Written by Reid Hoffman

Last week I gave a talk at South by Southwest, and in it I shared my top ten rules for entrepreneurship. They are borne from my experiences starting companies and partnering with great entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley as an angel and a venture capitalist. I hope they prove to be useful to you. If you are an entrepreneur and have other rules you live by and want to share with others, please post your thoughts in the comments field.

Rule #1: Look for disruptive change.

If you’re about to start on a new venture, ask yourself: What is becoming possible or necessary that wasn’t possible before? Is a new product or service able to take over an existing market or create a new market? When I co-founded LinkedIn the tech industry was in a deep depression. I looked at all the opportunities created by the Internet and had the idea that eventually everyone would need a professional profile online. The disruption was that people were able to directly reach the best candidates rather than hoping for responses from a listing in the paper or an ad on a Web site.

Rule #2: Aim big.

Regardless of whether a start-up is targeting a big idea or a small one, it will still require the same amount of blood, sweat and tears—so aim big! What is “big?” It is a new product or service that creates or dominates a significant market.

Rule #3: Build a network to magnify your company.

People tend to think that behind every great start-up is a single entrepreneur with a whiz-bang idea. The reality is great companies are built by a number of people with talent who are surrounded by amplifying networks. The most successful entrepreneurs bring in advisors, investors, collaborators and early customer relationships.

Rule #4: Plan for good luck and bad luck.

You should always assume you will have both good luck and bad luck with your new company. Good luck is not as simple as “it worked out.” Rather, this is when you discover a great opportunity and can quickly shift to go after it. Bad luck is what happens when your first idea doesn’t work. It doesn’t mean failure; it means you need to pursue plan B.

Rule #5: Maintain flexible persistence.

Very often entrepreneurs are given conflicting advice: “Be persistent! Stay committed to your vision!” or “Pivot on key data! Know when to change!” The challenge is to follow them both, but know which advice is most appropriate for which situation. You must know how to maintain flexible persistence.

Rule #6: Launch early enough that you are embarrassed by your first product release.

With my first startup, Socialnet.com, it took us nine months to launch the first product. That was a disastrous mistake. We wanted to have all the detailed functionality right away, including social controls to people could decide to connect or not with the people in their networks. We wanted everyone to “Ooh” and “Aaah” about how terrific the product was. We wasted a bunch of time and it put us months behind on more important problems that needed to be solved, such as how to get our product in the hands of millions of people. From that I learned, if you are not embarrassed by your first release, you’ve launched too late!

Rule #7: Aspire, but don’t drink your own Kool-Aid.

Target excellence, but be very careful about blind trust or belief in your theories. It is important to launch as early as you can in order to learn how your customers use your product or service. It is equally important to identify metrics that tell you if your aspirations and vision are on target. You should also get feedback from your network in order to iterate or pivot on the target, the product and/or the service. In other words, maintain your aspiration but always look for good perspective on how you are doing. It is very easy for creative innovators to get caught up in their own story rather than learning where they should be headed.

Rule #8: Having a great product is important but having great product distribution is more important.

I meet a lot of entrepreneurs who think the best product is the most important thing and that the best product should always win. What a lot of people fail to realize is that without great distribution, the product dies. How will you get your product in the hands of millions or hundreds of millions of people?

Rule #9: Pay close attention to culture and hires from the very beginning.

Your first hires set your culture, so make them good ones. These first people hire the next people and so on. The old wisdom was that you needed people with a decade more of experience in your start-up. The things a smart person learned a decade ago won’t help you now – you’re doing things that have never been done before, and the world and the competitive landscape are changing at hyper speeds. What you really need are people who can learn fast.

Rule #10: Rules of entrepreneurship are guidelines, not laws of nature.

Do not pay too much attention to rules set by other people. Entrepreneurs are inventors. They are successful when they make something work for the very first time. Sometimes in order to make something work, you will drive over the guardrail of one of these rules. Entrepreneurs sometimes just make new rules.

Bonus: Musicians@Google Presents: Google Goes Gaga

I’d like to say happy birthday to an old friend – although when I say “old” we’ve only known each other for four years. During that time, the way I run my working life and communicate with friends, contacts, family and the wider world has been transformed. I’m talking about Twitter, which was born five years ago today.

2006: Jack Dorsey sends the world’s first (non-automated) tweet:

The message was cryptic. Two words. No context, no punctuation, just: "inviting coworkers"

But that short statement proved to be enough to launch a global phenomenon that has launched careers, reunited long-lost relatives, and even, some would argue, topple dictators.

It was the first tweet.

The name Twitter was inspired by Flickr, a photo-sharing service. Other names considered: FriendStalker and Dodgeball.

The dictionary definition of twitter is “a short burst of inconsequential information.”

A perfect name, said @Jack because “that’s exactly what the product was.”

Since March 21, 2006, Twitter users now send more than 140 million Tweets a day which adds up to a billion Tweets every 8 days—by comparison, it took 3 years, 2 months, and 1 day to reach the first billion Tweets. While it took about 18 months to sign up the first 500,000 accounts, we now see close to 500,000 accounts created every day.

Now twitter has become an endlessly flowing river of news, opinion, information, expertise, contacts, data, links, connections. You can not only find out what is happening, but connect to the people you’re trying to reach more directly.

What’s far more eminent however is not everything Twitter’s attained to date, its promise and legacy lies in all that it has yet to fulfill. Not only will it continue to change how we discover and interact, Twitter will continue to shape culture, the nature of relationships, and also further democratize business and media to revolve around the EGOsystem. The global real-time water cooler is changing the dynamics of media and “we the people” are now becoming part of the story. Perhaps where we will see Twitter’s greatest impact is in the cooperation between societies and governments. Any network that can bring an audience to an impassioned voice on demand will overpower any organization’s attempt to suppress it. Twitter’s inherent ability to unite voices, engender empathy and trigger action is nothing short of #revolutionary.

Top 10 Tweets ofthe Past 5 Years

Over the past five years, single tweets have led to marriage and divorce, fame and notoriety, revolution and rebuilding — here are 10 of our favorites.

1. @Jack: inviting coworkers

It was the tweet that launched a social media revolution. According to Twitter, this is the first official tweet sent out by the company’s co-founder Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006.

2. @barack obama: We just made history. All of this happened because you gave your time, talent and passion. All of this happened because of you. Thanks

Posted by President Barack Obama (or the individual who manages his Twitter account), immediately after his 2008 victory,this tweet speaks to the role of social media in that presidential election. Through Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Youtube and other new media, Obama and his party rallied young people across the country. Since the election, Obama’s White House has continued to use social media to reach citizens directly.

3. @jkrums: http://twitpic.com/135xa – There’s a plane in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.

When Janis Krums of Sarasota, Fla., posted this tweet and picture, in January 2009, of the U.S. Airways jet landing in New York’s Hudson River, he didn’t just capture the so-called "Miracle on the Hudson," he caught the attention of the media. The iconic image was among the very first pictures of the event seen by the public and reinforced the role of citizen journalism and Twitter’s growing influence.

4. @aplusk: "Victory is ours!!!!!!!!"

Maybe it took Charlie Sheen only 24 hours to attract 1 million followers on Twitter, but back in 2009, Twitter followers weren’t so easy to come by. It took actor Ashton Kutcher more than three months to reach 1 million follwers and he was the first Twitter user to reach that milestone. In the lead-up to his first million followers, the media and Twitterati buzzed about the "race" between Kutcher and CNN (his closest rival). This is the tweet Kutcher posted when he crossed the million-follower mark.

5. #iranelection

It was the revolution that wasn’t just televised, but tweeted, too. In June 2009, the violence in Iranfollowing the election was tweeted, blogged, streamed and posted on countless websites despite government censorship attempts. According to Twitter, #iranelection was the top trending news topic in 2009.

6. @Astro_TJ: Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station — the 1st live tweet from Space! :) More soon, send your ?s

In January 2010, Twitter officially went extraterrestrial. This tweet, made by NASA flight engineer T.J. Creamer from the International Space Station, was the real-time tweet sent from space.

7. @conanobrieng: Today I interviewed a squirrel in my backyard and then threw to commercial. Somebody help me.

After comedian Conan O’Brien lost the so-called late night wars and his position as the host of NBC’s "The Tonight Show," in February 2010, he took to Twitter to reach his fans. This was his very first tweet. O’Brien’s account quickly exploded with followers, but his wasn’t the only online profile Twitter helped boost. O’Brien famously follows just one person on Twitter, Sarah Slowik (@lovelybutton), who now has more than 42,000 followers herself.

8. @BPGlobalPR: Catastrophe is a strong word, let’s all agree to call it a whoopsie daisy.

In the aftermath of last year’s devastating oil spill in the gulf, thisfake Twitter account mocking BP’s public relations team took the Internet by storm. The parody account swiftly gained a following on Twitter with its satirical take on clean-up efforts in the gulf. This tweet was considered one of the year’s most powerful tweets by Twitter, in its 2010 "Year in Review" report. It was this account, not the official BP Twitter account, "that defined the discussion–spoofing the company’s attempts to improve its public image," Twitter said.

9. @sh*tmydadsays: Don’t focus on the one guy who hates you. You don’t go to the park and set your picnic down next to the only pile of dog sh*t.

By tweeting just one of his father’s crass comments a day, Justin Halperin, a one-time struggling L.A. writer, has attracted more than 2 million followers, published a best-selling book and launched a television series. This tweet was the most re-tweeted comment of 2010, according to Twitter.

10. @nadiralamrad: @speak2tweet http://bit.ly/f6AGsC "Phone lines are being cut in the city centre…I can’t reach friends there." #Cairo #Egypt #Jan25 #Tahrir

As with Iran, Twitter helped Egyptian opposition members reach one another and the world. As uprisings spread across the Mideast this year, Twitter and social media played a crucial role in helping people communicate despite attempts at government censorship. When people lost access to the Internet, engineers from Twitter, Google and Say Now worked together to launch Speak2Tweet — a way for people to send recorded messages via tweets. This was one of the very first messages in which a Twitter user translated a Speak2Tweet message to English and shared it with the world.

Why I love Twitter?

Twitter is a fantastic platform for open yet meaningful communication. It’s a great place to speak and an even better place to listen to what others have to say. Surely, it’s not as glamorous as Facebook, but then that doesn’t undermine its value in anyway.

Whether it’s news, marketing, communication or supporting the human cause, Twitter does justice to one and all.

Ottawa Citizen mentions “At five years old, Twitter is still a child full of promise and dreams of changing the world for the better.” and I couldn’t agree more on that. There’s no denying the last five years have been fun. At the same time, I firmly believe the best of Twitter is yet to come.

Please join me in wishing Twitter a Happy 5^th Birthday! Do you love Twitter? If so, why? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment below this post.

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