Note: This article was originally published here by The Huffington Post. BostInnovation.com and The Huffington Post have a content partnership. Chase Garbarino, BostInnovation and Pinyadda founder & CEO, contributes to a weekly column on entrepreneurship for the Huffington Post.

On Christmas Day in 2005, during my junior year of college, my mother gave me a copy of the Small Business Opportunities magazine in my stocking. To this day, I can still remember the headline jumping out at me: “College Student Makes $300,000 In A Month.” After briefly skimming the article about the student setting up an affiliate shopping site, my mind was was made up – I was going to start an internet business.

The stack of resumes and cover letters prepped for internship opportunities at Lehman Brothers, Goldman and other financial companies never ended being mailed. Instead, a friend of mine and I created an internship position on several job recruiting sites calling for the nation’s top collegiate journalists and media makers to join “The New York Times of college publications.” That night, as I went to bed, it hit me like a ton of bricks: Did I seriously just bail out on applying for legitimate internships to start a national collegiate news site with absolutely no technical or media experience?

After several beers, a night of tossing and turning, and 24 hours of avoiding internet access, I finally checked my e-mail. We had received over 100 applications within a day and ended up receiving a total of over 300 by the time the listing expired after three days. The magazine headline that planted the seed for my interest in entrepreneurship quickly faded to the back of my mind. I was hell bent on giving students at the peak of their intellectual curiosity and development, a platform to share their new ideas and beliefs with the world, and CampusWord was born.

The next 18 months of my college career could be described as fearlessly trying to row the boat and plug the holes at the same time. I andCampusWord’s other co-founders, Greg Rogan and Kevin McCarthy, had little technical experience on our side, so running our website in the early days was always an adventure. With little to no money, we were forced to outsource our development efforts to countries like China, Vietnam and South America.

To give an example of what life in the tech fast-lane was like, at one point during the summer I was on my way to meet the parents of my then girlfriend for the first time. They knew little about me other than that I “ran a news website.” As I walked in the door ready to turn the charm on, the conversation quickly moved to CampusWord. I began giving my best speech about the importance of hosting an open platform for students across the country to share ideas and opinions. I was really on a roll. As we migrated over to their computer to view the site, I continued to ramble on as I typed in the domain. My gaze turned to the screen and rather than seeing a vibrant homepage of student contributed articles, there was simply a black screen with a picture of a masked man with a ticking time bomb and some questionable text in a different language. Needless to say my confident rambling quickly turned to broken and confused sentences as the grandmother’s face turned white. I assured them this wasn’t our site, I wasn’t a radical extremist of any sort and that we must have been hacked. Soon after, our hosting company confirmed a number of sites had been hacked and they corrected the problem. Regardless, the dinner conversation was stilted to say the least.

At its peak, CampusWord’s network included over 100 of the nation’s top collegiate journalists and media makers and drew an audience of over 100,000 unique visitors a month. Ultimately, though, CampusWord didn’t end up turning into a big, successful business and never made $300,000 in a month, as promised by the Christmas stocking magazine. This was mainly due to my lack of understanding of true marketing scale, and partly because of our team’s ideological desire to keep CampusWord in the hands of students — not to mention that we decided to pursue what we believed to be a bigger opportunity in creating a large-scale news aggregation technology that now powers our current properties, BostInnovation and Pinyadda. We are, however, proud of the fact that our staff of contributors from CampusWord have gone on to work for top media companies like Politico, CNN, Mashable, NY Daily News, TV Guide, The Onion and many others.

I consider an entrepreneur to be someone who creates something out of nothing. Good entrepreneurs create something of value out of nothing. While we certainly would have liked to have created more monetary value from CampusWord, we created value developing the foundation for our current business and in helping launch some very promising careers for others. When you see true value delivered to your users and customers from work your team has done with little to no resources, or your former employees enjoy success, there is no better feeling. And that is why I am an entrepreneur.

You can contact Chase at chase at pinyadda dot com

– Being lean is about doing things that make sense and about being efficient, not necessarily about following every step of the ‘methodology’ to a T.

The lean startup movement/philosophy/methodology has lots to teach businesses and entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes, but it’s not a live-or-die guide to building a successful company. In building Pinyadda we’ve done some things a little backwards and maybe a few others a little out of order, but for us it’s become clear that being lean is about lightweight, fast product iteration and hands-on customer development. The exact methods we use to achieve these goals have changed and will continue to change and evolve along with us.

Did we smoke test hundreds of landing pages? No. Did we build a product with the absolute minimum feature set? No. Have we learned and improved by integrating customers early and continuously iterating based on their feedback? Yes. The main point here is that it’s a good idea to read and absorb as much as you can, but don’t drive yourself crazy trying to implement the latest and greatest trends. Every business will have different customers and different products that demand different tactics and different solutions. Do what’s best for you.

– Measurement takes many forms.

With most Web 2.0 – style products, what you’re building is not so much a ‘product’ in the traditional sense as an experience. In this vein, while it’s really important to measure things like clicks and actions and pageviews that can be quantified, it’s also important to realize that actions are often dictated by psychological and emotional reactions which cannot be easily quantified.

A careful reading of most lean materials will reveal that qualitative data (surveys, interviews, observations) can often be as useful or more useful than all the numbers in the world. There are certainly instances where the reverse is also true, but the main point is not to throw feedback out the window because it’s not numeric in nature. Some of the most important feedback we’ve ever received about Pinyadda has come in casual conversation over a few beers.

– There’s no magic button.

At first glance, it can seem like the lean startup approach makes for clean periods of structured action, where one piece fits nicely into the next. The truth is that it’s nearly impossible to suddenly declare yourself “done” with one stage and simply transition cleanly to the next step. Often (especially in the early stages) things are muddled and it’s very difficult to tell exactly where you are in the life-cycle of the company (this isn’t made any easier by the fact that most entrepreneurs are, by nature, somewhat delusional). And even if you can get a good sense for where you are, trying to plot a course into the next phase can be daunting.

Going back to the first point – there’s no formula for this stuff. We have a general idea about where Pinyadda stands with our customers and we’ve defined some tangible goals for ourselves that should manifest over the foreseeable term (for us, about 3-6 weeks at a time). But we don’t sit around wondering if we’re in Phase 1.3 or 1.4. Set a goal, use your core philosophies as a guide, and then do everything necessary to achieve it.

Here’s the video of the presentation. Thanks to Matthew Mamet of EditMe for the recording. Matt’s original post on the meetup is worth a read as well.

Boston Lean Startup Circle – Pinyadda from Matthew Mamet on Vimeo.

Turns out this stuff is useful for people who are pirate-neutral, maybe even those with an aversion to pirates (I don’t understand you). I could sum it up  but you’re much better off checking out the presentation or watching a video of Dave giving the basic talk. But the gist is pretty simple: measure the stuff that matters, don’t measure the stuff that doesn’t. This might seem like an easy thing to do, but in reality it can be pretty easy to confuse getting a lot numbers with getting the right numbers.

We’ve measured a whole bunch of stuff over the course of our time at Pinyadda, and we’re still zeroing in on exactly what we need and what the best ways are to quantify those metrics. What works for our business almost certainly won’t work for yours or anyone else’s, and it takes time to figure out the magic concoction that can quickly and easily provide accurate insight into what’s really going on.

In our current phase, we’re focusing on two key aspects of the AARRR model – Activation and Retention. At the moment, these are the two most important things that we need to figure out: how and when are people getting to the ‘aha’ moment with Pinyadda, and what keeps them coming back? By drilling down and taking a really close look at these specific aspects of our product over the last month, we’ve been able to do a couple of key things that have kept us focused on making the right product iterations instead of spreading feature lists all over the whiteboards and then spinning around in tight circles:

1) We asked some really specific but straightforward questions about how people were using our product. These are things like “how many people does someone need to follow before they start Pinning articles consistently,” and “of the people who login most, do they follow more people, sites, or topics?” We’ve had this data all along but we’d always cast it in terms of feature use or product analysis. Spinning the questions this way, to make them centered on the people instead of the product, makes the information more useful, easier to understand and much more actionable.

2) We invested a small but invaluable amount of time in building some reporting features for ourselves. Raw data is wonderful and we have lots of it, but if it takes an hour harvest and organize it’s not really useful to us on the daily. Taking hours away from pure product development to work on this is a little hard to swallow, but sacrificing a few Friday nights to do it might save weeks of wasted effort later if you can avoid building a single doomed feature. Plus, it’s a good environment to mess around with some new toys (I used a lot of CSS3, which I don’t use much in production, and also got comfortable with a great visualization library called Flot). Here’s a sneak peak:

3) We set some tangible goals for user activity and retention. We’ve always done goal setting but narrowing the focus has helped everyone on the team look at their area of focus from a common perspective. When you’re as small as we are it can be hard not to get lost in your own little corner. Keeping our eyes on a small and focused goal set makes it easier to stay on the same page. The results have been great and it’s been awesome to feel the team catch its collective stride.

McClure’s language may be a bit blue, but the message should be taken to heart by small teams everywhere. It’s helped us not because we follow it to a T or take every word as truth, but because it just makes sense. Every business will have to find its own way, and what makes sense to measure will vary widely. But by thinking critically about metrics before spewing numbers all over the place, coloring the things you measure in terms of people and not faceless features, and keeping team members aligned toward small but focused tasks, you can channel the spirit of pirates and strive forward in the search for internet booty.

Each greater Boston area school fosters dense pockets of innovation, top-notch professors, interesting speakers, and unique curriculums, programs and opportunities. Seeing and reaping the benefits first-hand of the support, positivity, collaboration and idea sharing happening at a lot of the Boston startup scene as well as from working in an incubator space, I can’t get away from the benefits these campuses and the greater Boston creative economy could reap from more cross-campus collaboration.

On the one hand, I understand why college administrators might not want to do this: ultimately they’re competing for talent and revenue. Their focus is on getting the best professors to their schools, the best speakers, designing the best programs and curriculums and more to lure in the best students and teach them well so they will hopefully be successful out of school and give back to the college as alumni. However, that doesn’t mean collaboration can’t bring greater value to each individual school and students as a whole.

For example, Babson doesn’t focus on engineering/programming like MIT, but we certainly have a deep understanding of markets and are well-schooled in evaluating opportunity and developing strategies to execute on ideas. Imagine what the two could do together, even simply in informal networking events. It’s the whole collective intelligence idea that I seem to be obsessing about right now. And there’s lots of other theories to back up the importance of differences in mindsets and schools of thought in fueling innovation, like open and cumulative innovation theories that have been substantiated by neuroscientist research (a good read on this is Iconoclast). Here are a couple ideas that I think could help foster more of this, and ultimately lead to more successful startups in Boston:

Student-run startups get a cross-campus pass

The first would be a simple program that allows student startups at various schools to visit events and get hands-on advice from classes at other regional Boston schools.

The events are pretty straightforward and I can’t imagine are hard to operationalize. Lots of panels and speaking events at colleges cost money to attend. Let’s face it: college students bootstrapping a startup just don’t have the money for these. However, these students are more often than not the people that can add the freshest perspective to these discussions and reap the most benefits from applying learnings to their immediate situation.

As for cross-campus classroom collaboration, I can’t think of a better win-win: startups from school A get advice from classroom at school B; students from school B apply learnings and critical thinking in a real-life case study. So perhaps a Bentley non-tech startup needs advice from a entrepreneurial programming class at MIT or creative social media class at Emerson: new ideas, un-thought opportunities or applications surface, solutions to a current challenges are offered, etc. Conversely, maybe a killer invention from an MIT student startup is struggling to identify their market potential and could reap the help from students at an entrepreneurship class at Babson. It’s benefiting the students in the classroom (think and apply knowledge to a real-life idea/startup) as well as these 2-3 person student startups that need help at their critical early stage, and who will eventually graduate and give back to the colleges later in life.

Cross-institutional incubator for early-stage recent alumni startups

This would be an incubator house in the city for most promising entrepreneurs from a variety of schools. You can imagine top-notch seniors or recent alums from these schools (pairs, trios, etc.) apply and if accepted are housed for a certain amount of time. They’re mentored by faculty at these different schools and the various startups assist one another in their critical early-stages (this happens naturally in an incubator, anyways). This would give these students a higher probability of success and a great support and learning network.

I think this would add the most value to colleges outside of Boston (Babson, Olin, WPI), where their location gives them an inherent disadvantage in terms of networking in and collaborating with the entrepreneurial scene downtown and in Cambridge, and students at other schools. These students could offer and reap a lot in this scene.

I’d love to hear what current student startupers or aspiring startupers think about this idea. And what about college administrators?

This weekend I coached students as part of Babson College’s Coaching for Leadership and Teamwork Program. The program is designed to help first and third year students hone their oral communication, listening, teamwork, leadership, ethics, and decision-making skills. It’s one of the many distinctive programs Babson offers in addition to it’s truly unique, cross-disciplined business education. I’ve recently more keenly appreciated how Babson’s education fosters entrepreneurialism — regardless of if you decide to take specific classes in the entrepreneurship academic division or not.

Babson was a rigorous and rewarding experience for me. I didn’t concentrate in entrepreneurship, but the implicit learning I gained from being around motivated, aspiring and current student entrepreneurs certainly left it’s mark. Babson teaches it’s students to take risks, to figure out complex business problems, how to succeed in a highly demanding environments, among many other skills. All of these skills I’d qualify as essentials to being an entrepreneur. After going the traditional consulting route after graduation, I’m now navigating my way through the startup scene in Boston and Cambridge. There’s so much I find myself applying from my education and the programs at Babson in this scene. Here are a handful of the programs that set me up best to help make Pinyadda a success:

Foundations of Management & Entrepreneurship

This is a required year-long course for freshmen, in which 60 students start with rocket pitches and vote to narrow down the pitches to two business ideas. The class splits, determines roles and positions, receives a $3,000 loan, and runs the businesses through the semester. At the end of the semester, they donate all profits to a non-profit of their choice. My company, Greenback Card Co., raked in $12,500 in revenues and donated $7,500 in profits to a local YMCA.

The biggest learning from this experience that I’m applying now at Pinyadda is know that no matter your age and experience, starting and running a business is possible.

Intermediate Program

This program includes a capstone project your junior year that runs and is administered across disciplines: finance, organizational behavior, marketing, strategy, etc. A self-selected team of students choose a company and analyze and address complex issues facing that company, ultimately presenting strategic recommendations to a panel of professors at the end of the semester. My team chose Home Depot, as Lowe’s market share was steaming ahead. We recommended a variety of strategic initiatives and answered tough questions from the panel about how these would be financed, how much we knew about the markets we were entering to name a few.  We had no problem answering these questions given the thorough research we had done (we even spoke with management at Home Depot).

This program taught me the power of research and data analysis in strategic decision making. As a startup, no one tells you what to do and how to do it. As a result, we rely on data and research to drive this decision making more than anything else.

Management Consulting Field Experience (MCFE)

This advanced course pairs self-selected groups of students with an MBA student project manager. The group works with an area organization and provides consulting services. The team presents their recommendations to their client at the end of the semester. My team worked with Top Floor Learning, an adult education center facing a funding loss of $30k. They asked for our recommendations on how to make up for that loss. We performed pricing analyses, competitive analyses, demographical research, customer research, and ultimately provided implementable recommendations for making up for that loss.

MCFE allowed me to appreciate the importance of individual strengths and weaknesses in effective teamwork, especially amidst a group of friends. At Pinyadda, where we are all friends, we focus on working collaboratively towards a common goal by appreciating and honestly evaluating each others’ individual strengths and weaknesses. By doing so, we capitalize on strengths, and reach goals and develop initiatives in the most effective ways.

Honors Program Thesis

The Honors Program at Babson includes everything from advanced courses to networking events to a semester-long course on research methodologies. It provides an incredible support network and opportunities to get to know professors outside of the classroom. The capstone of the program is a three-semester long thesis project. My thesis analyzed the factors influencing Gen Y’s adoption of mobile payments. This thesis project taught me more than anything else how to self-start. No one was looking over my shoulder to complete the project; it was done independently and on my own time.

In a startup, you learn that the ability to re-energize and self-motivate is crucial — and entirely on your shoulders. No one is pushing deadlines and telling you when to work (maybe it’s why most startupers just work all the time?). Learning how to self-motivate is undoubtedly critical to startup success, so important that we’ve written it in our company conduct guidelines.

Woman’s Leadership Mentor Program

This program selects top well-rounded women undergraduate students at Babson and provides them with a scholarship and a vibrant support network throughout their years at Babson. Similar to the Honors Program, this program provided unmatched access to faculty, conferences, networking opportunities, a truly phenomenal support network of women, and a year long mentorship program with a seasoned female business leader in arguably your most busy time at Babson — your junior year. My mentor was an entrepreneur herself, truly got to know me as a person, and wanted nothing more than to see me find happiness and success. She helped me through a tough semester of juggling work, full course-load, several extracurricular activities, internship searching, and honing in on what exactly I wanted to do post-graduation.

The mentor program taught me how to balance things in my life. Startup life is 24-7, and when things are more crazy than “normal,” there’s no better lessons I learned from the Women’s Leadership Program than to immediately ground yourself by believing in your abilities.

As I mentioned, I took only a couple courses in entrepreneurship at Babson and didn’t take advantage of all the student-run entrepreneurial communities on campus like the E-Tower and Invenio Group. And while I knew I wanted to build a company down the road, I never anticipated doing it so soon out of school. I’m realizing now that regardless of my limited interaction with the entrepreneurially centered organizations and academic division, Babson still bred me to be an entrepreneur. The skills to succeed as an entrepreneur are built into so many of the school’s programs and classes, although I may have overlooked at the time the care at which Babson designed these programs and it’s curriculum in this way. The programs and learnings outlined above are without a doubt helping me navigate the startup scene and build Pinyadda. I now truly appreciate the #1 in entrepreneurship ranking.