Career path. Part-1 Your passion and skills

After a long break, Mike finally returned to his blogging habit and is now fully committed to it. #hurray

This time Mike is going to talk about the way people apply for a job, and the types of mistakes they might make during the long (full-time job) job

1. Think about "What you want to do NEXT"

Before moving to the SF Bay Area, questions like "What are you passionate about?" or "What do you WANT to do?" were more cliché for him than anything else. But after spending a couple of years in the area and being surrounded by such an intense and competitive startup environment, he realized that it's the mindset and not the skills-set that drives success in entrepreneurship. This distinction is lost in situations like the endorsement option on LinkedIn for "Entrepreneurship" as a skill.  For a successful start you better think about what exactly it is that you want to do next, because your thoughts will lead the way you talk to people, the way your facial emotions and micro-emotions are match or mismatching with your words, etc.

Exercise: This is a social-behavioral test. Take a moment and spend 5-10 mins of your time on this. Take a pen and paper. Draw a line down the middle of the paper, creating 2 columns. Name the first column: "What I can do". Name the second column: "What I want to do". After you have the sections ready, Mike would like to ask you to think about each question for about 5 minutes and write down 3 bullet points for each section. You don't need to complicate the list - keep it short and simple.

(Example: I can do coding, I can do photography, I can do teaching/coaching/mentoring)

Take another 5 minutes to think about what you WANT to do.

After you finish with these tasks, compare the columns. Don't be surprised if the the second set of 3 bullet points does not match the 3 on the first one.

Note: If you have a 100% match of the left and right sides, you probably fall in one of the following 3 different categories:

1.     You are a Unicorn, and you don't need to read this (apparently you will find the position you are looking for).

2.     You are a full-time employee and are just dreaming now, so you better do something useful. :)

3.     You are cheating at some point, which means you have fears regarding your "What I can do" side.

Now, when you have done the exercise and found differences, think about how the left side can interconnect to the right side.

Let's break it down here:

What I Can Do What I Want to Do Coding Photography Teaching Travel Teaching Sports

Clearly, you can see some overlaps here. Here are some examples of what you can do, so you will have a sense of your skills and passion match.

• Create a web site to teach photography to travelers
• Create a news portal about sports activities and post pictures from sporting events
• Travel, be a freelance developer, and teach photography

These 3 bullet points are only some examples of the things you can do if you pick an entrepreneur adventurer lifestyle. Alternatively, you can apply for a job, where your skills and passion will meet. And Mike is going to talk about the details of this alternative next time.

To be continued... 

Top-8 cities in USA to do tech startup

Entrepreneurship - is not a skill, it's a mindset and lifestyle... (Mike, September, 2015)
Mike was thinking about where else he would do his StartUp if it's not San Francisco, Bay Area?!?!, well recommended place, but also cliché
Indeed, depending on your business niche the location of the startup might be critically important. As Reid Hoffman mentioned on his  "How to be a great founder" lecture speech at Stanford

NYC - General Assembly, Hinge, giphy, codecademy, reverse, electric objects, weWork

Boston - RunKeeper, PowerInbox, FlightCar, HubSpot, Memrise, TripAdvisor, Leaf

LA - UCode, Washio, ZipRecruiter, SnapChat, ServiceTitan, eHarmony, Hulu

Austin - Cloud66, Mattr, Everfest, AppSumo, Burpy, Clarify

Boulder - Gnip, TeamSnap, Trada, SurveyGizmo, TechStars, Rally,

Chicago: Charlie, Fandium, Groupon, SnapSheet, SpotHero, Orbits, Cars.com

Seattle - Zulily, Swype, Apptio, PopCap, Zillow, DocuSign, Adaptive Biotechnologies

SF Bay Area - Come on, really? think about top -10 apps you ever used, most likely 7 out of 10 made in SF Bay Area ;)

Bonus: here is the list of cities/countries around the world where you should go for startup

Tel Aviv, Singapore, Dublin, San Paulo
There is huge opportunities for people to start a tech StartUp business, because in all countries are these cities coming from government is supporting tech as a PRIORITY part of economics.

London, Berlin, Tallinn
Europe is traditionally good at doing great things, especially in IoT and Hardware business, check the kickstarter, you will see how much hardware/IoT campaigns are from Europe, especially from London (I think it's correlating with generally more conservative approach of people about things they do; things they can see and touch :) As well as lot of creativity works around, more artistic

Moscow, Kiev, Minsk
Former soviet republics were always in Tech, another good example of traditionally strong math and fundamental science schools. (keep on mind that Soviet Union was the only country who was able to compete with USA in Space and Rocket Science)

Canada
Canada, is a good mix of Technology, absolutely amazing UX and creative thinking (want to give a clear example of it, IMAX was invented by Canadians, sorry US fellas :) not you), non-standard or solutions for standard problems (ability to think out of the box, good design thinking schools in Canada)

Sydney
Another good example of traditionally good mechanical and electrical engineering (I guess UK heritage) makes Australians good at IoT/hardware and design thinking (see remark about Europe)

Don't be surprise that there are no Tokyo, Beijing, Mumbai or Seoul in the list. Apparently, there are lot of successful startups over there, but the media presence of those cities isn't really transparent 

Simplicity, life experience and the story behind success

Mike wants to tell you a city legend...

Once upon a time, there was a team of four humble guys living in a small mountainous country and working hard to create something different, something unique, something magical, like never before... They were artists, animators, architects and engineers.

Throughout many years they were struggling with no electricity and gas, with no food and with lots of depression in a country challenged by a tough history.

But they never gave up and kept dreaming about magic, something which should be easy and simple, but at the same time, interesting and engaging...

One late evening, one of the friends was playing with his kid and showing shadow puppets in a dark room where a candle was the only source of light. And all of sudden, he has been flashed with Eureka effect. He put his kid asleep and rushed to his friends to share his idea and excitement. Next morning they rolled up their sleeves and started bringing it to a reality.

And...

On 8th of June, 2015 Shadowmatic got a prestigious Apple Design Award at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2015. 

Shadowmatic is an imagination stirring puzzle where you rotate abstract objects in a spotlight to find recognizable silhouettes in projected shadows, relevant to the surrounding environment. The game combines stunning visuals with relaxing and captivating gameplay. It features 9 rooms, each flavored with unique concept, atmosphere, and music.

The bottom line of the story - Never give up, struggle or as Steve Jobs said, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." 

Choose right over easy - lessons from Satya Patel

Mike would like to ask you: How much you love your product? How passionate are you?

Here is the short lessons from Satya Patel, Partner at HomeBrew and  former VP of Product at Twitter

Love your products. First, focus on delivering value to our users. Always remember who you are building for and what you are building. Build your product to long term. Communicate with anyone and everyone who is interested, but most importantly to your teams.

Let your teams determine how to build the product. (In other words don't tell them what to do excatly, tell them what you are expecting to get as results, don't be Product MicroManager)

Pursue excellence by thinking bigger and bolder than is comfortable. Don’t settle for definition good enough, i.e. choose right over easy. Chose simplicity over complexity.

Product manager - don’t make excuses, take responsibility.

Empower your team to be “can do - will do” players. Trust others to do their jobs well, don’t tell them what or how to do, just verify that they have right results.

Mike is happy :)

P.S. Read full material here
http://venturegeneratedcontent.com/2013/07/11/we-are-product-managers/?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=bufferaceac&utm_medium=twitter

Good vs. Bad Product Manager

Mike was reading interesting book of Ben Horovitz, called "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" and this article is really remarkable and worth to read.

Good product managers know the market, the product, the product line and the competition extremely well and operate from a strong basis of knowledge and confidence.

A good product manager is the CEO of the product. (It's actually enough said to don't read rest of the article, but please DO)

A good product manager takes full responsibility and measures themselves in terms of the success of the product. The are responsible for right product/right time and all that entails. A good product manager knows the context going in (the company, our revenue funding, competition, etc.), and they take responsibility for devising and executing a winning plan (no excuses).


Bad product managers have lots of excuses. Not enough funding, the engineering manager is an idiot, Microsoft has 10 times as many engineers working on it, I'm overworked, I don't get enough direction. Barksdale doesn't make these kinds of excuses and neither should the CEO of a product.


Good product managers don't get all of their time sucked up by the various organizations that must work together to deliver right product right time. They don't take all the product team minutes, they don't project manage the various functions, they are not gophers for engineering. They are not part of the product team; they manage the product team.

Engineering teams don't consider Good Product Managers a "marketing resource." Good product managers are the marketing counterpart of the engineering manager. (This is one of the most misleading things in StartUps)


Good product managers crisply define the target, the "what" (as opposed to the how) and manage the delivery of the "what."

Bad product managers feel best about themselves when they figure out "how". Good product managers communicate crisply to engineering in writing as well as verbally.

Good product managers don't give direction informally. Good product managers gather information informally. (Another rule to note down)


Good product managers create leveragable collateral, FAQs, presentations, white papers. Bad product managers complain that they spend all day answering questions for the sales force and are swamped. Good product managers anticipate the serious product flaws and build real solutions. Bad product managers put out fires all day. Good product managers take written positions on important issues (competitive silver bullets, tough architectural choices, tough product decisions, markets to attack or yield).

Bad product managers voice their opinion verbally and lament that the "powers that be" won't let it happen. Once bad product managers fail, they point out that they predicted they would fail. Good product managers focus the team on revenue and customers. Bad product managers focus team on how many features Microsoft is building.


Good product managers define good products that can be executed with a strong effort. Bad product managers define good products that can't be executed or let engineering build whatever they want (i.e. solve the hardest problem). Good product managers think in terms of delivering superior value to the market place during inbound planning and achieving market share and revenue goals during outbound. Bad product managers get very confused about the differences amongst delivering value, matching competitive features, pricing, and ubiquity. Good product managers decompose problems.

Bad product managers combine all problems into one. Good product managers think about the story they want written by the press. Bad product managers think about covering every feature and being really technically accurate with the press.

Good product managers ask the press questions. Bad product managers answer any press question. Good product managers assume press and analyst people are really smart. Bad product managers assume that press and analysts are dumb because they don't understand the difference between "push" and "simulated push." Good product managers err on the side of clarity vs. explaining the obvious.

Bad product managers never explain the obvious. Good product managers define their job and their success. Bad product managers constantly want to be told what to do. Good product managers send their status reports in on time every week, because they are disciplined. Bad product managers forget to send in their status reports on time, because they don't value discipline. (Soooo True)

Startup suggestions from Mike

Yesterday Mike thought about a few things: What are the main mistakes done by startups and how to prevent them?

1. Right amount of co-founders

One founder can't really handle everything. It's better to have 2 more fellas who will help you with all ideas and will definitely be the first guys who will criticize your crazy ideas in order to place them to the right pace. Here is some examples for you: Facebook - 5 founders, Google - 2 founders, WhatsApp - 2 founders, Reddit - 2 founders, Microsoft - 2 founders, Apple - 2 founders.

From another perspective too many founders can have different visions/opinions about "how it should work" or "who is the boss". Usually, startups with such problems die fast.

2. Startup is not a hobby

You should have 200% commitment if you want to be a startup. Mike was watching Shark Tank and he continuously noticed that entrepreneurs are failing to understand that you can't get investment if you are not committed to things you do or believe. Most likely Kevin O'Leary and Mark Cuban will ask you how much time you spend on your business, and if you tell them 2 hours every morning YOU ARE OUT, because it's your hobby, not your life...

3. Raise RIGHT amount of money

Raising less than you need –You might run out of money fast without being able to push to the market to the best of your potential.

Raising more than you need – is risky because it might make you feel like a star, so you might forget to deliver everything you should. Plus, you might have couple of more rounds to raise, so the more money you raised in the beginning – the more you would need to raise later. For some companies it is lethal. Last but not least to mention is the more money you raised the more dependencies and pressure from investors you will have.

4. Listen to your customers

This is a key factor for your success. Don't listen to your investors, I mean, take their opinion into consideration, but never take it as a 100% path to success. They financed your idea and vision, not vice versa.

HOWEVER, do listen to your customers. Listen and hear them (See Mike's Blog Here). Do A/B testing, ask for surveys, and organize target group discussions (even if you need to spend time and money). Starbucks gift cards are always handy here. :)

5. Team, Team, Team

Right team is like a unicorn-almost difficult to achieve. Please, spend time and hire right people-teamable work and spirit are vital factors of your young company.

It's easy to give suggestions (you are probably thinking) but Mike had all these flaws during his career in 5 different startups... He is learning with you, so no judgement, and just a few suggestions from a friend.