Timothy Ferriss's Blog, page 122

Free $1,000 Travelocity Voucher and $10,000 Spots to Kimono

(Photo: Royce Bair)

Hello lads and lasses. This post is intended as a morsel, a sugar high and respite. Life is serious enough, so this post will require zero calories of brain power.

Not to worry, of course, as we'll be back to our regular content with the next how-to post.

In the meantime, some goodies: the "Kimono" winners and a $1,000 travel voucher giveaway.

KIMONO SPOTS

Congratulations, after much tallying and consideration, to the winners of the $10,000 spots to the "Opening the Kimono" event! Please keep an eye on your inbox for follow-up details:

- Sheila McCarthy (votes)

- Jacqueline Biggs ("wild card" views)

First, sincere thanks to all who submitted video case studies, even those who re-submitted old videos and therefore weren't eligible. Second, HUGE thanks to Dustin "America's Trainer to the Moms" Maher for making the "wild card" scholarship possible — you rock!

Three honorable mentions for the "wild card" seat are below (out of dozens of great videos), and one includes a pic of me drunk at my London book launch. Oh, Internet, you hurt so good T_T

Two of them highlight post-4-Hour Workweek (now 2,172 reviews!) travel adventures:

$1,000 TRAVELOCITY TRAVEL VOUCHER — GIVEAWAY DETAILS

Alright, moving on…

I wanted to have some fun and get people traveling. "But I can't travel… it costs to much!" is a common refrain. Partnering with a new start-up called PunchTab, I wanted to remove this barrier.

Here's how it will work, as PunchTab explains:

Entering the giveaway is simple and takes only 30 seconds. Register by connecting to the giveaway widget below using Facebook. For each step you complete, you'll earn a giveaway entry:

1. Like this blog post by clicking on the Facebook Like button (+1 entry).

2. Become a fan of Tim Ferriss on Facebook (+1 entry).

3. Leave a comment telling me where you'll go and what you'll do there (+1 entry).

4. Tweet about the giveaway (+1 entry).

5. Unlimited bonus entries by pasting your invite link everywhere you can. For example:

- For every friend who clicks the invite link you Tweeted in step 4, you'll earn +1 entries.

- For every friend who then joins the giveaway, you'll earn +5 entries.

Giveaway ends June 31, 2011 at midnight PST. Open to residents of North America.

Enjoy! Attack! Discuss!

What's Your Start-up's "Bus Count"? 7 Myths of Entrepreneurship and Programming

(Photo: Stuck in Customs)

For the last two years, one name has come up again and again when talking with A-class start-up investors: Pivotal Labs.

See, Pivotal Labs quietly helps dozens of the fastest-growing tech companies in the world, including freight trains like Groupon and Twitter. If your start-up needs to get good coding done quickly, as in lightning fast — or if new hires need to get good at coding quickly — top venture capitalists are likely to look over their shoulder and confide: "Call Pivotal Labs."

I first met the Founder of Pivotal Labs, Rob Mee, when one of the start-ups I advise, TaskRabbit, began working with them.

One thing is immediately clear: Rob is obsessed with how to get obscenely high output. But that's nothing new. Here's the differentiator: he's obsessed with how to get obscenely high output with sustainable effort. One of his first remarks to me was "3am with Jolt and pizza can be fun, but it's a myth that it's the fuel behind scalable success…"

My kinda guy.

I then posed a few questions:

How do you create a scalable, bullet-proof business? In this case, "bullet-proof" meaning that there's no single point of failure — it won't nose dive if any single player (like you) is taken out… or opts out.

What are the myths of tech product creation (software specifically, and entrepreneurship more broadly) that he'd like to expose?



This post contains his answers.

Think software doesn't apply to you? If you're in business, rest assured that at least a few principles of good software development most definitely apply to you. Translate them into your world and prosper.

Enter Rob Mee

Software development is a rapidly evolving field that got off to a very rocky start.

Conventional wisdom for many years was that software engineering should be like other types of engineering: design carefully, specify precisely, and then just build it – exactly to spec. Just like building a bridge, right? The problem with this approach is that software is just that. Soft. It's endlessly malleable. You can change software pretty much any time you want, and people do. Also, since software can be used to model just about anything, the possibilities for what you can ask software developers to do are pretty much infinite. Want to simulate a circuit in software? Go ahead. Run a bank? No problem. Connect half a billion people to their friends? Why not, piece of cake. Not only that, but what we ask programmers to produce changes in the middle of the development, often in unpredictable ways.

This is not bridge-building.

Denying the reality of constant change doomed many software projects, for many decades, to either abject failure or huge budget overruns. So why did an entire industry hew to this conventional wisdom that flew in the face of all evidence? Hard to say. Finally, however, there has begun to emerge a new consensus: software development needs to respond well to change. In fact, it needs to be optimized for change. Nowhere is this embraced more than in today's web start-up development community. So-called agile methods have gained currency, and the "lean start-up" movement calls for exceedingly rapid change, often automated and based on experimentation with the live system.

So we're all good, right? Not so fast. In spite of the acceptance of more agile methods, there's plenty of received wisdom hanging around… and most of it ought to be thrown out the window.

1. Myth: You have to hire "ninjas".

The myth of the hero hacker is one of the most pervasive pathologies to be found in Silicon Valley start-ups: the idea that a lone programmer, fueled by pizza and caffeine, swaddled in headphones, works all hours of the night to build a complex system, all by himself. Time out. Software development, it turns out, is a team sport. All start-ups grow, if they experience any meaningful success. What works for a lone programmer will not work in a company of 10. And what's worse, encouraging the hero mentality leads to corrosive dysfunction in software teams. Invariably the developers who do a yeoman's 9-to-5, week after week, cranking out solid features that the business is built on, lose out to the grasping egomaniacs who stay up all night (usually just one night) looking to garner lavish praise. Rather than reward the hero, it's better to cultivate a true esprit de corps.

2. Myth: Programmers need to work in quiet, without interruption.



This makes sense … if people are working on their own. Every interruption does indeed break concentration, and it takes a while to get back "in the zone". Some well-known software companies even insist that each programmer have their own private office. That way they'll never be interrupted, right? Except that modern-day interruptions have little to do with an actual person tapping you on the shoulder, and everything to do with instant messaging, mobile phones, Facebook and Twitter, email, and the music coming in through headphones that programmers swear helps them concentrate. The reality is that most programmers working on their own only spend a small fraction of their day actually programming: the interruptions are legion, and dropping in and out of a state of concentrated focus takes most of their day. There is a solution, however: pair program. Two programmers, one computer. No email, no Twitter, no phone calls (at least not unscheduled; you can take breaks at regular intervals to handle these things). If you do this, what you get is a full day of pure programming. And "getting in the zone" with someone else actually takes almost no time at all. It's a completely different way of working, and I maintain that it is far more efficient than working alone ever can be. And in fact, with the current level of device-driven distraction in the workplace, I'd suggest it is the only way that software teams can operate at peak efficiency.

3. Myth: Start-ups run hot, so we're just gonna have to burn everyone out.



Working crazy hours doesn't get you there faster. In fact, it slows you down. Sure, you can do it for a week. But most start-ups plan to be around for a little longer than that, and developers will going to have to keep programming for months, if not years, to build a successful product. Many start-ups operate as if the pot of gold is just around the corner; if we only work a little harder, we'll get there. Pretty soon developers burn out, and simply go through the motions of working long hours without any corresponding productivity. Working intensely, for shorter periods of time, is far more effective. Pivotal has helped hundreds of start-ups build systems, and has done it on a strict 40-hour week.

4. Myth: Looming deadlines necessitate shortcuts.



Many software teams use the excuse of a high-pressure market and the need to ship product right now as an excuse to do shoddy work. Writing tests goes by the wayside; careful design is forgotten in the rush of frenzied hacking. But software teams are no different than other teams we're all familiar with, and the way high-performing teams succeed is not to lose their cool: on the contrary, when the pressure's on, you stay frosty, and let your training carry you through. How many times have we heard stories of remarkable performance under unimaginable pressure – whether it be military, professional sports, or a pilot landing a plane on a river – and the explanation almost invariably involves the heroes saying, "We trained for this situation."

5. Myth: Developers should take ownership of their code.



Ownership sounds good. As American as apple pie. Personal responsibility, right? But "ownership" in a software team implies that only one developer writes – and understands – each module of code. This leads to defensiveness on the part of the developer. It also creates risk for the business owner, since the loss of one person could slow the team, or potentially cripple the business if they were responsible for a particularly crucial part of the system. A much healthier process allows any developer to work on any code in the system. Pair programming facilitates this, because knowledge is passed from person to person. The so-called "bus count" (how many people in your team have to get hit by a bus before you're all dead in the water) is a critical indicator of risk for the software start-up. And it's not really a bus we're talking about here – it's your competitors, who would love to hire your best developers. The more people who understand the whole system, the stronger and more resilient your organization.

6. Myth: You need a quirky hiring process.



Would you hire an actor without an audition? You wouldn't last long as a director if you did. But this is exactly what almost all companies who hire software developers do today. Usually the process involves talking through an applicant's experience with them. And that's all. Imagine asking an aspiring actor if they enjoyed their role as Hamlet. Did you play him well? Good. You're hired! Many famous software companies propose brainteasers for their applicants. Some top companies even give candidates an IQ test. The best of them run candidates through a simulated software problem on a whiteboard. This is a sorry state of affairs. I'm going to state (what should be) the obvious: the only way to hire good programmers reliably is to program with them. I run programmers though a one-hour, rapid-fire, pair programming interview – and that's just the start. Having done it over a thousand times, I can score developers relative to each other on a 100-point scale. What do I look for? Mental quickness, ability to think abstractly, algorithmic facility, problem-solving ability. And most importantly, empathy. Because collaboration is the most important thing we do, and it doesn't matter how smart you are if you can't relate to how other people think.

7. Myth: Specialization is essential.



Managers, quite naturally, want to attack problems by dividing and conquering. In software teams, this often manifests as an urge to force specialization. Front-end vs. back-end, database administrators, and so on. Brad Feld suggests in his blog that every team should have one "full-stack programmer", someone who's a true generalist. He's right, but he's not going far enough. Everyone, in every team, should know the full stack [Tim: read Carlos Bueno's piece here]. Why? Because specialization makes a team fragile. Remember that bus count? Every specialist is a liability; if they leave, and you can't replace them, you're sunk. Not only that, but it makes a team sluggish. Specialists need to make their disparate parts of the system communicate through defined interfaces. In effect, they end up writing informal contracts with each other about how to do it. This leads to a lot of overhead, and often defensiveness or finger-pointing. At Pivotal, every developer works on every level of the system, from HTML and JavaScript, to Ruby, and down to the database. And the argument that specialists will be better at a particular layer of the system if they're allowed to focus on it doesn't really hold water. The state of software technology today is simply not that difficult. Programmers are better off knowing all layers and how they interoperate. By the way, another important implication of all this: you don't need to hire for a particular technology. Ruby programmers in short supply? Fine, hire a Java programmer and train them in Ruby (pair programming works great for this). Someone defines themselves as a "server-side" programmer? No problem, make them do JavaScript, they'll pick it up.

If they're any good, that is.

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Read more about Pivotal Labs and find their collection of tech talks here. If you're in SF or Boston, try TaskRabbit while you're at it :)

Click here to browse this blog's other Entrepreneurship posts (covering everything from Twitter and FUBU to selling companies and angel investing).

The Finals: Scholarship for Opening the Kimono

(Photo: Markal)

Please find below the finalists for the scholarship spot to the $10,000 Opening The Kimono event (all semi-finalist videos here).

There are nine contenders, listed in no particular order. Please watch the videos and vote on your single favorite at the bottom of this post. Two important things to note — achtung!

1) Voting ends next Thursday, June 9, at 11pm PST.

2) Because there were so many outstanding videos, I'm offering a second "wild card" scholarship. That's right — another $10,000 spot, though you'll need to cover flights and hotel, just like the other scholarship. Here's how it works…

- You cannot have a video that qualified for the semi-finals or finals.

- The YouTube video with the most views wins the "wild card" scholarship. The link and view count must be posted in the comments below by the same deadline of next Thursday at 11pm PST. No exceptions, so don't wait until last minute.

- The video must have at least 2,500 views to be eligible. If no one reaches this number, no additional spot will be given away.

Enjoy the videos and best of luck to all!

Dustin Patrick

Gonzalo Paternoster

Charles Phillips

Rachman Blake

Maneesh Sethi

Benedict Westenra

Sheila McCarthy

Michael-Scott Earle

Clark Weigand

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Odds and Ends: More Book Notes on Amazon

If you're interested, I've uploaded my Kindle highlights from several new books, ranging from hedgefund investing to Katie Couric's new compendium of "the best advice I ever received" stories from notable public figures. Find them and all of my public notes here — be sure to follow me at the top left to see my new notes and highlights as I post them.

The Shortcut to the Shortcut: The 4 Key Principles of The 4-Hour Body

This short presentation, delivered in Berlin at the NEXT Conference, covers the four key principles of the #1 New York Times bestseller, The 4-Hour Body. It also includes an interview with the fantastic David Rowan, editor of Wired Magazine in the UK.

The Q&A covers smart drugs, Ambien, measurement of "thoughts" (prefrontal cortex activity), and more.

All speaker videos from NEXT can be found here, and include some gems, like the inimitable CTO of Amazon, Dr. Werner Vogels.

How to Use Philosophy as a Personal Operating System: From Seneca to Musashi

(Photo credit: Graphistolage)

The following interview is a slightly modified version of an interview that just appeared on BoingBoing.

It explores philosophical systems as personal operating systems (for better decision-making), the value of college and MBAs, and the bridge between business and military strategy, among other things.

Avi first reached out to discuss my practical obsession with the philosopher Lucius Seneca, so that's where we start…

From Seneca to Musashi…

Avi Solomon: How did you get to Seneca?



Tim Ferriss: I came to Seneca by looking at military strategies. A lot of military writing is based on Stoic philosophical principles. The three cited sources are — first — Marcus Aurelius and his book Meditations, which was effectively a war campaign journal. The second is Epictetus and his handbook Enchiridion, which I find difficult to read. The last is Seneca and, because Seneca was translated from Latin to English as opposed to from Greek to English, and also because he was a very accomplished writer and a playwright, I find ":

For more, grab the hardcopy or Kindle above, or you can find the entire public domain version of Letters from a Stoic here. It might just change your life.

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To see my highlighted notes (thus far) from the incredible book, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, just click here. To see *all* of my highlights on this and other books, which I'll make public soon, simply follow me on Amazon here. Hope you enjoy!

The Random Show, Episode 14/15 – Bourbon, Photography, iPhone Apps, and Start-ups

Random Episode 15 from Glenn McElhose on Vimeo.

In this long-overdue episode of Random, Kevin Rose and I discuss everything from start-ups and photography to naming products, iPhone apps, and survivalist training. Fueled by bourbon and pizza — cheat day, of course — we had a blast.

Hope you enjoy! The mentioned links, assorted goodies, and show notes are below.

Last but not least, The Random Show is now on iTunes! If you simply want audio-only, or if you'd like to watch the episodes on your iPhone or iPad, here you go:

VIDEO: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-random-show-podcast/id417595309

AUDIO: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-random-show-podcast-audio/id417635513

Orbit Room Cafe

Milk, Inc.

http://milkinc.com/

Daniel Burka

http://www.deltatangobravo.com/



Path

http://www.path.com/

Business Insider – 15 Greatest Tech Pivots



Bessemer's "anti-portfolio" (mistakenly referred to as Accel's anti-portfolio)

http://www.bvp.com/Portfolio/AntiPortfolio.aspx

Control 4 Home Automation

http://www.control4.com/

Olympus E-PL2 digital camera

Panasonic LUMIX G 20mm f/1.7 Aspherical Pancake Lens



Christopher Michel – Photography

http://www.christophermichel.com/

Matt Mullenweg

http://ma.tt/

Power: Why Some People Have It And Others Don't, by Jeffrey Pfeffer

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, by Walter Isaacson

Sedo

http://sedo.com

Domain names – hash tag for kevin on Twitter: #krdomain

IPA (phonetic alphabet) flash cards

http://ipaflashcards.com/

Evernote

http://www.evernote.com/

PDF pen – app

http://www.smilesoftware.com/PDFpen/

America: The Story Of US

http://www.history.com/shows/america-the-story-of-us

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All previous episodes of The Random Show can be found here.

Semi-Finals: Scholarship for Opening the Kimono

(Photo: Josh Liba)

NOTE: VOTING HAS ENDED — THANKS!

Once again, I have been BLOWN AWAY by you all.

Please find below the semi-finalists for the scholarship spot to the $10,000 Opening The Kimono event.

There are 26, listed in no particular order, as we could not narrow it down further. The case studies range from parents to students, from snowboarding to software, from Berlin to British Columbia. Here's the next step:

1) Each video is a combination of three video submissions. After watching each video, vote for your favorite of the three applicants. Voting ends this Thursday, May 12th, at 12 midnight PST.

2) Once tallied, this round of voting will decide the 8-10 finalists for the next round.

Much like the Cold Remedy video case studies, these videos remind me of how much I owe you all. This kind of feedback is the reason that I continue to write, despite how hard it is for me, and why I love this community so much.

Thank you.

I hope you love these as much as I did. If you need a little inspiration, these are exactly what the doctor ordered.

Enjoy!

NOTE: VOTING HAS ENDED — THANKS!

NOTE: VOTING HAS ENDED — THANKS!

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Odds and Ends: Tim in Germany

I'm leaving from SFO for Germany as I type this, where I'll be for 1-2 weeks, mostly in Berlin.

Anyone want to throw a big party? Know any club owners so we can blow it out? Other recommendations for fun in Berlin? Can't wait to rediscover it, as I haven't been since 2004.

Danke!

Five Minutes on Friday, Six Minutes on Saturday: Listen to Music, Save Japan; Email a Company, Save 200,000 Sharks

It doesn't take a lot of time, money, or sacrifice to do an incredible amount of good. Hence the name of this post (and potential series): Five Minutes on Friday. Even if it's not Friday, this post might interest you…

Can you — and can I — take just five minutes each Friday (or Saturday, Sunday, etc.) to fix big problems and feel awesome in the process? Sure. It need not suck or feel like work. In fact, it can be like getting a Christmas present. Or perhaps like slaying bad guys as The Punisher.

Pretty sweet on both sides. Here are two quick options for your five minutes this week…

Listen to Music, Save Japan

Make a $10 or greater donation to Music for Relief for earthquake and tsunami relief in Japan and receive a kick-ass exclusive compilation of music from incredible musicians. To get people to take action, the offer is only good for a few days. Listen to the music (listed below) and make a donation here: http://japan.downloadtodonate.org/

Current Tracklisting:

Hoobastank — Running Away (acoustic)

Shinedown – Shed Some Light (acoustic live)

Sara Bareilles — Song For A Soldier

Flyleaf — How He Loves (live)

Staind —Right Here (live)

The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus — 21 and Up

Angels & Airwaves — Hallucinations

Taking Back Sunday – Best Places To Be A Mom

Placebo – Bright Lights (live)

Black Cards – Dr. Jekkyl & Mr. Fame

B'z — Home

Surfer Blood – Take it Easy (Live)

Ben Folds – Sleazy

Slash featuring Myles Kennedy – Starlight (live)

Counting Crows – Colorblind (live)

R.E.M. – Man on the Moon (live from Tokyo)

Talib Kweli – GMB

Plain White T's — Rhythm Of Love (live)

Elliott Yamin — Self Control

Pendulum – Witchcraft

Patrick Stump – Saturday Night Again

Linkin Park — Ishho Ni

Pretty sweet, right? Click here to download the tracks.

Email/Call a Company, Save 200,000 Sharks

More than 100 million sharks are now slaughtered annually to fuel the shark fin soup trade. The soup is non-nutritive, expensive, and doesn't even taste particularly good (yes, I tried it in China in the 90′s). It is served mostly as a status symbol at Asian weddings, formal functions, and high-end restaurants.

How is this fine soup made?

Shark fins are cut-off the sharks in a process called "finning." The practice is wasteful, unsustainable and ecologically unsound. Here's how it works: sharks are caught on long-lines (miles of line floating in the oceans, affixed with hooks and bait), brought to the boat, and have their fins are hacked off. Next, since shark meat isn't worth as much as shark fins, the mutilated but normally live animals are thrown back in to the water to sink and die.

Sharks cannot reproduce fast enough to keep up with mass-production shark finning. In the Atlantic ocean alone, shark populations in many species have decreased more than 90% percent in the last 15 years alone. It's fucking disgusting.

I wanted to be a marine biologist for nearly 15 years, and if there is two things to remember about sharks, here they are:

- Most sharks don't attack humans and have no interest in us whatsoever. I've dived with hundreds of sharks without incident.

- If you destroy apex predators (predators at the top of the food chain), the rest of the food chain topples soon thereafter.

If the oceans go to hell, so do we. To stick it to the bad guys and help the good guys, here are two five-minute options:

1. Boycott and Publicly Shame Restaurants That Serve Shark Fin Soup

Below is a list of Canadian and US restaurants that still serve shark fin soup. Boycott them, write to them, and — corporations hate bad PR — publicly shame them for inhumanely slaughtering sharks, using blogs, tweets, Facebook, e-mail, or whatever you have:

United States List of restaurant perpetrators

Canada's list of restaurant perpetrators

2. Join Future Shark Adventures

The University of Miami offers year-round shark expeditions, including weekly tagging trips in the Florida Keys, Great White Shark expeditions in South Africa, and Diving and Tagging tiger shark adventures in the Bahamas. Click here for more information.

If you have other creative ideas on how to promote ocean conservation, please contact Dr. Neil Hammerschalg at nhammerschlag-at-rsmas.miami.edu. To learn more about shark protection, visit these sites:

http://www.wildaid.org

http://www.sharksavers.org

http://www.rjd.miami.edu

http://www.sharktrust.org

Yes, I really love sharks. Here, I tag my first shark off of Miami as part of Summit Series: a beautiful female tiger shark. Truly gorgeous.

Have a fantastic weekend, all. Take the five minutes if you can. It will make you feel incredible, and it will have an impact.

How to Bribe People to Start Companies (Plus: Kimono Event Scholarship)

Once upon a time, two entrepreneurs had an idea: what if we used traditional bookbinding to make iPad cases?

It was a fun idea.

Then it suddenly became very, very profitable. The two entrepreneurs, Patrick Buckley and Craig Dalton, named the idea DODOCase and soon had sold more than 10,000 iPad cases at $60 a pop.

Soon thereafter, they were featured in The New York Times and had a multi-million dollar business on their hands, to the tune to $4-5 million a year.

That could be you.

See, DODOcase was far from alone. They were part of a simple experiment, a business-building competition I launched jointly with an incredible start-up called Shopify.

The results were amazing:

Revenue PER HOUR for the duration of the contest: $696.38

Total number of orders placed: 66,503

Most important — Total businesses created: nearly 1,400

1,400 &^%$ing businesses, created by people just like you.

People who'd become comfortable in a routine. People who'd dreamt of starting their own company… someday. People who just needed a quick slap to get off the tranquilizers of their 9-to-5. But did I say "people just like you"? Scratch that — 1,400 businesses, many of them created by people far less capable than you.

The Shopify Build-a-Business competition is back, bigger and better than ever. There are more than $500,000 in prizes, including:

$100,000 Grand Prize

VIP trip for two to New York City, where Seth Godin will cook you dinner

One-hour power session with Gary Vaynerchuk

VIP trip to San Francisco, where you'll visit the Googleplex and have dinner (and wine, of course) with yours truly at one of my favorite restaurants in the world…

This time, it's also international!

The contest is open to residents of the U.S.A. (excluding residents of Arizona, Maryland, Vermont, and Puerto Rico), The U.K. (excluding N. Ireland), Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Regardless of location, EVERYONE can participate to take advantage of the educational portion. You don't need any experience starting or running an online store. Forget the "prizes." Those are just window dressing. The real prize is creating a profitable business that could be the next DODOcase, the next 4-Hour Workweek, or far beyond both.

GigaOM noted today:

"The competition isn't simply about the money. Shopify is teaming with marketing guru Seth Godin, wine video blogger and author Gary Vaynerchuk and angel investor Tim Ferriss, along with sponsors Google, MailChimp and PayPal to offer advice and counseling to start-ups. That along with AdWords credits help bring the total payout to $500,000."

To reiterate the dilemma and solution, as I wrote last time:

"This competition is intended as a benevolent and encouraging kick in the ass. This stuff isn't rocket science, but it does require stepping outside your comfort zone for a bit to realize: this isn't that hard. It's just unfamiliar. If you do it now, a lot of people will be in the same boat and you'll take the trip together."

Ready to join the ranks, shed a little blood with your brethren (mere papercuts, guys), and fundamentally change your life forever? If not now, when?

Go here. Get excited. Pull the trigger.

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Related:

Looking for ideas? Browse some of the case studies in the "Engineering the Muse" posts, or successful examples on Shopify.

Learn lessons from past winners and runners-up

Odds and Ends: ONE Scholarship for $10,000 Event

As promised, I've thought a lot about financial aid requests for the $10,000 "Opening the Kimono" event in August.

I take your feedback seriously, but I also take the attendee selection seriously. I'll therefore be offering one "scholarship" (covering attendance fee) to a qualified doer. To separate the talkers from the doers, and to reward loyal readers, here's how a single winner will be chosen:

1) Upload a video to YouTube, no longer than 3 minutes, titled "4HB success story" or "4HWW success story," followed by your full name.

2) In the video, describe the results you've created from implementing something from 4HB and/or 4HWW.

3) Then, leave a comment on this blog post with "SUBMISSION" at the top of your comment and a link to your video.

4) My elves and I will choose 5-10 finalists.

5) Those top 5-10 will be voted on by the blog community to determine the winner.

Your video must be submitted no later than this Sunday, May 1, at midnight PST. Earlier submissions get priority in the case of any ties.

I will ask the winner for their last year's tax return and bank statements. If you can clearly afford it, the scholarship will go to the #2-ranked finalist. If #2 can clearly afford it, it goes to #3, and so on.

We look forward to seeing your videos, and to seeing one of you in Napa wine country in August!

The Non-Overnight Success: How Twitter Became Twitter

What did Twitter look like before it was Twitter? Let us begin the story with an image…

Jack Dorsey's first sketch for what would become Twitter (Photo: Jack Dorsey and d0tc0m)

This photo was first shown to me by Peter Sims, a former venture capitalist and now friend.

Pete and I share a number of common interests: wine, K-os, long dinners, and above all… little bets.

It's a favorite topic of conversation.

Perhaps a year ago, after a quick tour of the Stanford Institute of Design (d.school), Pete and I sat talking about start-ups in Tresidder dining hall. He was working on a new book about innovation, which he wanted to bridge different worlds, to explain the shared traits of the game changers.

The question he posed was simple: if you look at the biggest successes in the world, whether Apple CEO Steve Jobs, comedian Chris Rock, or award-winning architect Frank Gehry, what do they have in common?

Answer: the bigger they are, the more small bets they make.

Becoming the best of the best is less about betting the farm (a common misconception) and more about constant tinkering. Within Pixar or within Amazon, there is a method to the madness, but it's not haphazard risk-taking.

In the following guest post, Peter will look at the unlikely evolution of a little tool. It's a little tool now used to overthrow governments, and a tool that's become a company some value at more than $10 billion: Twitter.

How the hell did it happen?…

Enter Peter Sims

We're taught from a young age to avoid errors and failure at all costs, yet as any successful creator or entrepreneur will attest, breakthroughs don't happen without them.

So we have to be willing (and able) to think differently. Instead of trying to develop elaborate plans or perfect ideas, we need to make small, affordable bets in order to learn quickly, build momentum and networks, and expand our abilities and resources in order to discover unique ideas and opportunities.

Consider how Twitter came about. It didn't happen overnight. Jack Dorsey had been, in his words, "obsessed" by how people moved, interacted, and communicated since the early 1990s. So, he learned basic computer programming, created maps with dots on them, and used information from Manhattan dispatch systems to track the movement of bike messengers, taxis, police, firefighters, and couriers. It was a start.

Dorsey then transferred to New York University and got a job as a programmer with the largest dispatch company in the world. He learned a lot in the role and eventually focused on the short format messages that people sent to large dispatch boards. "This became the basis for all of my work going forward," he recalled.

After moving to the San Francisco in 2000, Dorsey continued to tinker with short messaging ideas. He started a company that dispatched emergency and taxi services from the web, but soon realized how little he knew about start-ups. Coming at the end of the dotcom era, the timing was bad, too. "The company scuttled and was more or less a failure," he acknowledged.

Yet he would learn from it.

Dorsey continued to use instant messaging and LiveJournal (the early blogging platform) to post updates on what he was doing – simple things like, "I'm on the phone" or "I'm listening to the Black Eyed Peas." Once again, these were small, achievable steps toward Jack's larger interests.

Then one night, Dorsey couldn't sleep and sketched out an idea on a white board. The idea was to exchange short "status update" emails with friends using his RIM 850, a predecessor to the BlackBerry. The device had four lines of text good for short format messaging, but unfortunately his friends didn't have RIM 850s.

So that experiment didn't go anywhere either, but Dorsey got little bit smarter, a little bit better, and a little bit closer to a big idea.

Around that time, Dorsey sketched out what would become the basis for Twitter several years later. On top it reads "STATUS," followed by a short fill-in the blank where he wrote "Reading." But lacking resources, Dorsey had to get a real job while continuing to tinker on the side.

Dorsey was eventually hired as an engineer at Odeo, a podcasting company where people weren't in love with podcasting. The company was, in fact, going nowhere, so founder Evan Williams asked employees for new ideas.

One night in 2006, Dorsey's colleague sent him the first text message he ever received. "I had no idea what this thing was," he remembered. But as Dorsey and his colleagues talked more about text messaging, he realized the short message format could be the missing link.

Williams gave him two weeks and another programmer to develop the idea. After the prototype was a resounding success internally at Odeo, Williams upped the ante for a six-month project then launched a full-scale version publically in July 2006. Twitter would consume more and more resources until Williams spun it off as a separate company in 2007.

Of course, luck was an important factor, but Dorsey's approach was brilliant. He focused like a laser on short messaging and made hundreds (if not thousands) of small, affordable bets in that area, most of which failed. But with each step he got slightly smarter, better, and closer until he ultimately achieved a remarkable feat.

It's an approach that the best entrepreneurs and creators have learned to do well, but anyone can do it. Jack began when he was a programmer.

It begins with a little bet. What will yours be?

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More on Peter Sims: The above guest post is by bestselling author and former venture capital investor Peter Sims. His new book is Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries. For a free excerpt, click here.