The Startup Of You

The book by Reid Hoffman gives an interesting prespective to plan your career. Reid is the cofounder of LinkedIn and Paypal.

All human beings are entrepreneurs

Quoting Mohammud Yunus the book says, all humans were entrepreneurs during stone age. A caveman finds food for his family everyday. But later humans became ‘labor’ working for big companies. Reid advises to think yourself as an work in progress and develop a mindset of Permanent Beta. Think of your career as a startup. While in permanent beta you always are investing in yourself and learning new things. You make a career path where you differentiate yourself from the millions others who can do your job. To have a competative advantage you develop your assets according to market realities which also satisfy your aspirations

Assets, Aspirations and Market realities are the 3 pieces of puzzle which cannot work without each other

Picking a market niche where you’re better than the competition is key to entrepreneurial strategy.

Learn by doing

Actions, not plans, will generate the lessons that help you adapt to the next phase of your journey.

Your identity is found through experimentation, fill the gaps of incomplete knowledge about yourself and your industry. Prioritize learning and think 2 steps ahead.

ABZ plan

  • Plan A: What you are doing now (your experiment). Your current implementation of you competative advantage.
  • Plan B: You pivot to B when your current plan is not working or you find a better way to achieve your goal
  • Plan Z: Your lifeboat plan if something goes seriously wrong.

An experimental plan A, an alternative plan B and unchanging, certain plan Z

Networking

  • Allies: These are the people whom you trust and consult regularly. This is a strong tie. You probably share same interest and go on to take same career path. You defend his brand and he/she does the same.
  • Weak ties: They bring variety to your prespective. With bigger network like friends of friends, you have bigger advantage.
  • Consider having an interesting people fund and use it to meet with people and invite them for coffee / lunches.

Summary

Entreprenuers are hustlers, they pursue breakout opportunities. Start by tapping into your network, investing in your skills, start forging your differentiated career plan, start adapting.

For life in PERMANENT BETA the trick is to NEVER STOP STARTING. The startup is YOU