Kyle Mathews :: Dreams With In

From Jack Ricchiuto:

1. Get to know the strengths and passions of people in your first and second circles.
2. Make your strengths and passions more known to your 1st two circles.
3. Discover who in your 1st two circles would benefit from introductions.
4. Make high quality introductions at the best levels possible.
5. Engage your 2nd circle to introduce you to people in your 3rd circle.
6. Look for new opportunities to learn with and from your first two circles.
7. Create new opportunities to collaborate with your 1st two circles.
8. Increase your asset, positional, and generative value in your networks.
9. Help other people increase their value in their networks.
10. Built trust and help others build trust through promise making and keeping.

From the Economist:

At some point in the decade after he moved from the farm in Nebraska where he grew up to the innovation hub that is the San Francisco Bay Area, Evan Williams accidentally stumbled upon three insights:

1. that genuinely new ideas are, well, accidentally stumbled upon rather than sought out
2. second, that new ideas are by definition hard to explain to others, because words can express only what is already known
3. and third, that good ideas seem obvious in retrospect.

Two reasons:

1. Open source software - Read how Guy Kawasaki created Truemor, a new web 2.0 company, on the cheap.
2. Outsourcing - Read how easily you can outsource in today's Wall Street Journal.

A website's goal is to convert as many visitors as possible

The number of conversions depend on two factors:

1. number of visitors
2. % of total visitors the website converts

SEO practitioners optimize web pages so the pages show up high in search engine rankings. This drives more traffic to the page which increases the number of conversions. How high a web page shows up in a search engine ranking page (SERP) is based on three factors:

1. Strength of the domain (measured by links, trust, age, and possibly some usage factors)
2. Internal and external links to the page
3. Keyword in the title tag

Other pages I found helpful to understand SEO:
If Your Page Ranks Well, You'd Better Be Messing With It
18 Questions Your CEO Forgot to Ask When Building Your Website
The Basics of Search Engine Optimization
How to Build a Keyword List
Google Ranking Factors - SEO Checklist
Beginner's Guide to Search Engine Optimization
Lots of links to other SEO resources
Before You Launch that Local Small Business Website -- SEO basics for small companies

I was reading a blog post earlier by Ross Mayfield. He was asked what were his best decision and worst mistake as an entrepreneur.

All his answers were good but I was especially struck by what he calls his biggest mistake:

Biggest Mistake -- Not taking bigger risks earlier

Maybe because in hindsight all risks are clear, but I always find myself regretting not taking bigger risks earlier. For example, open sourcing the Socialtext code was something we waited on until the company had strong footing. Partially because we thought there would be cannibalization, partially because we were understaffed to really engage with the community. But I believe if we bought this bullet earlier in the history of the company we would be reaping better rewards. As a planning exercise, now I always try to ask two questions: "How could we take more risk?" and "What risk can we take that creates the greatest amount of options?" I find there is always a way to do a little more, in particular by getting past instinct to control prevalent in so many entrepreneurs.

I was so struck because I'm in the middle of taking a big risk.

I am passionate about web development. I want to build web applications that enable people to connect, collaborate, and get more done in their lives. But at my current and soon to be past job, I'm not learning how to build these beautiful web applications.

So I decided to quit and employee myself. I decided that as no one is going to pay me to learn how to do web development, I'll just have to pay myself.

And now my mom, older sister, and I are going into business together. In a few months, we'll unveil Los-Detalles.com, the newest and greatest baby card announcement e-retailer. And in the months leading up the our launch, I will be learning web development.

Ross Mayfield learned it was a mistake to not take risks but that taking (calculated) risks opens up options where caution and control can never go. I'm trying to learn this same lesson. By taking this risk, the options I want to have will open to me.