- You can choose to have a normal life
or you can choose something totally different.
I'm here to say that if you're watching this
you might be able to choose to put a dent in the universe.
And Steve Jobs pointed the way
back in 1994.
- When you grow up, you tend to get told
that the world is the way it is
and your life is just to live your life
inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much.
Try to have a nice family life,
have fun, save a little money.
But life, that's a very limited life.
Life can be much broader once you discover
one simple fact,
and that is everything around you that you call life
was made up by people that were no smarter than you.
The minute that you understand that you can poke life
and actually, something will, you know,
if you push in, something will pop out the other side,
you can change it, you can mold it.
That's maybe the most important thing.
- As Steve said, the moment you realize
the world can be influenced by your actions,
everything changes.
But how does that change get transferred from you to others?
Usually the best ideas start as little known ones
until a group of really passionate, hardworking believers
turn them into a movement.
A social movement.
And then one day, seemingly overnight
it's everywhere.
How does it become that way?
I've really been lucky to see it first hand.
I've funded hundreds of companies
right when they were just a few people starting out.
Now, more than a dozen of them
are worth more than a billion dollars.
And every single one of them started as a movement.
It's a team and a direction,
and a thing that helps millions,
and possibly billions of people.
Today, we're going to talk about how a movement is born
and what you can do to build that movement.
Let's get into it.
That was one of the first songs played by The Ramones
at CBGB in New York City in 1974.
A lot of people consider them
to be one of the best bands in history.
This was a historic moment for punk rock.
And the music played in this one music hall
in New York City is now a part
of our western collective consciousness.
You might not have ever heard that song,
but you've heard the echoes of it
in rocks songs for decades now.
So a musician might create a new sound
that becomes an international phenomenon
and just like that,
startup founders might create a new product
that creates new experiences that touch a billion people.
It turns out, punk rock has a lot more to share
with startups than you might think
but we'll get back to that at the end.
So you want to start a movement,
whether it's music or startups, or social change
or any creative endeavor,
it's the same.
Researcher Jonathan Christiansen said,
"Social movements can be thought of
as organized yet informal social entities
that are engaged in extra-institutional conflict
that is oriented towards a goal."
What is extra-institutional conflict?
Conflict is actually fundamentally born
of a particular problem.
And the goal is to solve that problem.
Do you ever wonder why we call computers,
personal computers?
Well at that time, in the 1970's
personal computers were a crazy idea.
At the time, only large businesses and universities
and governments had access to them.
And this was the conflict.
The powers that be didn't even think normal people
would ever want it.
This is what the dawn
of the personal computer revolution looked like.
- Clubs of enthusiasts grew up
all over America.
Like the Home Brewed Computer Club in San Francisco
where members showed off
what their home brewed computers could do.
From these modest beginnings
came a series of startup companies
selling parts for the Altair,
and soon, whole computers.
By 1976, there were enough of them to hold a convention
in Atlantic City.
Off in a corner of the convention hall
were a group of raggedy looking guys
selling circuit boards.
Two of them would be come synonymous
with the personal computer.
Steve Jobs, and Stephen Wozniak.
As teenagers growing up in Silicon Valley,
Jobs and Wozniak had developed reputations
as high-tech pranksters,
all too eager to snub their noses at authority.
- Woz and I had known each other
since I was about 12 or 13 years old.
And our first project together was we built
these little blue boxes
to make free telephone calls.
So when it came to building a computer together,
Woz was the brilliant hardware engineer,
and focused on the core design of the computer.
And I was worrying about which parts we ought to use
and how we were going to build these things
and how sort of, somebody that wasn't a Woz
was going to manage to buy all the extra parts
you still needed to buy, and plug this thing together.
- So I was not designing a computer
with any idea we'd ever start a company,
ever have a product, ever be successful.
It was just to go down to the club
and show off, and to own and use.
Steve saw the interest,
and he started coming up with ideas right away
how this thing could be turned into product.
How it could be marketed.
- And that movement ended up turning into computers
on every desk, in every home
and yes, now the one in your hand, and in your pocket
that you're using
to watch this right now.
And that's how it all starts.
First, as a fringe movement almost 50 years ago,
now society has changed completely.
And that's the lesson.
Sometimes if you really believe in something,
you've got to do it yourself.
The first stage to any movement is this exactly.
Emergence, or social ferment.
What do you want that nobody else cares about yet?
What problem do you see first?
Try to solve it for yourself.
Then you might find that a lot of other people
need it too.
If you find that a lot of other people
need what you're creating,
that's when you'll find people start following you.
One of my favorite authors, Derek Sivers
actually talks exactly about this in his TED Talk.
That is what it takes to create a movement from scratch.
Leadership isn't enough.
It's about the followers too.
- First, of course you know
a leader needs the guts to stand out and be ridiculed.
But what he's doing is so easy to follow.
So here's his first follower with a crucial role.
He's going to share everyone else how to follow.
Now notice that the leader embraces him as an equal.
So now it's not about the leader anymore,
it's about them, plural.
Now there he is calling to his friends.
Now if you notice that the first follower
is actually an underestimated form of leadership in itself.
It takes guts to stand out like that.
The first follower is what transforms a lone nut
into a leader.
And here comes the second follower.
Now it's not a lone nut, it's not two nuts,
three is a crowd, and a crowd is news.
So a movement must be public.
It's important to show not just the leader,
but the followers.
Because you find that new follower emulate the followers,
not the leader.
Now here come two more people
and immediately after, three more people.
Now we've got momentum, this is the tipping point.
Now we've got a movement.
So notice that as more people join in, it's less risky.
So those that were sitting on the fence before
now have no reason not to.
- You could be the first leader,
or the first follower.
But either way, you've got to have intrinsic motivation.
Really wanting it from the bottom of your heart,
not because someone else told you to.
You're going to need to be able to champion your idea
or your company, not someone else.
If Steve Jobs looked to Hewlett-Packard
for a playbook, he never would've started Apple.
If Brian Armstrong looked to big finance for approval,
he never would've started Coinbase.
If The Velvet Underground
just copied whatever was mainstream at the time
the rock and roll greats like The Ramones and Nirvana
would never have emerged.
To be first, you have to really want it.
You can't ask for permission.
And this is where we've got to return to punk rock.
We've got to talk about DIY, Do It Yourself.
It's a way of doing things
that doesn't require any permission from anyone else.
Some people who don't like punk like to say,
"Eh, it sucks, it's too simple."
But to me, the detractors miss the point.
This is real, this is authentic.
And most importantly, it's unapologetic.
It's not trying to be something other
than what it already is.
And to truly embody DIY,
you don't wait for someone to give you something.
You don't wait for someone to teach you how to play.
You don't wait for a record deal.
Nobody has to come and bless you with anything.
You just pick up a guitar, and you do it.
You pick up a keyboard and you start writing code.
- Nothing against Led Zeppelin, I have all those records.
But there's nothing on the record
that makes me really connect with anyone in the band
because they live on another planet.
You're never going to connect with Robert Plant.
He's never, you're never going to walk into the venue
and walk up and, "Hey excuse me, Bob?"
But at a punk rock show, you could watch the band load in,
say, "You need some help?"
And all of a sudden, you're a Bad Brains roadie.
This could happen to me.
- The realness about that is really
what makes it connect.
And when you're early, and alone
that's more important than anything else.
If you watched my interview with Coinbase founder,
Brian Armstrong, that's exactly what he did
when he was building the first versions of that website.
He begged, borrowed, and stole the skills necessary
to get a website up.
He didn't look for a designer,
he used the free, open source
Twitter Bootstrap library, and it worked great.
You don't need the absolute best things,
you don't have to wait for perfect conditions.
Here's Kurt Cobain of Nirvana
talking about exactly this kind of DIY
bottom up pragmatism.
And why it's actually the best.
- We appreciate all different kinds of music
as long as it's good.
Doesn't matter if it's on a major label,
doesn't matter if it's a tape
that someone made on their home boombox
or a recorder like this, doesn't matter.
And it doesn't even matter
even if someone hasn't even recorded something,
to even have it distributed to anyone.
If it's good, it's good.
We just like it.
So you know,
we usually just play really cheap equipment
and a lot of times, before a show
we're scrambling for guitar parts
and gluing things together just to have a guitar
for that night.
We'd be just as happy playing in a basement, you know?
'Cause sometimes that's the most,
that's the most appreciative time we have with music
is just being together, 'cause we're good friends
and we play music.
- You don't need perfect stuff.
You just need to do it
and do it with whatever you have,
even if you're piecing together whatever guitar parts,
or whatever open source, whatever you've got.
Many of Nirvana's songs only had three chords.
But they became one of the most
influential musical groups in history.
Later, they did end up getting all that money,
all the distribution.
But when the started, it was just the purity of the music
that got them there.
You've got everything you need right now.
I can't tell you how often it is
that people waiting for perfect conditions
is what actually prevents them from starting
in the first place.
If you're stuck there, you'll never get started.
You don't need permission.
Do it yourself.
If you remember only one thing from this whole video,
it's this, do it yourself.
Humans have a visceral reaction
to experiencing authenticity.
Even at the cost of perfection.
Everyone is so focused on being perfect these days
and to that, I say fuck perfection.
Do it yourself, and if you do it that way
you might be able to create a movement.
A movement that touches a billion people.
- That's maybe the most important thing.
Is to shake off this,
this erroneous notion that life is there
and you're just going to live in it.
Versus embrace it, change it,
improve it, make your mark upon it.
Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.
- So that's it for this week.
I really wanted to take a moment
to think about what it would take for you to make
a real dent in the universe.
And that's what I think you need.
Keep in mind, whatever you do
a punk rock DIY aesthetic,
which means you don't try to create perfection
or wait for perfect conditions.
That's one of the beginning conditions, I think
for starting a true social movement.
It's crazy, it's hard to do.
But if you could get to that second follower
than you can get a hundred, a thousand, a million
or a billion.
And if you do that, you leave a mark on the world.
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go to the nonprofit CODE2040
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I'll see you next week.