July 13, 2012

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Good advice is hard to come by. When you are in a leadership position, people tend to ask you for advice rather than offer their own. Therefore, it’s important for entrepreneurs to seek out advice from other CEO’s, books, mentors, etc.

Here are three pieces of advice that shaped myYearbook (now known as MeetMe), and my life:

1. Don’t be afraid to make (and measure) mistakes.

Winston Churchill said, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”

While it is disheartening to fail, what you learn is invaluable. Not every launch is a success. If you are too worried about making mistakes, then you don’t give yourself room to innovate.

If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not making decisions. And not learning from your mistakes will lead to repeat failure. The only way to learn from mistakes is to create good measures of impact. At MeetMe, we have a metrics-driven culture and can quickly assess how a new product or feature is performing. It may be cliché, but “The only failure is not to try.” Take the risk and track it.

2. Be about one thing.

At Google, their company philosophy notes that “It’s best to do one thing really, really well.”

When we started myYearbook, we had a broad mission. We wanted to be where you go to have fun and connect with any type of friend — new or old. But it didn’t feel right. As time went on, our message became more crisp and we realized the value in Google’s wisdom firsthand.

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