Advice for a young entrepreneur

#1. Surround Yourself With Interesting People
Without this step, I wouldn’t even be here.

O’Reilly taught me that if I didn’t like the projects that other people were giving me I could go out and create my own projects. I’ve always been ambitious, but until I really ran headfirst into inventors I thought ambition was about working hard and getting promotions.

The second thing interesting people do is turn turds into gold. That’s certainly what happened at Odeo. We had no traction in podcasting but one person on the team did have the golden idea for Twitter. That person, Jack Dorsey, paired with two more people was able to put together a compelling prototype in two weeks.

The third reason, is that even if your company fails completely, the interesting people you worked with will disperse to other interesting places and invite you along.

I think this holds true for anyone starting their own business, certainly for myself. The full article has interesting anecdotes included.

Groupon's China Site Big in Visits, Behind in Sales

By Michael Kan, IDG News

About a month after offering its first discounted deals, Groupon's China site is attracting big user numbers, but still lags behind the local competition in sales, according to a group-buying aggregator in the country.

The U.S. company's site at GaoPeng.com represents its push into China, which has 457 million Internet users. Groupon is already popular in the U.S. as a promoter of group buying, a new form of e-commerce that is also taking off in China. Group buying works by featuring steep discounts on goods. Enough users, however, must buy into a deal in order for it to be offered to all who purchased it.

While Groupon has achieved success in the U.S., China's group buying market is already filled with domestic competitors. The country now has 4,015 such sites, all of different scope, with some focusing on certain cities, according to group-buying aggregator Tuan800.com, which offers an online portal to group-buying sites.

China is a hard nut to crack. Very different market to many other places.

RenRen Inc. in 25 Slides

by Kai Lukoff on 04/16/2011 · http://techrice.com/?p=2062">View Comments Comments

Inside Renren Inc. (NYSE: RENN) - By iChinaStock

View more presentations from iChinaStock

On April 15, 2011 Renren Inc. filed its F-1 for IPO on the NYSE under the ticker RENN. Beijing-based Renren Inc. includes the real-name social network Renren, the games producer Renren Games, and the group-buying site Nuomi.

The initial offering aims to raise $508 to $580 million and values the company at approximately $4.3 billion. Here’s what you need to know about Renren Inc. in 25 slides!

Note: I recently joined iChinaStock.com, which reports on Chinese companies publicly-listed in the US. We’re creating a series of iChinaStock ”Inside” profiles of publicly-listed (or soon-to-list) Chinese firms. Renren Inc. is the first in the series and I thought it’d also be of value to the TechRice audience.