Rohail Rizvi- Entrepreneur in the Making

When someone starts up a new business, it’s important to think about what it is their business really is. What service are they truly providing people? It may surprise owners that what they thought their business is isn’t really what their customers think it is.

Say for example you own a gas station and are in the business of providing people gasoline for their cars. But is that really what gas stations are all about?

If you ask me you’re in the fill people’s gas-provide directions-act as a rest stop-provide entertainment business. That sounds a lot different than just filling up people’s cars doesn’t it?

Think about it. When people go to a gas station they aren’t just looking to fill their gas. They are often looking for directions. So why not provide a GPS kiosk so travelers can easily have access to accurate directions whenever they get lost. People often stop at gas stations when they need to use the restroom. So why not advertise that? Advertise yourself as having the world’s cleanest fanciest gas station bathroom ever. People will remember your brand whenever they need to make a pit stop on the road. Thirdly, people stop at gas stations in states they are unfamiliar with and so your employees act as a lot of people’s first impressions of people from that state. Why not train your employees to be the friendly guy from Missouri at the Hess station as opposed to just another cranky gas filler upper at some random gas station.

So remember the next time you ask yourself about what business you’re in…ask yourself -Is it in the same business your customers see you in?

Okay, so I admit it, the last few months I’ve veered off and haven’t focused as much on business as I’d like. However, in that time I’ve realized that I’ve learned a lot.

First off, you guys probably know by now about Facebook’s decision to launch a marketplace for students. Their service directly competes with what Walamu was trying to do. And considering we’re dealing with the behemoth Facebook here, I’m not sure as to where the future lies for Walamu. It was definitely a good learning experience and I certainly don’t regret it. Granted it was an expensive learning experience, I still came out better than before and that’s what counts. Here’s a run down of things I learned for my next start up:

• Running a startup solo is boring and does not have the motivational power of a partnership. Having a partner around can make the start up a lot more important because you’re automatically more responsible to the expectations of someone else, have someone else to motivate you, have someone to discuss business decisions with, and ultimately more fun.

• Just because I’m a college student, doesn’t mean I have to focus on the college market. There are a ton of opportunities out there that don’t have the threat of Facebook taking over at any minute. This requires thinking outside of the box and looking beyond your immediate environment. When you’re in college that seems like your entire world. However, there are an insane number of communities and possibilities to explore.

• Don’t doubt yourself. I didn’t really reach out to any mainstream publications about Walamu. I kept my advertising limited and pretty local. Their were people who loved Walamu, but emailed me about not seeing much publicity about it. I guess that’s because most of my marketing happened online because I was too lazy to go flyering every day. However, I’ve certainly learned that it’s not impossible to get into publications like widely-read newspapers and that I shouldn’t limit my publicity because I have doubt in terms of it’s relevance to those publications.

• I’ve always liked to think of myself as a bootstrapping entrepreneur. However, most of the problems I ran into were because of a lack of funding. I never seemed to have enough money to get me to the next step. I now believe that if you have a business model you strongly believe in and that you can prove it’s value that there is no reason not to seek outside capital. It can only help you see your dreams become a reality. Why not do so?

That’s all I can think of for now. All in all, it has been a pretty crazy ride and people now refer to me as “Walamu” in order to get my attention. I’ll think of a way monetize the site somehow and keep it growing for the users. Believe it or not people are still posting on it even after Facebook’s launch of their marketplace. It feels like a failure and I sort of feel disappointed in myself, but I know I shouldn’t. Failure is a part of the game and I hope I continue to fail until I get it right.

It is 3:20am as I write this. I aplogize in advance because this isn’t going to be one of my most eloquent posts by far. However, I think it’s better that I write something than nothing at all.

The past few weeks have been extremely busy with the fraternity and enjoyable as well. Far more busy than pledging even. I have no regrets about joining and encourage everyone else who gets the opportunity to do so. Even though it’s still early, I can tell that it will make a difference in my life and a change in my character.

Right now I’m not in the best of mind states. What I do want to say, however, that the only way to truly be successful when you go out to achieve a goal is through action: Less talk, more action. From a symbolic and realistic point of view, it doesn’t matter how funny or charismatic of a guy you are, how much you make the girl laugh, or how many clues she’s giving you. If you don’t make a move, it’s your loss. You have to have the balls the make the move because it’s ALWAYS the guy who makes the move that gets the girl. I’ll be honest…I’ve experienced this situation more than I’d like to admit in the past couple months. However, it’s so true and it will leave you feeling like sh*t when the girl you were flirting with all night gets taken away by the guy who had the balls to make a strong move. It’s the same for business. Don’t beat around the bush. Go for what you want. If you want a particular client, a certain number of orders from a client, or whatever it may be, just make sure you’re the guy that makes the move and not the guy that gets left in the dust flirting with the proposition of making it to home base.

Fear is probably one of the greatest obstacles in entrepreneurship. However, there is another great obstacle that can hold you back almost just as much. That obstacle is outcome dependency. If everytime you get rejected or a client doesn’t like your ideas and you take it out on yourself, it means that you are still outcome dependent. The only way to succeed is to completely kill your outcome dependency. The way to do this is to go all out. Pitch that VC you’re sure is going to shut you down. Ask that girl out with the most ridiculous line and keep going until you’re almost certain you’re going to get slapped. Screw it…screw what they think. This is YOUR problem and not their’s. You’re just using them as a crutch to get over your HABIT of taking it out on yourself when something doesn’t go your way. The only way to fix this is to become immune to rejection and realize that there are other factors at play and it’s not just YOU. So quit blaming yourself, control the factors that you can, and pitch hard.

Some people, including myself, become extremely disheartened when something doesn’t go their way or if someone doesn’t like their ideas. The reality is that if you keep blaming yourself on things outside of your control and view every failure as inherently caused, then you’ve already lost the game. You will only continue to set yourself back and damage your confidence and faith to keep going forward. Thus, it is extremely important that no matter how many times you fail or what criticisms you get from some big shot exec, continue to move forward until you see your vision through. This is not to say that you should not take contructive criticism and apply it, but rather that you should not take failure and criticism as a reason to stop trying and start blaming yourself. Just keep choppin’ as we here at Rutgers like to say.

I just had a huge revelation last night while I was finishing up Cash Flow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki. He talks about taking baby steps to financial freedom and to avoid making that “one great leap” so many people try to do when they reach for goals such as losing weight. For the first week or so things are great and you’re hitting the gym an hour a day and eating less calories per day than your pet bird, but at the end of that week you’re exhausted and just go back to your old habits. Instead of an hour a day at the gym, Kiyosaki says you should underachieve and go to the gym for just 20 minutes a day or something similar where you feel like you could stay for much longer. I, myself, have been experiencing a little bit of entrepreneur-burnout lately as you can probably tell by my limited posts and lack of comments. I didn’t have much of a break because I focused on making “the great leap” on not just one goal, but many others. I want to achieve a little more balance in my life and maybe even have a good time here and there. My sleeping pattern lately has been awful and my lack of planning leads to nonconstructive days. I’ve decided it’s time for me to take baby steps and underachieve in terms of my goals. Small victories kick ass after all. In terms of this blog, I’m going to update it once a week on Sundays for two weeks. After that, I’ll bump it up to two. I know I’m making it sound like keeping this blog updated is a ton of work when it really isn’t, but I need to achieve some sort of balance in my life. I’ll be updating if anything big happens, however. Some baby steps I want to take:

• Talk to one new person a day.
• Go to the gym three times a week for 20 minutes a day.
• Blog once a week.
• Do one small thing to promote Walamu each day.
• Go to sleep by midnight and wake up by 9am two nights a week.

What makes great products stand out? For that matter, what makes anything great stand out? The best products, whether they be a web 2.0 startup or a TV show, have something about them that makes them stand out. As Seth Godin puts it, you need a “purple cow.”

The marketing aspect of your business doesn’t come from the physical advertising such as banner ads or TV commercials, but rather the actual marketability of your product. That is, does your product do you marketing for you? Does it make people talk about it and market itself? You can shout your slogan as loud as you want on that megaphone of yours, but if your product isn’t remarkable, then all the other marketing in the world couldn’t help you.

If you’ve ever watched the show, “Home Improvement,” you’re probably familiar with the character of Wilson, Tim’s neighbor. Now what’s funny about how they portray Wilson is that they never fully show his face. They could have easily portrayed him as any old neighbor by not creating a sense of mystery around him by hiding his face, but instead they chose to do something remarkable with his character. Even though Wilson isn’t a major character in the show, it just goes to show that if you do something remarkable, people will remember it. I’m sure that just by doing what they did to Wilson’s character the show got a boost out of people trying to find out what Wilson really looked like.

It just goes to show that in order to be able to market your product efficiently, you have to let your product market itself (kind of like Wilson’s character). In the end, it’s your product marketing for you rather than you marketing your product that’s going to make it a success.

Web 2.0 is anything but in the shadows these days. Everyday we are hearing more and more about Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace in traditional media. Sources like The Wall Street Journal and New York Times are keeping up with these colossal new companies that built themselves up in a matter of months and are now looking to be acquired for over a billion dollars.

There in lies the problem, however. Or rather it is the sweet spot. It depends on which side of the spectrum you are on. If you are YouTube or Facebook then the number of suitors have grown pretty slim in terms of potential acquirers simply because of the price tag. Viacom backed out of wanting to purchase Facebook because they thought it was too expensive. They did, however, say that they are looking for younger, less established businesses with huge potential. This is where today’s young entrepreneurs come in.

The fact that big Web 2.0 has exhausted many of their options because of their price tag means that there are a slew of companies out there looking for great ideas with great business plans that haven’t even begun to hit their potential yet. These acquirers know that Web 2.0 is real and that a dot-com business is possible. They’ve seen Google and they’ve seen MySpace. They also know that the biggest wave of new corporate giants is going to come from the Internet. That is why this is the time to really try and get noticed if you are in the Web 2.0 world. It’s true that there are a ridiculous number of Web 2.0 “businesses” out there. However, most of these do not possess a solid business plan. Some of them don’t even have a way of making money other than Google Adsense.

If you are confident that your service is helping make other people’s lives easier and is something that they would use on a daily basis like Google or MySpace, then you should have no reason not to make something big out of your company. With a strong business plan, a business model, the right execution, and some luck, you can make your Web 2.0 a true success in the eyes of the world.