Tag Archives: startups

May 08 2012
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Uncategorized Aside

Success in life hinges more on seizing opportunity than having everything go according to plan.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the exercise of putting pen to paper and writing out a plan is actually incredibly important for sharpening your mind and your focus.  But rarely, if ever, do you hear successful entrepreneurs tell you they are successful because everything simply went according to their plan. (Ha. wouldn’t that be nice!)

The far more common reality is that startups chug along for a while following a general plan.  They might have good growth but not quite hockey stick growth.  And then an unforeseen opportunity comes along out of the blue and punches them in the face. If the company is prepared, they grab that opportunity by the tail, ride it all the way home and never look back.

You can plan and plan until you’re blue in the face, but at the end of the day things hardly ever go according to plan.  If you really want to change the trajectory of your company, rather than planning out every detail for the next three years, spend your time putting yourself in situations where opportunity can come a’knocking.

When Opportunity Knocks You Better Be Prepared

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May 03 2012
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A World Give Day Surprise for Fatima

May 4th is World Give Day.  It’s the one day a year where people around the world come together to support the causes that they care about most, whether that means giving money, giving their time, or perhaps just giving free hugs.

For this year’s World Give Day, I am holding a mentor-thon and  giving all the money I raise to a little girl named Fatima. Fatima is 4 years old and battling leukemia in Los Angeles.  Friends of the family started this GiveForward fundraising page to relieve some of the financial burden as they cope with the high medical bills.  Fatima’s family doesn’t know we are helping and I think it would be awesome to surprise them with a big donation on World Give Day representing the collective generosity of all the awesome people on the Interwebz! My goal is to help make Fatima’s page rock!  I’d love your help!

So how’s a Mentor-thon work?  Good question!  For the next 24 Hours, I will be using Clarity.FM to take as many phone calls as possible  from anyone who wants startup advice.  Whether your question is about business plans, raising seed capital, finding a co-founder, hiring your first employee. marketing, customer acquisition strategy, blogging, you name it. I’ll answer it.

The goal is to raise $500 for the Ortega family.   All you have to do to help is go to my Clarity.FM page and click the button that says “call me now”.  It’s $2 per minute and all the money is being donated to Fatima through the family’s GiveForward Page.

So that’s it.  Give me a call!!!!  Like ASAP!!!  And if you don’t have any startup questions, ask me about burritos.  And if you don’t have any startup or burrito questions, pay it forward this World Give Day by sharing this on Facebook or sending this along to someone who might.  Let’s make this happen for Fatima!

Click here to talk turkey with me! —> https://clarity.fm/#/ethanaustin

Alternatively, if you think talking to me will be a real snoozer and you’d rather just give directly to Fatima, you can donate on her GiveForward fundraising page here —>  http://www.giveforward.com/friendsoffatima

As an extra incentive to give, I’ll match up to $100 (in total) on donations that use the hashtag #WorldGiveDay in the donation comments.  Let’s go Internet.  Let’s make something amazing happen!

Thanks for your support and happy giving!

- ethan

PS – I hope this post inspires you to do something meaningful on World Give Day.  Feel free to share your plans or idea in the comment section.

PPS – If you haven’t used Clarity.fm before it’s a super-cool website started by Canadian entrepreneur extraordinaire Dan Martell (sorry, no relation to the Model, Rick Martell of WWF lore).  Basically, Clarity allows startup founders (or anyone really) to call up successful entrepreneurs to get advice.  For instance, you want to call up Mark Cuban for advice?  Boom! Here’s his profile. Give him a call.

Clarity is still in private beta, but there are already some really awesome entrepreneurs in the network like Dave McClure and Micah Baldwin.  Holy crap, right?  Imagine not having to deal intro emails and LinkedIn nonsense.  Imagine actually using your phone for (gasp!) talking and not just emails and text messaging. Clarity.fm eliminates all the gatekeepers, and gives people direct access to the most bad-ass, nerd-celebrity entrepreneurs in the universe.  I love the fact that it is democratizing mentorship and bringing back the phone call like it’s 1996. I only wish this service existed when we were first starting GiveForward.

#IcallfirstdipsonprankcallingJeffClavier

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Oct 24 2011
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All First Time Entrepreneurs Should Start Social Ventures

Do you run a startup?  If so, chances are you are probably going to fail.  More than 90% of startups do.  And if you’re a first time entrepreneur, oh boy, your odds of failure are even greater -like 99.999%.   There’s no getting around it – startups are hard.  But here’s a trick that might give you your best shot at success.

If you are a first time entrepreneur, start a social venture.

Here’s the logic:  If you do good, people want to help.  If people help you, you have a better chance to succeed.  On the flip side, if people don’t help, you are on your own.  If you’re on your own, you better be damn smart and know what the hell you’re doing. By default, if you’re a first-time entrepreneur you have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what you are doing!!!  Therefore, if you are a first time entrepreneur you should start a social venture to give yourself the best chance at success.

I know I’ll probably catch some flack from the social venture community for saying this, but compared to a regular startup, I don’t think you have to be as smart (in terms of business acumen) to run a social venture.  Running a social venture is like cheating because everyone in the world wants to help you out.

Here’s an example.  I went to an incredible concert this past weekend called the Bridge School Benefit.  It’s a concert that Neil Young has organized for the past 25 years with all the proceeds going to the Bridge School for autistic children.  The show had an all-star lineup including Arcade Fire, Eddie Vedder, Beck, Dave Matthews, Mumford and Sons, and Nora Jones.

All these artists volunteered their time because they wanted to help the cause – it feels good to do good.  I think the same rule applies for startups: if you do good, people will want to help you.

We see the same phenomenon at GiveForward all the time.  In the past few weeks alone, I’ve had a former  producer for ABC and CBS news in NY offer to pitch stories for us pro bono.  I’ve had two CEOs of software companies offer to give us their software for free – no charge whatsoever for as long as we want to use their software.  These acts of generosity from strangers give us a small leg up on the competition.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  By no means am I saying starting a social venture is easy. I’m just saying it’s a tiny bit easier.  However, when you’re in a world where the odds are already so severely stacked against you, that tiny leg up might just be the difference maker.

So if you’re a looking to become an entrepreneur and trying to figure out what kind of company to start,  do yourself (and the world) a favor and start a social venture. You’ll do more good for world and more importantly for you, you’ll give yourself a fighting chance to succeed.

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