Gary Vaynerchuk spoke next at Web 2.0 NY on Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landscape.

He was hilarious. His video presentation is available online, to share with others. He is inspirational for new young entrepreneur and I’d love to see him talk at Ultra Light Startups

His talk was simply “Patience and Passion”.

Words of wisdom included.

• There is no reason to do stuff you hate.
• You can loose just as much money doing stuff you love.
• What do you want to do for the rest of my life, do it.
• Hussle is the most important word. We are building businesses here.
• You can monetize anything, you need to work hard, be patient and passionate about your business.
• You have to have a business model, that makes some cash along the way – Freemium.
• Your goal should be to leave a legacy.
• You need to build brand equity, in yourself. There is never a bad time when you believe, when you work hard, when you know what you are doing.
• People are the people that are going to help you, get out there and network, be transparent, be exposed.
• Previously you had to work hard to build a brand, now you can use any network to become known and more successful.
• 9-5 is for your job, a few hours with your family, then 7-2am is plenty of time to focus on your dreams.

In closing, you have to do what you love.

Next on the Web 2.0 keynote speaker list was Maria Thomas of www.etsy.com with her talk The DIY Guide to Growing a Company.

If never heard of Etsy before – Your place to buy & sell all things handmade, interesting site. Most companies start small, and stay small. Only 0.1 of 1% grow to any size (e.g. > $250 Million) Esty, this year has 100M in revenue, Amazon is about $2 billion.

The opening lines included the message “Don’t loose the essence of who you are, and what you want to achieve.” and the term Filotimo.

Filotimo (Greek)

• Operating with integrity
• a clarity of purpose
• a sense of social responsibility

It was an interesting point about qualifications “I got my Internet Degree at Amazon.com, then building digital media business at NPR – National Public Radio.”

Some more quotes from this discussion.

• Listen to end user, but be clear about when you want to go.
• Set you goals, communicate them, measure them.
• Practice Filimato – Keep it human.
• Go behind the resume, talk to people, be direct, be honest. Believe in employees.
• Understand that small decisions and impact bigger decisions.
• Just because your a DIY company doesn’t mean you have build everything.
• Get products out the door, get them out fast.
• It takes an effort of will, and a very good process to do this well.
• The perfect is enemy of good enough.
• Launch products off at platform and build more quickly.
• The marketplace has social, it’s personal, it’s playful.
• Visits to etsy become habit forming, it makes connections to real people with unique products.

Some points of reference from the next Web 2.0 keynote by Jason Fried of 37 Signals

• Software business is a great place to be.
• You can build anything you want. All you really have to it type, it’s not easy to do, it’s just not that hard to do.
• Change is easy, cost is cheap in relation to physical objects.
• You can build it anywhere.
• Software doesn’t have the same kind of feedback as physical objects.
• Visually we can determine good verses poor design (e.g. a bottle of water or a remote control).
  It doesn’t have edges, size or weight. It just expands, continues to expand and this is bad.
• What would your software be like if it was physical?
• When you say yes to too many features you end up with Homer’s car.
• The goal should be simple, clean, elegant and streamlined.
• Once you hit bloat, it’s too hard to go back.
• Listen to customers, but don’t do everything as they say. Think of yourself as a curator.
• Make your software a collection, not a warehouse.
• You don’t need to have everything in the world.
• You need a few solid features.
• Real work is hard, imaginary work is easy.
• Tell the people that want to have new features, to build them. Attach real costs to any requests.

The DNA of your company has to able to say no.

I will be attending next week’s Web 2.0 Expo 2008 in New York.

Garys Guide has a schedule of the key events and off site associated event parties.

It will be a bit of a change from the typical MySQL Conferences and recent OSCON Conference I have attended this year.

The Keynote titles gives you an indication of the variety of talks expected.

• Organizing Chaos: The Growth of Collaborative Filters
• (Re)making the Internet: Accounting for the Future of Information, Communication and Entertainment Technologies
• Next Generation of Video Games
• 10 Things We’ve Learned at 37signals
• High Order Bit
• What ManyEyes Knows
• Arianna Huffington in Conversation with Tim O’Reilly
• Because We Make You Happy
• The Real Future of Technology
• Enterprise Radar
• The Death of the Grand Gesture
• It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure.
• Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landscape