First off, it feels like we have a burgeoning employment crisis in this country. I wrote about this a bit in my TechCrunch article A Tale of Two Countries. In the bigger cities (and especially the ones with a heavy emphasis on technology) it’s boom time. There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance involved with living in Silicon Valley and hearing about how hard it is to hire and seeing the acquisitions and funding valuations at all-time highs and then to go back to Minnesota (where I’m from) or Kentucky (where my wife is from) and hear people there talk about a radically different economy. I was in Detroit last month and that city is probably prime example of a scenario that’s playing out in Cleveland, Memphis, St. Louis and a whole host of other less technologically advanced cities around the country.

Some of the statistics are pretty crazy. Mean duration of unemployment is at 40 weeks. That’s twice as long as the worst it’s ever been over the last 70 years. U-6, the government’s measure of under-utilization is 16.5%, up from 15.8% in May. Almost 50% of Americans are living on some form of government benefits. Wild stuff. And I’ve been reading guys like Tyler Cowen, Thomas Friedman and W. Brian Arthur and there’s some serious, serious cause for concern.

Sure, we’ve been in bad situations before. The stagflation of the 1970s. The fall-out from the dot com bubble in the early 2000s. Heck, fall 2008. But this time something feels different. It doesn’t feel like a traditional cyclical downturn. We’ve developed an incredible amount of technological sophistication in the last decade. And, as I referenced in the Tale of Two Countries article, I tend to believe Paul Graham’s view that as you have increasing sophistication of tools, you are going to to have an increasing gap in levels of productivity (the most productive person is going to be much more productive than the mean). And if wealth follows productivity (I tend to believe it does) then with the increasing sophistication in the tools you are going to end up with an increasing level of income inequality. And that’s what seems to be happening right now. The people at the top (presumably those with higher productivity) are doing very well. But there is an increasing number of people being left behind (as evident in the unemployment and under-employment numbers).

Which brings us to education. I’m fairly convinced that the vast majority of the unemployment we’re seeing, and will likely continue to see, is structural unemployment. We’re training people for jobs that don’t exist while at the same time we’re not training enough people for high-demand jobs. Today Chris Dixon pointed to this as an example of structural unemployment and I think he’s right. Technology companies can’t hire fast enough. But step outside of technology and other tech-focused industries and it quickly becomes a wasteland. Compensation is rising for engineers, designers and pretty much anyone who is tech-savvy. But are we seeing an accompanying increase in demand for computer science degrees? No, actually it’s just the opposite. Check this out:

There were 43 percent fewer graduates and 45 percent fewer CS degree enrollments in 2006-2007 than in 2003-2004, according to the Computer Research Association.

One answer to this might be that despite growing demand for people with these skills and increased compensation, people are simply preferring to not work in technology. But that doesn’t really make sense. After all, people are spending more and more time with technology (e.g., Facebook, gaming, etc.). Why wouldn’t they want to pursue careers in the space as well. Well one reason would be that our education system is not providing them with the foundational knowledge to go after more advanced careers in technology.

Salman Khan, perhaps the most innovative thinker in education in a decade, makes this point really well in his must-watch TED Talk:

Whether you get a 70 percent, an 80 percent, a 90 percent, or a 95 percent, the class moves on to the next topic. And even that 95 percent student, what was the five percent they didn’t know? Maybe they didn’t know what happens when you raise something to the zero power. And then you go build on that in the next concept. That’s analogous to imagine learning to ride a bicycle, and maybe I give you a lecture ahead of time, and I give you that bicycle for two weeks. And then I come back after two weeks, and I say, “Well, let’s see. You’re having trouble taking left turns. You can’t quite stop. You’re an 80 percent bicyclist.” So I put a big C stamp on your forehead and then I say, “Here’s a unicycle.” But as ridiculous as that sounds, that’s exactly what’s happening in our classrooms right now.

The modern equivalent to unicycling might be writing code. We’re not doing a good enough job teaching people fundamentals and then we’re seeing them not pursue careers where that fundamental knowledge is pretty much a prerequisite. And then we’re wondering why we have a problem with unemployment despite that fact that so many companies can’t find enough qualified people. Is it starting to become clear how inter-related these things are.

So finally we come to entrepreneurship. And this is where, for me at least, the lightbulb went off. According to the President’s Job Council (and similar research done by the Kauffman Foundation and others), almost all net new job creation is coming from start-ups. Not big companies. Not old companies. Small companies that are less than five years old are keeping an economy that’s already in rough shape from being much, much worse.

But there’s a governor on the growth for many of these startups. Want to guess what it is? They can’t hire enough people with the technical skills to help them growth. And here’s where we enter either a vicious cycle or a virtuous one. More startups, more jobs. Fewer startups, fewer jobs. Startups throwing up their hands because they can’t find the engineers, designers and product people to achieve their goals? Fewer startups. Fewer jobs. So the education sector fails the entrepreneurial sector which causes the entrepreneurial sector to fail the economy because it isn’t creating enough jobs.

And there’s one more problem here, perhaps an even bigger one and that’s the our current education system does a very poor job of preparing people to become entrepreneurs. To understand why you have to go back to the formation of the modern education system. When you do the research you realize that the modern education system was essentially created to produce good factory workers. The skill set, and more importantly, the mind set required to be a good factory worker stands in almost direct opposition to the mindset required to become an entrepreneur. We don’t teach people to fail in school. We fastidiously get them to avoid failure. We don’t have people learn by doing. We have them learn by listening to someone or reading something. We don’t reward out-of-the-box thinking and breaking the rules. We penalize those things. And because of how the system is structured, we end up with far, far few entrepreneurs than we could have.

This is probably over-simplifying things and I’m most definitely not an economist. But the more that I read on these topics, the more interconnected they seem. You can throw money at programs for promoting entrepreneurship, fixing education or creating jobs but until you step back and see the whole system, you’re missing critical information.

I’m excited the dive deeper into this and am very much looking forward to the ongoing dialogue about this. And I feel incredibly blessed to be helping to run a company that I feel could have an impact in all three of these areas. BTW, as you could probably guess, we’re hiring.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliettereyes/4952717445/

Altius Education – I met Paul Freedman, Altius’s founder, a couple of years ago and was very impressed with his vision for Altius. One of the biggest mismatches of supply and demand in higher education is at the community college level. Community colleges historically have offered an affordable way for high school graduates to continue their education and for many, to eventually transition into four-year universities. However, with budget cutbacks and rising costs, many community colleges are forced to turn away a lot of interested students. This is where Altius comes in, offering an affordable way for students to receive their Associates degree in an online setting and eventually have a chance to transfer to a desired school to complete their Bachelors degree. Altius is backed by CRV, Maveron and Spark Capital.

Certified Business Laureate (CBL) Exam – I’m a big fan of people who are looking to disrupt the credentialing space. When I met Guy Friedman and heard about his plans for CBL, I saw a very big opportunity. There are many people out there who possess the business knowledge that’s roughly the equivalent of an MBA, however there’s no chance for them to really prove this. CBL will offer that opportunity and has the potential to be a fast-growth competency-based credentialing model, similar to Western Governor’s University which has grown tremendously in the last decade. (AngelList profile for Certified Business Laureate Exam)

Fatminds – The first time I met the Fatminds guys they pitched their idea as Kayak meets Yelp for Continuing Education and I was sold pretty quick. The continuing education market is a multi-billion dollar one and gets a lot less attention in the education space than say, test prep or tutoring. I think that’s largely because most people don’t encounter continuing education until later in life, after the age at which it’s typical to start a technology company. Fatminds has an extraordinary amount of potential and has already partnered with schools such as MIT and USF. (AngelList profile for Fatminds)

Prazas – I think one of the biggest opportunities in K-12 education is a lower-cost approach to tablet computing. The iPad is obviously going to be transformative for many students but unfortunately, it’s too expensive for most schools to justify putting one in every student’s hand. Android-based platforms offer affordability and because of the open source nature of the platform, an opportunity for entrepreneurs to innovate outside of third-party restrictions. I’m psyched about anybody working on tablet computing for children and am happy to be helping out the Prazas team.

Udemy – I encountered the Udemy guys (Eren Bali and Gagan Biyani) back when I was running eduFire. While our visions were similar, Udemy has taken a somewhat different approach to democratizing education. Udemy offers packaged courses such Eric Ries teaching about The Lean Startup and Zed Shaw teaching Python the Hard Way. These are rock-solid courses offered at a fraction of the cost that you’d pay to a university for similar content. It’s a highly disruptive model and one that is really starting to gather steam.

I’m really excited about these companies and while I wish I could clone myself to give them more of my time, am happy to be able to provide them with whatever help I can.

#1 – Hiring a VP of Engineering or CTO For Non-Techie (First Time) Founders – Solid article from Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures.

#2 – How To Run A Company That Engineers Actually Want To Work For -Business Insider isn’t normally the first place I’d think to look for advice on hiring engineers but this article is actually really good.

#3 – On Finding and Working with Software Engineers – How the heck did I miss the one the first time around?! One of the better articles I’ve read on the topic.

#4 – Ranting about the quality of developers – Fairly straightforward but good overview of hiring engineers.

#5 – Startup Mantra: Hire Fast, Fire Fast – I don’t know that I fully agree with Suster here but well worth a read. Interesting to note the difference in philosophy between this article and Cult Creation.

#6 – – 25 Things that make hiring technical talent much easier My friend Charlie bringing the heat. Here’s another good post from him on the topic: “Startup Recruiting Hacks“.

#7 – How to (Fucking) Hire Developers – A very opinionated (and mostly awesome) article about how to hire developers.

#8 – How to Hire a Great Web Designer, With Y Combinator’s Garry Tan – This doesn’t get talked about enough and few know more about the topic than Garry. Great complement to Jason Putorti’s Quora post “How to Interview a Designer” and Chris Zacharias’s “Hiring Front-End Engineers“.

#9 – Hiring: The Lake Wobegon Strategy – Short but simple post from the Google Research blog about the dangers of hiring “above the mean”.

#10 – How to assemble the perfect team – A person-by-person analysis of hiring in a startup along with lessons learned. I wish more startups did this.

#11 – Recruit Top Talent Like Ari Gold From Entourage – Woot! Love listening to my boy Ethan talk on this topic. Read everything he writes on the topic.

What have I missed? Let me know in the comments!

There’s definitely a technical focus here (assume this is geared at your average Silicon Valley tech startup) but I think much of what’s written in these articles is applicable to most companies. Also, I’ve tried to avoid the articles that are mostly common-sense platitudes (”Hire great people”, “Hire people smarter than you”, etc.) and instead took a bias for writings that had interesting insights and actionable advice. I hope you enjoy! (BTW, I should mention in passing that if you’re interested in being a part of world-class team, RG Labs is hiring.)

#1 – Cult Creation – One of the most interesting posts on hiring and building great teams that I’ve read. From Steve Newcombe (who build Powerset).

#2 – How to hire the best people you’ve ever worked with – A classic Marc Andreessen post on team building.

#3 – HOWTO: Recruit Rock Stars – Great article from Joe Stump of SimpleGeo.

#4 – How to Find and Hire Amazing People – An excellent four part series (Part 2, Part 3 and c/2010/01/how-to-find-and-hire-amazing-people-part-4.html”>Part 4) from Adam Smith of Xobni.

#5 – The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing (version 3.0) – Classic article from Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software, the guy who coined “Smart and Gets Things Done“.

#6 – – Startup Hiring: Why You Should Date Before Getting Married Sage advice from Dharmesh Shah.

#7 – What are the best methods for recruiting software engineers today? – Uber-helpful Quora post from Quora’s own Charlie Cheever. Here’s another Quora thread worth reading if you’re very early stage: What are the best ways to recruit top engineering talent to work on a pre-Series A startup with no funding but big ideas?

#8 – Hiring the First 5 Engineers: What Sort of People Do You Want on Your Team? – Elad Gil of Mixer Labs and now Twitter has written some great stuff on hiring. Here’s another good post from him on Ninja Hiring Techniques for Early Stage Startups: How to Get Your First 3 Employees.

#9 – Recruiting Smart People – Lots of great insight in this one.

#10 – Never Read Another Resume – Some good advice from 37 Signals founder Jason Fried.

#11 – Hiring Religion – Classic article from Paul English.

#12 – Never Hire Job Hoppers. Never. They Make Terrible Employees – Suster is probably the most prolific writer in the startup world these days. Here’s another good article that although a bit more sales-focused is good as well: How to Improve Hiring at Startups.

#13 – What developers think when you say “Rock Star” – Love this one!

#14 – Will the real programmers please stand up? – Article on tech interviewing from the RethinkDB guys. Here’s another great one from the same folks: Building a world-class team: six mistakes I made early in my career.

#15 – In the war for talent, love is a weapon – This one had me at the title…

#16 – Hiring Employee #1 – You knew Jason Cohen would have some good advice here didn’t you?

#17 – Hiring is Obsolete – Paul Graham is easily one of my favorite writers. As usual, he has some fantastic insights in this post.

#18 – People – How to Recruit a World Class Team – This one borders on “platitudey” but actually is pretty solid.

#19 – Engineering Management – Hiring – Some really good advice from Yishan Wong who helped build the team at Facebook.

#20 – Hazards of Hiring – This might be one of the most under-rated articles ever written about hiring. Very dense information in this one from Eric Sink.

#21 – How to pick a co-founder – More relevant at the earliest stages but relevant advice from Venture Hacks even if you’re a bit further along.

I hope you’ve found this list useful. If you have read other things that you’ve found helpful in building teams please post in the comments. At some point I’d love to post a follow-up to this and include other great articles that I come across.

To help with that, I’ve assembled some inspirational stories of hard-working entrepreneurs with some non-business folks mixed in for good measure. Two caveats. First, hard work is completely irrelevant is you’re not working smart and being productive. Second, hard work is also counter-productive if you’re sacrificing your health to an extreme degree and if the increase in quantity of hours worked is leading to a decrease in your creativity (often the case!). With that being said, here’s some stories of people who’ve worked about as hard as a human being can.

Jeff Immelt – A few years back I read a story about Jeff entitled The Bionic Manager which reset my thinking about what hard work is. Here are a couple of passages from it:

Immelt, 49, says he’s been working 100 hours a week for 24 years. That does not take him back to his 1978 graduation from Dartmouth, where he was football team captain (as offensive tackle) and a fraternity president who liked to party….Most hard-charging types have put in a 100-hour week or two. But month after month, year after year—is that even possible? Let’s do the math. If you worked from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week, you’d still be two hours short of 100 hours. If Immelt has been working that hard for 24 years, then he has already done 60 years’ worth of 40-hour weeks.

Here he is on a recent swing through San Francisco: The first meeting is with institutional investors at 7 a.m. Then he addresses some 200 retail investors at 8:30, standing comfortably for 25 minutes with his left hand in his pocket and his right hand holding his PowerPoint remote; after his talk, he answers questions for an hour. Then it’s more institutional investors, followed by GE salespeople in Burlingame, a presentation to customers, and finally a big reception for customers and top salespeople. He seems as energetic at the end of the day as at the beginning. He had run virtually the same routine in Los Angeles the day before.

Mark Cuban – Cuban has written some posts on his most excellent blog on the subject of hard work and loving what you do. Here is one of my favorite excerpts:

The edge is getting so jazzed about what you do, you just spent 24 hours straight working on a project and you thought it was a couple hours. The edge is knowing that you have to be the smartest guy in the room when you have your meeting and you are going to put in the effort to learn whatever you need to learn to get there. The edge is knowing is knowing that when the 4 girlfriends you have had in the last couple years asked you which was more important, them or your business, you gave the right answer…The edge is knowing how to blow off steam a couple times a week, just so you can refocus on business…The edge is recognizing when you are wrong, and working harder to make sure it doesn’t happen again. (from The Sport of Business)

Steve Pavlina and Seth Godin – These guys have written millions of words in their relatively young careers, authored books, spoken at conferences and started companies largely as one-man shows. They do more in a year than most people do in a lifetime and are well worth learning from!

Steve sums up his philosophy towards hard work pretty well in the aptly titled post “Hard Work“:

Hard work pays off. When someone tells you otherwise, beware the sales pitch for something “fast and easy” that’s about to come next. The greater your capacity for hard work, the more rewards fall within your grasp. The deeper you can dig, the more treasure you can potentially find…Your life will reach a whole new level when you stop avoiding and fearing hard work and simply surrender to it. Make it your ally instead of your enemy. It’s a potent tool to have on your side.

Seth has a similar post entitled “Labor Day“:

Your great-grandfather knew what it meant to work hard. He hauled hay all day long, making sure that the cows got fed. In Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser writes about a worker who ruptured his vertebrae, wrecked his hands, burned his lungs, and was eventually hit by a train as part of his 15-year career at a slaughterhouse. Now that’s hard work…Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you’d rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And, after you’ve done that, to do it again the next day.

Eminem and Kanye West – These guys have legendary work ethics. Witness:

It is a little-known fact that the only book Eminem read as a child was the dictionary. He pored over it, searching for words that rhymed with each other that could later be pulled out of the bag during the freestyle rap “battles” that provided his education in hip-hop. The years spent studying the English language lie at the core of his technical brilliance. They turned him into the greatest rapper of his time. But they did so at a personal cost: for Eminem could be uncharitably described as an anorak. His life starts and ends with music. He writes constantly, scrawling lines on sheets of notepaper in a crabby handwriting. When he’s not composing new verse, or messing around in a studio, he’ll be listening to hip-hop. “The guy’s a studio rat,” says producer Terry Simaan, the owner of Oh Trey 9, one of the Detroit’s most influential hip-hop labels. “If he feels like it, he’ll spend 12, 15 hours a day in a studio.” (From Eminem: The fall and rise of a superstar)

But West initially had trouble convincing Roc-A-Fella execs to let him make his own album as a rapper. He was able to change their minds only after the accident that inspired his breakthrough single, Through the Wire. Exhausted from working around the clock, West fell asleep behind the wheel of his Lexus and got into a crash that nearly killed him. He was back in the studio three weeks later, recording that hit song with his broken jaw wired shut. (From Genius Is As Genius Does)

(Note to self…take a cab or have someone else drive you if you’re working your tail off!!)

Kobe Bryant and Tiger Woods – While these guys haven’t exactly been choir boys the last few years they’ve definitely worked their tail off to get to where they are. Here are some of my favorite articles about them:

Commuting to Staples Center with Kobe Bryant

Kobe’s well-honed killer instinct

It’s 1995, and Bryant is the senior leader of the Lower Merion team, obsessed with winning a state championship. He comes to the gym at 5 a.m. to work out before school, stays until 7 p.m. afterward. It’s all part of the plan. When the Aces lost in the playoffs the previous spring, Bryant stood in the locker room, interrupting the seniors as they hugged each other, and all but guaranteed a title, adding, “The work starts now.”

(Don’t miss Spike Lee’s documentary about Kobe either!)

Tiger vs Phil Part Two: Work ethic.

I refuse to let anyone outwork me. That’s the reason I log so much time on the practice range. Besides, hard work is the only way to maintain a competitive edge, and I enjoy the process. The key, though, is to practice with a purpose.

Tiger’s Daily Routine and Workout Regimen

The Beatles – Gladwell made their Hamburg-era work ethic famous in Outliers. Here’s the passage in case you missed it:

“All told, they performed for 270 nights in just over a year and a half. By the time they had their first burst of success in 1964, in fact, they had performed live an estimated twelve hundred times. … Most bands today don’t perform twelve hundred times in their entire careers. The Hamburg crucible is one of the things that set the Beatles apart.” (From this blog post about the band)

Yolanda and Rogelio Garcia Sr. – You’ve never heard of these two and I hadn’t either until I stumbled across this article talking about how they put their kids through college:

For 21 years, the Garcias have supported their family by picking through garbage, often cutting their fingers on broken glass while searching for cans and bottles. Late at night they make their living on the darkened streets and back alleys of Los Angeles, recycling other people’s trash for cash. They’ve collected more than 8 million cans and bottles to help put two children through college. Their youngest is still hitting the books, so Yolanda and Rogelio still hit the streets every night.

OK, perhaps this doesn’t fit the definition of working as smart as possible but nevertheless, reading stories like this reminds us that our “hard work” probably isn’t as hard as we think.

Who’d I miss? Let me know in the comments!

Plus a whole lot of other interesting articles and documents in our eduFire Content section. Check it out!

And then there’s the other type of quit.

The quit where a huge part of you wants to give up. The quit you make when you the world is against you, when you’re sick to your stomach half the time and when all those who told you it was a dumb idea to begin with are now reminding you that they told you that it was a dumb idea to begin with. The quit that just feels easier.

So what do you do when feel that kind of quit coming on? Simple. Never give up. But just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy. So here’s what you’re going to do when you feel that kind of quit coming on (and I’m going to say “you” but it’s really “we” because these are the things I’m going to do as well when I feel this kind of quit coming on!).

#1 – You’re going to read Evan Williams’ story in Founders At Work. When Evan was at Pyra Labs they ran out of money. He laid off the team (actually just stopped paying them). Everybody hated him. He worked alone for a year in what I can imagine were far from optimal conditions. And what happened next? He sold his product (a little thing called Blogger) to a hot start-up (a little company called Google). The rest is history. And I’m pretty confident there would be no Twitter today if Evan hadn’t persevered back in the day.

#2 – You’re going to read Paul Graham’s essay The Anatomy of Determination.

We learned quickly that the most important predictor of success is determination.

Got that? Not talent. Not intelligence. Determination. Thank your lucky stars you’re facing adversity. How the hell would you be able to show that you have what it takes to succeed if you weren’t?

#3 – You’re going to listen to Joe Liemandt’s story of the starting of Trilogy. Trilogy was dead. Dead as in $500,000 worth of credit card debt dead. But this story is a prime example of entrepreneurial will (even if it will likely make every financial advisor cringe). Joe and his team didn’t give up. They believed in what they were building and they had a vision for the future that they clung to even in the darkest of days.

#4 – You’re going to read the story of Steve Genter in Friday Night Lights. Genter was supposed to competed in the Munich Olympics in 1972. One small problem. His lung collapsed before the Olympics. He swam anyway. Without painkillers. You gotta read the whole story but if this doesn’t make you re-think quitting I’m not sure what will.

#5 – You’re going to watch Jimmy Valvano’s (the former basketball coach at NC State) speech at the 1993 ESPYs. At the time Jimmy was only 8 weeks away from dying of cancer. This speech is intense. Some of his closing words? “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.” (8:30 in)

#6 – You’re going to read the Three Feet from Gold story in Think and Grow Rich. Often when you’re faced with the prospect of giving up you’re simply three feet from gold. The world is full of people who were building what could have been the next Facebook or the next YouTube but stopped just a bit short. Don’t be one of those guys at the bar telling you the story of how he almost succeeded. Be the guy who gives it everything he has and has no regrets. Indeed, in your bleakest hour you’re usually three feet from gold.

#7 – You’re going to read this insanely cool collection of stories of people who simply did not give up. Reading through these almost makes you wonder if there has been anyone who has achieved something of lasting value who didn’t suffer rejection and defeat. My guess is that the number is pretty close to zero. Peoples’ failures often don’t get publicized but rest assured, pretty much anyone who’s ever risen to great heights has experienced more than a few Dark Nights of the Soul.

#8 – Finally, you’re going to realize watch the video below and realize that the greatest joys in life come precisely because you’ve been willing to go through the lowest of lows to get there. That’s exactly what makes them so sweet. One of my favorite professional athletes in Kevin Garnett (we had season tickets to Timberwolves games as kids). Kevin went through just about every form of hardship you can imagine. The Wolves sucked for years. Malik Sealy, one of his best friends on the team, was killed by a drunk driver (I was on the same road that same night so that one hit close to home).

All sorts of bad things happened. But he persevered. And last year he won his first NBA championship. Watch the pure joy:

That’s what you’re going to feel when you don’t give up. When you pull through and grow your company and get that big fat acquisition offer. When you ring the bell one day on the New York Stock Exchange. You’re going to remember those days when you wanted to give up and quit.

How sweet it’s going be.

When you get a little down on your luck (and we’re all there at some point in time), here’s a good little reading list (along with some comments) and a few videos for you. I tried to filter out the fluff on the subject (and there’s a lot of fluff on this subject!) and narrow it down to some articles with really quality advice. I think you’ll dig it.

Harnessing Entrepreneurial Manic-Depression: Making the Rollercoaster Work for You – Classic Tim Ferriss article. The part about timing your actions around when you’re feeling incredibly confident or less than confident is sage advice.

The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 1: Why not to do a startup – This is the article that the Andreessen quote from the Ferriss article was from. It’s not necessarily going to make you feel anymore confident but rather will remind you that we all go through what you’re going through as entrepreneurs.

Some days things will go really well and some things will go really poorly. And the level of stress that you’re under generally will magnify those transient data points into incredible highs and unbelievable lows at whiplash speed and huge magnitude.

No truer words have ever been spoken.

The 21 Day Challenge Everyone Should Take – I liked this whole article but the “Realize you are going to die” part struck me particularly hard and reminded me of the Steve Jobs Commencement Address (embed at end of the post).

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

(full text here)

Ten Unusual Ways to Improve Your Appearance of Confidence That Really Work – A few of these were a little less than the best but I liked #1, #2 (who does that?!), #5 and #6. As with so much of this advice, it’s about trying stuff and seeing what works for you. But most definitely things like posture and exercise can do wonders for improving your mental state and your confidence.

How to Build Confidence and Destroy Fear – So much good stuff in this post. This quote alone was worth reading the article:

Remember that those times when you feel that your ideas aren’t good enough, or people are putting down on your ideas, or you’re getting fired — that these are the same ideas that you’re going to be celebrated for 30 years later. You almost have to have courage. — Francis Ford Coppola

Command a Room Like a Man – Apologies in advance to any women reading this blog (this is after all a post from a blog entitled “The Art of Manliness” ) but there are some good tips contained in here. The story about Teddy Roosevelt at 23 is classic as is the tip about taking control of your surroundings.

Al Pacino’s Inspirational Speech

Tony Robbins tells Rocky story

Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Anything is possible. Go out and kick some entrepreneurial ass.

#1 – Sam Altman pitches Loopt at the WWDC 2008. Epic pitch.

#2 – Omar Hamoui pitches AdMob. $0 to $750 million in three years. Not bad…

#3 – Evan Williams talks about Twitter at TED. Great story about the power of taking on side projects and following hunches.

#4 – Yext presenting at this year’s TechCrunch50. A slightly crazy presentation but the proof’s in the pudding. They’re doing $20 million in annual revenue and just raised $25 from IVP.

#5 – Cafe Press’s “Lesson Learned” pitch. No video here (unfortunately), just slides. But powerful slides. Like “8-digit term sheet” kinda powerful slides.

“Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch

#6 – Drew Houston launches Dropbox at TechCrunch50 (2008). A year later Dropbox has 2 million accounts. For a 25 year old Drew’s one hell of a presenter.

#7 – Hey, just because it’s not a business doesn’t mean it’s not a start-up! Us businessfolks can learn a ton from how politicians sell themselves and get people to buy into their vision. Here’s a great example (Obama’s speech after the New Hampshire primary):

And another (Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall” speech). Gotta balance the left and the right…

#8 – Aaron Patzer launches Mint at TechCrunch40 (they won top prize). Notice how he immediately gets you hooked by talking about something that’s important to everyone (money).

#9 – Kevin Rose demos Digg…in 2004.

#10 – OK, so these aren’t all startup pitches. But this is Steve Freaking Jobs we’re talking about. “Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.” How can I not include him in this list?

Bonus awesome Steve Jobs videos here and here (jump to 4:50). And if you love learning about how Steve Jobs pitches a startup most definitely check out this awesome Venture Hacks post.

#11- David Sacks launches Yammer at TechCrunch50 2008 (they won top prize).

#12 – Michael Pritchard demoing Lifesaver. Make no mistake. A killer start-up pitch can save lives.

BONUS #1 – OK, a couple of funny ones too. The Tonchidot presentation from TechCrunch 2008 is straight hilarious:

As is Ali G pitching the “Ice Cream Glove”:

BONUS #2 – The best article I’ve read on pitching to investors. And a great video from Dave McClure on the same topic. And one more thrown in for good measure (”How To Demo Your Startup”).

BONUS #3 – Not sick of pitches yet? Check out the links below. Some are good, some are bad and some are downright ugly. You’ve been warned!

Richard Branson’s PitchTV
Shark Tank
TechCrunch50
TechCrunch Elevator Pitches

Babak Nivi (Venture Hacks)

Pitching (Excellent outline with a bunch of must-reads. Other favs below…)
Create a market for your shares
Potpourri: Introductions, Auctions, Tranches, and Co-Investors
Tips from a ex-VC who helps entrepreneurs raise money
Should I shop around?
What should I send investors? Part 2: Deck
What should I send investors? Part 3: Business Plans, NDAs, and Traction
How should I format my deck?
Is it safe to send my deck to investors?

Marc Andreessen (blog)

The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 2: When the VCs say “no”
The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 4: The only thing that matters

Mark Suster (Both Sides of the Table)

Pitching a VC (Awesome outline! Some of my favorites are also listed below.)
The First VC Meeting (Post 1 of Many)
The First VC Meeting (Post 2 of Many)
The First VC Meeting (Post 3 of Many)
The First VC Meeting (Post 4 of Many)
A Tale of Two Pitches
Do You Really Even Need VC?
VC Funding Season Ends Next Week
WTF is Traction? A 6-Step Relationship Guide to VC

Paul Graham (blog)

What Startups Are Really Like
How to Fund a Startup
The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups

Chris Dixon (blog)

The most important question to ask before taking seed money
Don’t shop your term sheet

Guy Kawasaki (blog)

The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint
The Art of Raising Venture Capital
The Top Ten Lies of Venture Capitalists
The Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs

Some other miscellaneous links:

Startups 101: The Complete Mint Presentation
Writing a Business Plan
Writing a Compelling Executive Summary
Top 5 things missing from most entrepreneur pitches
David S. Rose on pitching to VCs
Fail: 12 Ways To Blow Your Investor Pitch
4 Things to Do After You Get Your First Term Sheet
Combined VC Pitch Deck with Examples and Discussion
How To NOT Write A Business Plan
How I started Seesmic and raised $6 million
Startup Viagra: How to Pitch a VC
Tips for the first VC Meeting
How Not To Make A Fool Of Yourself When You Pitch VCs Like Me
My Startup Experience: VC, Entrepreneurship, Self-Analysis & The Road Ahead
Mint CEO Aaron Patzer on Startups
Disturbing Similarities Between Dating & Raising Capital
Pitch Perfect
4 ways to get automatically rejected by an angel investor
Raising Money Using Customer Development
Due Diligence Checklist
Term Sheet Archives (from Brad Feld)

Bonus: Some good pitch videos

Yext (from TechCrunch 50)
Loopt (Sam Altman)
Yammer (Winner of TechCrunch50 2008)
Mint (Winner of TechCrunch40 2007)

UPDATE (11/08/09 @ 2:40 PM PST): Added four links.
UPDATE (11/09/09 @11 AM PST): Added five links.