store:

100 million iPhone users : 2 million iOS apps = 50 users : 1 iOS app

Google Play Store:

2 billion Android users : 3 million apps = 667 users : 1 app

Bottom line:

Launching a Chrome extension gives you 200 times more potential users than an iOS app
ALL
GREG ISENBERG
GREG ISENBERG
@gregisenberg
When I was 17, I was in a school shooting. It was traumatic

I'm convinced that overcoming fear is the secret to winning at startups, business and life:

Here's some tips and lessons on overcoming FEAR:

The greatest productivity tip of all time:

It isn't to drink coffee or get 8 hours of sleep or use Notion

It is conquering your fears. Period.

Life is too short for fears

"Adjusted for the subjective increase in how fast time passes, life is half over by 23 or 24. Don't waste time."
h/t @samaltman

Time is ticking

Beat your "amygdala"

Amygdala = the part of your brain that registers all your fear

When you have an experience that creates fear, it gets "coded" into your brain

For the rest of your life, your amygdala, is tainted with your past experience

Arm wrestle your amygdala and win

Rejection sucks. But it's one of the most useful ways to refine your craft

Mindset shift: use fear to learn & motivate, not run away & demotivate
LIFE
GREG ISENBERG
GREG ISENBERG
@gregisenberg
Mental models are the secret to making the best out of the world around you

But there is a million of them...

A guide to my favorite mental models:

Marketing

Luck Surface Area:

“When you do something you’re excited about you will naturally pull others into your orbit.

The more people with whom you share your passion, the more who will be pulled into your orbit.”

Orbits are powerful in marketing, business or life

Sales

Hunting whales vs flies:

5 types of sales prospects

1) Whales
2) Elephants
3) Deers
4) Rabbits
5) Flies

How can you hunt 1,000 whales, 10,000 elephants, 100,000 deers, 1,000,000 rabbits or 10,000,000 flies?

Who do you want to hunt? Why?

(no animals were harmed writing that last tweet)

It's time for a non-hunting mental model for this

Any one have ideas?

Military

Winning Hearts and Minds:

“In which one side seeks to prevail not by the use of superior force, but by making emotional or intellectual appeals to sway supporters of the other side.”

Key: if you speak to people's hearts and the minds, you are speaking to human nature
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Joe Speiser \u26a1\ufe0f
Joe Speiser ⚡️...
@jspeiser
The dirty inside secret most first-time entrepreneurs don't know.

14 tools I use to steal from competitors, and build million-dollar businesses.

Housekeeping note:
Don't do anything that destroys your reputation. Copying what works is a simple & practical strategy, but don't cross any boundaries.

In this thread, I'll show you how to steal your competitors' traffic, product ideas, and customers in a 100% fair way.

1. Steal their social media traffic

Drop your competitors' url in https://t.co/n4squ8fjHh

It will tell you what % of their web traffic comes from which social media platform

Looks like this


Generally, this traffic will be from ads and not content. To steal their social traffic, you'll need to steal their ad strategy.

If they're getting their traffic from Facebook...

2. Steal their Facebook ads

Go to Facebook Ad Library and find ads that your competitor has been running for 6+ months.

All of these ads are likely profitable https://t.co/bgqtSOvAe2
STARTUP
Brock Briggs
Brock Briggs
@BrockHBriggs
I currently intern for a venture accelerator where I listen to and provide feedback on pitches from startups looking to get funded.

Here are 7 things I've learned so far 👇

1/ Forget the elevator pitch

Be able to describe what your business does and how it does it in one sentence.

VC's have short attention spans. Explaining what you do quickly means you understand your business and the value it offers.

2/ Tell a story

Every good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end - the same way a good pitch does.

Beginning: What is the problem?
Middle: What did you do about it?
End: Where is it going?

3/ Explicitly define the problem

Explain in detail what the issue is your customer has and WHY they have that problem.

Just because you have sales doesn't mean you're solving a problem.

Good businesses with exponential potential solve problems.

4/ Understand why you're different

If you're a first-mover in a good business, you will have competitors.
If you're not a first-mover, you already have competitors.

Know what value you bring that others do not. Why did customers choose you and why will they continue to?
STARTUP
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Austin Rief \u2615\ufe0f
Austin Rief ☕️...
@austin_rief
THREAD: Here are 10 insights I've learned over the last 5 years from cofounding and selling business.

On startups, investing, marketing, and career advice:

👇👇

"I learn more from speaking with others than reading" is complete nonsense.

The smartest people in the history of the world have distilled their life's work into a few hundred pages.

No, a 30 minute convo with your buddy won't teach you more.

The best businesses in the world expand their target market

-Nike convinced the world that everyone is an athlete
-Apple convinced the world that everyone is a creator
-Shopify is convincing the world that everyone is an entrepreneur

Champion customers and they will reward you

"Follow your passion" is complete complete crap.

People are passionate about things they are good at. Get really good at something, and you will become passionate at it.

Then you will make enough money to follow your original passion in your free time.

There is no industry in the world that is easier to get to an 8 figure exit than digital media.

There is also no industry harder to get to a 10 figure valuation than digital media.

Understand your industry and plan accordingly.
STARTUP
Joe Speiser \u26a1\ufe0f
Joe Speiser ⚡️...
@jspeiser
I scaled my last SaaS startup to $2M/yr in <18 months with 0 paid ads.

Steal the 6 step blueprint I used:

Many startups over-rely on paid advertising.

I can tell you 1st hand, this is risky.

• Platform policies change
• Costs increase overnight
• Your audience gets ad fatigue

Which is why, you should consider organic marketing…

Organic marketing attracts customers...

But in a different way.

Paid ads = lead generation
Organic marketing = lead nurturing

You nurture people from social media followers,

Into community leaders, brand ambassadors, and loyal customers.

These 6 steps will show you how:


1) Create consistently

Organic marketing starts with consistency.

• Post daily
• Test ideas

Do your best to provide content your audience finds valuable.

And make sure it feels native to each platform.

At this point, your focus is daily action, not performance.

2) Leverage analytics

Leverage analytics to see what’s working.

Recommended metrics to measure:

• Likes
• Shares
• Profile visits
• Followers/ subs

Here’s what each will tell you…
STARTUP
Matthew Paik
Matthew Paik
@PaikCapital
Build a cold email lead gen agency from scratch

// THREAD //

You've already seen it on this side of twits.

People who have transparently built $10k/mo. agencies with a few resources.

I'm going to reveal exactly how you can start this agency today and the ONLY resources you'll need for it.

Let's begin!

1. Core service

A cold email lead gen agency gets leads using cold email

>> scrapes the emails
>> writes the emails
>> sends the emails
>> books appointments

2. Your clients

Imagine running an agency where ALL appointments are booked for you.

You will target
>> local biz agencies
>> ad agencies
>> ecom agencies
>> coaches / consultants

HUGE MARKET.
PEOPLE GO CRAZY FOR THIS.

3. Cold email clients

Seriously, if you write a killer cold email to an agency, it speaks for itself.

Just ask @blackhatwizardd or @THETYFRANKEL.

What you'll need is obviously a 10/10 first line.

But that's not all.

You need to know exactly what agencies are looking for.
STARTUP

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Murray \U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8
Murray 🇺🇸...
@Rothbard1776
NEW: @SidneyPowell1 radio interview w/ @toddeherman "The new report has a truckload of evidence of foreign interference in the election in it. That's what people seem to want to deny, even though the FBI & CISA ... issued an advisory and alert back on Oct. 30th & updated on

2/ Nov. 3rd, so for them to deny that now is absolutely absurd. Plus, we have an affidavit from an expert cyber-warfare [individual] who even shows the diagram of all the attacks coming in. We know that the VPN ... the Dominion people left those open and unencrypted on the night

3/ of the election, so that anybody could get in. We know that the packets of information went to Serbia [note: over 100 Dominion employees scrubbed there LinkedIn profiles of any affiliation with the company after the election, many of whom were in Serbia], Liechtenstein,

4/ Spain, Venezuela, Hunan, China & Hong Kong. There was traffic all over into our election system that is supposed to be self-contained, not accessible by the internet at all. We have witnesses who document that it was connected to the internet. We have a study out of

5/ [the Dominion voting system in Antrim] MI, they know that it was connected to the internet. They erased their audit files & their adjudication files, where they dumped over 68% of their ballots into a bin that they call "adjudication" [that would've been thousands + thousands
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Mau Abata \U0001314a
Mau Abata 𓅊
@MauAbata
Read through a forum thread on Chastity Mansion to see who is talking about the Edge-o-Matic and figure out what more to address regarding frequent questions, as well as scout out user feedback. Here's some thoughts you can carry back to the forums!

My website doesn't have any product reviews, but people scatter them everywhere else in forums, tweets, xtube vids, etc.

If you ARE a previous customer, and you like the thing, can you drop a review on my site to help others?

The price is steep, but that's the amount of coins I calculated to make these. I have several spreadsheets calculating every expense involved with this project.

The current cost sustains production and development of new tech, and is helping create jobs. We are 2 people now!!

It IS 3D printed, because injection molding is orders of magnitude more expensive for the initial tooling, and I am still making small revisions to the enclosures.

Injection molded plastics are a six thousand dollar commitment for fifteen cent parts. Great for mass mfg.

Also, if you didn't know, 3D printing technology allows for some shapes which would be difficult, expensive, or impossible on injection molding or milled parts!!

Undercuts, which I use in this design, require special lifters to mold that cost a tremendous fortune.
FOR LATER READ
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KrishnaLeela
KrishnaLeela
@Talesofkrishna
🌿𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝒂 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒓 : 𝑫𝒉𝒓𝒖𝒗𝒂 & 𝑽𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒏𝒖

Once upon a time there was a Raja named Uttānapāda born of Svayambhuva Manu,1st man on earth.He had 2 beautiful wives - Suniti & Suruchi & two sons were born of them Dhruva & Uttama respectively.
#talesofkrishna https://t.co/E85MTPkF9W


Now Suniti was the daughter of a tribal chief while Suruchi was the daughter of a rich king. Hence Suruchi was always favored the most by Raja while Suniti was ignored. But while Suniti was gentle & kind hearted by nature Suruchi was venomous inside.
#KrishnaLeela


The story is of a time when ideally the eldest son of the king becomes the heir to the throne. Hence the sinhasan of the Raja belonged to Dhruva.This is why Suruchi who was the 2nd wife nourished poison in her heart for Dhruva as she knew her son will never get the throne.


One day when Dhruva was just 5 years old he went on to sit on his father's lap. Suruchi, the jealous queen, got enraged and shoved him away from Raja as she never wanted Raja to shower Dhruva with his fatherly affection.


Dhruva protested questioning his step mother "why can't i sit on my own father's lap?" A furious Suruchi berated him saying "only God can allow him that privilege. Go ask him"
RELIGION
Anshul Pandey
Anshul Pandey
@Anshulspiritual
IMPORTANCE OF SATYA NARAYAN KATHA AND ITS ORIGIN.

We all have heard and read the Satyanarayan katha. But none of us dont know the original stories that Shatanand or Sadhu or Kalavati must have heard. Also, as a habit we hear or read this katha


but dont know the proper way it should be conducted.

We find its mention in Skanda puraan(Reva khand) and Bhavishya Puraan(Pratisarg parva).
Both Bhagwatam and Gita call Bhagwan Narayan as Satv or Truth. So Satyanarayan denotes this name as the one which is Truth incarnate.

The story began in Naimisharanya when Vyasji asked Sutji about a way to eliminate all the sorrows and fulfill all the desires and about who is the devta who can grant these at the same time.

So Suutji first prayed to Bhagwan Satyanarayan who is no one else but Vishnu ji.

Then he remembered all his avatars.After that he narrated the story of Narad. Once while visiting Mrityulok, Naradji was pained to see the sufferings of People around. He was deeply moved by these sufferings and wanted to know the means by which we could rid ourselves from these.

So he went to Vishnu ji and after paying his respects stood in front of him. Naradji narrated the purpose of his visit.

So Bhagwan Vishnu said to him that in Satyug and Tretayug, Bhagwan eliminates sorrow in Vishnuswarup. In Dwapar he assumes different forms to help people.
RELIGION
KrishnaLeela
KrishnaLeela
@Talesofkrishna
🌿𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝒂 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒓 : 𝑫𝒉𝒓𝒖𝒗𝒂 & 𝑽𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒏𝒖

Once upon a time there was a Raja named Uttānapāda born of Svayambhuva Manu,1st man on earth.He had 2 beautiful wives - Suniti & Suruchi & two sons were born of them Dhruva & Uttama respectively.
#talesofkrishna https://t.co/E85MTPkF9W


Now Suniti was the daughter of a tribal chief while Suruchi was the daughter of a rich king. Hence Suruchi was always favored the most by Raja while Suniti was ignored. But while Suniti was gentle & kind hearted by nature Suruchi was venomous inside.
#KrishnaLeela


The story is of a time when ideally the eldest son of the king becomes the heir to the throne. Hence the sinhasan of the Raja belonged to Dhruva.This is why Suruchi who was the 2nd wife nourished poison in her heart for Dhruva as she knew her son will never get the throne.


One day when Dhruva was just 5 years old he went on to sit on his father's lap. Suruchi, the jealous queen, got enraged and shoved him away from Raja as she never wanted Raja to shower Dhruva with his fatherly affection.


Dhruva protested questioning his step mother "why can't i sit on my own father's lap?" A furious Suruchi berated him saying "only God can allow him that privilege. Go ask him"
RELIGION