MindValley Blog

Jules, the giant stuffed tiger is usually spotted on the couch, near the water supply, or doing customer support.

However, thanks to Facebook, I spotted pictured of him crowdsurfing at a private event at a swanky club called Heritage Mansion.

Trusted sources told me that he was crowdsurfing to a remix of a popular song by “The Killers”.

On Monday, when I asked him about it, he said..

“It wasn’t me.”

He told me to go away, as he was busy on an important new MindValley project.

In this picture it seems, a MindValley shirt is under the jacket. Hmm…

I told him it’s okay, MindValley people crowdsurf all the time. Besides, it’s a great time to celebrate, we just got awarded the World’s Most Democratic Workplace.

He still insists he was reading books on a Friday night… I guess I will just have to believe him.

If you have extra evidence to prove otherwise, please leave a comment.

MindValley was just recognized by WorldBlu as one of the Most Democratic Workplaces of 2008!

First of all, this award would not have been possible without any of you at MindValley and I wanted to thank all of you for having taken MindValley this far.  Special thanks go out to Jiangti, KhaiLee, Janne, Wu Han, and Kenneth, who have been a huge inspiration and have contributed a tremendous amount to take MindValley to the next level in terms of leadership, cooperation, and developing a culture that focuses on rapid innovation, constant learning, and of course for developing a far more democratic workplace.

So, what makes MindValley democratic?

Funny that you ask because we are actually working on a book on what makes MindValley tick.  I want to thank KhaiLee for helping us to crystallize our ideas and leading this initiative.  If I had to pick two words, I would say that what makes us tick is

Agile Entrepreneurship

Go grab your copy now and look inside the MindValley machine.

http://www.agileentrepreneurship.com

I was asked this question yesterday in a team meeting where I shared three critical factors of entrepreneurial success that Brian Tracy shared with me at a seminar. 

His answer to why most entrepreneurs fail was: They give up

It is as simple as that.  The successful ones just NEVER stop!  They have a pigheaded determination to achieve the goal they set out to achieve. 

Brian Tracy shared a really powerful analogy with everyone at Jay Abraham’s seminar.  What he said is that entrepreneurship is similar to flying.

a) You need a destination - where do you want to go?
b) You need to take off - just get started and take action!
c) You constantly need to adjust course

Did you know that a plan is always off course?  99% of the time it is making constant adjustments to ensure that it gets to the desired destination. 

Entrepreneurship is not that different.  The problem is that that most people don’t have the stomach for the constant ups and downs.  It is an emotional roller-coaster!

This is how most entrepreneurs view things:

In order to get from A to B, most entrepreneurs will say that they experience a constant series of ups and downs. 

It is a never ending struggle and somewhere along the way most entrepreneurs drop out of the race.  They simply give up, pack up, and go home.

However, the successful ones just keep on going.  What helps them along the way? They view the world differently.

Here is how successful entrepreneurs view things:

Successful entrepreneurs think of climbing a new mountain and to climb a mountain you hardly ever choose a straight path. 

Instead, you have to feel out the terrain and constantly make little adjustments.  One second you are moving towards the left and the next you make a small adjustment and continue towards the right.  But you are constantly moving forward, learning, and getting closer to the top. 

So, the “ups and downs” have become course corrections.  There are no “downs” in the eyes of successful entrepreneurs.  These are simply learning opportunities on an exciting journey towards the top.

I received an email today, random stuff really. But just as if the universe wanted to tell me something, the lesson I learned in the past three weeks hit me hard. And here I use the main ideas from the email and elaborate them a bit further…

You might already have heard about the fact that extraordinary results come from doing something different… from challenging the status quo and shaking things up. So for quite a while now I have been trying to figure out what that really means… what does get me on a path to innovation, extraordinary progress and extreme success? Here are five things that I stumpled upon over and over again

1) Uniqueness

The ultra successful companies and people are aware of their difference. In fact they even use it to their full advantage. As long as I tried to please most people it did not only hurt myself, it also made me look beige. I am different - so what?! Being afraid that by being polar will alienate your friends, family or market is like killing your most valuable sales point. Only if you are true to yourself you start attracting the most specific group of people around you. The kind of people that make each other feel comfortable and focus their power on the facts and energy that can move mountains.

I don’t want a one size fits all, “canned” solution. I don’t want to be surrounded by people who want that. “Meike, you are annoying sometimes”, someone told me. “I know.” I answered. Maybe this is also because I am never to afraid to

2) Ask Better Questions

Many people think that super successful people have all the answers. Maybe - but they didn’t get them from just divine intervention or from guessing. They get the answers from asking better questions.

Finding what to do takes asking hard questions to yourself, your friends, your co-workers, boss, peers and family. I read that average people tend to shy away from asking the tough questions because they are afraid of the answers they might get. I was compared to not going to the doctor because being nervous about what he might find out. Most successful people face new challenges head-on, ask the tough questions and tackle them regardless of the answers. If that makes me annoying - that’s good…

3) Take Risk

Risk tolerance is a success trait that is hard to ignore. You know about the saying: “no risk - no fun”. That makes so much sense… Who takes great risk can loose a lot… can also win a lot. Now don’t go overboard with risk. Hedge your bets with high quality information and research. Put the work and time necessary to plan for and research the viability of a risky decision. This way, risk becomes calculated and you won’t loose it all…

And in case you don’t win (simply because life isn’t a wishing list) you might understand that with every failure comes a learning experience. Make it a lesson leaned experience and gain extremely valuable information from you mistakes and failures. Do so by analyzing the situations and extract as many lessons as possible from the disaster. Then synthesize this information and create better plans for going forward. The super successful people don’t wallow in the misery of their failures and stick their head in the sand to hide. They pick themselves back up and move ahead again. This time armed with new information.

4) Fight

… as if you were right. But listen as if you were wrong. Most average people try to avoid confrontation at all costs. They hate to cause trouble, make a scene or have to get in someone’s face. This happens even to the point of missing out on something they are entitled to, paid for or are owed just so they don’t have to confront the situation. They’re happier practicing avoidance than strength. The overachievers on the other hand don’t follow that thinking. They make it a point to engage in battle to get what they want, deserve or are passionate about.

The successful people are not afraid to hurt some feelings and be open, honest and blunt about what they think, want or need from anyone. They are willing to fight for what they believe in, their passion and their ideas. This is a leadership quality that allows them to achieve more, accomplish more and have others working for them and with them to accomplish everything they need to give achieve high degree of success and happiness in life.

Truth been told: that all reads very easy but is hard to actually turn into action. It is true though. Think about it. A few weeks ago Khailee sent me an article about practicing brutally honesty. And I can tell you: it feels darn good…

5) Leverage Time

We all have the same amount of time in a day. Some people just do more with it than others. I am not talking about the g-t-d tricks or force of being extra efficient 24/7. I believe that just doesn’t feel natural to everybody. The “Trumps” of the world know the value of time and how to leverage it to get more accomplished. The average person thinks about time as a renewable resource not a precious raw material to

success.

So the next time, why don’t you leverage time and stop trading it for dollars? Stop buying into a tit for tat mentality when it comes to the exchanging of time for money. Instead create systems that you build one time that work for you for eternity. Do it like the super successful and seek out and get involved with opportunities that are scaleable and deliver returns for long periods of time. Action and ideas are the currency of the rich.

So the next time everybody jumps off the bridge… at least think twice before you jump, too.

As MindValley grows in new people and new ventures - how can we maximize happiness and profit?

Let’s tap the brain of a guy who funded 80 startups with a total of about 200 founders, with a pretty good hit rate (conception to acquisition / profitability).

Yes, it’s Paul Graham. One of my favorite brains to tap.

Read his essay "You weren’t meant to have a boss" as he talks about

• Optimal group size for work
• The way humans naturally work in groups
• Struggles in designing a structure to avoid becoming a "big company"
• Lions hunting in the wild

In the article, he ponders the same problems we are trying to solve….

"A large organization could only avoid slowing down if they avoided tree structure. And since human nature limits the size of group that can work together, the only way I can imagine  for larger groups to avoid tree structure would be to have no structure: to have each group actually be independent, and to work together the way components of a market economy do.

That might be worth exploring. I suspect there are already some highly partitionable businesses that lean this way. But I don’t know any technology companies that have done it." ~ Paul Graham, from "You weren’t meant to have a boss"

Personally, I want to solve this problem. Not theoretically, but I want it to work in action. It’s a great problem to solve, as the solution (perhaps lessons other organizations and startups can use) will unlock a world of talent, innovation, and happiness at work.

Solving this might take some fancy experiments with organizational structure, radical thinking, consistent hard work, a bit of patience, and a group of people who dare… which is why I’m grateful to solve this with MindValley.

We’re doing some crazy stuff right now, but I’ll only talk about it when we have RESULTS. Till then, do share your workplace experiments and thoughts, if any.

I was digging through old photos when I chanced upon this unflattering picture of me.

That’s me in early 2006, a week or two after I joined MindValley.

Here are some things you NEED to know about that picture

• It was taken in a super old and moldy office we used to camp in, when MindValley first arrived in Malaysia, all those years ago.
• The old second hand couch in the picture was soon re-upholstered (is that the word?) with new funky cloth. It has since found a new home the "sexy area" of our current office.
• The photo does not accurately represent the actual width of my thighs.

When I think about it… two years is a LONG time (especially in internet time). To my surprise, I still feel "fresh" - so many new skills to master, so much room to grow, and new adventures ahead.

It seems MindValley speeds up with age.

In the past few weeks alone, we’ve picked up so much pace, I’m still trying to hang on for dear life. I’m not exaggerating. It’s still too early to talk about it, but let’s just say we’ve been awfully quiet on the blog recently for very good reasons…

I think Mike or Vishen will blog about it soon enough.

For now, it’s 1am and I’m dreaming about what the following months will be like. It’s as though all the different pieces I’ve been working over the past two years is coming together… and it feels like a brand new day…

I am currently studying “Get Altitude” and one of the key lessons that Eban emphasized was:

1) STOP Multi-tasking 

I could not agree more.  This is a disease!  For whatever reason people are obsessed with multi-tasking (think email, IM, Skype, Twitter, etc.) and accept constant interruption. Being a great multi-tasker is not something to be proud of! 

You must be able to get into FLOW at which point your productivity and also creativity and enjoyment of what you are doing reach a max.  Getting into FLOW while multi-tasking is impossible.  So, always try to chunk your time.  Spend 1-2 hours on a task, then take a break but whatever you do, try to stop multi-tasking. 

It’s always good to take a step back once in a while and be reminded of what is important.  Eban also stresses the importance of having intense experiences both at and outside of work.  If you don’t, then you just get tired and burn yourself out. 

Thanks Kamal for putting these up. And organizing these fabulous meetups! You’re a legend in the Kuala Lumpur web2.0 scene.

OK so here it is.

A video of Talat, our chief mathematician, presenting “The Impact of Higher Mathematics on The World Wide Web”.

Powerful nuggets in the above video (or at least for me)…

• Mathematics is a tool to see beyond intuition.
• People are hardwired to look for certainty, not probability.

And if you get to minute 12 onwards, it will get pretty hilarious. Talat takes us into the n th dimension. Or maybe it’s just my sense of humor, I don’t know. You can here me laughing in the background of the video.

And then there is me, telling the story… “How Ruby on Rails made my teenage WET dreams come true”.

Apart from Talat and myself, former MindValley uber geek Aslak spoke. As well as and ex-Googler turned investor Colin Wong.

From what supposed to be a Ruby on Rails meet up… it has sorta blossomed into a full on web2.0 and innovation gathering, sponsored by MDeC. How many people turned up? 50!

Yeah it’s not huge, but I’d like to think, it’s the beginning of a very exciting journey :)

Meike, who is an AIESEC trainee that just joined MindValley a few months ago, created a great video of her experience at MindValley so far that I wanted to share with you. 

Meike initially created the video to share her experience with other AIESEC members in Germany but I thought some of you might also like to take a peek at what work has been like for her at MindValley. 

Thank you Meike for creating this video.  It’s great having you part of the team!   You rock!

I came across this You Tube video today about another web 2.0 bubble that was simply too good not to share.  It is very telling about the mood in Silicon Valley these days.  Here in KL it’s business as usual.