Every Entrepreneur Should Read This Guide From A Facebook Co-Founder

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.comMoskovitz reminds people that building Facebook was a lot of work.

Dustin Moskovitz co-founded Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg and it made him a billionaire. Now he's working on another company, Asana.

Moskovitz created a startup deck that's full of advice about how to launch a successful company and explains what it takes to be an entrepreneur. It's not as glamorous as Hollywood and the media make it look.

"It's important to know [why you want to start a company]," Moskovitz explained to a Stanford class. "You may have been mislead by the way that Hollywood or the press likes to romanticize entrepreneurship."

Dustin Moskovitz/Startupclass.samaltman.com

"The 4 common reasons people want to start companies are: It's glamorous, you'll get to be the boss, you'll have flexibility, especially over your schedule, and you'll have the chance to have bigger impact and make more money."

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

"The reality is just not quite so glamorous, there's an ugly side to being an entrepreneur, and more importantly, what you're actually spending your time on is just a lot of hard work."

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

"So a scene from 'The Social Network.' This is us partying and working at the same time—somebody's spraying champagne everywhere..."

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

"This is an actual scene from Palo Alto, [Mark Zuckerberg] spent a lot of time at this desk, head down and focused...this is just him signaling his intention to be focused and keep working, not be social."

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

"Then there's the scene demonstrating the insight moment. It's kind of out of 'A Beautiful Mind.'"

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

"Really, we were just at that table the whole time. So if you compare this photo, Mark is in the exact same position but he's wearing different clothes, so this is definitely a different day."

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

"Why is [a startup] so stressful? You've got a lot of responsibility. You have fear of failure on behalf of yourself and all of the people who decided to follow you... Ben Horowitz likes to say the number one role of a CEO is managing your own psychology. It's absolutely true; make sure you do it."

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

"Another reason [people start companies] is you start to develop this narrative [at a job], like the people running this company are idiots.. I'm gonna start a company and I'm going to do it better. I'm going to set all the rules."

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

But being a CEO is really like this...

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

"A subset of You're the Boss is you have flexibility, you have control over your own schedule. This is a really attractive idea."

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

"Here's the reality..."

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

"This is the [reason to start a company] I hear most...People tell me, 'You know, I'd really like to work for much smaller companies or start my own because then I have a much bigger slice of the pie.'"

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

"If you're [not] extremely confident in building a $100M company, it should go without saying that you should have a lot more confidence [working for] Facebook in 2009 or Dropbox...If you think you're the right entrepreneur to build "Uber for Space Travel", a really huge $2B idea, you're actually going to have a pretty good return for that, you should definitely do that."

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

"I really think that financial reward is very strongly correlated with the impact we have on the world...It's important to keep in mind the context what kind of company you're trying to start and where you will actually be able to make it happen."

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

So, what's the best reason to start a company?

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

You can't NOT do it.

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

"You can't not do it in two ways. One is you're so passionate about it that you have to do it and you're going to do it anyways. This is really important because you'll need that passion to get through all of those hard parts of being an entrepreneur...The other way to interpret this is the world needs you to do it."

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

Here's Moskovitz's recommended reading list for aspiring entrepreneurs:

Dustin Moskovitz via Startupclass.samaltman.com

These Are the Top 18 Names That People Really, Really Want on Their Coke Bottles

And they'll pay a lot for them on eBay By Alfred Maskeroni

• 

  Photo: Mike Mozart/Flickr Creative Commons
  Sparking people to collect, hack and do all kinds of things with them from earnest tocynical, Coca-Cola's #ShareaCoke promotion has taken on a life of its own. And now there is some interesting data on which names are most sought after. 
  Terapeak, an eBay analytics firm, has scoured the site to uncover behavioral trends behind this campaign. Aron Hsiao, copywriter and consultant for social media operations at Terapeak, tells AdFreak that his team used several sophisticated search techniques to identify auctions of named Coke bottles.
  "Across all #ShareaCoke bottles, just around $32,000 in eBay sales have occurred since the start of the campaign," he says, "with individual bottle sales valued at an average of between $7 and $8 but going as high as $80—significantly higher than retail price."
  Take a look at the results below, and see if your name made the list. 
18

• 
  Name: Makayla
  Bottles sold: 14
  Average price: $13.36
  Total money changing hands: $187
17

• 
  Name: Danielle
  Bottles sold: 25
  Average price: $7.60
  Total money changing hands: $190
16

• 
  Name: Alisha
  Bottles sold: 17
  Average price: $12.82
  Total money changing hands: $218
15

• 
  Name: Jimmy
  Bottles sold: 4
  Average price: $55
  Total money changing hands: $220
14

• 
  Name: Hunter
  Bottles sold: 23
  Average price: $9.70
  Total money changing hands: $223
13

• 
  Name: Spencer
  Bottles sold: 16
  Average price: $14.94
  Total money changing hands: $239
12

• 
  Name: Carrie
  Bottles sold: 26
  Average price: $9.27
  Total money changing hands: $241
11

• 
  Name: Bobby
  Bottles sold: 21
  Average price: $11.86
  Total money changing hands: $249
10

• 
  Name: Sydney
  Bottles sold: 21
  Average price: $12.19
  Total money changing hands: $256
9

• 
  Name: Shelby
  Bottles sold: 32
  Average price: $8.84
  Total money changing hands: $283
8

• 
  Name: Kara
  Bottles sold: 24
  Average price: $12.33
  Total money changing hands: $296
7

• 
  Name: Karen
  Bottles sold: 35
  Average price: $8.80
  Total money changing hands: $308
6

• 
  Name: Cynthia
  Bottles sold: 34
  Average price: $9.15
  Total money changing hands: $311
5

Linda: $338

• 
  Name: Linda
  Bottles sold: 15
  Average price: $22.53
  Total money changing hands: $338
4

• 
  Name: Caroline
  Bottles sold: 22
  Average price: $15.59
  Total money changing hands: $343
3

• 
  Name: Michelle
  Bottles sold: 43
  Average price: $8.37
  Total money changing hands: $360
2

• 
  Name: Amy
  Bottles sold: 52
  Average price: $7.31
  Total money changing hands: $380
1

• 
  Name: Kim
  Bottles sold: 44
  Average price: $8.77
  Total money changing hands: $386

The Top Creative Minds in Digital

Digital's standout stars in today's cluttered multimedia space By Gabriel Beltrone

Unleashed into the digital wilds, creatives have responded with innovative, far-reaching ideas that leverage interactive’s unique attributes. We look at some of the people best utilizing the new technologies to create work that stands out amidst today’s multimedia clutter.

Andy Hood, executive creative development director, AKQA, London, Nick Bailey, executive creative director, AKQA, Amsterdam 
AKQA’s talent pool runs deep—and wide. Collaborations include the Star Player for Heineken, a dual-screen mobile and social soccer game created by Hood (in London) and Bailey (in Amsterdam). Designed to raise the profile of Heineken’s UEFA sponsorship, it lets users “participate” in a soccer match by predicting—via their smartphones, tablets, or computers—upcoming plays. It’s hardly the only work to garner buzz: Since 2008, the agency, across all offices, has earned more than 300 awards.


Koichiro Tanaka, creative director, Projector Inc., Tokyo
Months before Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook’s Timeline, Tanaka—who established Projector, a creative collective, in 2004—built Intel’s The Museum of Me, which pulls content from viewers’ Facebook pages and displays it in a personalized, virtual “exhibition.” Tanaka hit a narcissistic nerve, as the museum has racked up more than 800,000 “Likes” since its June launch. Tanaka first made an international name for himself with his intricate work for Uniqlo, which included a YouTube campaign starring robot-like dancers.


Neil Heymann, creative director, Droga5, New York
The award-winning, Australian-born Heymann was at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, among other agencies, before joining Droga5. He worked with quintessential New Yorker Jay-Z to market both the launch of the entrepreneur’s biography, Decoded, and Microsoft’s Bing. The agency created an interactive treasure hunt, putting clues online that led viewers, using Bing’s map function, to book pages hidden in real locations. Fans who reassembled the book received the chance for a lifetime pass to Jay-Z concerts.


Stephen Goldblatt, executive creative director, partner, Evolution Bureau, San Francisco
In the last year alone (give or take a month), Goldblatt has led campaigns for clients including Lady Gaga and Juicy Fruit. This past May, the former Goodby, Silverstein & Partners creative worked on a promo for Gagaville, an interactive project between Zynga and the pop star that promoted Born This Way. And in summer 2010, he helped create Juicy Fruit’s Sweet Talk app, programmed with videos of lips offering fawning compliments. It turned millions of iPhones into mouthpieces for flattery, as users covered their yaps with their devices and let Juicy Fruit rattle off sweet nothings on their behalf.
Aaron Koblin, creative director, Google Creative Lab, San Francisco, Chris Milk, director, @radical.media, Los Angeles
Specializing in the geeky field of data visualization, Koblin, who is also an artist, uses real-world and community-generated data to create work for brands. His award-winning collaborations with Milk have resulted in, among other things, ingenious, Google-branded music videos to promote the Chrome browser. They paired the technology with A-list artists such as Arcade Fire. The band’s interactive video, “The Wilderness Downtown,” invites users to launch Chrome and enter their addresses, enabling the browser to pull photos from Google Maps and combine them in real-time with 3-D models for personalized journeys through neighborhoods.


Malcolm Poynton, chief creative officer, SapientNitro, London
Joining SapientNitro immediately after it was created by the merger of Nitro Group and Sapient Interactive gave Poynton the chance to work across brands and disciplines. (When he started in 2010, he reportedly called the shop “the first truly ambidextrous agency in town.”) Poynton’s work has lived up to expectations, such as the Foot Locker SneakerPedia website, a crowd-sourced repository of shoe porn where sneaker fanatics can share their photos and stories with like-minded souls.


Johan Jager, creative director, co-founder, Jung von Matt, Stockholm, Sweden
When German agency Jung von Matt wanted to expand to Scandinavia in 2006, it landed in Sweden thanks in part to the reputation of ad veteran Jager. He oversees innovative and often brilliantly goofy work, such as BMW’s Mini “Getaway” campaign, which staged a digital game of Capture the Flag in Stockholm. iPhone location tracking let competitors race around town to steal a virtual Mini Countryman from other players. The prize for the person left holding the Countryman at the end of the week was an actual car.


Iain Tait, global executive interactive creative director, Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore.
What’s that scent you can’t seem to shake? Oh, right. And it’s no wonder. The mixing of W+K’s well-crafted Old Spice campaign, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” with the feverish mind of Tait (who co-founded Poke in London before moving to W+K in 2010) resulted in “Response,” which fired off some 185 personalized video replies to Twitterers with large followings who referenced Old Spice, as well as to less influential fans who caught its fancy. It created considerable buzz for the Procter & Gamble brand, and was a vivid example of how social media can be paired with on-the-fly production.


Christian Behrendt & Leif Abraham, creative directors, R/GA, New York
Need breeds innovation, as Behrendt and Abraham, a.k.a. “Innovative Thunder,” can tell you—they’ve created no less than a new social commerce model to spread the word about their book on digital advertising, Oh My God What Happened and What Should I Do? Called Pay With a Tweet, the simple barter system works like this: promote the book on Twitter, and you receive a free copy in return. Microsoft has since used it for its TechDays conference, and, last month, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney utilized it to promote an e-book he wrote. The duo—who work for brands including Old Bay, MasterCard, and Nike—have traded more than 185,000 copies of their book for a tweet.


Bill Wright $ James Dawson-Hollis, vice presidents, executive creative directors, Crispin Porter + Bogusky
For Jell-O Pudding, Wright and Dawson-Hollis, along with interactive associate creative director Ken Slater, created a digital visage, The Pudding Face Mood Meter, whose expression reflected the total number of emoticon smiles and frowns of Twitterers. But that was just the start: some of those who exchanged their frowns for grins were given coupons for free Jell-O Pudding desserts. The team also powered a billboard version of the site in New York, and are renowned for the controversial Whopper Sacrifice Facebook app, which gave every user who dumped 10 friends a coupon for a free Burger King sandwich. The campaign didn’t last long—Facebook shut it down—but the buzz did.


Faces: Ricardo Santos