Pingwyn's Blog

Deploy your network (Read time 0:23 sec)

Most people believe good judgment is a requirement for success, but the truth is - withholding your judgment can make you more successful. What do you do instead? Deploy the network around you. All these friends and acquaintances on LinkedIn, Facebook, Quora, etc. - ask their opinion, solicit their experience and judgment. They are free from your burdens and often can see it more clearly. Get their answers then prioritize. Prioritize time, information, people and make your decisions together - not alone. Use your network systematically to give you the signal from the noise. Heroic entrepreneurship makes for a good story, but lone-wolf victors are really rare. So rare in fact that they just come to prove the point - you could get lucky trying on your own, or you can increase your chances by working with your network.

KNOWING - repost from J Michael Dolan's blog

I have to share this in its entirety - from the blog of J Michael Dolan:

"I was 29 when I started Music Connection magazine. 0-money, 0-experience. I couldn’t PROVE to anybody that MC was going to work. But I could KNOW it. I was holding it in my hands and reading it in my mind before I ever committed to actually doing it. Just like a songwriter hears the music in her head before she ever writes it down. Just like the Wright brothers couldn’t PROVE that their cockamamie idea of flying machines would work. But they could KNOW it. You may not be able to PROVE to investors, producers, agents, managers, staff or even friends and family that your crazy, genius idea will work. But you can KNOW it. And the manner in which you articulate that KNOWING may be the only convincing “pitch” that sells it."

Original post at: http://www.jmichaeldolan.com/blogs.php

Obvious to You - Amazing to Others

 

We can do this ...

Sometimes it's best communicated in a short video:

 

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The Battle Within - read time 34 sec

This is the one they don't teach you how to win in Business School and no - it is not the battle with your inner demons. I mean the battle within one's own camp. The freshly minted MBA imagines that the CEO rules his army. Not at all. The army rules him. The CEO must feed his managers' and directors' appetite for novelty and adventure, keep them fit and confident (but not too confident, lest they grow insolent), discipline them, coddle them, reward them with bounty and bonuses, but contrive to make sure they blow their loot on luxury cars and mortgages so that they are hungry to march and fight again. Leading a company is like wrestling a hundred-headed hydra - you kill one serpent, only to face ninety-nine more. And the farther you march - the harder it gets. So what are the CEO's options? In the end he may lead his company only where it wants to go.

Rockstart

The illusion of privacy (and what we actually care about)

No, we don't actually have privacy. We traded it long time ago for convenience. What we really dislike is being surprised by how much companies know about us. Perhaps soon we will get used to this too ... Here is more on the subject by Seth Godin:

You probably have very little privacy at all, giving it up a long time ago.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

One Network to Rule Them All

Facebook is undeniably a great success story and ... a very lucky idea. If we look at the urgency with which Mr Zuckerberg is trying to 'improve the user experience' and give us even more reasons to stay with his creation - then we can easily see that he is plain scared. That's right - he doesn't know what made Fb the 'juggernaut' of social networking.

 

The field is crowded with great ideas, great platforms, and yet we all keep coming back to Facebook. What would happen if we all stopped using it for a week? What if we got bored or if the next kid from Harvard came with an idea like Pingwyn for instance and with the speed of 500 million mouse-clicks we all left ...

 

Pignwyn by the way is only a location-based mobile social networking platform just for the iOS ... for now. So Facebook is safe ... for now. Sleep well Mr Zuckerberg.

Original article by Todd Hixon @ Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddhixon/2011/10/05/one-network-to-rule-them-all/

No one ever bought anything in an elevator

The purpose of an elevator pitch isn't to close the sale.

The goal isn't even to give a short, accurate, Wikipedia-standard description of you or your project.

And the idea of using vacuous, vague words to craft a bland mission statement is dumb.

No, the purpose of an elevator pitch is to describe a situation or solution so compelling that the person you're with wants to hear more even after the elevator ride is over.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

Happens all too often - people focus on the format so much that they forget the purpose. Thank you for reminding us Seth Godin and for doing it in such an eloquent, elegant and concise way. It's almost like an elevator pitch - I want to read more about it.

When Google comes calling...

What would happen if Google, or Facebook come calling? This is a question that comes up all the time, when we discuss the future of Pingwyn. My answer always is - we have our business goals and they have theirs. Nobody will try to copy us before we prove ourselves successful in the market.

Here is another interesting take on this question by Seth Godin:

In June of 2008, Google launched Knol, a monetizable Wikipedia, or, as some people saw it, a Squidoo killer. Not the same as what we were doing at Squidoo, not focused on individuals and their passions, but close enough for discomfort.

via sethgodin.typepad.com