5 Unwritten Rules Of Entrepreneurship
By a Silicon Valley pioneer who has mentored 100+ Stanford startups
It’s not every day we meet someone whose wisdom is highly considered valuable and priceless. However, I happen to know one. A few days ago, I had the opportunity to speak with him and I considered him a mentor and advisor for the past 3 years.
He’s one of the keys behind Hikre School’s success, but also how I first thought of its idea in the first place. His very first venture was at 9 years old when he and his classmate created a newspaper magazine.
He’s Adriano Farano, a serial entrepreneur and Silicon Valley pioneer who founded the Netflix of Videojournalism, Watchup, which was then later sold to Plex.
He’s also a Knight Fellow at Stanford University, entrepreneur-in-residence, advisor, and mentor at StartX, and has mentored hundreds of students’ startups since 2013.
In our chat, I’ve managed to gather insights and lessons that he gladly shared with us. Without further ado, let’s get into them.
Most successful startups are led by founders that are customer-centric
When asked what is one piece of advice he would give to newbie and aspiring entrepreneurs, he explicitly said that you need to talk to your customer a lot.
Adriano is now building a bread startup in Paris and he said that he sees his customers every day at his shop and bakery, so it’s easy for him to spark a conversation with its people.
How about when you’re building a product in which everything is online? How do you do it?
The lesson here is that when you’re building something that is completely online, there’s a blindspot. You need to find a way to connect with your customer or user.
Joshua Browder of DoNotPay also adds his comment on being customer-centric, he said on this tweet,
To which I reply,
Then, Joshua replies,
Key takeaway: Talk to your customer — be extremely customer-centric
Additionally, one of the founders of Whatsapp and Linkedin is known to have worked in customer service prior to founding their respective companies.
What do we say about that?
The number one advantage you have as a startup over big companies is that you have the speed and time to speak to your customers and this can be leveraged as a competitive advantage.
A hobby can help deal with burnout and stress
According to a study by Harvard Business Review,
25% of entrepreneurs felt moderately burned out with 3% felt strongly burned out.
Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet constant demands.
How do you deal with it? Some deal by:
Going to a party
Going for a vacation
Taking a whole night sleep
Engaging in intimate work with partners
However, during our chat with Adriano, we asked what are his ways of dealing with multiple ups and downs or failures in his entrepreneurial journey.
He said that one thing that has helped through the years is his hobby of baking bread. Adriano is now building a bread startup, which is a result of his passion for bread from a decade ago.
I can certainly verify this since I also use my hobby to cope with stress or burnout, in my case, writing. He also adds that having a hobby you can do when you’re stressed out or close to burning out helps by 60% to 70%.
With simple observation, most successful executives and entrepreneurs do in fact have a hobby. Some play sports, some go surfing by the beach and some listen to podcasts or play music.
Key takeaway: When you’re burned out or stressed, do your hobby
We can change the world, without being assholes
It’s not every day you’re touched by a simple quote. A little over a year ago, I stumbled upon a quote by Adriano online that pretty much stuck with me to this day.
And no, it’s not like those cliche types of quotes you see online.
Let’s change the world, yes, but without being assholes.
Unlike the archetypical Silicon Valley entrepreneur who’s okay to be an asshole to people around him or her, Adriano is a firm believer that you can change the world without that need of being an asshole.
Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Spiegel, and Elon Musk are known to being one, however, Adriano said that hard work, ambition, and tenacity always pay off.
Key takeaway: You can change the world, without needing to be an asshole
Aim to be the number one in one thing
Perhaps one of the mistakes most startups make is that they either do not become the best at one thing or they try to be the best at everything.
When I was in the early days of my startup, I asked Adriano to schedule a quick call with me so that I can ask for his advice or blessing for my then newly founded startup.
In our call, he repeatedly told me to work on becoming the best one thing and that I need to use speed to make this happen.
Either I would do it geographically or demographically, both would work.
2-week sprints would also facilitate the process and would be a well-needed framework to make it happen.
An example of this principle would be:
Facebook at its early days became the best at Harvard
Snapchat became the best among high schoolers in California
DoNotPay was the best Robo-lawyer at Stanford
Uber became the best taxi-hailing in San Francisco
Can you recognize the pattern now? Great! Reflect on that and apply it.
Key takeaway: Find your niche market and become the best at it
Street smart will make you a better entrepreneur than book knowledge
Constraints.
What does constraint mean by definition? — a limitation or restriction.
One of the things that surprised me in our talk with Adriano that also gave a wow expression when I’ve heard is that people who have street smart tend to have more entrepreneurial success than people who have more book knowledge.
How is that? Well, the reason is constraints. The limitation or the restriction. This allows an entrepreneur to do more and to be more creative with his idea and product. This results in a much better focus, which then results in faster iteration and so on.
Drug dealers for instance tend to have better business knowledge than people who go to business school. Fascinating right, but wow does that happen?
One key detail among drug dealers is that they are very customer-centric, but also because they know how to negotiate and how to sell what they’re selling.
Additionally, unlike people who have more book knowledge, they’re not slowed down by the vast amount of information they have in their heads.
These, altogether are the reasons why people who have street smarts tend to become better entrepreneurs than book smarts.
Key takeaway: To become a better entrepreneur, a study being street smart
Deliver more than is expected
Soft skills are said to be the more important ever in our very fast-evolving society. At Hikre School, we also say that soft skills are like the fuel of a car. Without it, the car won’t run. This means that you won’t go far if you don’t prioritize soft skills.
Few small details I’ve noticed during our chat with Adriano is that:
He calls everyone by their names (regardless if he knows them or not)
He acknowledges mistakes and he thanks a lot
He treats everyone equally, it’s just like everyone is like him
He delivers more than expected (he made sure every question was answered by the end of our chat)
He sent a follow-up message asking if everything went alright, which then proceeded with a follow-up call
Now, these are also considered interpersonal skills which go under communication, leadership, proactiveness, validation, and adaptability.
In Napeleon Hill’s book, Think and Grow Rich, he mentions that delivering more than is expected is a key to having a successful career. This can result to being paid more than is needed, but also a good quality of being of service.
Not everyone will do this, that’s why if you do this, that already makes you different than most people.
Not only delivering more than is expected, but also other soft skills mentioned above are important. Everybody can have hard skills like engineering, language, accounting, software, but not everyone will have soft skills.
Key takeaway: Hone your soft skills and deliver more than is expected
Final Thoughts
So here’s what I took away from our chat with Adriano Farano, who started his first venture at 9 and who successfully sold one of his startups in Silicon Valley.
As an early-stage startup founder, become super customer-centric
Having a hobby can make a difference when you deal with burnouts
Change the world without being an asshole
Become the best at one thing, and become the best at everything
People with street smarts tend to make better entrepreneurs
Deliver more than is expected
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I’ve created a curation of 100+ essential questions that will help boost your entrepreneurial know-how. These are the same questions I wish someone told me when I was younger!
Note: Some of these are case-to-case basis and won't always apply.
All the best learnings from:
💣 Zero To One
🤕 Y Combinator
💡 Paul Graham’s essays
📈 Accidental Billionaire
🌍 Lean Startup
💶 Naval Ravikant
🧑🤝🧑 Steve Job’s biography
🤝 Twitter’s #BuildInPublic!
This collection is the result of my years of experience including working closely and being mentored by a Silicon Valley pioneer who has mentored 100+ student entrepreneurs at Stanford University and being a top writer in Entrepreneurship, Startups, and Technology to the tune of 1 million combined views with articles published at The Startup with 8 million+ readers including a mention from Forbes.
So what are you waiting for?