Without Their Permission – Alexis Ohanian
The Power of the individual and the open internet
The Open Internet
The open Internet has leveled the playing field. If you have a connection and a laptop, you can build your ideas exponentially and share your work with the world.
The open Internet is not a magic wand, but as a technology, it has the potential to do tremendous things – to allow awesome people to reach their full potential.
The Digital Revolution
We must all significantly up our game as a result of the digital revolution. We are compelled to acquire abilities outside of our comfort zones. It forces us to cease making excuses for our high expectations and standards. And it pushes us to work more, stop making excuses, and start lessening how awful the world is.
The free Internet is, after all, a gift and a golden opportunity.
The Engineer’s Disease: Starting Backwards
Most people who start a business (and engineers are especially prone to this, hence the term Engineer’s Disease) do it in the following order:
Build A Product You Think People Will Like
Ask “Who wants this?” as you walk out the door and wave it around.
When no one wants to purchase the amazing product they spent months creating, they become depressed. Instead, consider what Alexis and Noah advise you to do: Before creating anything to assist potential customers in solving their problems, speak with them to ascertain what issues they currently face.
Just Do It: Becoming A Solopreneur
Whether you’re a solopreneur or you lead a growing team, if you want to make the world suck less, you need a kickass support team. Sure, they need to be competent, driven, and somewhat entertaining (that’s a plus). But more importantly, they need to take pride in their work.
Even if you end up never starting something of your own, the skills you learn in development are highly sought after these days.
Get The Honey But Save the Bees!
A father and son duo from Australia invented a way to get honey from their beehives without having to open it and tranquilise the bees. Thanks to their simple system, the honey just flows out, literally on tap.
Not a pretty common problem – yet it managed to gather over $13 million on IndieGoGo, a crowdfunding platform.
Become The Maker: Learn The Language
The Language = Programming.
If you want to become The Maker, you might want to follow these steps:
- Don’t make any excuse: Learn coding.
- Empower yourself using the thousands of tools available online. It has never been easier to break free from the cycle of the 99 percent.
A Problem Close To You
Forget about billion-dollar markets or reaching 1 in 7 people on the planet, like Facebook (even they started with just college campuses).
Focus on a problem that’s personal, close to you, and unique to a small group of people, and you’ll do just fine.
The Power Of The Open Internet
We all carry ideas we are passionate about, voices that need to be heard, and projects that need to spread. And since we have access to the Internet, we have no excuse not to take action.
This can be incredibly empowering to some and absolutely frightening to others.
Why are some of us still waiting for permission in an online world that doesn’t require it?
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