Click on the image for a larger version of sketchnotes. This talk is part of the free MaRS Entrepreneurship 101 series (webcast and in-person session every Wednesday!)

Feel free to share this! You can credit it as (c) 2012 Sacha Chua under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada licence.

Missed the first session? Check out my sketchnotes for Finding and Validating Your Idea (Keri Damen).

Liked these notes? They’re fun to do and I’m happy to share them. I learn, other people learn, everyone’s happy! If you want, you can set up some time for tea/hot chocolate/Skype/Google Hangout (or e-mail me your thoughts), tell me what you’re interested in, and help me in my quest to learn how to get really good at connecting the dots. =)

Looking forward to sharing more notes next week!

Text for searching

MARS ENTREPRENEURSHIP 101: LIVED IT LECTURE
BRUCE POON TIP. G ADVENTURES
1990 Backpacking myself…
Envision the world before
Google
Email
Fax
People had to go to travel agents
I realized…
Canadians only have ~2 weeks holiday.
Looking for adventure companies in German phone books..
How do you turn tourism into something exportable?
GAP
Cruise
backpack
all these people trapped in mainstream holidays…
opportunity !
Now –> I’m surprised by the number of people who say
I want to go to Antarctica this Thursday…
$100 spent
Only $5 actually stays in a developing country’s economy.
–> UNEP 2008
Ex: public beahces in Jamaica
Flashback
I just got my fax machine..
… and then I realized they needed to have a fax machine too!
Business Model
Happiness
Building a buisness model around this.

1993
Europeans have way more holidays..
The Australians work between holidays..
Export the business! Now.
need a brand
(sustainable)
HAPPINESS
(at work)
– perceived progress
– freedom
– being part of something
– larger than yourself
– perceived control –> make it easy for people to leave
– connectedness
Netflix – 14 pages of core values!
More advice from Q&A: boutique, niche
Building iconic brands
Movements ex: Dove – cheap –> premium
Social
Enterprise
a whole new style of business
Oct 3, 2012
Example: Peru
Weaving
youth going into tourism industry
time
Women’s weaving co-op
– help people
– differentiated our trips
Solving a business problem with sustainale salutions
Strategy 1: Big company: Corruption
Strategy 2: Some good, some bad
Strategy 3: Focusing on training consistency
My leadership challenge:
1500 people, most of whom I’ll never meet, want them to be happy and deliver
Traveller
Taking what we are as a business and turning it into a movement.
Transcending your product
Engaging your customers –> why, stories
Challenging customers
What will you do today for tomorrow?
Engage customers for a higher purpose–> beyond travel
Doesn’t have to cost you anything
Partnership, projects
Q: How do you do everything?
A: Great people
Q: Pivot?
A: The world is changing so much ~every 5 years
Q: Biggest mistakes?
A: Trying too hard to find diamonds in the rough while bootstrapping
sometimes not best for business

Click on the image for a larger version of sketchnotes from today’s talk on Finding and Validating Your Idea. This talk is part of the free MaRS Entrepreneurship 101 series. Feel free to share this! You can credit it as (c) 2012 Sacha Chua under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada licence.

UPDATE: Here’s the video.

Like this? Interested in business? You’ll probably also like my sketchnotes of The $100 Startup. Check out these other sketchnotes, or search them in my public Evernote notebook. Enjoy!

Chris Guillebeau’s new book The $100 Startup was released just yesterday. Here are my notes! Click on the image to view a larger version.

The book is packed with clear, practical advice and backed by concrete, diverse stories from successful microbusinesses around the world. It’s not a very deep book (don’t look here for step-by-step instructions, thorough analyses of case studies, or hand-holding through the business startup process), but it’s an enjoyable read. I’ll probably find myself referring to it a lot for inspiration and ideas. If you like this book, you’ll probably also like The Lean Startup (see my notes). Enjoy!

Check out more sketchnotes or read about my ongoing experiments in business. I’d love to hear from you!

Here’s the text from the image to make it easier to search for: THE $100 STARTUP Chris Guillebeau What you love to do What people will pay for passion + skill + usefulness = success benefits features Ex: happiness widgets Expand your opportunities by reusing your skills in different ares. Most people want simplicity. Don’t give them unneeded details. Some businesses are easier to start. consulting information products You don’t have to be an expert yet! Action Planning Don’t wait for perfection. Start and learn along the way. Invest time into growing your business. Learn how to offer, hustle, launch… “Franchise yourself” -partner -outsource -spin off a different biz scale up You don’t have to build a huge business. Make one that’s the right size for you. Where to find opportunities -marketplace inefficiency -new tech or opportunity -changing space -spin-off or side projects Decision-making matrix Impact Effort Profit Vision Idea Idea Market before manufacturing Test your idea Failsafe: offer refunds FAQ: objection-squasher 25 cents Make your first sale ASAP. Great confidence builder. Other useful parts: 1-page business plan 39-step launch checklist 1-page promotion plan + web resources Like this? Check out my other notes @ LivingAnAwesomeLife.com! – Sacha Chua Twitter: @sachac

This week, I’m taking Monday afternoon off, and all day Friday. The client wins because we can spread the hours over more time, and I win because I can invest in building more capabilities. In the future, I may limit myself to working at most 32 hours a week on any particular engagement, and maybe even dropping down to 24 hours a week if the rhythm works out well.

It’s easy to fall into the more familiar patterns of a 40-hour work-week – maybe even up to 44 hours if I invest the extra four hours in the client relationship by working for free. But it’s also valuable to spend time thinking about business, and it’s good to keep myself honest about what fits into the time that I have for work.

I think I’m going to love having the ability to manage my time like this. I schedule my breaks around the clients’ needs, of course, but my time isn’t constrained by vacation policies. As I get better at managing the schedule and as I build more flexible streams of income, I’ll have even more control of and responsibility for my time.

These chunks of time are challenging because they’re self-directed. No one tells me what to do or what to focus on. It’s easy to spend time reacting to people’s requests, but the real value comes from choosing what’s important to work on and making it happen.

What are some of the things I could work on?

• I can learn new skills or improve the ones I have. I’m particularly interested in drawing, writing, and designing.
• I can work on building QuantifiedAwesome’s possibilities by reaching out to people, offering help, and improving the system.
• I can read books, share my notes, and draw more visual summaries.
• I can follow up on leads or flesh ideas out into opportunities.
• I can meet people and help others out.
• I can brainstorm and plan.

There’s a lot I can do, and it’s well worth making the time to do so.

A friend of mine asked me if I’d considered creating a tech startup or advising one. The subject came up again when I was talking to another entrepreneur. With more and more tech startups hitting the news, it seems like the idea’s on everyone’s minds.

After reflecting on it during a few bike rides to and from work, I have a clearer understanding of what I want from these business experiments. A tech startup isn’t for me, at least not for the next few years.

I think of it as minimizing risk by learning only small chunks at the time. Working as an employee was like learning how to ride a tricycle. The company gave me a stable platform so that I could build skills, confidence, experience, and capital. I experimented with intrapreneurship and found that it worked well for me.

When I had reached my savings goals and picked a good time to leave, I started my own business. Two months in, I’m discovering that the path I took is just like graduating from a tricycle to a bicycle with training wheels. By taking advantage of well-established business models, markets, and concepts, I can focus on learning how to run my own business without simultaneously trying to create something new and tremendously risky.

Going from the employee world to the startup world would have been much more of a stretch. I think of startups like riding on a mountain bike down a rocky hill where you’re not quite certain the trail will get you all the way down or whether that promising fork up ahead actually ends up going over a cliff. Actually, it’s like riding a in a pack of mountain bikes where other people might make it easier to spot cool opportunities (ooh! look! waterfall over there!) but they could also crash into you and send you all tumbling down the hill. Too many things to learn at the same time, I think.

Startups might be something I eventually grow into. I want to be more confident in my ability to handle paperwork, manage cashflow, hire and manage other people (or coordinate with contractors, or delegate in some other way), and negotiate with clients and suppliers before I take on trickier challenges. For example, it’s easier to practise negotiating with clients than with partners. You can fire a client, but there are much bigger consequences if you have problems with your business partners. By learning all these business skills with the training wheels of well-tested business, I can get ready for riskier projects and ventures.

Sure, it would’ve been pretty cool to hang out at all these meetups and tell people about my new venture (making sure to use phrases like “minimum viable product” and “pivot”), but it’s okay to learn about business in this somewhat less glamorous but more step-by-step way.

Besides, most tech startups brag about their horrible work-life balance lifestyles. I think that’s partly the self-fulfilling image we have of what it’s like to be in a startup, and partly because people have to scramble so much to learn all these different things at the same time. I don’t mind growing a little more slowly if it means still being happily married. =)

So that’s why even if I’ve got web development skills, contacts, and business/design interests, I’m not working on a tech startup. Small steps first, and that’s all right.

Here are my notes (click on the image for a larger version):

I’ll tell stories along the way. =) Looking forward to it! (I may even remember to record it if I don’t get too flustered…)

(Click on the image for a larger version)

William Mougayar shared lessons learned from serial entrepreneurship at the Third Tuesday Toronto meetup. He also demoed his recently funded startup, engag.io, which promises to be a social inbox for comments and conversations across different websites.

My thoughts after the talk:

• Blog comments and online interactions are great ways to build trust relationships. (Hear that? Comment more! )
• It would be nifty to have a social inbox, particularly one that’s also a relationship management tool
• $500k seed funding can get people pretty darn far
• It’s fun getting speakers to autograph the sketchnotes =)

Were you there or have you attended other talks by William Mougayar? Have you used Engagio? (Seems to be down at the moment, pity.)

One nifty thing about Third Tuesday Toronto is that they fly speakers in and they coordinate with meetups in other cities to get the maximum coverage. Join the meetup to find out about upcoming events.

Related links:

• William Mougayar
• Engagio
• Third Tuesday Toronto

If you like this, you might also like my other sketches. I like turning presentations and books into quick, easy-to-review images. Enjoy!

Here’s the text from the image to improve people’s ability to search for it:

William Mougayar @ Third Tuesday Toronto
@wmougayar @engagio
See also Paul Graham’s chart

Stages of a startup
Clear vision or Blurry vision (more realistic)

When Christopher Columbus set sail, he didn’t Google America.

Social Capital
Got to know people through blogs
I’ve made 3,000 comments on Fred Wilson’s blog
Got asked to moderate Fred Wilson’s blog
8 weeks to a minimum viable product
Demo of engagio
-inbox
-My contacts
-Person’s profile (one place to follow)
-Sites
Neat, would like to try this out
5 Lessons
1. Be wary of selling enterprise software
Very difficult to sell to a large company when you’re a startup
2. Have an original (but simple) idea
3. Don’t believe your own
4. Relationships don’t matter. Trusted relationships matter
5. Don’t quit trying

Fragmentation of the social web
Commenting is important = Potential relationships
Value in the conversations
Bet a beat story about startups & alcohol from blog conversation

Replying
Sharing/Linking/Liking
Monitoring/Listening
Signal
Noise
Online advocacy is on the rise

Q&A
Platform? Rails, MySQL, Solr, Twitter Bootstrap
Multiple users? Next week
Yelp? Maybe if API
Equentia? Some ideas for discovery. Get to 100K users first.
How did you get away with looking like Gmail? Haven’t gotten a call from Google yet.
Business? Focusing on end-users.
Funding priorities for spending?
Engineering & marketing
product development users
Building more social features into the product
Summarizing comments?
Maybe talk offline after.
Pivot reactions?
Excited. Still had other clients, but could move on.
Personal profile?
Automatically populated, can be edited.
Profile resolution?
Merging profiles with authentication
Mobile app? HTML5
Track other sites? In road map, may have to create plugin.
Business model? Get to look users first also, business intelligence/analytics.

Notes: SachaChua.com
Twitter: @sachac
March 27, 2012