Month: April 2013

I’m Going To The Amazon To Live With Indigenous Indians

I’m about to leave for a trip to the Amazon jungle to live with indigenous indians.

One of the most interesting trends is that we’re flattening the economy.  Friction is being removed at a very fast rate.  Adam Smith’s invisible hand may crush the 99% completely out of the economy.  If that happens, what happens to capitalism?

Naval Ravikant from Angellist told me “There will be information tech based small businesses, where you roll out of bed in the morning and you get assigned a task by an Android phone, maybe it’s in a bidding market place, you choose what you want to do, you get rid of it at the end of the day, and you’ll work for yourself.”

So I’m going to spend some time living with indigenous indians.  They don’t have electricity or most of the things we take for granted.  I had to get a yellow fever shot which made me sick.  There are guerillas who kidnap people in the area.  But it should be very interesting.

Should we disturb their traditional way of life?  Of course not!  But large numbers (the majority?) of indigenous people do not want to continue their traditional way of life so they move to major cities.. But they are often unable to adapt well – we have seen this frequently in Australia with the australian aborigines.

What if we had a netflix prize, which rewarded finding the highest hourly rate possible in a scalable way for indigenous groups?   Lets say the average hourly amount an indigenous person could earn while living in their traditional environment was $1/hr.  What if we could bring this up to $5/hr?  Would this enable more of them to return to their traditional lifestyles while still gaining some benefits from modern civilization?

How I Do Referrals

Since I’m a connector, I often make referrals.  However my referrals are different, since I am able to make connections across unusual markets or very far away internationally, both cases where there is much less trust.

Fred Wilson and other well known venture capitalists now ask for double opt in introductions.  Fred writes:

When introducing two people who don’t know each other, ask each of them to opt-in to the introduction before making it.

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/11/the-double-optin-introduction.html

I don’t do this, because its I think we can do better.  I’m glad to make unannounced introductions.  However we need to do the introduction REALLY WELL.

Here’s what I look for:

  • If I’m forwarding along an email from you, is your explanation of what you’re looking for clear, well written and something the other person will immediately want to jump on?
  • Are you willing to do something of real value for the person?  If you’re well known that may be enough – or it may not be.  Maybe you will need to be willing to jump on the phone to give some free consulting.. Or take them out for a nice dinner.. Or gain special access at an event..
  • Are you willing to jump through hoops and be super responsive to the other person, even though this is something someone of your status in your market would normally never have to do?

This can be hard to take for people who are used to being top dog in their market and used to special privileges.  But the way different markets interact can be complex – what you have achieved in one arena may not translate to another.  And I’m not a world famous guy like Bill Gates.  I’m not listing these things  for fun, I’m bring these points up so the introductions will WORK.   And I’ll work with you in whatever it takes so we get it right.

I’m glad to do referrals and like to help my friends out.  I want my referrals to be powerful and useful so the person receiving them instantly says “yes, that is definitely something I want” instead of viewing it as an imposition.

And for those receiving my referrals, if I got it wrong and the referral isn’t useful feel free to just ignore it.  I’m very clear that I have to bring value.

Beginner Internet Business Setup

If you’re getting started in an internet business there’s a few services you should sign up for.  Even if you have some of these services elsewhere, in most cases you will be best off moving everything to this setup.  A lot can go wrong with this stuff and you want to spend as much time on your business as possible with as little time as possible on the technology.  I’ve had this conversation with enough people that I’ve now decided to put it into a blog post.

1.  Domain name: namecheap.   You need a domain name of your own.  I host using name cheap.  Its cheap and reliable.

2.  Your website should be hosted on WordPress.com  This will let you map your domain name properly and make it very easy for you to edit your site.

3.  Google apps email.  Get a business account which gives you email + a host of other services.  This will avoid a huge number of problems such as getting your email delivered.  Your email will be all set up using your domain name.  Its also a good idea to start using:

  • google docs (replacements for word, excel, etc) inside google apps – as your team grows it will make collaboration easy.
  • google drive (similar to dropbox), making filesharing easy.

4.  icontact.  To connect with your customers you should be using email regularly.  I use icontact.

5.  Facebook / twitter.  Everyone tends to start with these.  Social media is good.  Just make sure you have the rest as well.

You can hire a company to get everything set up.   There are lots out there.

With a setup like this you’ll be stable, have to spend a minimum of time on technology and can focus on building your business.

Update:  one of the nice things about this setup is all security is handled by other people.  So you don’t have to worry about things like this.