Jessica Mah Meets World

In building my latest company, many people have asked me “how will this make money?” And even when it was still in its idea stage, I’d quickly say “with a freemium business model, of course.” I needed an easy, efficient, and trustworthy way to attract users into paying for a service, and most people assume that a freemium business model works best.

But I think there’s a lot more to this thing called “freemium” than meets the eye. It’s distinctly different from offering a free trial or a free sample. The biggest problem with freemium is that the conversion rate from free to premium is utterly low — some say that the average conversion rate is 3%. But in the companies that implement freemium business models well, I see that they attack one thing that customers can’t argue with: an actual, urgent need. By doing this, they’ll assuredly increase their conversion rate and customer satisfaction. In case you forget, here’s a checklist that you can post on your wall:

The key is in acquiring users who are looking for a potential solution to a problem, and may or may not pay depending on what they need. But when they have that urgent need for your upsell, they’ll gladly pay. Here are two examples of companies that understand freemium:

VistaPrint.com is best known for “selling” free business cards. I first heard about them when someone gave me a business card that said “Made by VistaPrint.com” on the back of it. I ordered my first batch of free cards, paid for $5 shipping, and I was a happy camper. The poor souls from VistaPrint made practically nothing off my purchase.

Two years later, and the week before my first TED Conference, I knew that I had an urgent need for business cards. So surely enough, I went back to VistaPrint to get my “free” cards. But fortunately for them (and unfortunately for me), they understood that freemium models work best when the customer has an urgent need, and they showed that in their shipping prices. I got free cards from them before, so I knew they were good. But I needed a new batch within 72 hours, and VistaPrint made a nice profit from the rushed shipping costs that I paid them. Take a look at their pricing breakdown for free business cards:

I think the key here is that VistaPrint spent less time worrying about features that would be “nice to have”, and more time on selling me something that I absolutely needed to have, and something I’d obviously be willing to pay for. Props to them!

Another company that’s done a great job at freemium is PBworks.com. (formerly known as PBwiki). I worked there last summer, so I had a lot of time to think about why their model works so well. Firstly, the company targets so many different demographics: individuals, students, teachers, companies, conferences, engaged couples, people trying to lose weight, among others. But most of these users will never pay for PBworks, because they don’t have a need to. And even if there were “cooler” features that PBworks could offer, these users probably wouldn’t pay. As a student using the product for personal use, I remember ignoring the upgrade button on the top right of the screen, and using PBworks as far as free would take me. In fact, I still have a personal wiki I use for taking notes in class, and I see myself as the type of user who’d never want to pay for premium features.

But now I run a company, and we love our PBworkspace. In fact, I think I’m addicted. But my colleagues and interns are too. And while I’d still do anything possible not to pay for “cool-to-have” premium features, PBworks is smart enough to make me pay for its service because I need it. There were two things that they could do: cut me off after I made too many edits to my wiki, or heavily encourage me to pay when I’d have a clear need. They chose the latter route.

This is precisely why the “per user” model is so powerful. You get the benefits of a full-fledged product, but you only pay for what you need. For the first 3 users, PBworks is free, but when I bring in more people, I have to pay $8/user. Which is a relatively small cost to pay for something that I’ll probably need to have. Take a look at their pricing structure. Note that I omitted the free plan.

What’s interesting about this is that the difference between the “Professional” and “Professional Plus” plans is trivial. We normally expect the most expensive plan to have 20 baller features that the others don’t have, just to convince you to pay for the more expensive plan. But PBworks isn’t that naive: they realize that as long as you have a need for more than 3 people to collaborate on a wiki, (which is pretty much every organization out there), you’ll pay for the product out of sheer need. And the difference between their “Professional” and “Professional Plus” plans shows their understanding of this too: Some organizations need to have 24/7 live support, and they’re willing to pay for that.

But at the end of the day, when the organization’s decision maker needs to figure out which PBworks plan to purchase, it isn’t comparing featuresets between plans. It’s about selecting the one plan that solves the needs you have, and PBworks and other enterprise software companies such as Freshbooks and Salesforce do this well.

So ask yourself, “where is the actual need?” With VistaPrint, the need comes down to getting business cards in a timely manner. With PBworks, the need is when an organization has more than 3 users on a wiki. For Indinero, my current company, the need is when a company has more than 2 bank/credit card accounts that they need to keep track of. By thinking about “what the user needs” rather than thinking about “what a user sees as cool features to have”, you’ll be taking full-advantage of the beautiful thing called freemium.

Speaking of smart marketing, VistaPrint decided to give you guys a 25% discount on all products, and an 80% discount on premium business cards. For a product that I’ve actually paid full-price for, I highly recommend them. If you run into another company with a unique business model, please send me a tip at jessicamah (at) jessicamah.com.

Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, (and graduate of U.C. Berkeley) gave this fantastic commencement speech at Carnegie Mellon University yesterday. My favorite quote:

“You cannot plan innovation. You cannot plan invention. All you can do is try very hard to be at the right place and be ready.”

This goes back to what I wrote about a few days ago. People try to carve out their perfect path to success, but there’s only so much that one could do. Lead a fulfilling and exciting life, and amazing opportunities will come your way.

It’s been an incredibly exciting year! With today being my 19th birthday and the end of my first year studying at Berkeley, I felt that it was time to glance over the great things that have happened in the past 12 months. I’ve been incredibly lucky for all the great things that have happened, and wanted to give thanks to the people who made it happen, as well as my naive sense of how best to live life.

Back in the fall, I was talking to Cal Newport about an upcoming book he’s writing, and came to realize that the exciting things from my life came my mere desire to do fun things; not from my “selfish” attempt to actually further my career. As a student, I felt that my job was to do anything and everything to grow as an individual, and attending class was far from efficient in achieving that task.

I don’t usually enjoy blogging about my “personal life”, but I thought it’d be nice to do something different. Many of you have asked me to give a more personal touch to my blog, so here it is: a short list of some cool things that happened to me this year, and the incredible people I have to thank:

- Just a year ago on May 17, I graduated from Simon’s Rock, the Early College, with my Associates Degree. I first went to Simon’s Rock to leave the boredom of high school, and to get a jump start on my career. If it wasn’t for my freshman-year roommate insisting on going to Berkeley one day, I’m not sure if I’d follow in her footsteps.

- Over the summer, I landed a gig at PBwiki (now PBworks.com) as a summer web developer, and had the time of my life. The founder, David Weekly, has since become a close friend and adviser for my current company. If it wasn’t for a referral from a blog reader, I wouldn’t have landed that incredible opportunity.

- In my first week as a student at Berkeley, and in the first Discrete Mathematics class, I met a cool guy named Andy. We were the only first-year students, and the TA told us that we’d better make friends if we planned on surviving the class. Fast forward a few months, and he’d eventually become my best friend and co-founder for internshipIN and our latest company, Indinero. If it wasn’t for the blunt TA, I’d still be looking for that perfect partner.

- In February, I went to my first TED Conference in Long Beach, CA. In the 5 days I spent there, I grew more as a person that I ever have before. If it wasn’t for meeting a random TEDster on the beaches of Jamaica, I’d never have gotten an invitation to go.

- In April, my company landed a $35k grant from Lightspeed Venture Partners. If it wasn’t for a random emailing from Berkeley Alumni who told us (and other students here) about the summer program, we’d still be looking for money.

This past year has been filled with incredible serendipity, and the excitement in my life is more-or-less fueled by it. None of these fantastic things happened by directly looking for them, but rather by putting myself in the the right place to be exposed to the right people. Most of the great things on my list stem from having gone to Simon’s Rock, and by living as exciting a life as I possibly could. And If it wasn’t for high school being so crappy, I wouldn’t have had the motivation to apply to college early.

Human life is so dynamic that there’s no good way to plan for good things. People ask me all the time, “how did you get invited to the TED Conference?” And the only honest answer I could give is “by living the most exciting life that I possibly can.” People are always focused on achieving the next logical step in their education or career, but that often prevents them from doing exciting things that would indirectly get them closer to achieving eventual success.

For example — As a high school student, if I actually cared about going to college, I’d focus day and night on my school work. But by following my philosophy of “living the most exciting life possible,” schoolwork failed to meet my criteria. So I did the most exciting thing I possibly could do, and that was to start a company. One year later, I got into college. And the admissions people looked specifically at my botched attempt to run a company while attending school, and accepted me half way through my 2nd year of high school.

Sure, my theory of life doesn’t always work to further your career, but at least it promises you this: You’ll grow tremendously as an individual, and live an exhilarating life. And if you have just that, I can guarantee you eventual success.

“Jessica, honey, baby, you’re a smart girl, but your business idea is total shit, and none of your friends are going to be honest like your mommy is.”

Hearing that hurt more than having teeth pulled, but it was for the good of humanity. It made me realize that most people refrain themselves from giving you negative feedback because they want to support you. If you have any relationship with the person you’re asking feedback from, they’ll find good things to say about your business idea, even if it’s a lard of crap. As an entrepreneur, it’s your job to get them out of this comfort zone, telling you the brutal truth.

Not only are people too nice when it comes to getting feedback on our business ideas, but many of us sub-consciously seek out “constructive advice” from people who we know are going to give us positive feedback. When someone compliments our idea, it’s tempting to move onto getting more “constructive feedback” from other friends who we know will pat us on the back.

When starting a new company, you have the entire entrepreneurial community on your side. “Your idea is fantastic, and you should ignore all of the naysayers!” But I’m going to suggest something different: Instead of ignoring them, talk to as many of them as possible, and figure out why your business could potentially fail. By doing so, you’ll be able to anticipate pitfalls that you can then account for. Not to mention, you’ll be better able to sway the minds of people who would otherwise be skeptical of you and your idea.

People are too nice. Friends and colleagues will praise you for your entrepreneurial ambition, even if they sub-consiously think your idea sucks. I speak from experience — when a good friend of mine pitches a business idea to me, I’m tempted to think only about the positives. It’s my friend, so I want to uplift his or her sprits! But upon greater thought, I realize how flawed the business is, and I wish my entrepreneur friend knew what I thought.

I’ve been working on a stupid business idea for the past few weeks, and I’ve been so pumped about it after getting positive feedback from most of the people I talk to. But just this week, I pitched the idea to my mom. As a successful entrepreneur, I thought she’d be able to give good constructive feedback. And “constructive feedback” she gave. Within 10 seconds, she was able to give me a dozen reasons for why my business idea is flawed, and for why I lack needed experience to see it through.

I thought three things: 1) “Wow, my idea sucks”, 2) “Wow, I’m a failure for an entrepreneur”, and 3) “Wow, my mom’s doing a fricken good job at convincing me not to drop out of college”. I cried my brains out from thoughts of being a failure, then recovered with newfound knowledge on how to actually improve on my business. And of course, with renewed motivation to prove naysayers (like my mom) wrong.

Nobody wants to hear how much their idea sucks, and that’s because most naysayers are shitty at providing constructive criticism. The last time my mom criticized my entrepreneurial abilities, we were driving to the airport. I remember wanting to jump out of the car rather than to hear her tear apart my dreams. I told my mom, “Why do you hate me so much?!” As an entrepreneur, you probably understand that having someone tell you that your idea sucks is analogous to being made fun of in middle school. You feel like you’re hot shit, and then moments later, you realize that you’re a loser who didn’t know any better.

So suck it up. The best criticism acts like a slap in the face, and you realize that you’re dreaming stupidity by thinking that you and your business is great. Maybe I’m a masochist, but I like it when my friends (and mom) tell me the fundamental flaws behind my business. As a smart entrepreneur, drag your friends to their feet and have them offer legitimate reasons for why your business could fail. With a sense of humor in all of this, you’ll ultimately be a better entrepreneur, with answers for everyone who questions the purpose of your company’s existence.

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about why 99% of entrepreneurs fail. But before you have the potential to be a failed entrepreneur, you need an idea. And many aspiring entrepreneurs don’t know where to start.

Why are good ideas so hard to come by? Because most people try to think of them in either the wrong venue, or from the wrong-perspective. You need to stop thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur when you’re thinking of an idea. You need to experience life as the world’s victim, experiencing the flaws of the human life, and figuring out ways to improve on it.

1) You’re born with the ability to see the world in an abstract way, and can immediately come up with ideas on how to rid the world of its problems. You look at the world around you, and ideas are popping out as fast as babies from teenage girls. In other words, you’re lucky.

2) And then there’s everyone else who can’t think of any good ideas. For the other 99% of the entrepreneurs in the world, including me, you struggle in the pursuit for ideas. You either need to retrain to be an idea person, or steal an idea from someone else. Or do both. So how did I do it? How did I go from having no ideas for a business/nonprofit to having more ideas than I could possibly work on? I followed the following “idea life-cycle”:



It isn’t simple, but I’m going to suggest that you change your perspective on the world in one select way: It’s as retarded as it gets, but be a picky bitch who can identify everything wrong in the world, and not be scared to share it with others. Everyday, you experience minor inconveniences in your life that are waiting to get solved. But after learning to become “mature adults,” you’ve conditioned yourself to be happy with what you have, leaving the flaws in life untouched.

If you want to expose yourself to more ideas, you need to train yourself, and in every obscure way possible. Don’t settle for anything that you’re not content with. Experience the world for what it is, and be absolutely freaking honest with your feelings and frustrations in life, and come up with ways to fix them. Let’s take one “simple” exercise that I remember doing in elementary school, and analyze it. Here was the thought process of my 6 year old mind:

I’d go to a restaurant with my Daddy. The wait is 15 minutes long and I hate waiting. Why can’t I order my food NOW, and have it ready for me when a table is ready? Why do I have to wait on a line before I can even order? Why is it annoying to flip each page in the menu? What have my friends tried and liked? Why do waiters take so long to come take my order when I know what I want to order? Why is the portion so massive… couldn’t they give me something I could finish? Why does it take so long to pay? … And Daddy, why are you staring at the waitress?

I could go on and on with this story for pages, describing everything sucky about the way restaurants work. As you could probably assume, I was a very picky, impatient (and curious) child. I’d often share these thoughts with my parents, and they’d tell me to shut up and be appreciative with what I have. Fortunate for them, I’ve since become a jolly human being.

But unfortunately, I’ve lost this incredible ability! Think about the possibilities — If you and I were able to experience the world like 6 year old Jessica Mah, then we’d have hundreds of potential business ideas each day. Sure, you’d probably be a life hater and that lonely kid on the playground who didn’t have any friends. (which I was) - but at least you’d have lots of ideas, and perhaps even one fantastic idea for a company you could start.

If you fit into the second category of entrepreneurs that I listed above, (not being born an idea-person) then it’s imperative that you train yourself to be the snobby 6 year old girl who has no problem complaining about the flaws in this world, then asking her daddy to fix them. For every flaw you see in this world, write it down in a journal. Be as general as possible. For example, based on my thought-process in a restaurant, I’d be able to come up with these ideas:

- Waiting on lines sucks
- Waiting for servers sucks
- Having people not know your preferences sucks
- Comparing dozens of options with each other sucks
- Life in general sucks

Now bring those general ideas back home with you, and get out of your 6 year old la-la land. Start thinking of ways the world sucks in all of those above ways, and ways to fix them. I hated waiting to get seated at a restaurant, so how can I improve that? Since the problem was so general, (”waiting on lines sucks”) how could I apply this to waiting for anything in life? This simple example applies to waiting at theme parks, airports, traffic, waiting on new mail, and I’m sure dozens of other things that are totally not worth waiting on.

And for each of those ideas, we can break it down further into dozens of potential solutions. The airport example is being fixed in a lot of great ways that you can see: Online check-in and the Clear Pass, just to name a few. Commercial flight has been around for decades, yet nobody has thought of the above ideas until just a few years ago. This suggests that fantastic ideas are all around you, just waiting to get found.

As they say, the best ideas come from entrepreneurs who are fixing a problem that they saw in the world; not from any profit incentive or selfish motive. And there’s no better way to do this than to see as many flaws in the world possible. Think of as many ways that life sucks. Every context you’re in provides new opportunity to think of ways to improve on the world. Most of the ideas you come up with will suck, but many will hold great opportunity if you don’t dismiss them so fast.

Then, apply these flaws to everything else in life. I’m serious — keep a journal with all of the flaws in the world. Then in the bathtub, start brainstorming creative solutions to those problems. When you have a list of problems to solve, you have a framework from which you can think of brilliant business ideas.

With that said, go experience the world starting now, and be honest with your true feelings on why your life sucks. (even if it doesn’t.) Then, transfer those ideas into entrepreneurial concepts. As a good idea-person, you’re capable of finding every minuscule flaw in human life. Just try not to bring this to the business… and especially not to the bedroom.

These past few weeks have been absolutely mind boggling — I went to Long Beach for the incredible TED conference, Boston for a Harvard’s Model United Nations conference, and I’m now back in Berkeley trying to absorb the incredible things I’ve learned this month. In the coming few weeks, I’ll publish the thoughts I had on the inside-scoop of the TED Conference, the fundamental flaws of the United Nations, and of course, more ideas related to innovation and entrepreneurship.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been thinking a lot about taking small, basic ideas and extending them into new applications that are difficult to foresee. Most of the incredible innovations of the past century seemed dull at conception, but now revolutionary in hindsight. Some obvious examples include the invent of the world wide web, the cell phone, the personal computer, etc… The founder of the world wide web “wrote a proposal in March 1989 for ‘a large hypertext database with typed links’, but it generated little interest.” Neither he nor his naysayers could envision the incredible extensibility of what’s now the internet. Who knew that a pitiful “database of typed links” would eventually help people communicate, find information, and perform tasks crucial to the 21st century?

But such examples exist in the world around us — fellow TEDster David Merrill presented an invention at the TED conference called Siftables, which are basically “computerized tiles you can stack and shuffle in your hands. These future-toys can do math, play music, and talk to their friends, too.” Siftables is a great example of a seemingly simple invention that is yet to discover the vast extensibility of it’s abilities. Wait until Siftables go 3D — every side of the block gets its own screen, and childrens’ imaginations can be taken to the next level. David made it seem as if his toddler-aged beta tester didn’t know how to use Siftables, because the child just wanted to stack the blocks vertically. However, I’m sure that there are hundreds of more applications that can arise from taking these Siftables and making them interact on a three-dimensional level. This just comes to show how a seemingly basic concept has the potential to grow into an incredible invention that’s difficult to foresee.

For your enjoyment, David Merrill’s live demo of Siftables at the TED 2009 Conference.

I definitely have highs and lows. Often, I’m at the high of a new idea–one that I think can be REALLY promising. This feels good. Really, really good. Mmmm. It’s so happy and life is worth living. But then, swinging to the lows, which are filled with disheartening moments of despair where I think to myself: it’s not worth it, everyone’s doing something, there’s no way to compete, even babies have their own pet projects, *kills self in self-hating moment*
- Anonymous Blogger

I read that quote a few nights ago, and I practically laughed myself to sleep. I love that quote, because it’s true (and false) in oh so many ways. Many of you have had the pride and joy of thinking that you know the next billion dollar idea. For scholars, a similar feeling is found when you come to a philosophical epiphany. The high is so great, that it’s difficult to get your mind onto anything else.

But also, as many of you know, that feeling sometimes hits its rock bottom when you think that your business idea won’t work and your peers find the concept stupid at best. This is where I come into disagreement with the writer of the above quote — I don’t understand why people won’t even attempt to make their business idea work. If they’re convinced that their idea is the “next Google”, how could it hurt to at least disprove that it is?

There are three types of amateur entrepreneurs out there, and in my young life, I’ve been every single one of them. By coming to terms with my failures, I’m more prepared to classify which type of amateur entrepreneur I am, and thus preventing myself from failing in the same way again.

Type 1 Amateur Entrepreneur: All ideas, no implementation.

Let’s admit it. All of us have at some point thought of the brilliant, billion dollar idea. We brainstormed it out, thought about how rich and successful we’d be from having thought of the idea, then dreamt about living lavishly in a penthouse overlooking Central Park with enough money to feed every starving child in Africa. I’ve done it, and I know you have too. The problem lays in the fact that most self-proclaimed entrepreneurs are great at dreaming and envisioning their business idea, yet they lack the capability (and even willpower) needed to see it through. In my honest opinion, these people cannot be considered legitimate entrepreneurs if all they know is dreaming and allocating the task of implementation to others.

As a 5th grader, I started my first “company” and convinced my entire class to join me in my quest to build the internet’s latest and greatest entertainment portal. Of course, I didn’t know how to build anything more complex than a basic HTML website. My classmates lost faith in me, and I went down as a failed, type 1 amateur entrepreneur.

Type 2 Amateur Entrepreneur: Lots of ideas and half assed implementations.

These entrepreneurs think of good ideas and have the willpower needed to start working. However, they take the “fail fast” mentality way too far — they’ll launch a prototype of their project, put in almost no effort in getting it noticed, then call it a failure. Or even worse, I know of some entrepreneurs who dedicate months of their time working on a startup idea, but never end up launching. If you’re going to fail, at least make people think that you spent your time semi-wisely. Alternatively, type 2 amateur entrepreneurs have multiple ideas that they’re simultaneously working on, and figure that they’ll get rich from at least one of them. To you and me, this is obviously flawed logic. But at one point, I was a type 2 amateur entrepreneur.

A few years ago, Alex Notov and I co-founded Shockapps.com, a pathetic startup that made numerous, half-assed attempts to launch a successful facebook app. We got a lot of users and made some money, but with a concrete and focussed development strategy, we could have gone much further. We’d launch three apps in a single month, but all of them sucked, and only one of them got traction. When your mind is distracted by the thought of getting rich from multiple business ideas, it can be difficult to follow the rationality behind having focus.

Type 3 Amateur Entrepreneur: Lots of ideas, lots of implementations, and absolutely no focus.

Type 3 entrepreneurs are marginally better than type 1 and 2 combined, but they have absolutely no time for anything other than their work. They make a solid attempt to see their business idea through, but get distracted by the idea of another growth opportunity. I feel bad for these people more than anything — they try harder than both type 1 and 2 entrepreneurs, yet they often see just as devastating results. (and mostly on their psychological well-being)

Let’s say Johnny has an idea for a million-dollar idea. He starts working on it, gets traction, and a loyal client base that’s paying for his service. He then finds another growth opportunity — perhaps a multi BILLION dollar idea that he thinks he should be pursuing. He’s locked into business #1, so he can’t just drop it. So Johnny starts building up business #2, it gets traction and a loyal user base, and now he’s stuck handling two completely different companies. Now how lame would that be?

Unfortunate for my mom and I, but of us have been sucked into the trap of being a type 3 entrepreneur. In fact, my ninth grade business partly failed because of this trap. I started a simple, easy, cheap web hosting company as a way to cover the costs of having a personal website. I then realized that leasing expensive, managed, server solutions to small companies would bring me much more profit. Both businesses were doing pretty well, but they were sucking up all of my free time. What ninth grader should have to deal with the pains of school, running two companies, and the onset of puberty? Gag me with a spoon.

Going back to the quote — yes, everyone is “working” on a project, but 99% of self-proclaimed entrepreneurs fit into one of the three profiles above. If you’ve thought of the next billion dollar idea, please refrain yourself from being an amateur entrepreneur. If you find yourself as being an amateur entrepreneur, it’s not too late to change. Pick one idea that you’re passionate about, and whole-heartedley follow through with your implementation. Forget about the babies who have their own pet projects! If you don’t put in the effort to build your company, you’ll see nothing but a self-hating outcome. To the blogger who wrote the quote above: when you make the time and find the resources needed to make your idea a reality, you’ll experience the bliss of knowing that you’ve contributed to something amazing.

At last, my school vacation is nearing its end. However, I’m excited to be keynoting at the Teens in Tech conference on Saturday, January 31st at the Microsoft Office in Downtown San Francisco.

Teens in Tech is abut looking into the lives of teens in technology, and why people are building technology for teenagers.

In a nutshell, we’re seeing more and more teens in the tech industry, and this conference provides a venue for them to meet and to share ideas with each other. I don’t particularly enjoy talking about entrepreneurship as a teenager, because there isn’t anything particularly interesting or exciting about it. The only true hold-back is time commitment, and I’ve been forced to prioritize between my school work and side projects. So instead of dwelling on these insignificant “obstacles”, I might talk about how ignorance, lack of experience, and even a hint of stupidity may lead to the young entrepreneur’s eventual success. With that said, what do I know?

Have any ideas for you’d like to hear at the conference? Please let me know! If you’re interested in attending, register on their website with the discount code MAH. See you there!

Throughout my childhood, I often heard about my parents complaining about how crappy the education in America is. As the victim of numerous teachers who sucked at their jobs, I falsely believed that suffering was a necessary part of schooling. This suffering included useless classes, boring and repetitious homework, and teachers who spent more time controlling us than they did on actually teaching us. Pity.

Applying business skills to our public schools

Thinking back to how I was in fifth grade, I distinctly remember myself wondering, “what if I was the principal of this school?” This would be quite unfortunate for the teachers of my elementary school, because a good chunk of them would have been fired. Sound like how I’d run a company? Precisely.

Time magazine recently wrote about Michelle Rhee, the new superintendent of Washington D.C.’s public school system. They call her a “revolutionary and polarizing force in America education” because she plans on running public schools as if they were businesses. Why, what a novel concept!

To be openly blunt, many teachers suck. While I’m no expert at teaching, it’s quite clear that a good chunk of our education system’s problems come down to America’s lack of good teachers. Instead of being paid by merit and ability, most teachers in the same school are compensated equally. If Michelle Rhee were the benevolent dictator of teaching worldwide, teachers would no longer be guaranteed tenure, and inadequate teaching would quickly lead to one’s dismissal. If you ask me, it sounds like Rhee wants to run America’s school systems like a crafty Silicon Valley startup. I like!

Bureaucratic stupidity

Unfortunately, unlike the typical Silicon Valley startup, Washington D.C.’s public school system has a lot of red tape. Just think about it: If you ran your school like a good CEO, you’d have to deal with nagging parents who hate you because you fired a “nice and caring teacher”, regardless as to how much s/he failed at educating your child. You’d have to deal with the teachers, and they’d get the union involved. Think about it: “Experienced” teachers losing their tenures, and even their jobs! Of course they’re all outraged. But it needs to be known that by not dismissing crappy teachers, we’re indirectly performing a crime against humanity.

America’s future leaders are being left behind in grade school, and they’ll have a hard time catching up if even ONE bad teacher is given the chance to negatively influence their life. Research conducted by Stanford researcher Eric Hanushek suggested that a child with a top notch teacher (85%tile in quality) will be scoring well above grade level on standardized tests, while those with bad teachers will be almost a year and a half below grade level, and will probably never catch up. If teachers have that much impact on a child’s life, there must be a way to cut through the red tape and make some serious reform.

Stupid people turn smart people stupid

The effective teacher cringes at the idea of working side by side with a crappy teacher. In some cases, the crappy teacher is being paid more AND has tenure! This sends a terrible message to both effective teachers and aspiring educators. Good teachers will realize that the expectations of them are sub-par at best. Aspiring educators are scared that their teaching will have no effect on young children, only because bad teachers are giving the educational community a bad rap. Teachers who are interested in working at a school that employs crappy teachers will be turned away, thus leading to the hire of only more crappy teachers. * le sigh *

“I like to think about our public schools as… a lucrative enterprise”

This sounds terrible to say, but I love the idea of treating our school systems as a faltering business that needs a little face lift. Principals act as CEOs, teachers act as employees, and our children act as our theoretical customers. Only that in this case, if schools fail to provide a good service, our entire nation suffers equally as much as the customer does. So let’s change the perspective a little… if you were the principal of a school that just so happened to be a for-profit enterprise, what would you do?

If I ran a school, I’d be in constant contact with my customers (students) to figure out what’s needs improvement in the classroom. Back when I was in public high school (which didn’t last very long for many obvious reasons), my principal had the nerve to tell my mom that I was helping run ratemyteacher.com, the website notorious for encouraging young students to speak their mind! My principal thought that ratemyteacher.com was “unfair and mean to bad teachers…” And I’m thinking, “well… uh….. THAT’S THE ENTIRE POINT!” Students were happy to voice their opinions, whether they be 5 star ratings for good teachers or 1 star ratings for crappy ones. In my experience, bad teacher ratings were a pretty good indicator of the teacher’s crappiness. If I was the principal, I’d probably have students fill out evaluations that allowed students to give feedback on their teacher, based on some thought-out critera. Most colleges and universities do it. Why shouldn’t elementary schools, too?

Assuming that you’re a good CEO/principal, you’d ONLY hire good teachers. Unlike most schools, yours would have a zero tolerance for mediocrity. You’ll have a continuous feedback cycle with students to figure out how you can improve. Parents would do anything to send their child to your school! When principals decide to stop funding the retirements of shoddy teachers who I’d rather be jobless, the outlook on our children’s futures might just hold promise.

Update: (12/26) There are so many different perspectives on this topic… none can be confirmed right or wrong, but it’s important to look at every view. My friend Joël sent me a link to a speech made by John Gatto, who suggests that “the U.S. educational system cranks out students the way Detroit cranks out Buicks.” Students are programmed to contend to norms rather than taught how to think.

Many of my blog readers have asked me why I left high school early to attend Simon’s Rock, the Early College. There’s a difference between being “taught” and being “educated”, and unfortunately, my public high school taught me uselessness instead of teaching me how to think. While teachers like John Gatto believe that the public education system is broken beyond repair, others suggest that change can happen when the focus is more on teaching than on pleasing parents, satisfying teachers, and preserving teacher unions.

Fact is, this is an incredibly complicated topic that I claim absolutely no expertise on. Even the so-called “experts” have only so much influence on fixing the system. In John Gatto’s teacher of the year acceptance speech, he said, “we need to realize that the school institution “schools” very well, but it does not “educate” — that’s inherent in the design of the thing. It’s not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent, it’s just impossible for education and schooling ever to be the same thing.”

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Just a few days ago, something hit me: without my amazing mentors, I wouldn’t be here right now, and you wouldn’t be reading what little I have to say.

Rarely do I promote another website, but my friend Allie recently set up a neat web page that connects students with mentors in similar fields of interest. I know of so many smart people who would benefit from the guidance of someone who’s “been through it all.”

Mentorship is a new form of “life support”

Only in hindsight have I realized the significance of getting help and guidance from amazing people. I had never thought about calling these people “mentors”, but all of them have unknowingly become just that! One of my first mentors, Norman Bander, helped me through my darkest high school days to get me into college early. After my summer internship at PBwiki, David Weekly has become more than just a friend or employer to me: he’s helped me with important life choices, and opened my mind to a world beyond academics and entrepreneurship. (yes, such a world actually exists!)

To the other brilliant people reading this blog, you have incredible potential to help an inexperienced twirt like me! By mentoring someone, you have the potential to change a person’s life course. You’ll make sure that they don’t run into the same walls that you once did. You’ll learn so much about yourself that you never knew before! And perhaps, one day, karma will pat you on the back. You just wait and see

Convinced? Awesome! If you have no clue as to how to get started, I’d highly recommend going to http://thecreativecareer.com/mentors/ - fill out the short form, and call yourself a better person for having done so. If you don’t, just keep in mind…

The value of having adult supervision (that doesn’t include bad parenting) is incredibly undervalued! One day, you’ll come across a young smarty-pants who would die to have you as a mentor. Without you even realizing, you’ll lead this person through some important life decisions, and forever change their life.

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