Jessica Mah Meets World

The incredible secret to making money online

Posted on July 1st, 2008 by Jessica.
Categories: Business, Tech.

Everyone’s so concerned about looking for venture funding and coding up silly apps that they have no time to think about the underlying secret to making money online.

So you ask, what is this secret to making money online?

Heh… simple! Charge for your service! The video above tells you everything you need to know about becoming a bagillionaire on the internet. Good luck!

Lengthy and well-thought out articles shall resume shortly.

2 comments.

I’m the CEO of a stupid and meaningless company

Posted on June 18th, 2008 by Jessica.
Categories: Business, Tech, culture.

We complain about how nobody outside of the Bay Area understands the internet industry. We think that east coasters are dumb because they don’t understand why someone would create small web-app companies. But maybe we’re partially at fault… Most of us are making stupid and meaningless companies that claim everything and do nothing. Most of us think we have brilliant ideas, yet *normal people* would never consider using them. In fact, I’m one of them. I was once entrenched with what I thought to be brilliant business ideas, and my mom would bring me back to earth by telling me how arrogant and stupid I was to think the way I did. I’m beginning to appreciate her candid opinions.

Making it onto Techcrunch and presenting at the Demo conference may not offer as much business value as one expects. What it does is create reputation within our self enclosed industry — it helps with raising money and recruiting talent, but let me remind you that doing this is quite possible with companies that understand how to create actual products that do something meaningful. While I supposedly knew this all along, one of my PBwiki co-workers made this extremely clear to me. Recruiting business development and sales people from out of the software industry provides for a completely opposite perspective that brings the company back to its core focuses: making money and creating real value for customers. Unfortunately, many of us have lost sight of this. I’d say 9 out of 10 people who email me with their business ideas have what I consider to be the typical web 2.0 bubble mentality.

West Coast VS East Coast

People often talk about the differences between west coast and east coast people. West coasters are mainly about doing cool things and helping others. East coasters are all about making money. In my experience, this stigma has some merit. Do I agree that companies should be all about creating cool things? No. Do I agree that companies should be all about benefiting their bottom line? Of course not, although my New Yorker friends may disagree. But I think the more consistently successful entrepreneurs understand the importance of keeping a balance between these two different perspectives.

My friend Alex and I originally wanted to work on a startup dedicated to being the “eBay of services.” It would create jobs, prevent scamming, and help a whole bunch of people. We loved it! Then somehow we get entrenched with the concept of Facebook Apps. Lots and lots of stupid facebook apps that don’t actually help the world, but provide for quick and easy cashflow. From a macroeconomic standpoint, does this not hurt the economy and the greater world? Incredibly talented people are dedicating their time towards creating internet products that don’t service anyone. This is precisely where Alex and I went wrong as “entrepreneurs.” Are they fun projects? Yes. Do they make for good businesses? Also yes, but very few of them will be movers and shakers in the world around us. Just as few of them will be remembered as companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Getting written up by Techcrunch or Valleywag != Success

Unfortunately, getting written up by popular tech blogs should not be constituted as success. I’ve heard stories of people begging our friend Michael Arrington to write a Techcrunch post about their company. It’s as if the success of a company is heavily dependent on them being promoted by a single blog. My take? These people aren’t wrong to think that way, but if anything, they should have more faith in the abilities of their own product. They need to think outside of this mind-controlling web 2.0 bull**** and make something that real people will use. If their product was meant to succeed, getting written up by major tech blogs probably won’t drive them as many paying customers as they might have thought.

Which brings me to another point — being slammed on a tech blog or being criticized on twitter isn’t as bad as you may think. Sure, it sucks to have someone tell you that your company blows and that your product is worthless, but focusing on these things does nothing but blur your sense of reality. As it applies to PBwiki, most of our paying customers don’t actually read blog posts or understand twitter. As this applies to companies like Facebook, people will still use your product even if tech blogs smash you for adding features that users don’t approve of.

The Bottom Line

If you have the stereotypical east coast mentality, take a chill pill and learn how to place customers before profits. If you have the stereotypical west coast mentality, learn how to make something that’s meaningful enough to make money. I’m not going to debate about whether or not we’re in a bubble, but there’s no denying that the vast majority of internet companies we hear about are either stupid or meaningless. Some of you are giving me flack for doing nothing more than stating the obvious — but if it’s so obvious, why are you still making stupid companies? Beats me.

11 comments.

Valley Girl with Jesse Draper

Posted on June 12th, 2008 by Jessica.
Categories: Growing Up, Jessica's Life.

One of my trusty friends linked me to a valleywag post about Jesse Draper — daughter of venture capitalist Tim Draper. Looks like she’s doing a show called “Valley Girl.” When I took a look at the trailer, many things went through my mind: Will it be like all of those other stupid web 2.0 shows without a point? Is this girl taking advantage of her daddy’s connections? Is she smart or is she stupid? And after thinking about it for a solid 5 minutes, I’ve come up with the following:

She’s Tim Draper’s Daughter. So what?

Sure, her dad is Tim Draper. Sure, he’s smart, rich, and well connected. Jesse Draper’s show definitely takes advantage of all of his genius, but if you were in her shoes, wouldn’t you? For all we know, the show was completely Tim’s idea. But why does this matter? She’s a talented actress and she wants to launch what will probably be a unique and entertaining show. Before we judge, maybe this show will make the world a better place. Who knows?!

How not to suck

Jesse, please don’t make girls in the valley look like dumb whores! You seem to recognize the issue of rich trust fund babies down in LA getting famous from doing meaningless crap. I presume that you won’t do the same?

The stupid crap that she has to deal with

How about we take another perspective. Because she’s Tim Draper’s daughter, she probably gets a lot of stupid crap from random people who assume that she’ll be Paris Hilton #2. Not only that, but people probably make friendly with her because of her money or connections in the valley. Sounds like a friendship nightmare if you ask me.

Give the girl a break. No matter what she did, she’d be critiqued because of her family background. I say we all reserve judgement before this show goes public. And for your entertainment, here’s the trailer:

2 comments.

When the architecture department is housed in the ugliest building on campus, something’s gone wrong.

Posted on June 12th, 2008 by Jessica.
Categories: Jessica's Life.

When I heard that Berkeley’s architecture department was housed in agreeably the ugliest building on campus, I just about cried from laughter. If anything, this makes Berkeley look like an institution that endorses stupid irony. Another example: All new students at Berkeley are forced to go through an orientation website which doesn’t even function, yet Berkeley supposedly offers a top notch CS education. Is that not weird?

How about an unnamed communications college on the east coast that doesn’t understand the concept of communicating with people? It’s ranked among the top 10 best communication schools in America, yet they don’t understand the basics: What school sends undergraduate students information about jobs with heavy requirements? What school spams its undergrads with these emails and doesn’t even have an unsubscribe link? Sounds like irony to me.

So what does this mean? It’s simple: do what you preach! While this irony is much more prevalent in bureaucratic educational institutions, it wouldn’t look good if a company couldn’t eat its own dog food. I’ve heard of plenty of web 1.0 startups selling services so stupid that the founders couldn’t even find a use for them. Matter of fact, I’m a perfect representative of this irony. I talk about entrepreneurship, yet I’m working for a company. Doh!

1 comment.

Escaping the spotlight

Posted on June 8th, 2008 by Jessica.
Categories: Jessica's Life.

I’ve concluded that none of you will ever see me on the front page of Business Week, Forbes, or any big publication worth mentioning. For the past few months, I’ve kept myself out of the spotlight and I’m very much enjoying it! Why, you ask?

There’s a lot of shock in having too much exposure at a young age. Sure, it can be fun to speak at random conferences in Amsterdam, but after a while, it becomes too much. By no means am I burnt out — I’m simply more self aware. I came to realize that people treat you differently when you’re in the spotlight. They see you in ways that you and your close friends would never think of. While it’s nice being recognized in the tech community, it’s equally as nice and liberating not to be.

I chose my summer internship with PBwiki for many reasons. Compared to the other companies I was considering, PBwiki is the company with the least amount of visibility. What you see is what you get. PBwiki keeps itself under the radar and gets stuff done, and that’s precisely the type of company I belong at.

So if you’ve been wondering what happened to Jessica Mah, she’s just taking a vacation. A nice, long, vacation from any exposure to this thing called attention.

3 comments.

You’re good at everything, but an expert at nothing. What to do?

Posted on June 4th, 2008 by Jessica.
Categories: Growing Up, Jessica's Life, Random Tips, School, conversations/interviews.

Last night, I learned the amazing and the obvious. I’m good at a lot of things, but I haven’t exactly *mastered* anything. I know few people who have, because it’s incredibly difficult to do so. Leading a busy life doesn’t exactly help this. One of my entrepreneur friends suggested that the best way to get good at something is to throw it into your busy schedule and do it until you’re amazing at it. If you want to get good at writing, dedicate half an hour a day to writing something. If you want to get good at tennis, play tennis X times a week. Find someone to report to — make sure that they’ll keep an eye on you until you’re excellent at whatever you’re trying to do. Why do you think personal trainers make so much money? Not because you couldn’t learn how to weight train on your own, but because it provides someone for you to report to. They keep an eye on you and make sure that you accomplish your goals. People with incredible self disciple can do without having someone to report to. Unfortunately, even the most ambitious and motivated people I know have trouble doing this.

Many business people are impatient by nature. They want to get stuff done and see immediate results. Yet again, who doesn’t want that? The problem lies in the fact that we want to be good at everything, yet its impossible to do so unless we focus on things one by one. However, I don’t think it’s impossible to be expert at something yet good at everything else. Such is the beauty of a liberal arts education: for the first two years, you take a huge variety of courses and get *good* at many different things. For the last two years of college, you specialize. You become expert at something you’re only good at. If anything, being good at many different things may help an individual find what s/he is best able to become an expert at.

Many of you still ask why I’m doing “grunt work for one of the bagillion web startups.” Firstly, I’m happy with what I’m doing. Secondly, I’m learning things that I wouldn’t have been able to learn by self educating myself. I think that with the aspirations that I have in life, it’s important to be good at everything while finding one thing to be an expert at, and unfortunately, I haven’t yet found that one thing. I don’t know what it’ll be, and doing what many of you call “grunt-work” is actually helping me get closer to achieving my goals. It’s good work, it’s serious work, and it’s work that I’m learning to become good at, and possibly even an expert at.

The founder of PBwiki.com, David Weekly, told me that it’s less important to find someone who’s an expert in a special area of expertise, and more important to find someone who’s an expert at problem solving skills as it applies to working in a company. A good team member is fast to adapt to new environments — this means adapting to company culture, understanding how to work within the company, as well as learning what needs to be learned for the job role. Over the past two years, I’ve forgotten the mathematical formulas I learned in calculus and I can no longer recall vocab words from my biology class. However, in the process of learning those facts, I’ve become incredibly good (but not yet an expert) at problem solving and at how to learn. If you had to choose something to be an expert at, many would agree that learning how to learn would be the most useful thing to become an expert at.

3 comments.

Thoughts on entrepreneurship and my first week of working for “the man”

Posted on May 31st, 2008 by Jessica.
Categories: Company Review, Jessica's Life, culture.

I just had my first week as an intern at PBwiki.com! Firstly, if you asked me a year ago, I would have told you that working for “the man” was something I wouldn’t consider. However, I’ve since changed my mind. I’ve been at PBWiki for only one week and I can honestly see myself working for this company, Does this make me the average pathetic soul who isn’t cool enough to start a company? Of course not. I still plan on working on something of my own in the near future, but I felt that an internship would be great for many reasons. I want to have a fun summer before I go back to college in late August. I need more working experience before I jump into entrepreneurial ventures, and I want to be working with amazing people. All of this is provided for me at PBwiki, and I’m quite happy that I made the choice that I did.

There’s a common misconception that all internships involve sorting mail and buying coffee for the real employees, but I’ve found that not all companies do that. It’s in the company’s best interest to make you happy and to suck out all the talent you can possibly offer the company. If you’re half smart, sorting the mail would not be putting you to good use. If anything, people who complain about having to sort mail as part of their internship didn’t look hard enough in their job search.

Since starting my internship at PBwiki, I’ve thought a lot about company culture, and how important it is to both employee productivity and to all around employee happiness. On my first visit to the company, I asked many employees what they thought about the company culture. All of them gave it two thumbs up: everybody is helpful, friendly, giggly, and fun! It’s the kind of place that makes you wish it was a work day, everyday! In another blog post, I’ll go further in depth about company culture and how incredibly important it is to the company.

Again, this does not mean that I forever plan on working for a company. I think it’s smart to keep my mind open to all options that exist. My mom is an amazing entrepreneur and always reminds me how working for a few companies will better prepare me to run my own. I need to be patient and have experience working in many different departments. When the time is right, I’ll be best prepared to start my own.

6 comments.

Superficial Silicon Valley Networking

Posted on May 26th, 2008 by Jessica.
Categories: Growing Up, Jessica's Life, Networking.

“Nice to meet you! My name’s Jessica Mah and I have thirty seconds to determine whether or not you’re a person worth knowing. If I don’t like you, I’ll promptly ask for your business card and find someone else to meet.”

Unfortunately, the above quote defines how I see networking in Silicon Valley. Networking involves making superficial relationships, where you determine what the other person does, and if they’re smart/connected/wealthy enough for you to want to befriend them. All the incredible people in the valley don’t network because they realize that it’s likely that people will just suck up to them. Instead of doing typical silicon valley networking, I prefer making true relationships while ignoring the superficial tendencies of doing business.

I’ve found that my most helpful connections are people who I met through non-superficial means. I would befriend people because I enjoyed their company and intellectual curiosity. I typically surround myself with people who are ambitious people who either want to create amazing companies or do good for the world. Basically, people who I’d without hesitation recommend for a TED membership. And more often than not, they end up doing amazing things. Because they’re genuine relationships, they’re more likely to help me out with social support, business advice, or introductions to other influential people.

I see good networking as involving a lot of serendipity. You meet people who you doubt will be helpful to you in any way, but they often end up being much more influential than you originally think. Genuine friendships help you out in many ways that you’d never predict. Whenever I meet someone new, I fit them into a social profile to see how similar they are to me. And if they fit into the criteria, they’re bound to be an amazing connection in *some* way that I may not be able to predict. This social profile of mine involves ambition, intellectual curiosity, interestingness, and kindness. I’d have to write another blog post to describe this criteria in further depth.

The bottom line: Networking can only do so much for you. Try to make genuine friendships and don’t expect them to help you out in amazing ways. Making friendly with people who are hot shit wont get you far if they know that you’re using them. When *networking*, invest your time in befriending people who you find interesting and ambitious, regardless of their net worth.

3 comments.

Underestimating the power of brands

Posted on May 26th, 2008 by Jessica.
Categories: Branding.

Over the past week or so, I’ve come to believe that maybe I underestimated the power of a brand. I recently wrote about the power and deception of a brand, and how no decision should be based on the power of a particular brand. However, I find myself to be a hypocrite of my own advice! In regards to a recent post I made about U.C. Berkeley VS Claremont McKenna, brand does matter. Both are incredible schools in their own regards, and I love the academic environments of both schools almost equally so. However, there are plenty of benefits of going to a name brand school that I too quickly overlooked.

As I mentioned before, people make snap judgments based on brand names. If you drive a Toyota Prius, it quickly tells a lot about who you are. Same with if I say that I go to Berkeley.

This is a debatable subject that I’m still pondering over. It just needs to be made known that brand names hold more importance than I originally gave them credit for having.

5 comments.

The most successful entrepreneurs have trouble managing their time

Posted on May 22nd, 2008 by Jessica.
Categories: Leadership, Living, Random Tips.

Many people have asked me how I manage my time. I’ve asked many of my busy friends how they manage theirs. The answer? We don’t. We lead busy lives and have to sacrifice a lot in the process. The basic low-down:

Being super-selective in opportunities. Learn how to say NO

I consider my mom to be one of these successful entrepreneurs. She works her butt off and tries to balance that with her personal life, but she also has to give up many opportunities in the process. As a well-respected fashion designer, way too many people ask her for her time and help on other projects. QVC gives her too many orders for her to handle. Random individuals want to work with her on individual fashion lines. Together, they add up to millions of more dollars that she could make, but she ignores them. She tells them “no, I’m too busy.” She knows how to say no, and so does any successful entrepreneur.

Same applies not only to business opportunities, but also to relationships. You meet hundreds of people in your business life, yet you need to choose who’s going to be your friend and who’s going to remain strictly as a business relationship. The busy entrepreneur doesn’t try to become best friends with everyone. S/he keeps a low profile with only a few select individuals as genuine friends. If a busy entrepreneur doesn’t want to be your friend, don’t take it personal. Interpret this as them doing “effective time management.”

Being super-selective about opportunities involves doing not only what you love, but also what yields the greatest utility. (yay ethics class!) I’ve been invited to several speaking engagements, but I only chose the Next Web Conference in Amsterdam for two reasons: 1) It’s in Amsterdam and it’s during spring break! 2) Audience of 500+ people > Audience of 200 people.

Next on the roster…

I’m so busy that I allocate hang-out time with my parents on a calendar

It’s sad, but I have so much stuff to do that my parents get scheduled into my busy calendar. I allocate time for them just as I would to anyone else. If someone wants to hang out with you, schedule them in the holy calendar that syncs with your iPhone! I often give my meetings 45 minutes each, factoring in travel time between appointments, and scheduling them back to back when possible. Saturday is the official vacation day, where nothing shall be considered an appointment.

… which brings me to my next point. BUSY ENTREPRENEURS SHOULD TAKE VACATION DAYS! My friend Siqi is a great entrepreneur, but he used to work 18 hour days, 7 days a week. No designated vacation days. What kind of life is that?! Siqi, I know that you’re a busy guy, but come on — even one vacation day a week is preferable to none.

In Summary…

Honestly, I can’t give you a good answer as to how to manage your schedule. Good entrepreneurs learn how to prioritize opportunities, the importance of saying NO to the vast majority of opportunities, and to schedule everything if need be.

If you’re one of these so-called entrepreneurs, learning time management is of utmost importance! Good luck!

2 comments.