Exclusive: LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue’s advice to Indian startups

Before co-founding the world’s largest professional network, he spent seven years doing lighting and scenic design for the theater. He’s not a techie, in fact his degree from Stanford was in scenic design.

Meet Allen Blue. Before joining LinkedIn in 2002, Blue had been director of product design at SocialNet, an early social networking site. He believes in the power of technology to create new economic opportunities.

Allen spoke to Business Insider about how passion can unlock a wide-range of career opportunities, and what it takes to build a successful startup from scratch. The following words are quoted verbatim from Allen’s mouth.

Silicon Valley was built by functional immigrants like us who were all designing for the web. Currently tech has become so simple and intuitive people can pick up something and use it. It’s that simple. This makes it a great time to be an entrepreneur. It’s cheap and easy to try a new idea.

Diversity in people and thoughts is the key to creating innovative solutions. Try and bring in an alternate viewpoint. When I came in, I had done a lot of theater, Humanities and teaching, and happened to meet a couple of hardcore engineers. It seemed a really interesting case, building a system where people can represent themselves online. I assure you our solutions could only be created by those perspectives.

Also, when you step into entrepreneurship you’ll not get anything without asking for it. It’s a crucial change from the world of school into that of life. The first thing to do is to find 2-3 people you can trust, and get advice. Call on the knowledge of other people. There’ll always be senior, classmates, teachers or family who can offer insights, but they won’t come to you. Just ask.

So that’s its folks, dream big, get shit done and know how to have fun.

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