Ben Huh: be weird, practice failure, thank the Internet
Guest post by Alex Diaz, vice president of UW American Marketing Association chapter
“The best things in life are non-linear.” So said, Ben Huh, CEO of Cheezburger Network, at a recent event organized by the University of Washington American Marketing Association in collaboration with the UW Foster School of Business Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Not surprisingly, his talk, “Making Failure Cheap: Managing Risk to Ensure Success,” was no ordinary bullet-point-filled PowerPoint. Instead, Huh was an amazing speaker who grabbed everyone’s attention by sharing his real-life stories—the kind of tales we (as students) hope we never have to face. Together, we all learned how he overcame his challenges in the most unconventional of ways.
Ben Huh is a quirky, innovative, natural entrepreneur. He injects fun into everything he does, which helped make something as trivial as sharing cat pictures into an Internet sensation. The audience heard about his successes – like “LOLcats,” but also learned about how to create knowledge through failure and to learn from mistakes. Huh gave a call to action to “hack the system” and follow your vision.
Thinking beyond the great education we are getting here at the UW was another piece of Huh’s advice. While educational institutions do an amazing job teaching us how to strive for success and accomplishment, we can’t forget that a proper education is actually a balance of what we learn from the books and what we are courageous enough to experience in real life. Being courageous enough to consider our failures as good practice, is one example. Huh suggested we not fight failure, but take it in and redefine what motivates us.
Specifically with regard to using the Internet in future ventures, Huh reminded us that users drive it, and that the Internet IS culture. Each user is motivated innately and content is then created by the masses. This means that a different user mindset applies to different mediums. Know your audience.
The gist is this: There are two ways of looking at the future. The first is that you see the future as inevitable, whether good or bad, everything is already set in stone. The second way of looking at the future is to create it the way you want it. Hearing Huh speak helped the audience remember that we each have the ability to do exactly that. Nothing has been determined for us.
Huh’s presentation left us all with the following insights: Being weird doesn’t mean you are alone (thanks to the Internet). Instead of following the money, be non-linear and follow your dreams. Know what motivates you and strive to make an impact. Take what you can from your dreams and make them as real as anything.
