12 SUPER SUCCESSFUL FOUNDERS WHO FAILED FIRST

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You know all these people that I'm going to talk about, and probably you could know their success stories, but what you missed is their fail more exactly their First Fail.

Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Tobias Lutke, Ben Silbermann,... Are all now the most powerful and successful Founders in our century, but keep in your mind that they FAILED for the First Time, and they FAILED AGAIN Until they Succeed! So that's the Spirit we should all have.

Here's a list of The 12 SUPER SUCCESSFUL FOUNDERS Who Failed First :

1. EVAN WILLIAMS - TWITTER

Before co-founding Twitter, Williams developed a podcasting platform called Odeo.

He realized it would be useful for people to have a central directory where they could search, download and listen to all the audio content on the web.

After 22 months, Odeo featured more than 2.1m pieces of sound. Still, it folded soon afterward when Apple announced the podcast section of iTunes.

2. REID HOFFMAN - LINKEDIN

Before co-founding LinkedIn and investing in big names like PayPal and Airbnb, Hoffman created SocialNet, an online dating, and social networking site.

It focused on online dating and matching up people with similar interests, like golfers who were looking for partners in their neighborhood.

The combination of the site is ahead of its time and Hoffman's inexperience as a manager caused him to abandon the project in 1999. Still, it would provide invaluable insights that he would use in founding LinkedIn years later.

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3. BILL GATES - MICROSOFT

The legend is that somewhere, presumably in a garage, a couple of high school kids produced a version of Basic that ran on personal computers and the rest just happened. The truth is somewhat different.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen had already set up a company, Traf-O-Data by the time they were 16 and 19 respectively and were already making money from computing.

4. NICK WOODMAN - GO PRO

After school, Woodman founded two startups, both of which never entirely made it off the ground.

The first was a website called EmpowerAll, which attempted to sell electronic goods for no more than a $2 markup and was quickly shut down after failing to get off the ground.

The second was Funbug, a gaming and marketing platform that gave users the chance to win cash prizes. A year later, in April 2001, the company was face down in the water, unable to gain traction among users.

5 - STEVE JOBS - APPLE

Steve Jobs' first business was selling "blue boxes" that allowed users to get free phone service illegally.

These boxes were designed in 1972 by Jobs' close friend and future co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak. They worked by producing certain tones that were used in the telephone system to switch long-distance calls.

Once you made a long-distance call, you could use the box to enter operator mode, then use it to route your call to wherever you wanted for free. This made calls extremely difficult to trace and made blue boxes a popular item amongst various criminal elements.

The two stopped making the boxes after they were nearly caught by the police. Despite giving up on the venture, they reportedly made about $6,000 selling the blue boxes.

But it was the magic that two teenagers could build this box for $100 worth of parts and control 100's of billions of dollars of infrastructure in the entire telephone network in the whole world.

"Experiences like that taught us the power of ideas. If we hadn't made blue boxes, there would have been no Apple."

6. KEVIN SYSTROM - INSTAGRAM

Kevin Systrom was a fan of Kentucky whiskeys. So when he created a location-based iPhone app (one driven by the success of networking app Foursquare), he named it after the booze.

Burbn let users check in at particular locations, make plans for future check-ins, earn points for hanging out with friends, and post pictures of the meet-ups.

Burbn was not successful. The app was too complicated and had a jumble of features that made it confusing.

Systrom, however, kept tweaking the app. He paid attention to how people were using it and used analytics to determine how their customers were using Burbn.

His finding? People weren't using Burbn's check-in features at all. What they were using, though, were the app's photo-sharing features.

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7. PETER THIEL - PAYPAL

A couple of Brainy Kids called Max Levchin, and Peter Thiel had been working on a payment system at their startup Confinity.

They were trying to make it possible for owners of the Palm Pilot handheld to swap money via the infrared ports on the devices.

It was exciting technology, and no one else was doing it. However, the world's millions of Palm Pilot owners used their devices only episodically. Nobody needed their product, so they had no customers.

8. ANDREW MASON - GROUPON

In 2007 Andrew Mason created a website called The Point: a "social good" fundraising site that ran on a "tipping point" system. A cause would only receive funding once the pledged donations reached a specific number.

It gained modest traction in Chicago but basically went nowhere.

One day, Lefkofsky raised an idea he thought could revitalize the struggling startup, based on a campaign he'd seen launched on The Point: a group of users decided their cause should be saving money.

Their plan was to round up 20 or so people who all wanted to buy the same product and see if they could get a group discount.

9. STEWART BUTTERFIELD - FLICKR

Stewart Butterfield's dream was to create a gaming world where people played not for winning, but for the sake of interacting with people.

He and his team started building an MMO game – Game Neverending and released a prototype in 2002.

It was a very complicated online game. As Butterfield admits, the concept was too weird and unfamiliar to people. The Game Neverending project was unable to raise money and was forced to shut down.

The game also included a photo-sharing tool, which turned out to be one of the most popular aspects. Butterfield decided to leverage this photo popularity and pivot to Flickr.

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10. STEWART BUTTERFIELD (AGAIN) - SLACK

Despite his initial failure, Butterfield's dream to build the game Neverending was still alive.

With his success with Flickr, Butterfield raised over $17 million to build Glitch – Game Neverending 2.0 with significant improvements in user experience and technology.

But again, some of its features were simply too strange. The company ran out of cash, and the game was shut down again.

Then (again) Butterfield and his team turned a byproduct of the game into something successful.

During development, the Glitch team built an internal chat system, finding existing options unsatisfactory. Despite the already-crowded space in enterprise communication, Butterfield believed that his team has something unique to offer to the market. This marked their pivot into Slack.

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11. BEN SILBERMANN - PINTEREST

Ben Silbermann started out working at Google, but as a non-engineer, he felt there was only so far that he could go in that culture.

He kept talking about doing a startup, but it was his girlfriend who told him,

"You should either do it or stop talking about it."

Ben set out to transform every cell phone into a clothing retail outlet with an app called Tote. It pulled data from online product catalogs to create a meta catalog for shoppers on the go.

Months after launching, it was clear that Tote wasn't going to work.

There were two big problems.

• People weren't using mobile apps for shopping. It was too early.
• Apple's App Store wasn't ready to support businesses built on the platform as it was too slow.

While Tote users weren't making purchases via the app, they were growing collections of "favorite" items to share with their friends. And that's how the idea for Pinterest was born.

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12. TOBIAS LUTKE - SHOPIFY

Back in 2004, Tobias Lutke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake attempted to open their own online snowboard equipment store, called Snowdevil.

The shop wasn't successful at all. Still, they loved the storefront they created, so they decided to sell it to other businesses that needed a better online store. The rest is history.

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Everybody enjoys a success story. Living out our fantasies through those who achieved success gives us hope it will happen to us.

But, listening to these stories doesn't do us any favors because those tales aren't the whole picture: the struggles, the tough breaks, the defeats that set the stage for the eventual big win.

Samuel Beckett:

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. You won’t believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better.”

Lbiinga

Getting Rich From Scratch

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23# Investing Secrets You Never Knew

23 Investing Secrets You Never Knew

Today, I'm going to talk about my experience in the Investment field, so if it comes to your head that's easy to learn I advise you to reshuffle your cards.

Investment is about Having Experience, playing Smart, have knowledge of the Bigger Investors in the world and finally escaping fear.

 I had no experience as an investor. I had never taken a job on Wall Street or with a fund or anything like that. But I wanted to be good. People say, “I learned the hard way”. I had to do more than learn the hard way. I wanted to be a good investor and it was really difficult for me.

It’s been very hard and I’ve been very scared. I sort of regret being interested in investing. Since 2012 I’ve had a return of about 85% per year on money I’ve invested. I started off very small and now it’s turned into a good amount.

Its amazing to me how little people study investing, even though it’s so incredibly difficult. I talk to “professional” investors all the time who don’t do what I consider to be the basics.

I'll explain all the secrets learned from Investment in detail, so you may need to be aware of all these reasons, take notes.

1#  KNOW YOUR HISTORY

• study the history of investing. The history of money. Where did it come from. When were the first exchanges. 
• Study modern investing. Why did the Great Depression occur. What was volatility like in the 1930s. In the 1960s. What caused the recessions in the 1970s. What caused the market to rise and then crash in the 80s.
• What were the actual bubbles in 2000 and 2006–7 that then led to massive crashes. Note: the answers are NOT “the internet” and “housing”.
• What are common features in every recession? In every bear market?

2#  READ BIOGRAPHIES

Start with Warren Buffett. Then Bernard Baruch. Then read Greg Zuckerman’s new book on Jim Simons. Read Ray Dalio’s “Principles”. Read about Jesse Livermore. Carl Icahn. Jim Cramer. Victor Niederhoffer. Michael Milken. Charlie Munger. George Soros. Read all the Market Wizards books. Read about John Templeton, Peter Lynch, every investor you can find a biography of.

After you read each book, write down 5 things you’ve learned from each investor.

3# STUDY EVERY TYPE OF INVESTING

I never worked at a bank or a hedge fund, I was never force fed one particular style of investing.

Through studying and trial and error I had to learn each type and then figure out which ones worked for me the best. Each style is the best type given certain conditions and at different times.

To truly understand investing you have to know all of the types:

• value investing
• growth investing
• merger arbitrage
• convertible arbitrage
• options investing (understanding the “greeks”)
• private equity investing
• venture capital investing
• investing in bonds
• activist investing
• closed-end fund investing
• trade finance, investing in liens, venture debt investing, buying credit card debt, etc.
• country arbitrage (e.g. when Canada goes one way and the US goes another, under what conditions will they “snap” together.
• PIPE investing
• microcap investing and how it differs from buying larger companies
• hedging

4# READ ABOUT ENTREPRENEURS

Understand basic accounting and how companies often fool investors. Read about how to value a company. It’s more art than science but important to know.

Why do some companies trade at huge multiples over earnings and others don’t and never will?

To understand a stock, you have to understand how the underlying company is run and if it will be run well. You have to understand the CEO and he/she is good or bad.

I share with you this article where I'm talking about some common Entrepreneurs Mistakes that you should avoid Read it Here:  What Are Today's Young Entrepreneurs Mistakes?

5#  UNDERSTAND WHAT TRENDS ARE HAPPENING IN SOCIETY: Marketing, genomics, AI, big data, energy, etc.

What does society need, what will it need five years from now, who is working on it.

There is a quick way to do this:

6# THE MOORE’S LAW TECHNIQUE

In 1966, Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel, predicted that computing power will double every 24 months.

Computing power was very tiny then. But its been doubling every 24 months since he made that prediction.

Investing in an industry that is doubling every X months will lead to huge wealth. The computer / internet industry went from being in the hundreds of millions in value to the multiple trillions.

Some industries doubling or more every year or so: computers (still), genomics, solar power, data, AI, automation, etc.

Find as many “Moore’s Law” industries as possible, avoid the scams, and invest in the rest.

7# STATISTICS

If you can, find an easy to use statistics package for testing out ideas.

For instance, what usually happens if the market goes down five days in a row? Or if Microsoft goes down five days in a row? What usually happens on a Monday if Friday was down?

What happens when Canada goes up and the US goes down? What happens the week after insider make a big buy on a stock?

There are thousands of questions you can ask the data. It helps to get a feel for the market.

8# IGNORE “TECHNICAL ANALYSIS”

People say things like, “there’s a resistance at 12 dollars a share so if the stock hits there it should bounce. But if it doesn’t bounce it could go the next level of resistance at $6”.

In other words, “the stock could go up or down”.

I’ve tested out every technical analysis theory. None of them work.

9# DON’T READ THE NEWS

By the time an article is in the Wall Street Journal or on CNBC, you’re the last investor to have learned the news.

10# KNOW THE BASIC RATIOS

P/E ratios, book value, P/S, % of stock that is in the float, income / debt, cash in the bank, etc.

11# ALWAYS ASK, “WHAT IS MY EDGE?”

You have no edge. If you think the iphone is great and you say, “I’m investing in Samsung” what makes you think you have an edge over the 100s of hedge funds who have studied every phone on the market, have figured out every detail of the next five phones to be released, etc.

You might get lucky. Or you might not.

It’s very hard for the average investor to find an edge. Warren Buffett gets an edge by doing deals directly with the company.

Big hedge funds find an edge by doing some form of insider trading.

Billions of dollars are spent every day subtly manipulating the market without regulators being aware of it. You don’t have an edge over those people.

How do you get an edge?

12# RESEARCH STOCKS THAT HAVE COLLAPSED

If a company misses earnings by two cents, often retail investors get scared and the stock collapses.

Ask, “did it collapse irrationally?” This is one of the few times you might be able to get an edge.

Note: most stocks collapse for rational reasons.

13# FOCUS ON MICRO CAP OR SMALL STOCKS.

Stocks that are worth less than a billion dollars.

These stocks are ignored by the news, they are ignore by banks, and they are often too small for the big hedge funds to research them.

They are also not in the big indices that have all the major funds following them.

Note that Warren Buffett made his first million only by investing in microcap stocks.

The problem with microcap stocks is that many of them are either scams or are in industries with no real interest by investors.

So use the Moore’s Law technique above to find growing industries and the stocks in them. And do the research to make sure the stock is not a scam.

Even ONE RED FLAG (the CEO used to work for another company that went to zero) is enough to say, “I’m not going to invest”. NO RED FLAGS ALLOWED.

You can have an edge on small stocks but it’s still hard.

14# CLOSED END FUNDS

These are like mutual funds but they trade like stocks. Find the closed end funds that trade below the added up value of all of their assets.

For instance, a closed end fund might have $100 worth of stocks but is trading for $90. Meaning: you can buy up the entire company for $90 and liquidate it for $100 and make money.

Why do they do this? Study closed end funds.

There’s often a good reason they are trading low but they are pretty safe and usually pay good dividends.

15# IMPORTANT RULE THAT NOBODY KNOWS: The less you invest in a company, the more you will make.

This doesn’t sound right and it doesn’t work for everyone.

But I know for me I have a problem: If I invest a big % of my net worth in one company then I will obsess on it.

I won’t be able to sleep.

And as soon as it has a reasonable profit (or loss) I will get rid of it.

If I invest a small amount and it starts to go up, I am more willing to sit on it for the entire ride and I will make more money.

This has happened to me again and again. The less I invest, the more I make.

I tend to invest only 1–2% of my net worth in any one investment.

16# Choose PRIVATE COMPANIES, they are usually better

Companies only go public when great investors no longer want to put money in. In fact, the venture capitalists want to get out so they force the company to go public.

The “public” is considered the weakest investors.

This is why the iniital investors in Uber made millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars but the people who bought when it went public are now losing money.

How do you find good private companies? Fortunately, more private companies than ever are being listed on crowdfunding sites like AngelList and Republic.

17# FOLLOW THE GREAT INVESTORS

Pick your 20 favorite investors.

If you can buy the same stocks around the same price or lower than it’s an ok investment.

For instance, if Warren Buffett suddenly buys a stock like IBM, then it’s probably a good buy at the same price. Buffett tends to hold for long periods of time so your edge over Buffett is that you can be more nimble.

18# CHECKLIST

• The CEO has built and sold a company before.
• Other good investors are invested in the company
• The company does not need to raise money for a long time.

This checklist is good for both public and private companies. For a private company it helps to add one more item: do they have any customers?

19# DIVERSIFICATION IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK

“buy Exxon and Microsoft”. One is oil and the other is tech. Now, those two stocks are no longer diversified. Most large stocks tend to move up and down as a group.

 “buy bonds and stocks”. Now this is not as true. Bonds and stocks also tend to move as a group.

Diversification is to play multiple strategies that are independent of each other and independent of the economy.

An example diversified portfolio:

• some private companies
• some closed end funds (for the dividends) that focus on municipal bonds
• microcaps that are independent of the economy and each other
• peer to peer lending
• statistical arbitrage
• put selling on value stocks
• some growth investing (but keep investments small)
• investing in a basket of stocks owned by other great investors.
• special situations

20# DON’T DAYTRADE

Daytrading is mostly for idiots.

There are millions of algorithms working every day on the markets. How can you have an advantage over them?

There are strategies that work. But it’s like a fulltime job to play those strategies and you have to know them and really study them.

21# STOP LOSSES

Some people put “Stop-losses” on a position.

This means if they buy a stock at $100, they may decide at $90 to sell it for a loss. Don’t do that I’ve tested out every strategy using software I’ve written. In every case, the use of stop-losses make less money in the long run.

The key to sitting on your hands is to invest only a small amount in every investment.

The path to wealth is to have good investments that grow very big.

22# THE AVERAGE HOLDING PERIOD IS A LONG TIME

Buffett says the average holding period is “forever”. He is lying when he says that because he’s afraid smaller investors will be more nimble than him.

BUT…most companies I own I will own for 5–15 years. I am in some investments right now since 2009.

People say investing is like gambling. This is sort of true. But the longer you hold something, the less it is like gambling and the more it is that you researched an industry and a company and are investing in the growth of both.

It takes a long time for a small company in a small but fast growing industry to reach its full potential.

Also, if a company is growing 20–50% per year or more, where else are you going to get that kind of return on your money? Keep the stock. Don’t take profits.

Again, this is why I keep initial position sizes low and I never double down.

23# BIBLIOGRAPHY. KEEP READING

Here are a few books one can read that I think are fairly simple to read and will give a basic understanding of most of the above.

• Buffett, by Roger Lowenstein

• My Story, by Bernard Baruch
• The Money Game, by Adam Smith
• You can be a stock market genius, by Joel Greenblatt
• The Big Short, by Michael Lewis
• The Man Who Solved the Market, by Greg Zuckerman
• The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
• Hacking Darwin by Jamie Metzl
• Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb
• Tools of the Titans by Tim Ferriss
• Sapiens by Yuval Harari
• A Man for All Markets, by Ed Thorp
• Famous First Bubbles by Peter Garber
• Confessions of a Street Addict by Jim Cramer
• Essays of Warren Buffett by Lawrence Cunningham

There are just a few books, you may go far where you can master Investing. I hope you guys enjoyed this article.

Lbiinga

Getting Rich From Scratch

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