In just under 40 minutes, we riffed on:

• What is a tribe and why are they important?
• The critical importance of finding the first ten rabid fans for your idea.
• The benefits of Eric Ries‘ Lean Startup methodology
• How to quickly mock up your idea using a rapid prototyping tool for less than $50
• How to build virality into your startup, like Instagram did.
• Why your startup should give users a metric to be embarrassed about.
• The unique application and interview process for the Seth Godin MBA program.
• How SAMBA taught applicable business lessons vs. a standard curriculum.
• The genesis and vision for Spindows, my new startup.
• How to get your early customers to fund your startup.
• How to use search.twitter.com to find members of your tribe.

Watch the video below or over on Howard’s blog.

My friend Andy Traub is a man who ships things. He regularly ships the Linchpin Podcast, one channel of his Take Permission Media Network.

In June, Andy was nice enough to interview me for his Linchpin Podcast. The episode is pretty long at almost 90 minutes but we had a great conversation on the following topics:

• The two traits of an incurable entrepreneur (hint: you have both)
• A free website to launch and spread your idea in 15 minutes
• Why the cost of failure has approached zero
• We Work Labs – a new innovation co-working space in NYC
• How to pivot your idea for success
• The difference between ideas and shipping
• My first failed business (a non-profit involving an Atari 2600 and my brothers when I was 8 years old)
• How to finally write that book in your head (can you write a page a day?)
• How to meet more relevant people in your organization
• How Elliot Bisnow changed the world by dropping out of college and organizing an impromptu ski trip that spawned a world-changing organization.

Click here to head over to Andy’s blog to listen or click here to listen directly.

I hope you enjoy the show and look forward to your thoughts.

On Wednesday, Vinicius Vacanti, founder and CEO of Yipit, the most popular daily deal aggregator on the web, delivered an excellent session for startup founders titled, “From Idea to Product to Traction.”  The session was jam-packed with actionable nuggets.  Some highlights and a link to the full post below.

Identify a real problem. The biggest mistake most entrepreneurs make at this stage is getting excited about an idea that isn’t solving a real problem that people have.

Make sure it’s a very big problem. Vacanti used a personal example of replacing a broken remote control for one of his televisions. Problem? Yes. Big problem (market)? No. Vacanti explained that when pitching entrepreneurs need to convince VC’s they’re building a billion dollar company.

Come up with a name and setup a landing page. Collect emails while you’re working away getting a product up to speed.  To do this quickly and easily, Vacanti recommended one of my favorite new startups, Launchrock.com. He explained a few simple ways to promote the landing page, such as including the problem you’re solving and the landing page URL in your email signature.

Come up with a less than 7 word description that succinctly explains the problem you’re solving. Tumblr’s is simple, “The easiest way to blog.” Yipit’s is “All the best daily deals in your city.” The original Apple iPod was, “A thousand songs in your pocket.” The shorter the better.

Don’t add features, throw them out. Vacanti explained that by trimming features and functionality, Yipit reduced it’s production time from a year and a half for v1.0 to four months for v2.0 and then down to three days for the current iteration of the product.

You can read the rest of the post over on Yahoo! Scene here.

Last Wednesday, Mary Van de Weil was nice enough to have me back on her wonderful NY Brand Lab Radio show.

Mary is brilliant. I was her first ever repeat guest and I hope to be on her show again soon.

The show is about 30 minutes long and we riffed on some interesting topics:

• The two traits of an incurable entrepreneur (hint: you have both)
• A free website to launch and spread your idea in 15 minutes
• Why the cost of failure has approached zero
• We Work Labs – a new innovation co-working space in NYC
• How to pivot your idea for success
• The difference between ideas and shipping
• My first failed business (a non-profit involving my brothers when I was 8 years old)
• How to finally write that book in your head (can you write a page a day?)
• How to meet more relevant people in your organization
• How Elliot Bisnow dropping out of college and organizing an impromptu ski trip changed the world

I hope you enjoy the show.

My wish for Martin Luther King Jr. day is for all of us to have a dream. And act on it.

If you can’t see the video, click here.

OK, they may not know what you’re wearing but there is a good chance they know your customers better than you do.

Flowtown uses emails from your customer database, (you do have an email database for your customers, right?) and can tell you interesting and valuable information about those customers.

I recently met the founders of Flowtown online. They are wicked smart guys with a product that is immediately useful to almost any business.

Below is my interview with Ethan Bloch.

Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Ethan Bloch and I’m the Co-founder and CEO of Flowtown.

Why should companies use Flowtown?
Because social media is hard and Flowtown turns social data in dollars.

How much does Flowtown know about someone from their email address?
Name, Age Group, Gender, Occupation, Location, Influence and almost every Social network they’re on.

Really? Wow. Do you know what I’m wearing right now?
I think you’d prefer I didn’t say

So this would allow companies to do more targeted campaigns. For instance, if only 10,000 of their 100,000 members are twitter users, they could do a focused campaign, right?
Totally, way more focused. For example if you’re not on Twitter it would be annoying to get an email saying ‘Hi Clay, we’re building out our presence on Twitter…” you’d be like “I’m not on there, why are you sending me this?” On the flip side we’ve found that if you know someone is on a network and you mention that in your email, the performance of that campaign skyrockets.

Is Flowtown a replacement for traditional email systems like Flowtown, AWeber or MailChimp?
In the case of mainstream email service providers, I don’t think Flowtown is a replacement but rather an enhancement. For example we’ve built an integration with MailChimp where any MailChimp user can come to Flowtown and in 3 clicks dump a ton of demographic and social graphic information back into their MailChimp list and then use MailChimp’s segmentation feature to get more relevant with their subscribers.

You guys are adding interesting new features to Flowtown pretty quickly. Tell us about some of them.
We just launched an influence calculation (powered by Klout), where now when you import a contact list we’ll show you your top 50 influencers, which you can use to do 1-on-1 outreach i.e. we’re showing you the 20% that will drive 80% of the results, in respect to getting noticed and building buzz.

In fact everything we do at Flowtown is ran through this ‘Pareto Lens’ – early on, internally, Dan and I would speak of Flowtown as the 80/20 marketing filter for business.

Tell me about your partner, Dan Martell. How did you guys meet?
He’s a Rockstar – we wouldn’t be anywhere close to where we are today without Dan.

We actually met on Twitter back in September 2008. Did an IRL meetup, discovered we’re both passionate about marketing and moving the needle for business and the rest is history…

Tell us what your typical day at Flowtown is like.
I wake up around 6:30 and immediately touch base with David (VP of Engineering), he’s on EST so by the time I get up I’m already playing catchup.

(I jumpstart my day by using a strategy from Leo at Zen Habits: http://zenhabits.net/2007/02/jumpstart-your-day-night-before-evening/)

I’ll do a brief skim of all the new email that’s came in make sure there’s no bombs going off and then then I’ll work on 1-2 of the most important tasks I have scheduled for the day, for the next 3 hours, usually product, sales or biz dev focused, this could include new product mocks, coding, emails, phone calls, brainstorming and white boarding.

After those 3-hours are up I start going into a more ad-hoc mode, where I’m answering email/tweets, talking to customers, closing new customers, working with David on new features, bouncing around the bay for meetings, testing new features, breaking things and syncing up with Dan.

Later in the day/evening is when I go to the 30,000+ foot view of life, this includes research, reading (going through my Instapaper) and planning.

What did you do before you started Flowtown?
Right before I started Flowtown I was producing/hosting a video show called WSYK? (What Should You Know?) which was syndicated by Revision3. And I was a marketer full time at Cake Financial, a start-up that was recently sold to E-Trade.

Where do you hope Flowtown will be in 3 years?
Flowtown will be responsible for raising the bar on customer experience/service, by helping all businesses care for their customers like Zappos cares for theirs.

What’s the plan then?
Not sure if I’ll be ready, but I want to help fill the massive void in education. I hated school growing up and think there’s a lot we can do to improve the experience for children everywhere.

You’re from Baltimore. Please tell me you’ve seen the Wire or we’re ending this interview right now.

“You come at the king you best not miss.”

I love The Wire. My favorite character is Omar and if you don’t know why just watch this.

Thanks, Ethan.

If you want to try Flowtown yourself, enter your email address here.

Last week, I wrote an email to a friend who is visiting Costa Rica and is going to try surfing. As I crafted the email, I noticed some key similarities between surfing and starting a new business.

Conditions are critical
SURFING:
Even excellent surfers can’t surf when the water is flat. On a day with perfect waves, even amateur surfers catch a few good rides. (On rough days, you can spend 80% of your effort just paddling to get into position.)

BUSINESS:
When market conditions are perfect, even average businesses can succeed. When conditions get worse, only the very best can thrive.

Experience trumps tools
SURFING:
Experienced surfers can make do with average equipment, whereas rookies aren’t helped by a brand new surfboard.

BUSINESS:
A spreadsheet does not make someone a financial analyst. Keynote does not make someone a good speaker. A twitter account does not make someone a social media expert. Good tools reward experience.

Timing is everything
SURFING:
Paddle too early and you’ll burn out when the wave comes. Paddle too late and the wave will pass you by.

BUSINESS:
Burn through your cash too early and you won’t be around to sustain the tough periods. Wait to long to change your business due to an industry paradigm shift (like the end of traditional publishing) and you’ll be left underwater.

Do you have a secret recipe for the best salsa ever but can’t seem to sell it on that e-commerce website your niece made you for $500?

Is your aunt Kate’s spiced pear butter ready for the big time?

Until now, there has been a serious gap between rocking a booth at a farmers market and getting shelf space at Whole Foods.

Enter Foodzie.

In their words,

We are an online marketplace where you can discover and buy food directly from small passionate food producers and growers. We are a part of a bigger mission, to help change the way people eat. Our small piece of that mission is to help the small food producers across the country find customers and grow their business. We believe that instead of a small number of large food companies there should be a large number of small food companies. We’re a bit obsessed with good food and passionate about connecting those that like to eat it with the people that make it.

Foodzie handles credit-card processing and tax calculations for producers, and supplies prepaid shipping labels to the makers of such items as salami, apricot jam and ‘single malt scotch dark chocolate bars.

In return, Foodzie takes 20% of sales. (Explaining the math to aunt Kate should be pretty easy.)

They started in Colorado but recently moved to San Francisco and now Silicon Valley legends like Digg’s Kevin Olson are stopping by for tours.

Foodzie identified a gap in the marketplace and filled it. Now they’re filling stomachs and the pocketbooks of artisan producers all over the country.

I for one, hope they succeed.

It has been elucidated much better than I can here and here and here, but walking home today I noticed this sign.

That’s right. If you give Citibank $1,000 today, and then wait 365 days, they will give you your original $1000 plus $22.50 in interest.

Risk free!

Or is it?

A freelancer gets paid when they work.
An entrepreneur builds a business that makes money while he sleeps.

A freelancer starts from scratch.
An entrepreneur borrows money.

A freelancer works to make himself money.
An entrepreneur sets out to gain an enormous return for his investors.

A freelancer’s business is themselves. When they are gone, it is gone.
An entrepreneur sets out to build an enterprise that will last long after they are gone.

A freelancer can change direction quickly.
An entrepreneur must stay focused on a singular goal.

Neither is inherently better than the other but it is critical to know which one you are and act the part.

So which one are you?