New Blogpost: The First 90 Days of an Entrepreneur http://bit.ly/APBRf

Watching video interview with @jamievaron from TwitterShouldHireMe.com http://bit.ly/cOdJV

New Blogpost: 4 Reasons why the New Facebook will NOT replace Twitter http://bit.ly/ELGBq

Facebook is Down

Facebook is Down.

The Fail Whale is paying a visit to Facebook: http://ping.fm/CBITo

Cute Cat: http://ping.fm/f3Bru

Learned quite a lot from the founder of Brazen Careerist http://ping.fm/yq6rH

Blogpost: Bilderberger

Blogpost talking about someone raising a conspiracy by Obama....

Check out the Bilderberger post and let me know what you think!

New Blogpost: Bilderberger Junk - conspiracy by Obama? http://bit.ly/3cJmLD

Just realized my name is on the 2nd page of Google when you search for "Chou". Good enough for me to sleep on :)

Woman creates myhusbandneedsajob.com

A woman helps her husband find a job by creating the site myhusbandneedsajob.com

To see the actual blogpost, go to http://yukaichou.com
Or Click Here

New Blogpost: Woman helps her husband find a job by creating myhusbandneedsajob.com http://bit.ly/6WPmI

The912Project.com: Glenn Beck?s 9 Principles and 12 Values

(To see the original post with a video and other blogs by me, check out http://Yukaichou.com
Yu-kai's Power Blog )

Craze about the 912 Project touching the people's heart

Today, I saw that the 912 Project by Glenn Beck was disproportionally popular on the internet. It has been getting a lot of attention on Google Trends and Twitter. I decided to investigate it a little bit and wanted to share what I found.

After some investigation, I realized the actual website the912project.com was down due to the high traffic. So many people were enthusiastic about the project, it actually crashed the Fox servers 5 times! Quite impressive. Now this is something that I really want to find out.

What is The 912 Project?

After a good amount of research (actually quite difficult), I found the best summary about the 912 Project on Mahalo:

"Project 912 is the brain child of conservative talk show host and radio personality Glenn Beck. According to the website, the origin of the title is in remembrance of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. The program was revealed on becks Special You Are Not ALone on March 13, 2009. Beck encouraged viewers to send in photographs of themselves, and the site created an art piece of a man holding a flag with the script "We the People" printed on the bottom."

The idea of Project 912 is that since right now the world is in chaos, people need to go back to their true essence. This essence can be summed up as the 9 Principles and 12 Values. A lot of the 9 Principles and 12 Values were taken out of religious text, Founding Father writings, and some common sense.

Obviously this is a movement more from the conservative side of the population, but I feel many of the Principles resonate with anyone who is unfirm about life because of all the uncontrollable circumstances and be able to create that solid core to live by again. The resonance is shown from the massive amount of people who sent their pictures to be part of the project, which actually is quite out of the way.

The 9 Principles of Project 912

According to project912.com, people need to send an email with their pictures attached to wesurroundthem@foxnews.com if they believe 7 or more of the following:

1. America is good place, not perfect, but good.

2. I believe in God and He is the center of my life.

3. I must try to be a better, more honest person than I was yesterday.

4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority.

5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.

6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and not a guarantee of equal results.

7. I work hard for what I have. I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.

8. It is not un-American for me to disagree or share my personal opinion.

9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them. They answer to me.

The 12 Values of Project 912

According to project912.com, these are the 12 Values that Americans have kept for a couple centuries but has been lost in recent decades:

• Honesty
• Reverence
• Hope
• Thrift
• Humility
• Charity
• Sincerity
• Moderation
• Hard work
• Courage
• Personal responsibility
• Friendship

Glen believes that if everyone upholds these 9 Principles and 12 Values, we can survive through any crisis. What do you guys think? Would you send a picture to him because of the project?

New Blogpost- The912Project.com: Glenn Beck’s 9 Principles and 12 Values http://bit.ly/8P2kq

I will NOT SHAVE until I lose 12 lbs. http://ping.fm/Ls57D

Good night everyone! Tomorrow will be even MORE extraordinary than today! :D

Superman is better than Spiderman song: http://ping.fm/ostFi

New Blogpost: Thank You Reader Love http://bit.ly/dMSw7

OK...props on being the most random/dorky product I have seen. Prevents your banana from bruising: http://bananasaver.com/

New Blogpost: How to actually save the economy with a $787 Billion Stimulus Package http://ow.ly/nLP

haven't lost a single game of chess on the iphone app "chess with friends" yet. If you are good my # is 3236338323. Battle till death!

Wow! My good buddy Jun got onto the front page of Lalawag.com!! http://ping.fm/64mrH

New Blogpost: Yu-kai's collection and rating of Twitter apps and tools http://bit.ly/iM27j

Long night sleep. Recovered from illness. Ready to do good work again! :)

New Blogpost: How I started my Career as an Entrepreneur Freshman Year in College http://bit.ly/rPnp

Drop For Me finally launched! Check it out and get free lists of quality dropshippers/suppliers http://dropforme.com

New Blogpost: Want a real life? Be an Entrepreneur http://bit.ly/Ww9i

For those interested in starting an e-business, http://dropforme.com provides an awesome list of dropshippers and suppliers!

New Blogpost - Red Flags and Light Bulbs: the Art of Brainstorming http://bit.ly/10le5

Yay, just converted a few more Social Media and SEO clients! :D

New Blogpost: How to impress everyone by just driving around http://ping.fm/ofmTQ

RT: @caseywright Worst TV ad placement ever. http://ping.fm/Yy0OZ - watch through to very end

Pretty cool: my VC Presentation on Viralogy for Cinacon 09 is featured on the front page of http://slideshare.net

Won Best Startup Presentation at the Cinacon 2009 - Twice!

OK, the second one was second place, but I'm still quite ecstatic about this surprising award. Here's the story: (skim as you need)

How I got into this

So I happened to become good friends with the President of this entrepreneurship organization called CINA in the Bay Area. CINA was hosting their annual conference (The Cinacon), where a bunch of entrepreneurs set up booths and showcase their companies and pitch to VCs. I first got the newsletter from CINA regarding the event, but since I have a busy schedule and it costs money to join (yea, we're leanest of the leanest right now), I did not respond to it. Weeks later, she called me and urged me to sign up and join. After two times of her calling just to encourage me to join, I OKed it.

The Set Up

The set up goes like this. All the startups will have their tables, where they can set up all their fancy equipment, brochures, booklets and little snacks to look cool like a company. There are then companies who are doing the "Showcase," which means they're at the farend wall, making a 10-min presentation. People can sit down and listen, or they can just wander around the booths and not care. Over a dozen of them are showcasing their companies. Finally, there is a session where entrepreneurs have close to 10 minute to present their companies to a group of 20-25 Venture Capitalists in a closed room.

My Preparation

Honestly, for the past few days I have been pretty busy. I have been doing a few projects and doing some consulting work, especially regarding a Twitter project with a client. I thought I would take the entire day before the Cinacon to create the perfect pitch. Unfortunately at the time, I happened to get into a huge fight with my girlfriend (who is the most wonderful girl in the world), extending from the day before. Some discouraging words from my co-founder earlier that day didn't help either. After some issues and handling some other work, it was already 5PM. Oh no! Time for meeting with this friend/client and discuss this project. It will probably last 1 hour, and I can get back to work.

The meeting was very productive and fulfilling, except when I was done, it was 9PM already. Gosh, I haven't started making my presentation yet, and I need to 1. turn in my slides by tonight, and 2. be there at the conference at 11AM the next day. At 9PM, I started working on my presentation, while talking to my girlfriend on the phone (a closure conversation that made both of us feel good and just want to talk longer with that after-surviving-the-storm feeling). At that time, I was trying to go along with the presentation guidelines that the organization gave me, which was 7 slides, just briefing over the necessary information. I thought it was a requirement and every company will use this "template" and felt I needed to conform.

However, after trying to put in the right information that wasn't interesting or engaging, I suddenly thought I should make my presentations in pictures and icons to make it fun (after all, FD is about being fun AND productive). Yea, my presentation might be different to everyone elses', AND I might go over the 12-page limit, but I'm an entrepreneur and I can be different. Its not like I can get laid off for this. Plus, its nice that I'm young, because people will just think I'm "of a different generation" and maybe rebellious, whereas if I were old, people would think I'm weird or eccentric. They might shake their heads at me, but I at least want to present something I can be proud of.

Wii Fit is awesome (and very FD)

So by this time I was still at my friend/client's house, and it was about 11PM. I suddenly felt extremely tired. I was sure that its because I was drained by my sadness from the fight with my girlfriend that afternoon. For some reason, being sad takes a lot of energy and exhausts you. At that time, I decided to play the Wii Fit game that my friend had, while talking to my girlfriend on the phone (gotta use that time efficiently, no?). The Wii Fit was quite kind and reminded me that it was late and sleeping too late would be bad for my health. I appreciated it, but I needed something casual to wake me up and reboost my energy. I played some balancing games, yoga, aerobics and what not. Btw, I got up to 361 spins with the hulahoop game (try to beat that). Even though I was exercising, by the time I was done, I no longer felt tired and was recharged again. The Wii Fit kindly reminded me it was late again and I should sleep. For me it was time for good work again! I worked up till 3:30AM in the morning, sent the file to CINA, and fell asleep at my friend's place.

Before the Event

The next morning I woke up at around 8AM. I got my stuff, and drove home. This is when I was thinking, "Hmmm....I don't have any company material or brochure I can show people. It would be weird if it was just me sitting there." When I got home, I quickly typed up some information about the company and Viralogy, pasted on some images that we have, and started printing over a few hundred copies while I took a shower. I also realized that I had not had the chance to practice through my presentation once, so I don't even know if it fits in the 10 minute time frame. I decided to practice while I am tabling it at the booth. There was actually some solo-drama here, but lets just say I left on time but got to the event an hour late.

At the Event

When I got there, I realized that everyone else had 5 monitors set up, fancy webcams and hardware, large billboards, and a few folks at each table. Boy, I'd look pretty bad. However, I remember my own lesson: "Confidence is everything minus one." As long as I sit there and presented myself as if we were a cool company (which is true), other people will look past the lack of set up and feel the same way. I put my printed documents in a stack on the table, and then put another stack of my business cards next to it. I then would just be using my laptop and doing other work until someone comes close and asks a question. Pretty ghetto.

The Show Case

When people started doing the showcase, I realized that no one else followed the exact guideline that was given to me. Whew, at least I'm not the odd ball. I also noticed that people who were presenting were like twice my age. Some of them have PhDs, and some of them have companies with good revenue already. I also realized that my presentation for both the casual showcase AND the formal VC presentation was last, which is about time peoples' brains get drained and start to drool. I figured I needed to do something for me to get a chance at anything.

When it was my time to present, I got up to the microphone (why is it called "micro"-phone again? It makes your voice louder), and started to yell, "HELLO EVERYONE! I'M YU-KAI CHOU FROM FUTURE DELIVERY, AND I'M HERE TO PRESENT YOU VIRALOGY.COM TODAY. I know everyone's pretty tired by now, so my goal is to energize all of you so you'll all be excited about an extraordinary evening after this." My first job was to just wake them up. I'm not sure if this was a great thing to do, but I won some awards so I must be doing something right. I must say I learned this from my co-founder and best friend Jun Loayza as he was filming his Future Delivery TV. He taught me the way of the yell.

The Official VC Presentation

Now it was time to do the official presentation to the two dozen VCs. They'll also have 2 minutes to grill me on questions. After 2 years of being in this high-tech field, I already know that VCs always ask pretty similar questions, so I wasn't particularly worried. I made the same presentation with the same intro (yes I yelled at the VCs. I actually interrupted one lady VC who was talking to another and forced her to stop just because my voice came in as a blast), and waited for their question.

They asked me, again, the usual bunch: revenue model, and sustainable advantage. To be honest, we have competitive advantages, but I'm not sure that we have clear-cut sustainable advantages. We target a niche that no one else is targeting (the bottom 95% of all bloggers - those who need the most help. Blog Hubs just focus on the top 5%), but someone else can target that niche too after us. We have some nice technology and layouts, but people can duplicate it too. The only thing that people can't steal, is the name Viralogy.com (which I think makes us sound legit), and the loyalty/reputation we have already built as the dominant personal blogger ranking site. However, the market is big enough that I think we'll be fine without destroying other companies (400 Million and growing market is already larger than the US population).

The tough thing to explain to them was our revenue model. It was complicated. Lets just say its kinda like eBay plus the reverse of Google Adsense. Confused? I don't blame you. I actually feel that the revenue model is our most innovative feature in our new product. I don't think anyone has done this before, but all the smartest people I explained it to said it was smart/ingenious. I know Guy Kawasaki said that VCs are ultra-scared of innovative revenue models. They like innovative technologies and products, but how they make money should be simple like selling dog food. However, I'll disagree a little (don't all entrepreneurs do that when the pundit disagrees with what they're doing?). Look at Google. When Google created Google Adsense (which is what made them truly successful), I'm sure people would feel that Adsense was a very complicated model. What? People first bid for a price per word, and then others search, and then the engine detects the keywords and display your ads if you are a high bidder, and they charge you for the click*bid you gave. Oh, and you can set what's the maximum amount of money you are willing to spend in that period. I think that was an innovative/complicated model during its time. Now try to explain that to the VCs in 30 seconds.

At the end of my pitch, I simply informed that the VCs that since we make some contracted income, we are sustainable and not looking for funding. However, we would consider $100,000 to fulfill our 2009 plans. I threw out a modest valuation of $2M, considering our company has a few live products, a TV show, and a good reputation in our field already.

The Gala Dinner

After the pitches, we had a REALLY good dinner. We listened to some incredibly successful and impactful VCs talk about the economy and how the money is still out there, but VCs are just concerned so they're just not rushing to invest. Amonst them are Scott Chou of Gabriel Venture Partners (for some mysterious reason I particularly like "Chou"s....), Vince Occhipinti of Woodside Fund, Wu-Fu Chen of Acorn Campus Ventures, Prashant Shah of Hummer Winblad, and Eghosa Omoigui, the Investment Director of Intel Capital. They talked about how Early Stage money has not decreased by that much based on the stats, but raising VC funds are hard to begin with and people just blame the economy when they don't get the funding.

Awards

So here comes the awards. They first started off with Official Presentation awards. I didn't expect to win anything (considering my preparedness), so I was just typing at my laptop and doing some work. Suddenly I heard them call out "Future Delivery." Gosh, it feels so good when you hear people use words/names that you invented as if it was legit and almost a matter of fact. I walked up stage and realized that it was first place for my VC official presentation. Wow, the 2 dozen VCs considered my presentation to be better than all the others. That was pretty sweet. I had 19 seconds to sum up what Viralogy does. Eghosa Omoigui of Intel Capital then said that he invested in the blog company Six Apart, so he is quite keen of this space. He wanted to talk to me more about how can I monetize on the long tail of the blogosphere. That's pretty awesome. As a prize, I got a golden boat model that says "The Hong Kong Science Park." Supposedly it has some historical value, and people around me mentioned it was worth over $1000. I guess whatever floats my boat.

When I got back to my seat, I was quite excited, so, uh hum, the first thing I wanted to do was to tweet this to my dear friends on Twitter. However, my Twitterfon wasn't working because I was pretty excited. For some reason, I generate some strange electricity current or something that will stop electronic devices from working when I'm more emotional...undiscovered super powers? While I was calming down and being frustrated for Twitterfon (which btw is the best free iPhone twitter app. Best paid one is Twinkie), I heard my company named being called out again. I heard the organization say "Hehe, I know the results. Its pretty surprising....Future Delivery!" Haha, what a surprise! I realized I got second place for the Show Case presentation that I did earlier. I guess the yelling DID work!

After the awards

So after winning two of the I think six awards in total, then comes the friendly people. Don't get me wrong, I have been networking and building relationships with all types of entrepreneurs and VCs before this, but this is totally different. Now people WANT to meet me before they decide if I'm a cool guy or not. Folks just appeared and asked if we could exchange business cards. When I walked up to the keynote speakers, they instantly talked to me in a welcoming way. It was a little hard not to think of myself as important when people are treating you that way, but made sure I had a grateful mentality and a new hope to work even harder in the future.

Something I learned

Getting 1st place is an interesting experience. I have not gotten that many 1st places in my life. I have been top before, or I have been "different"/unique before, but rarely 1st. That's almost by definition understandable. Its a good feel, but it could also build up into a very negative character growth. Being the one who is constantly moving and catching up with people when I grew up, I felt that the humility and tenacity is much better for character growth. Struggling, failing, and suffering and then getting 1st place is an awesome and fulfilling experience, but I think being 1st place continuously is not healthy for an individual. There I go again, always making something into a lesson...

Yea, I know a good blogpost is supposed to be like 700 words, but I just really wanted to share my experience with people. Its a very genuine attempted to connect with others and share my feelings and thoughts. Sorry for that. For those who read all of it, I am quite impressed by you. Truly appreciated. At least post a comment so you can get credit :)

Oh, and here's the boat:

Bank of America and Citigroup lost $10 Billion together this quarter :( http://ping.fm/5rDkj

I hate my life.

I hate fighting with people you love over stupid things that mean nothing to no one.

Hilarious: choose your own Apple CEO Adventure http://bit.ly/efJ1

Funny and wrong: Rated-R Balloon Animals Ad: http://is.gd/fTxu

Anyone close to the Diamond Bar area want to teach a lady how to use the computer for decent money? Email me.

is doing work at Dave Liu's place, learning how difficult Plurk is

Interesting: South Park Episode on If the Internet is Gone http://ping.fm/50pl5

New Blogpost: Yu-kai's Predictions for 2009 http://yukaichou.com

Career Centers in most Universities are crap.

After I got my first speeding ticket ever in my life because I was behind a speeding car (there goes my iPhone upgrade), I found myself in the perfect mood to write something I am angry about. Apparently a person has more guts when his head is hot. After thinking about what is grossly upsetting in society and has a large impact on peoples' lives, I was reminded about the incompetencies of many university Career Centers that my friends and I have experienced.

To start my story, I'll begin with the study my company Future Delivery, which help Gen-Ys connect to the careers they are passionate about, tried to do on Career Centers earlier last year. In hopes that Career Centers would work with us and use our free tools to help students more efficiently, we contacted over 50 top university career centers, asking them if we could do a study on how well they help their students and potentially creating a ranking for them. Most of them ignored us, half a dozen of them politely rejected, one school responded with enthusiasm (will praise later), and some responded in a hostile manner.

While we were still contacting the career centers, we actually got a very upsetting call from the UCLA Career Center(sadly my Alma Mater). Yes, I'm calling you out UCLA, because I want you to be better. Instead of just demanding me to take this off, please improve your ways first. UCLA told us that they heard about what we are trying to do, and they are very angry. They said they were at a Pac-10 Career Center Conference (didn't know those existed) and we were brought up. All the schools were very upset about our "study" and said they would not let us do this.

So we told the UCLA Career Center that we just wanted to see how they are helping their students, and we also plan to talk to their students to see how they are doing. We thought they might as well talk to us too and let us know about all the positive things they do. UCLA not only refused, they prohibited us from talking to the student body about it, claiming that "I don't think what the students say is an accurate measurement of how the Career Center help the students." I thought that was pretty ridiculous. What else is a good measurement? How much funding they get a year?

The thing about public schools, is that its like a subsidized business: it can afford to be inefficient. If companies are not doing things efficiently, they die. Public agencies usually have a budget no matter how well they do, and the employees don't get rewarded based on their performance. Most schools (including private ones) have extremely inefficient administration services that send you from one window to another. So what's the best-run division in UCLA? Parking Enforcement. The revenue department is obviously more important than the customer service department. 30 seconds at the wrong spot and there's your one way ticket to sadness. If the UCLA Parking Enforcement team worked for Future Delivery, I'm sure the world would already know about Viralogy even before we launch.

So that experience also brought back some memories while I co-founded Bruin Consulting at UCLA. During that time, top consulting firms like Mckinsey, Boston Consulting Group, and Booz Allen Hamilton did not really recruit UCLA students because the students were so unprepared in the field of consulting. Our goal was to get these companies back to UCLA, and prepare the students so well that whenever they do come, they are thoroughly impressed by the student body. We were very successful and Bruin Consulting remains one of the premiere business organizations on campus. However, while we were helping UCLA students get prepared for Case Interviews and learn about various companies, the UCLA Center approached us and said that we needed to stop doing what we were doing because we were growing too fast. They pretty much said that if companies could do everything so much more efficiently through Bruin Consulting, they would stop sponsoring the Career Center.

Wait....what? I thought the Career Center was there to make sure students get good jobs, and would be happy that we helped them cover a part of the 40,000 student body. OK, fine, if you wanted to monopolize this VERY important service, lets see how you do. Among the 40,000 student body, if I remember correctly, the career center gives out mock interviews to 30 students a quarter. Hmmm, my college education has taught me that this is not a very high ratio. What about the resume help? All my peers said they just said your resume is fine even though it was horrible. They let go of 4-page resumes, even though recruiters have specifically said, "you can put anything you want on your resume, as long as it is one-page long." Yes, their Bruinview service is actually pretty good, but that's because companies respect the UCLA name and constantly list their jobs there themselves.

So yea, I understand you don't have the budget or resources to cover such a large student body. But instead of endorsing student organizations that do your job for you for free, why spend that energy to threaten them? That's pretty disgusting to me. I have a friend who works as a recruiter at a reputable engineering firm, and he told me that he is proposing to cut budgets for various university career centers because they were "uncooperative, hard to work with and non-responsive." I hate to admit, but he said that the USC Career Center was friendly and worked hard to make the connection between the company and motivated students easier and better.

What's interesting is that I have a friend who works for the University of California Regents (like the Board of Directors of all the UC schools), and when I pointed this out to him, he said, "Hmmm, that's interesting, because the UCLA Career Center has won many awards and is known for its programs." There clearly lies a misalignment between the high-level decision/budget makers and the end-users who use the service. That's why one of the Good to Great CEOs, when newly appointed the job, spent 50% of his time with the end-user, observing how they use the products and the problems they face.

One of the university career centers that I was highly impressed with was Notre Dame. When we contacted them about our study on career centers, they responded with feverish enthusiasm. They told us that we could interview every one of their career counselors, as they are all completely passionate about helping their students. We could examine how they use new tools and technology to make the connections between students and companies easier. Finally, they said they were frustrated how their hard work never affected the university rankings, and would welcome a ranking system for the career centers. Even though we were never able to do the real study because there were so few schools that cooperated, I ended up with the utmost respect for the Notre Dame Career Center. They made me want to be a Notre Dame student.

In FD, we believe that too many young people don't know what they want to do, and too many older people hate their jobs. We believe its because people don't have enough information and opportunities when they were in college and started off in a career they do not care about. The Career Center is the first to have this great opportunity to solve this enormous problem. Take advantage of it! Even though I mostly wrote about the UCLA Career Center, every person I talked to also revealed similar experiences with their own career centers, so its a universal problem that all career centers need to think about.

What does everyone else think about your career centers while you were in school? Are they helpful? Do they care about their students? I would love to know if you guys have the same experience, or actually have great career centers that helped you get to where you are today.