Getting Over Your Pre Entrepreneur Fears

Larry Chiang scandalously teaches at a school he used to crash classes at: Stanford University . He edits the Bloomberg BusinessWeek channel “What They Don’t Teach You at Business School”. After Chiang’s Harvard Law keynote, Harvard Business wrote: “What They Don’t Teach You at Stanford Business School“ (it is the same title as his NY Times bestseller). He is Entrepreneur in Residence at Stanford University and a VC. If you read his hilariously awesome “What a Supermodel Can Teach a Stanford MBA”, Enroll in Stanford Engineering 145 and “How to Get Man-Charm”, you will like his latest post: “Getting Over Your Pre Entrepreneur Fears”

By Larry Chiang

Congrats on recognizing you have fear and that you need to reach out to me to bust that fear in the face.

Ok, I never answer startup questions but the below answers all happen to suck. A lot.

Ok so lets say you’re launching and you’re decently well-versed with Lean startup method (trademarked by Eric Ries), and now you’re on to getting over your fears and executing.

It seems like you’re a super intelligent, well read first time entrepreneur so here are some patterns I recognized so that you can pattern replicate (and iterate but mostly replicate)

– Fear of getting circumvented.

This is super counter intuitive but you actually want people to rip you off and copy your exact thing.

What??!!

Yes, because it validates you and pushes you higher. For example, I have a presentation called “How to Do What Duck9 Does Without Having to Hire Duck9″

I cold call a conference producer in banking or credit or credit card banking and say: “Pow. I wanna do this preso that in effect kills my business. Want the duck? Err the deck. Do you want my slide deck.”

They say no but ask the name of the speech I want to give.

I say: “How to Do What Duck9 Does Without Having to Hire Duck9″

They then get wet or get wood. Or both

What is the conclusion to the presentation: “How to Do What Duck9 Does Without Having to Hire Duck9″??

Too much work. LETS hire ’em.

ITs always the conclusion.

Do not fear getting circumvented.

Another example is my venture fund. I live in ground zero of 60% of the vc money in America: Palo Alto CA. I had a VC register ‘every-animal 9′. VCs copy stuff. So I have this idea for a venture firm with a strategy that is pretty easy to copy.

So what do I do??

I drop my pants and do the version of “How to Do What Duck9 Does Without Having to Hire Duck9″ but but for my venture firm— SO I blogged it http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2011/11/22/7-questions-lps-should-ask-vcs-but-dont/

Do you think that the top five venture firms have more resources, more money and more ability to execute my li’l CS-major-CEO-farm-system maneuver than me and my 7 hours per week?!

YES, they have more resources.

But I work and hustle my little venture firm with my one little LP and I am getting to 13,000 cs major ceo cell phone numbers come Noah-the-ark or high-waterj

BUT LARRY CHIANG I DON’T WANNA LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT

ok, here is the thing about entrepreneurship. You are gonna look like an ass 70-90% of the time

You name the legendary entrepreneur and I will tell you the 3-10 times they looked like they had an IQ that hovered below IQ 88

Google IQ 88.

I documented them.

Oh and Friendster was genius. And so is Jonathan. He runs Founders Den. Sure that evite sequel business didn’t pan but learn from Jonathan’s pattern — don’t avoid it completely

I am tired from answering this question. Vote it up at Quora and I will share some mo’

Google me… I’m sort of a big deal :-]

Reprint. This first appeared on STANFORD BASES blog.

Other stuff to read from my all day workshop in Hawaii:
– Leverage other people’s momentum (by doing a sequel to a company, book or film you did not create) (Ch 3 of my book)
– Learn from other people experience by getting superstar, junior and co-hort mentors (Ch 5 of my book)
– Get access to other people’s money “Venture Capital Secrets” and more
– Cut and Paste other people’s work (Ch 3)
– WORK a CONFERENCE: Booth Sales (lead generation, tag team selling and getting expo visitors into the red zone) and Speaking to Get Deals (Ch 6)
– How to Tip, Bribe, Comp and Tip your way past 100 Stanford MBA’s

Follow on Twitter @larryChiang. Remember, my book’s chapters are reprinted free at a website called BusinessWeek
If you cannot sleep, watch NBC 8, KHNL