About a week ago, I received a private invitation from Dave Howlett to attend his VIP Knocking Down Silos keynote. Only about 75 high-profile executives and managers were invited to the keynote, so I was a bit taken back when I was invited. He took a liking to my online advertising startup, Influenza Media and asked me if I needed any help with my business. Now, what a nice guy. He has no obligations to help me as a stranger but he did anyways. And so you know, I need tons of help in finding clients for my business.

So I went, and got a taste of what being rich and powerful felt like:

1) Open bar with all kinds of drinks you can think of, plus top-notch wine.

2) Free food - free ridiculously good food that I can’t even try to pronounce (except for crab salads…mmm).

3) Mingling in a sea of poker/business-faces with equally eluding laughs and chatter.

4) Forming of cliques, categorized by level of influence, fame and job position.

What a world eh?

Me and Dave Howlett at the VIP Knocking Down Silos Keynote

Visit http://www.facebook.com/n/?inbox/readmessage.php&t=1002946599799 to sign-up for the next Knocking Down Silos keynote.

Peter Kao

My economics teacher in high-school told me something that I would never forget. He said, “You haven’t seen the real world yet kids. You’ll get a closer look when you go through University, but you won’t know how the world really works until you start your career.”

Being the cocky high-school student I was, I had thought I understood what he really meant but it wasn’t until I stepped out of my bubble and started meeting with ambitious and hyper-intelligent over-achievers that I’ve noticed there are so few sincere individuals in the world.

I won’t name the specific incidences since I actually have readers of this blog (surprise!) and don’t want to create unnecessary commotion, but people always judge others based on credentials, age, sex, ethnicity and act accordingly to those judgments. That’s fine - it’s part of the evolution of the human mind, but what is not fine is when you are rude to those below you and kiss the asses of those above you. Time and time again I see this around me and even experience it myself. And starting my own online advertising company has especially put me in the lowest of the lowest position since those around me have already made a career for themselves; they are rich; they have connections; they have decades of experience. Me? I’m an undergrad who’s building a startup with no experience whatsoever. What makes me even more upset is the fact that I can already spot people around my age starting to become the kinds of people I mentioned above.

When I build a more successful startup with my own bare hands, when I become richer than they are, when I build more connections, and when I have more experience than them I will tell them from a pedestal that they should treat everyone equally and with sincerity and respect. Then they will listen.

Peter Kao

If you have just finished building your corporate website, submitting your website to online directories may increase your ranking on search engines and generate more page landings.

See the huge list of web directories here: http://www.definiteweb.com/list-of-directories2.htm

There are TONS of directories in that list. However, I only recommend submitting to the major ones, especially the popular search engines:

1) Google - http://www.google.com/addurl/

2) Yahoo - https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit

3) MSN Live - http://search.live.com/docs/submit.aspx

4) Open Directory - http://www.dmoz.org

You should also invest in submitting your website into the Yahoo! Directory. It will cost you $299USD but it’s well worth it! It’s the YellowBook of the internet! Since we’re on the topic, make sure to submit your business in local business directories as well. YellowBook is a must considering it’s popular and FREE.

Peter Kao

I have been putting off this blog entry for a while now (over 2 weeks…) and I was going to put it off for tomorrow…but it’ll just end up never being done.

About a month ago, I received an email asking for my appearance on a video about Velocity for UW President David Johnston’s presentation at the Canadian Telecom Summit. As the director of Velocity told me, “The Summit is the highest profile telecom conference in the
country.”

Naturally, I was pretty excited since it’s the first video interview I’ve had relating to my online advertising startup - Influenza Media.

Peter Kao