When I met Sahil, the founder of Gumroad, 9 months ago one thing that stuck out was him saying that he thought Gumroad had the potential to become a thing. I was intrigued, usually people don’t talk this way about products. Plus he has a track record of working for startups that have become things: pinterest and Turntable.fm. Despite that track record it was difficult for me to understand how this simple concept would become a thing and also why gumroad would take off instead of an inevitable clone or even a preexisting competitor adding this feature.

When I heard the phrase “the potential to become a thing”, I immediately knew what he was referring to but I still have trouble defining it. Becoming a thing is about being the category killer but with a social cred twist.. Instagram became a thing for sharing photos, Kickstarter became a thing for social fundraising, path is on the verge of becoming a thing for sharing intimate moments of your life and Quora is becoming a thing for answering and asking questions. Becoming a thing comes from a combination of having a strong brand, a great user experience and powerful network effects when applicable. Becoming synonymous with the action that your site allows for is the culmination of becoming a thing. This is how startups are able to take off and become successful de facto monopolies.

Certain products become a thing because they are is so much better than the competitors. Google’s ascent to becoming the top search engine is a great example of this. They had an anti-marketing marketing style that became hip and a simplified user experience but where they really shined was in having search results that were much better than their competitors.

Instagram is an example of how having a great user experience and becoming cool can lead to a startup taking off. The company took off because it became a thing. It became cool to take and share photos with the service. Of course the great user experience was part of it and helped the initial spark. Though now, even if a competitor had the same or even a better user experience it’d just be called a clone and almost certainly couldn’t catch up. Using instagram is the modern day (or should I say retro) version of the kodak moment. Instagram says the service is about “a world more connected through photos” and I think the service gives users a photographer’s lens for viewing the world. Many of my friends excitedly say I have to “instagram this” when referring to taking mobile photos.

A thing can become a fad. Draw Something may end up being in this camp. It may endure with some level of popularity but certain things can have short life cycles, especially games. It is difficult to differentiate between what will last and what will fade. I think products that fulfill basic human needs will sustain while a lot of “non-franchise worthy” games will fade in popularity.

So how does a startup become a thing? That is a hard question and I don’t think there is a straightforward answer. Usually it can’t be predicted before hand. This is why some companies can shoot up in value so quickly once they find product-market fit. The following are areas that startups should focus on if they are hoping to become a thing:

1. Have well known founders and/or advisors.
2. Have a relentless focus on a great user experience.
3. Have a strong focus on marketing and building a brand. Recommended reading: The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
4. Have a deep understanding of human psychology
5. Have a focus on authentic growth (think Instagram versus socialcam)

What that would mean for the economy and society at large would be incredible. The true human potential of each individual could be unlocked. It is hard to completely fathom how society would be different but I think it would be better in a lot of ways. The economy would thrive. More intelligent  decisions would be made on political and societal issues. More great things would be created.

We need to find better methods of teaching that will replicate the benefits of tutoring at much lower costs. Technology is likely part of the solution but there is still the need for teacher involvement, especially great teacher involvement. As a technology-inclined autodidact, I am tempted to view the likes of Khan Academy and other self-paced, individualized learning tools as the holy grail. They alone are not. They need to be combined with the human element to reach their full potential. Certain types of instruction, such as project based learning, typically require a hands on teacher or mentor. Also, teachers do more than just teach. They motivate, coach, listen and guide their students. Or at least that is what they do at their very best.

On top of better tools and methodologies, we need a psychological shift. Education needs to be valued very highly. Some research has shown that parental attitudes towards education is one of the most impactful variables on a student’s success…sorry, I can’t find the link right now. Determination needs to be taught to whatever extent it can be taught. If students and their parents valued education and had the right values system, educational outcomes would be much higher.

Combine that with better teaching methodologies and techniques and the outcome would be truly amazing.

I am no expert on this subject, but like many, education is a topic that I deeply care about. Growing up, I received a lot of one-on-one tutoring from my older brother, Peter. While I was still in preschool, he taught me what he was learning in his 5th grade math class. This helped boost me ahead in math and ignite my love of learning. I am also thankful that I went to good public schools, had some great teachers along the way and parents that value education. My father even owned two used and out of print bookstores. I had a limited but impactful exposure to self-paced, computer-based learning. Overall, my primary and secondary school experiences were positive. Though, I imagine how my life would be different if I went to bad public schools and my family wasn’t as supportive. My education would have been completely different.

Without those factors, I don’t know if I would have excelled in school and acquired a love for learning. Society ought to do as much as possible to help each student get as good of an education as possible and instill a love of learning. Watch this space!

The internet changed all of that. Now instead of being dependent on the capabilities of one computer, the whole world is now your tool. You can search the world’s information on Google. Ask the world a question (or a very small but interesting subset of it) on Quora. Share your thoughts on WordPress or Tumblr. Learn using Khan’s Academy, MIT OCW or Stanford’s new online courses. Information has finally become ubiquitous and free.

I want to say that the internet is the most remarkable tool that has ever been come up with an it is equivalent to a rocket ship teleportation device for our minds. Under a literal interpretation, Google maps can take us anywhere instantly. Though more interesting than physical geography, are the worlds of ideas and people. Virtually any piece of knowledge that is in the public domain can be accessed instantly. A connection can be made with any willing person. This democratized access to people and ideas is incredibly powerful. It is what is causing software to eat the world. This virtual teleportation ability has or will cause the disintermediation of most middle men. They will be replaced by centralized virtual hubs of activity in the areas of commerce, learning, social connection, music, wellness, entertainment and more.

Having access to a virtual teleportation device is wonderful, powerful and potentially dangerous. It lets people access what they want instantly and for free. Oftentimes this means content creators aren’t paid for their work and new addictions are created. Games, music and movies (all great things in moderation) win out over more productive pursuits. Addictiveness accelerates. Focusing becomes more difficult. Despite these drawbacks, the internet is still the greatest invention of all time in my mind. Teleport wisely, my friend.

It’s Who you Know

Having recommendation(s) from people that the hirer knows can go a long way. Even better if you have built a relationship directly with the person doing the hiring. That way, your resume will float to the top or you might even be able to know about the job opportunity before it is even public information so you won’t have to worry about being just another resume in the stack. As far as how to build a great network: check out the answers for this question on Quora and this video on networking. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, it is estimated that 50% or more of jobs are found through networking making it a much more important ability than just submitting your resume on job sites.

The Golden Pedigree

The standard method is to quickly filter through the applicants is by quickly sorting through the CVs and seeing who has the most shining resumes: who went to the best colleges while maintaining a high GPA and has worked at name brand employers. The thinking is, if they were good enough for HYPSM and [insert prestigious employer here], they must be good enough for me. This is the quickest proxy for identifying talented and hardworking individuals when you are faced with a flood of resumes. Yes, many great candidates are missed who don’t fit into the mold while some schmucks will still somehow be able to sneak in. Still this is the quickest and most efficient way to sort through a large stack of resumes and hence it is commonly utilized.

The perceived importance of having a golden pedigree has caused intense competition for getting into the nation’s top universities and for job slots with employers who are perceived as being prestigious. Sometimes students are willing to even take jobs that they hate in order to have amazing “exit opportunities”. I know students that have a great passion for finance or strategy consulting and that is great but by no means should other students feel pressured into pursuing those options. Plus for students that don’t fit the conventional mold, there has to be ways to build alternative credentials.

Your Web Presence is The New CV

Most likely a future potential employer will google your name/look for your web presence and whatever comes up will be used in evaluating you as a candidate. Some forward thinking companies such as Union Square Ventures have gone as far as only asking for an applicants web presence when applying for a position. The ability to write thoughtfully and passionately about a topic is a great way to demonstrate interest in an area. Also, your web presence is a great place to display qualities and accomplishments that don’t fit neatly on a resume and these are areas where you can really stick out. The importance of your web presence will only increase in value over time as it becomes a more integral portion of the hiring process.

In conclusion, I hope that one’s online presence and other alternative, non-exclusionary credentials help democratize the job application process. What skills you have learned and can display should be more important than one’s alma mater or there lack of. Despite that, I think which school you go to is becoming more important for most students because competition for good jobs is intensifying. That being said, for those with an entrepreneurial mindset, great things can be achieved and jobs can be found with or without such degrees. It will just be that much harder for those without the high-value formal credentials to fall back on.

I’d also like to see a better evite system that allows people to move from conditional plans into something concrete. For example, I might want to go to dinner and a movie with friends IF I like the movie, and IF the timing is right, and IF they pick a good restaurant. My guess is that many people don’t bother making plans with friends because it’s too hard to negotiate all the preferences. No one enjoys putting out invitations and getting no takers. It’s hard to be the organizer.

I’d like the future evite system to start by figuring out who is around and who is up for what sorts of activities. Over time, the system would figure out the sorts of things you like and make suggestions to your circle of friends. Or perhaps you would keep a running profile of the new movies you’d like to see, the concerts you’d enjoy, and the restaurants you want to experience. The evite system would combine everyone’s general preferences into one or more specific plans for which you can opt in or out. And all along the process that might develop over the course of a week, each participant can “nudge” the plan in the direction he or she wants. The system might even negotiate potluck menus and help pick a home for get-togethers.

Looking at the sociology of Facebook it is evident that most people only socialize with a very small group of people. There is nothing inherently wrong with this–it is much more comfortable to do so–but I think a lot of people would like to socialize more and with more people but they don’t know how. Meetup.com is great for going to events organized around a particular interest. But what is there to help encourage social events among friends and acquaintances? Facebook is great for connecting with your friends online (and looking at a bunch of your friends photos) but the real-world events side is limited. Yes, it allows people to easily create events and distribute it to their social graph which I am sure encourages some social activity that wouldn’t have happened otherwise but I don’t think it is enough. I don’t know exactly what the solution to this problem will be but I think there will be a lot of interesting developments in this area in the coming decade.

An idea is just a multiplier of execution as Derek Sivers says in his must read post. In order to execute well, you need the right team, hence the idea is the second most important thing…next to the team. An idea, no matter how good, without any execution is completely worthless. Virtually no one can sell an idea for any amount of money, even if in the rare occasion the idea is really good. Simultaneously, with equally solid execution, a great idea can create an incredible amount of value while a bad idea can lead to no value creation whatsoever. This is a very strange paradox. It makes having a good idea very important.

This belief is widespread. The most common reason for people to not do a startup is because they do not have an idea for a business/product according to a poll on Hacker News. This seems strange. Everyone has ideas, don’t they? Of course they do. Most people have many of them. The problem is having the right idea. Aspiring entrepreneurs believe if they discover the so called “right idea” they would be willing to take the dive and start a company. This is often an excuse and there are other reasons why the would be founders aren’t looking to start a company, which is completely fine. The popular press reinforces the belief that there is a great epiphany moment behind every great company. You read the profile of entrepreneurs and they like to highlight the “a ha” moment when the entrepreneur thought of the idea that would go on to change the world. Writing about the arduous process that is building a company isn’t nearly as effective for attracting page views. The truth is the idea for startups often change and evolve over time and an epiphany moment is rarely the impetus that leads to a company to be founded.

The problem is that it is very difficult to measure the quality of an idea without the benefit of hindsight. Many ideas that turn out to be the best ideas were at one point considered terrible ideas. For example, after the tech bubble burst in 2000 there was a board game called Burn Rate that featured supposedly bad startup ideas. It turns out that some of those supposed bad ideas have turned into multi-billion dollar businesses. A sampling includes: name your own price auction (Priceline), online computer store (NewEgg) and group discount auctions (Groupon). Having the right spin and positioning of an idea–combined with good timing and a bit of luck–can be what transforms a bad idea into a great one. Groupon added the local business, time dependent and fun copy elements to the group auction model while simultaneously benefiting from the rise of the social media distribution channel. These factors helped Groupon succeed where Mercata failed.

Other ideas that are obviously good ones, or at least appear to be good ones at the time, can lead to many competitors as the space heats up. This can make it a lot harder to stand out from the crowd and win against the numerous competitors. Some of whom are able to raise a large amount of money and are willing to acquire customers at a loss. If you have the right product and distribution strategy you can still win in a crowded market but it adds a layer of difficulty. In the words of Peter Thiel, you need to be contrarian and right…or at least this would be the best case scenario.

So what makes a great startup idea? There are different key elements that help define what makes a startup idea good. Sequoia Capital has put together a good one pager on the topic and Paul Graham wrote an essay about ideas for startups. When you are just getting started, I think targeting a large and growing market (preferably one you are interested in and have a background in as well) is the most important thing if your goal is to build a high-growth venture backed startup. The potential size of your business is limited by the size of the market. Your specific product idea can grow and evolve over time but you are structurally limited by the market that you are in.

Even though having a great idea can act as a very powerful multiplier for the outcome of a startup, it is not worth waiting for the so-called right idea. There are other reasons to not do a startup or to delay doing one but not having the right idea should not be one of them. The epiphany moment with the brilliant idea will probably never come and you will be more likely to find the right idea after getting started on a startup. Creating a startup can be like testing a scientific hypothesis. Just because you don’t have the perfect hypothesis to test it is still worth starting to test hypotheses. Even if your hypothesis is wrong, you will learn from conducting the experiment and will better know what is the best thing to test next. In the words of Paul Graham “It would be closer to the truth to say the main value of your initial idea is that, in the process of discovering it’s broken, you’ll come up with your real idea.” And hopefully in that you will stumble upon a great idea.

The first step is to gain expertise in some area. Of course some so called “thought leaders” try to skip this step and call themselves a leader of something or put themselves in front of a movement with no real credentials. While this strategy can work, it is disingenuous and it is better to develop an expertise before trying to become known as an expert. After deciding what area you want to focus on, delve deep into that area, reading a ton of material on the subject, working in the field and talking with and developing a relationship with experts in the field. If there are events focused on the topic, attend them. If not, organize events around the subject.

As you gain expertise, share your thoughts with the world by blogging, creating videos, writing a book, writing guest articles and whatever else. Make sure to put time into developing great content and make the content in such a way so that it is easy to spread and will remain fresh (evergreen content). Coining terms and creating a whole new terminology can be a useful differentiator and can help you “own” this new area. Tim Ferriss wasn’t the first to write about starting your own business and traveling, but he presented a new twist and a great overall package. He created a number of new terms “join the new rich”, “4-hour workweek”, “lifestyle design” and “geoarbitrage”  as part of his book. Tim really stepped it up from his old blog to his new one.

Of course it is much harder to stake a digital claim then it is to write about doing so. It takes a high level of commitment to become an expert in a field and then to create quality content around the subject matter. And you will have to keep with it even though it can take a long time to build an audience. There is an increasing amount of competition as more and more people are creating content in each niche. Though, with enough dedication and hustle, it is definitely possible.

“[I]f one object happens to be slightly more popular than another at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still. As a result, even tiny, random fluctuations can blow up, generating potentially enormous long-run differences” Duncan J. Watts, New York Times

There are many cases where the above quote is evident. Sometimes the initial differences are based on chance, at other times the initial differences can be based on differences in natural talent, work ethic or good timing. Whatever the root cause is, cumulative advantage is a powerful force and it is important to find a way to break into this virtuous cycle.

In sports, athletes that start out slightly better that their teammates when they are young are given more coaching attention, more play time and are able to play in more competitive leagues. Overtime, these initial advantages, whether they are based on fortuitous birth-dates or differences in natural ability, grow and can make the difference of whether one athlete can make the pros or not. If an athlete can make it to the pros, the Matthew Effect still applies, the players that excel initially, get the most coaching attention and playing time leading to longer careers. Similar initial differences can explain who becomes the next pop star and who remains in obscurity.

Similarly, in entrepreneurship small initial differences are very powerful. In winner take most and businesses with network effects, a small initial advantage can lead to large differences in outcome over time. Being the front runner in a market can help a company sign BizDev deals, attract top talent (both employees and investors) and make users sign up for your service instead of a competitors. With this information in mind, it makes sense to work hard and take action now. If you can “see where the puck is going” and work hard to get there, you can have a good shot of getting an early lead and being able to harness the power of cumulative advantage going forward.

These days, people can see what people are accomplishing all across the country and of course a very small percentage of outliers will be accomplishing amazing things at a very young age. Also, the closer you get to the top of a distribution, the more of a difference there will be between peers. For example, the difference in earnings between the 45th percentile and 55th percentile is relatively small, but the difference in earnings between the 98th percentile and top 1/100th of a percent is massive. If you end up in a place like Silicon Valley you may also find that some of your new peers will be part of this outlier group and will be doing amazing things for their age, which is awesome. Being in Silicon Valley, you are no longer in a small pond so there will be a lot of big fish swimming around. Surrounding yourself with intelligent, productive people that are accomplished is a great way to learn. Though, sometimes it can be intimidating. A small part of me can become envious of what another individual has or has accomplished and I think “I want that” or  ”I am falling behind”. The latter sentiment is ridiculous for a 20 year old to think. I try to minimize my sense of envy that I feel and instead focus on being inspired and learning the lessons that I can  from these individuals. I think this is the most healthy and effective way to deal with peer comparison.

The funny thing is as you do more and more cool things, there is always another ladder to climb. There is always another person who is more accomplished and even if you reach the very pinnacle of success in a given field, you could then look to people that have optimized their lives for other things, for example adventure or knowledge or caring for one’s family and think why you didn’t do that. You can’t have it all and no matter what there will be some people who are more impressive then you. Though you can still have a wonderful life.  To be honest, it is probably impossible to eliminate all sense of envy but by viewing the situation through the right lens, the sense of inspiration can overpower the envy and encourage you to work on accomplishing great things.

What really ended up building a brand for me or a business opportunity for me was just being known as being helpful…If you are insightful and helpful, they just grab you and pull you in.” Chris Sacca

“Focus primarily on making everyone around you succeed.” Yishan Wong’s secret to career success

Think of the ways you can be helpful and help make the people around you succeed. Silicon Valley is truly a small community and word gets around about who has the ability to be helpful and get things done. Your reputation is the most valuable asset that you have. It takes time and hard work to build a good reputation but it is worth it. In the words of Warren Buffett “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently. ” Put in the time and effort to try and help as many people and startups around you succeed. Do right by others and in the long term, you will see the dividend. Plus, helping others feels good as well.

Network but don’t network just to exchange business cards. Meet people and see what problems they or their startups are facing and look for how you can help. See where your strengths align with the problems that they and their startups are having and offer to help out. In the beginning, don’t worry about money, or titles, just focus on how you can be as helpful as possible. Further develop an expertise in the areas that you are helping these individuals and startups in and this will lead to nothing but good things

The occasional person may try to take advantage of your kindness but so be it. In general, people have a naturally reciprocal nature and they will try and help out those who have helped them in the past. Playing tit-for-tat is a waste of energy. Just focus on being as helpful as possible, especially when it is a startup that is very interesting to you and looks promising.

Similar strategies can be used within the company you work at. Don’t try to trample over the backs of you co-workers, help your co-workers succeed and you will see that when the time comes, they will put in a good word for you and this will help you in the future… Focusing purely on how you can succeed within an organization without consideration for others, can lead to animosity which leads to an uncomfortable environment and enemies instead of allies. Plus, the startup that you are working at is even more likely to succeed if all the people around you are succeeding at their jobs. And as an employee with stock options, that is how you can get rewarded as well.

The strategy of primarily focusing on helping other people succeed is particularly well suited for Silicon Valley. Helpfulness is one of the most highly valued traits here. Yes competition between companies can be cut throat but the people here typically are not. It is all about how people and startups can win in a collaborative way and the best way to do so is simply to “create more value than you capture” Tim O’Reilly and to be helpful.