I’m a firm believer in creating opportunities through hustling. One thing I’m starting to realize more and more is that you can create incredible opportunities by hustling online. Nothing supplants a face to face interaction regardless of the context, but a lot of times getting to that point can be difficult. Hustling online can help you get there.

If there is someone that you know you’d like to meet there is a ton of ways you can hustle online to facilitate that, without having a personal connection.

Blog comments

If the person you’re trying to get in front of maintains a blog that’s a great place to start. People always appreciate thoughtful comments like “great post”, but to start …
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I had a really interesting conversation about why we want to be entrepreneurs a few weeks back that made me take a good hard look in the mirror.

I think a lot of people say they want to be entrepreneurs without ever really taking a good hard look their core motivations, myself included. A few reasons why someone would opt for the entrepreneurial path:

Freedom that comes with being your own boss
The chance to create something people love
The challenge and creativity it takes to execute on a vision
A chance to make a lot of money, FAST
Some people just hate working for someone else or in a corporate environment

The friend I spoke with said that his main motivation to take the entrepreneurial leap, …
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As a user, I’m inpatient, unforgiving, and have trouble using/finding features that appear so simple to product managers. If I can’t find what I want quickly and easily you’ve lost me. This poses a variety of challenges for product managers depending upon what stage you’re at:

New product: Who are my early adopters and am I solving a salient problem? How can I communicate this effectively to users? Don’t try to solve ten different problems, but solve one really well. This misconception prevents a lot of new startups from even getting traction

Product with some traction beginning to scale features: At this stage its important to tread the balance between user retention/feature requests while maintaining and emphasizing core …
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“I want to break into the startup scene…but I can’t code”

If I had a nickle for every time I’ve heard that…I’d probably have like $3.20. But seriously, I don’t know if its because the tech scene is hot right now or that the composition of my personal network is changing, but it seems like a lot of people I talk to who aren’t already in the startup scene want to break in to it. I feel that the common misconception many people have is that they have to be a developer or designer to do this. Although these qualifications help, its a far cry from a necessity.

This post serves as a personal case study of my journey to what I …
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I find psychology and sociology extremely interesting and relevant as I blaze my trail in the startup world. In particular, I think its really important to understand our behaviors and what drives them. Having a firm understanding why we do certain things allows us to correct our behaviors to reach our goals.

One thing that I find particularly interesting is how many people wait for all the stars to align before they do something. I  see this behavior a lot when people are trying to launch a business, but the general theme spans across a ton of circumstances and needs to change. What compelled me to write this blog post is a recent situation where my friend has been waiting to …
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The e-commerce space is an interesting one to say the least. Being the broke startup guy I am, when I know I want a specific product I typically go to google and type in whatever it is I’m looking for. Moments later I’m taken to an aggregator of some sort where I can seamlessly find the site with the cheapest offering (with shipping included!).

This is definitely great for the consumer for a couple reasons. 1) I can find the product I desire easily and efficiently. 2) This process ultimately results in a race to the bottom for brands cutting in to their beloved margins and in some cases leveling the playing field.

The question is, if I’m a brand how do …
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I have a ton of friends outside the tech scene with ideas for a startup or new business. Ideas are awesome, but let’s be honest everyone has ideas and very few actually execute on them. Along the same token, a lot of people have many ideas and don’t understand where to start. I always tell my friends before you get all excited and go buy a domain at GoDaddy, you should perform a little due diligence to see if your idea is really as viable as you think it is.

But where to start…how do I know whether this idea is worth pursuing and which one of my ideas are the best? My personal philosophy is to develop a set of …
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