When I heard that Tim Ferriss was moderating this session, I was really looking forward to this because I was a big fan, having read his book “The Four Hour Workweek” twice just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. This panel was about building big in as little time as possible. I’ll have to admit, save for Tim, I really didn’t know any of these people. And I call myself a tech geek – oh the shame. All of the speakers were accomplished in their own right.

• Tim Ferriss – author of the Four Hour Workweek
• Evan Williams – founder of Blogger and Twitter
• Cali Lewis – host of GeekBrief TV, a video podcast site for tech geeks like me
• Mike Cassidy – CEO & co-founder of Xfire, DirectHit, and Stylus Innovation

I think Mike belongs in a whole different category of his own. Mike is a speed freak. He sold Stylus Innovation for $13 million, quickly followed up by selling his 500 day old company DirectHit for $532 million. If that wasn’t enough, he then went on to sell his 2 year old Xfire to Viacom for $110 million. He’s a speed demon. I like. I thought man, I wanna hear what this guy has to say, he’s not messing around.

I’ve organized my notes by person. It helps me understand them individually better.

Cali

• Build a community
• Have passion
• Don’t promote too early

Evan

• Use social networks to build a critical mass
• Follow the market that’s responding – not necessarily the market that your website was meant for
• Grow faster by taking away power user features

Tim

• Embrace the thought leaders not the traffic leaders
• Ready, fire, aim approach. Launch first, then figure out who its for
• Don’t skip on time spent networking
• Don’t ask people to review you
• Offer to share knowledge and explain
• Eliminate as much as possible
• Get relationships in place before you need them
• Make it easy for mentors to help you
• Focus on a really small audience
• Recommended reading: “Buffet: Making of an American Capitalist“

Mike

• Compress all phases of the company
• Release products/updates quickly (2 weeks)
• Start with a simple clean feature set
• Recruiting: set expectations with a running start beginning on day 1
• Form relationships even when there is no immediate benefit
• Recommended reading “Six Days of War“

If I were to distill everything down to just a key point from each person it would be:

• Be genuine, be real, and it will show.
• Go with the flow. You don’t know how users will use your product until it happens.
• Go for quality over quantity whether it’s relationships, product, users.
• Do it fast.

Tim Ferris has a writeup of the event including a recording of the panel. You should definitely check it out.