01. Learning how to Learn
Estimated Time
- Reading: ~7 minutes
- Videos: ~23 minutes
- To Do: ~TK minutes
To Do
- Identify the top skill you need to improve on, sign up for & start a class
- Take time to explore the tools and identify 3 - 5 that you plan to use
- Start a SOD - EOD process to build learning consistency
Episode Date: August 17, 2017
Jason Calacanis
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Top Insights
- "The number one skill in the 21st century is the ability to acquire skills"
- Too many founders want a shortcut, there is no shortcut - do the work!
Be great at an important skill
- As a founder, you do not need to be an expert at everything
- You do need to have or develop valuable skills to move the company forward though
- Jason points out — "There is no excuse for not having skills today"
- There are so many free (or inexpensive) options to learn the necessary skills
- Identify the skills you have, and those that you need to improve on
- Then learn those additional skills!
- The top skills Jason identified in a blog post, Advice to Founders Starting their Career, in 2015 that are still relevant today:
- Sales
- Coding
- Product
- Growth
- Design
- Corporate Storytelling
- As a founder it is vital that you are adding skills to your tool belt, specifically in these areas
- This may be pretty straightforward, but:
- If you can not build a product - customers will have nothing to buy
- If you build a product but can not sell it - you will not make money
- In either case, you were unsuccessful in starting a company
- To be a successful founder you need to be able to develop a product and sell it
- Jason reiterates that a successful founder needs to:
- Gain every skill you can
- Build a great product
- Build a great team
- Delight customers
- Be relentless and do the work
So when should you hire someone else to do 'the work'?
- You do not want to have to rely on too many variables (like outsourced work) early on or you lose control before you even start
- As a founder, you must get your vision off the ground
- If you need help, find a co-founder who complements your skillset
- When it is time to hire someone, the project they will complete must generate money - for example:
- Development of the product
- Marketing or selling the product
- Before you hire someone you need to know how much the project costs for you (or your co-founder) to do it - at least back of envelope estimates
- Do this with a simple formula:
- To find the hourly cost take salary*1.3 / 2000 (hours)
- Why 2000? 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year
- Why 1.3? It takes into consideration the "all in" cost of the employee
- Now find the cost of the project = hourly cost * estimated hours for the project
- Let's take a small project for example:
- If are making $100k, and anticipate the project to take 50 hours
- hourly cost = (100,000 * 1.3) / 2000 = $65/hour
- cost of the project = 65 * 50 = $3,250
- Note: You can also reverse engineer this
- For example if hiring a marketing firm is going to cost $10,000...
- You can work backwards to find how many hours it would take you to accomplish the goal at your hourly cost and determine if that is a good use of your limited funds
- After you work through the quick formula - ask yourself a few questions
- Can you hire someone for significantly cheaper without loss of production quality?
- What could you be spending 50 hours on if someone else is delivering the project?
- How much revenue do you expect the hire to bring in, and when does it offset the cost?
- Is it still worth making the hire?
How to Gain Skills
Do the Work
- You can learn anything online today
- Below are several great places to start learning
- Identify one of Jason's core skills above where you believe you can improve and find a course to take that will add a new skill to your founder tool belt:
- Codecademy: Learn to code interactively
- Coursera: Free online classes from top universities and organizations
- FreeCodeCamp: Learn to code for free with projects
- Khan Academy: World-class education for anyone, anywhere
- Lynda.com now LinkedIn Learning: Focus on skills for job opportunities
- Skillshare: Unlock your creativity with online classes and projects
- Treehouse: Learn to code, design, and more
- Udacity: Gain expertise for the careers of the future
- These are just a few places to start learning new skills
Tools
- One of the biggest keys to building a startup and getting a MVP launched is identifying which tools will help you accomplish your goals
- We have curated a list of some of our favorite tools to get you started
- There are thousands of tools available - find the ones that work best for you!
- Several of these tools have free versions, free trials, and tutorials available on their websites
Design
- Blush: Illustrations and design for your product/website
- Portfolio company
- Canva: Graphic design in minutes
- Coolors: Super fast color schemes generator for designers
- Figma: Design and prototyping tool for digital projects
- Flat Icon: A search engine for thousands of glyph vector icons
- Glyphsearch: Search for icons from other icon databases
- InVision: Wireframes and prototyping
- Pixlr: A robust browser photo editor
- Unsplash: Free high-resolution photos
Development
- BitBucket: Plan projects, collaborate on code, test, and deploy
- For more advanced coding
- Bubble: No code solution - build a MVP functional product
- We will use Bubble to build the MVP in this course
- Circle: Community platform for creators
- Founder.University runs on Circle
- GitHub: Build software better, together
- For more advanced coding
- Hive: Project management platform
- Visual Studio: Comprehensive collection of developer tools
- For more advanced coding
- Zapier: Connect your apps and automate workflows
Discoverability
- AngelList: Where the world meets startups
- Beta List: Discover and get early access to tomorrow’s startups
- Gumroad: Makes it easy for creators to get paid for their work
- Product Hunt: Curation of the best new products, every day
Marketing
- Bitly: Create, share, and track shortened links
- Grammarly: Find and correct mistakes in your writing
- Hemingway: Makes your writing bold and clear
- LeadIQ: Email sourcing
- Portfolio company
- Mailchimp: Manage email, social, landing pages
- Medium: Write, read, and connect
- Squarespace: Easily create a landing page
- Typeform: Free beautiful online survey and form builder
- ZenPen: The minimal writing tool of web
Organization
- Airtable: Brings spreadsheets and databases together in a single program
- Dropbox: Free, secure storage space - up to 2GB
- Evernote: Note-taking and task management
- Notion: One tool to write, plan, and get organized
- Slack: Alternative to email - instant message communication
- Trello: Keeps track of everything
Additional Tools
- Delighted: Gather actionable customer and product feedback
- Mercury: Banking built for startups
- Stripe Atlas: Powerful, safe, and easy-to-use platform for forming a company
- Wave: Manage business finances
- Loom: Video messaging for work
Podcasts
Shift the Algorithm - Learn on Social Media
- Use social media to follow, learn from, and interact with other founders, investors, and thought leaders in your space
- The resources shared on Twitter can be extremely valuable
- Not to mention the ability to connect and network!
- Be consistently active and provide value
Examples of Twitter Resources
- Again there are thousands of great resources on social media - below are a few examples of the type of content you can find on Twitter:
- Lolita Taub "Asking for a Founder" threads are some of the best insights for startups online
- Lolita will ask a question and tens to hundreds of experts will respond offering suggestions and advice
- Click the link above and explore what Lolita provides!
- A couple more examples (in case you aren't convinced):
- "A list of startup and VC resources (My connections shared this list on LinkedIn) A thread"
- These are a few of the resources provided in the thread:
- And a few more threads...
- "I gathered tools your startup needs. Here's what they are:"
- "I curated more of the best free tools for your startup. Here's what they are:"
- Threads by startup founders and VCs with advice on raising a seed round
- Note: You should always vet social media resources
- They can be great but you can't always be sure where they came from - so tread lightly and use your judgement
- Please share other resources you find valuable in the comments for this lesson
Who should you follow?
- There are all kinds of articles like the 17 Twitter Accounts to Follow for Entrepreneurs if you aren't sure who to follow
- Another strategy is to find people like Jason and see who they follow or interact with on social media and follow them
Learn how to Search
- We use Google every day, but when learning online you may be looking for unique answers - use the full capabilities of the search engine to improve results
- This article includes 20 Google Search Tips to Use Google More Efficiently - a few are highlighted in the graphic below
Tips
- When building your MVP if you get an error code and aren't sure what it means - copy it exactly into Google
- There are almost always threads on solutions
- Identify which Google results are labeled "Ad"
- Often the best results are listed after the paid results
Be consistent in your learning
- Another key to being successful and adding skills is to be consistent in your learning
- Set aside a specific time every day to develop your skills and work on your product
- Don't break the chain! [The Seinfeld Strategy]
- The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande discusses how implementing something as simple as a checklist can improve your effectiveness
- Jason wrote about how he uses checklists with his team in the End of Day (EOD) report
- This process is great for teams shifting to a written culture but can provide a lot of insight and focus to a single founder as well
- Set a goal of 3 - 5 things you want to accomplish each day
- As you progress through the day check off how you are doing
- At the end of the day write a quick sentence or two of what you got done, where you fell short of your goals, and why
- Identify what blockers you have moving forward - and how you'll work through them (if available)
- Then set the list for tomorrow so you can jump right into the work
- I challenge you to try the SOD - EOD every day for one week and see how it works for you
- If you love it - continue to use it to track progress and organize your learning
- If it isn't for you - no need to continue after the week
- If you want to learn more about how Jason uses the SOD - EOD check out E1236 of This Week in Startups:
- Episode Date: June 24, 2021
Skill Swap
- Leverage your community and network to see if you can exchange your skills and time for some of theirs
- Everyone in this cohort comes with different experiences and skills and is a great place to start
- There are people with backgrounds in development, marketing, sales, growth, content creation, enterprises, startups, etc.
- When money is tight it is worth asking if anyone is interested in swapping skills
- If you are open to swapping skills with other founders - let people know by posting in the chat
- For example, "Hi everyone, I have an extensive background in marketing. I am interested in learning more about what it takes to develop a database.
- Is there anyone with a programming background that would be interested in finding some time to exchange ideas? Here is a link to my calendar."
- This exchange could just as easily take place on Twitter or other platforms for a greater reach
Growth Mindset
- Shifting from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset can be a challenge, but a necessity for founders
- To develop your skills that aren't as natural requires this shift
- This mindset shift is essentially moving from
- Fixed: "I've never been good at math, no one in my family is, therefore I can't do Algebra" to
- Growth: "If I study, ask questions, do the work, and practice every day I can improve my Algebra skills"
- As a founder, you will live outside your comfort zone constantly
- To be successful you need to be evolving in your skillset daily
- The top founders in the world are always learning - take after their lead!
- Remember the top skill of the 21st century:
"The number one skill in the 21st century is the ability to acquire skills" - Jason
- And one more resource for this section: how to learn stuff quickly
To Do
- Identify the top skill you need to improve on, sign up for & start a class
- Take time to explore the tools and identify 3 - 5 that you plan to use
- Start an SOD - EOD process to build learning consistency
- Skill Swap