The NY Startup Scout

After two months of exploring the world of HTML/CSS, I have finally relaunched my personal website: liyanchen.com.

To be fair, I did NOT code the site and used a template that I purchased at Mojo Themes. But I did a lot of customization to make it look like what it is now, through applying my HTML/CSS skills. From adding Twitter widget to changing font size, I had a fun time exploring the world of code.

The idea of having a portfolio website traced back to this summer, when I was contemplating what the domain name should be for my BER reporting class (yes, I was THAT excited over the summer). Then I surprisingly found that liyanchen.com was still available. With some tips from a friend, I bought the domain name, purchased the hosting service, and configured the WordPress Platform. Bingo! Liyanchen.com is mine.

In the beginning of the semester, I decided to get another home for The NY Startup Scout, since it makes more sense to save liyanchen.com for my portfolio. Due to the heavy course-load, I have never gotten the chance to reconstruct my personal website until now.

From now on, Liyanchen.com will include my portfolio in various publications. I will continue to improve it, so please let me know what you think!

CourseHorse, winner of the 2011 New Venture Competition, recently raised $500,000 in a seed funding round and launched a co-branded site with Time Out New York.

One and a half year after winning the New Venture Competition in 2011, Katie Kapler and Nihal Parthasarathi have turned CourseHorse into one of the leaders in the $17.5 billion personal interest educational market. In October, the startup raised $500,000 in a seed funding round led by a group of investors including New York Angels, NYC Seed, and Pinterest’s first investor Brian Cohen.

Nihal Parthasarathi (left) and Katie Kapler (right) founded CourseHorse in 2011 and won the NYU New Venture Competition.  PHOTO: LIYAN CHEN

CourseHorse, a startup that connects users to local classes through a platform of more than 20,000 classes from 500 class providers, is one of many successful startups that have thrived from the NYU Entrepreneurs Challenge. From improving communication skills to building strong relationships, Kapler and Parthasarathi, both NYU alumni, earned the $75,000 cash prize step by step through hard work, persistence, and strong passion for education.

“There are lots of sexy startups out there trying to build really cool products that go viral, or insert another buzz word. But it’s always been our passion to tackle a real problem and make a real impact,” Kapler said in an interview in September.

Read more on Forbes’ blog on NYU Entrepreneurs Challenge.

Note: To learn more about the story of CourseHorse, click here for my previous interview with Katie Kapler.

Startup principles work for not only entrepreneurs, but also journalists.

Having covered startups in New York for some time, I have learned many lessons from entrepreneurs that can be applied in my journalism practice. I have increasingly realized that in many ways, I am an entrepreneur who committed herself to the business of producing high-quality news stories that matter to readers.

But what does that mean? Let me take Eric Ries’ Lean Startup Method as an example.

To write interesting stories, I first need to identify under-reported topics, such as the NYU Entrepreneurs Challenge, in the entrepreneurial world. Ideally, journalists want to write about something that no one else has written before. Even for a topic that everyone else is covering, good reporters can still find unique angles that few have looked at. The Lean Startup Method said so, too – the first step for startups is to identify an existing problem that they wish to solve. If it is a problem that many people already know, startup founders need to come up with a solution that no one has thought of before.

Once I identify a good topic, I need to tell the story in a way that readers find interesting. Once I finish writing a story, I gain feedback from readers through different channels (yes, readers are my customers). Doesn’t this sound like the Minimal Viable Product development and customer validation in Lean Startup? According to the Lean Startup Method, startup founders need to build a MVP that will allow feedback from their customers. Such feedback can help founders to better improve the existing product and avoid wasting time on developing less important features.

Based on the feedback from readers, I sometimes need to adjust the topic or my writing style in my next story– in other words, I “pivot” in my writing, as many entrepreneurs will call it. Of course, I run into the problem that many startup owners face: what is the right time to “pivot”? As a journalist, I do not write stories to simply please the readers. A story with many page views does not guaranteed its quality. But at the same time, if only six people in the world read what I write, that says something about how interesting my story is. To “pivot” or not requires sound judgment from a good journalist and a good entrepreneur.

Each story for journalists is like each round of iteration for entrepreneurs: you write a story; you validate the interests from readers; you “pivot” accordingly. But at the end of the day, like entrepreneurs, journalists need to repeat the process and keep trying, until they find their best writing styles.

See the similarities between the Lean Startup Method and the thought process of a journalist?

The Lean Startup Method is one of many lessons that I learned from the entrepreneurial world. The more I cover the startup world, the more I realize that start-up entrepreneurs and journalists have similar characters to succeed.

The most important thing we share is passion. You can’t build a startup without deep passion, just as you can’t be a good reporter without love for reporting and writing. Startup founders work 24/7 at home, at their friend’s garage, or at a public library, often without getting paid a penny. As Bob Dorf said to the NYU Entrepreneurs Challenge constants in his Boot Camp, building a startup is “brutally hard.” Similarly, in an increasingly competitive media world, only those with deep passion for news are willing to stay in the news industry. Needless to say, passion is what drives entrepreneurs and journalists to succeed.

In addition to passion, both entrepreneurs and journalists need persistence. Journalists make tens of cold phone calls before they contact the right source. The best reporters never give up even the smallest clue for a story. Same with entrepreneurs. Almost every entrepreneur has to cope with failure. The secret to building a successful startup is to keep trying until you get to the right product and business model.

Don’t get me wrong – I do my best to be objective and I often ask entrepreneurs tough questions. But I love reporting technology, startups, and entrepreneurship, because I learn so much from the exciting process of building a company.

Romney’s most recent gaffe was a false claim about the auto industry. Oh, and it happened in the state he’s trying hardest to win—Ohio. 

With the election days away, Mitt Romney has one more thing to learn: how to cite news articles accurately.

Romney recently raised a controversy in Ohio—a key battleground state—when he falsely claimed that a major American auto manufacturer plans to send local factory jobs overseas.

At a rally in Defiance, Ohio, on Oct. 25, Romney told a crowd of 12,000 people that “Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China.”

The story that Romney cited was a Bloomberg News article that ran Oct. 22. The original story accurately stated that Fiat, majority owner of the Chrysler Group LLC, plans to “return Jeep output to China and may eventually make all of its models in that country.”

Shortly after Romney’s comments, Chrysler’s CEO Sergio Marchionne wrote an email to employees, ensuring that Jeep production will not leave Ohio for China. “It is inaccurate to suggest anything different,” Marchionne wrote in the email.

“Romney wanted to puncture Obama’s record on the auto bailout,” said Tom Troy, political writer at The Blade, who has been covering the election in Toledo, Ohio. “But he mischaracterized what he read.”

Romney’s incorrect statement intensified the dispute on the auto industry bailout in the Midwest between two campaigns. In response to Romney’s statement, the Obama campaign launched a new TV commercial in Ohio last week, attacking Romney’s false claim.

“When the auto industry faced collapse, Mitt Romney turned his back. …Mitt Romney on Ohio’s jobs, wrong then, dishonest now,” said the narrator in Obama’s commercial. The commercial cited Detroit News’ criticism on Romney’s “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” statement and Chrysler’s refute of Romney’s Jeep claims.

The auto industry bailout has been a core theme for Obama’s campaign in Ohio, because of its popularity among voters in that state. While Obama’s other policies like healthcare reform are less popular and more controversial among Ohio voters, his support for the auto bailout is a “signature achievement in Ohio,” according to Troy.

Troy suggested that Romney was trying to distract the Ohio voters from the auto bailout and draw their attention to the national economy. But there has been “no push-back” on the bailout.

“But what can you say? [The auto bailout] is unquestionable success,” Troy said.

Ohio’s economy has performed better than the national average since the Obama administration issued the bailout. Unemployment in the state has dropped to 7 percent in September, which remains below the national unemployment rate of 7.8 percent.

“Ohio is a swing state with strong industrial base. [The auto bailout] touched the nerve of voters,” said Philip Xie, a professor at Bowling Green State University.

Xie said that Romney and Obama present very different perspectives on the auto industry and jobs creation in Ohio. While Obama tries to highlight the success of the auto bailout, Romney is trying to suggest that manufacturing jobs will never return to Ohio.

A native of China and a resident of northwest Ohio, Xie said that Chinese Americans in the region “are living conflicted life,” as the debate on outsourcing jobs to China intensified. Romney’s auto bailout comment was one of the many examples.

“China is a scapegoat during the whole election,” he said. “Every time something happens, it’s China’s fault. Every politician is trying to use China for their purpose.”

But it remains unclear whether the dispute on the auto industry bailout will have real impact on the election.

“Of course you won’t know until Nov 6. But Romney and Obama mentioned [the auto bailout] in every possible way. People got the message,” Troy said.

Voting in Chinatown was lively, as Governor Cuomo’s executive order encouraged voters to turn out and interpreters stood by to help translate ballots.

Ngansin Chin, an 82-year-old Chinese immigrant, walked out of the polling station in the Confucius Plaza with a relaxing smile. She has never missed a vote in the presidential elections since she got American citizenship 16 years ago.

Chin said in Cantonese that she voted for President Obama, because she likes him and his policies are “good for the seniors.”

Many Chinese Americans, especially seniors like Chin, arrived slowly at Confucius Plaza the morning of Nov. 6. The turnout of Chinese-American voters in Chinatown has been “quite good,” according to Lester Chang, coordinator of the polling station in the Confucius Plaza. Chang said that he hoped to get a turnout of 25 percent, because normally the turnout is in the low 20 percent.

“Twenty years ago, it was different. Now there’s no challenge anymore,” Chang said, emphasizing the importance of interpretation service provided at the polling station.

Many Chinese Americans, especially seniors, have limited knowledge of English, a major barrier for them to vote in the past. But now Chinese translations are printed on the ballots, and seven interpreters stationed at the Confucius Plaza help voters with language difficulty.

Like Chin, many Chinese-American voters voted for President Obama. In 2008, President Obama won 62 percent of Asian-American votes to John McCain’s 35 percent, according to Pew Research Center.

Shirley Lui, who has been an interpreter for the elections for many years, said that President Obama’s policies appeal more to the economic interests of Chinese-American voters.

“Obama’s policies are for the lower and middle class,” Lui said. “Romney’s policies are for the rich. Most Chinese Americans are new immigrants and relatively poor, so they support Obama.”

Very few people came out to vote in the past, according to Lui. But in recent years, campaigns pay more attention to Chinese-American voters and spend a lot of money to get their votes, such as giving out gifts to Chinese-American seniors at the senior activity center.

While the turnout increases compared to the past, Hurricane Sandy affects the turnout rate of voters in other boroughs, according to Chang. Some voters said the Governor Cuomo’s executive order helped them to vote.

To monitor the voting rights for Asian Americans, volunteers from the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund conducted bilingual exit polling to document voter problems at the polling station. The Fund dispatched more than 800 volunteers to 14 states and planned to poll 10,000 Asian Americans.

Chin, who has insisted on voting since she became an American citizen, said that Sandy did not prevent her from voting.

“The government should help citizens,” she said.

Note: The post was originally posted in BER’s Election Day 2012 blog.