3 essential points for entrepreneurs

After consistent efforts to avoid it, yesterday I finally saw the Social Network movie. Don't ask me why I've resisted it for such a long time, I guess I was afraid to find out bad things about Mark Zuckerberg, whose work I highly respect, and I had to prepare myself for it. The recent news about the Winklevoss brothers court adventures convinced me to see the movie.

Anyway, let's discuss 3 essential points that you can find between the lines of the movie. Spoiler – I still have a lot of respect to Mr. Zuckerberg's work.

1. Personal involvement

The anomaly in the story is that the Winklevoss brothers got the money. There is a common believe in the entrepreneurship world that at the same moment you're working on something new, there are, at least, 3 other crews in the world that work on exactly the same thing. There are almost no exclusive ideas, there are only new ways to transform the idea to the real thing.
Let's get it straight, I'm not claiming that stealing ideas is OK, because it is not. I'm saying that the way from the general idea to the specific implementation is so long, that often it is hard to find too many elements of the original idea in the final product.

If you are giving to someone else to implement your ideas, while you're busy doing other things, don't expect to get something back. Even if you have enough money to invest in a startup company, you must be actively involved. Unless you have expensive dad's lawyers that will achieve 65M dollars for you.

Personal involvement is crucial for taking a part in a success of startup company.

2. Dedication

In the first stage of a startup company, you must dedicate yourself to it. It sounds simple, you're dedicating yourself to many things in your life – job, family, hobby… Here is the difference – you must dedicate yourself only to the company. 24/7, at least! You wake up thinking about it, you're going to sleep with it. You drink it, you eat it, you breathe it. Still, be prepared to find out that it isn't enough. Successful entrepreneurs sacrifice a lot. You must create a supporting environment in your private life, otherwise you may find yourself successful, but alone.

There are no accidental millionaires and billionaires, there are only people that were willing to sacrifice their lives to the implementation of the idea.

3. Think Platform

Obviously, facebook is not a social network application. It's not even a social network service. It is a social network platform. You can think about it also asa  social network operating system with a bonus – well over 500M active users.

I'm sure you've heard the expression "Think Big" many times, but it doesn't reveal the essence. "Thinking platform" will allow you to quickly respond to the user's needs that arise from the use of your product. At the beginning, ideas are a set of cool features that answers the need you've recognized. Try to understand what is common to those features and try to figure out how to implement the building blocks that implicate the features. At the end of the day, each feature is only one case of the use of the platform.

Here is an example. My facebook friends are located around the world. When I want to chat with one of them, I never know what his local time is. Certainly, 2AM isn't the best time to talk about business, while 2PM isn't appropriate time to talk about the movie I saw yesterday. So, I have a brilliant idea to show the friend's time in the chat window (I know, Skype already does it and it is, indeed, a great feature). "Think platform" means to implement the time feature in such a way that adding in the future the local weather won't require writing a code, than only configuring the system. It can be achieved by implementation of a system where time, weather, exchange rates etc. are only cases of the general ability to bring local information from one place to another. Such approach may take a little bit more time in a short-term, but it saves a lot in a mid- and long-term.

"Think Big" is "Think Platform". Prepare yourself for future requests, so when they come, you can respond quickly.

Summary 

We have discussed here 3 essential points required a success. There are more factors for startup success – focusing on one idea, facing problems in the real time without compromise and even luck, but without the active involvement, the dedication and thinking platform, the odds for success are extremely low.