ExtendNode 2019 Annual Letter
Becoming an entrepreneur should be a career choice for anyone. At ExtendNode, we want to empower you to make that happen.
ExtendNode was born with a desire to empower aspiring entrepreneurs to pursue their dreams by providing accessible resources. The publication ExtendNode’s Blogs for Entrepreneurs on Medium is the first pilot program of ExtendNode, aiming to be a platform dedicated to sharing knowledge and stories written by and for founders, business leaders, and investors.
2019 Review: birth
The facts:
- The publication officially launched in September and made an open invitation and guideline for writers to easily find us to share their insights with our readers.
- Resource Center was created in October to display the templates and tools created by writers for business owners to download and use.
- 14 writers contributed (8 founders, 5 business leaders, 1 investor) contributed 30 articles on startup knowledge and stories since launch.
- 92 Tweets and 31 Instagram posts were made to feature the articles since launch.
The learnings:
The publication has grown in a very organic way. We’ve attracted writers who share the same heart like us, empowering aspiring entrepreneurs. Though we wanted to publish every good article on the platform, we intend to be disciplined and strict on the themes we’ve chosen for 2019 (how-to startup, Asia market, entrepreneurship). We’ve said no to fantastic writers on their articles that don’t seem to be relevant to such themes.
It has proven that entrepreneurship is mostly about self-taught, ideally with community support. Most people are happy to give (some capacities and empathy) and take (some resources and inspiration). A publication is the very least form of an intermediary to serve the need and demand. However, after months of the experiment, I’ve begun to strongly sense this is not sufficient for our readers as well as writers. The content is produced without knowing the specific need of the readers, and the readers cannot interact with writers on the topic in a proactive way.
Medium is a great platform and I cannot be more grateful for its thoughtful design with readers as the center. They’re reinventing the reading experience. However, I realized that learning differentiates from reading quite a lot. Reading can be purely out of curiosity. Learning, on the other hand, requires clarified goals, applicable knowledge, community interactins, and real case-solving tools. Therefore, for our readers, the aspiring entrepreneurs who are eager to learn and then apply the learning to real problems may need more than a conventional publication.
2020 Outlook: budding
We want to shift the angles more towards the groups we serve and the problems they have: What do aspiring entrepreneurs need? What are the problems they’re facing? What can we do to make them improve and progress, little by little? Can we deep dive into the common questions in the following dimensions?
We don’t know all the answers and have yet to make detailed plans. But we will make efforts in the directions where we can make a better platform for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Problem first. In order to do these, we will firstly be more focused. We intend to re-design the themes from a founder’s perspective and remove the rest, such as market insight (Asia market).
Crowd wisdom. Best practices are not brought by one person but by many people. A better index and search platform on repeated questions asked by founders and business owners will be very helpful.
Community support. Becoming a business owner requires lots of mental exercises. It could be a very lonely journey. A place where you can share your struggles and relate to others’ problems is essential.
2020 is the beginning of another decade. I am really excited to see more entrepreneurs who live out their dreams and ExtendNode can play a part in that.
The Founder of ExtendNode
