Tech Collagea tumblelog

So you want to be an Entrepreneur?

Lately you have been reading lot of VC blogs, following them on Twitter and obsessing about how you make your startup lean. You spend hours debugging Erlang code, debating why Vi is better than Emacs on StackOverflow. And you code, sip some caffeine, code again… You work like one hell of a code monkey 17hrs a day, 7 days a week and things just work fine for you. But why am I discussing this here? And whats the point? Infact what wrong with this scenario?

Well for one its a Big Ball of Mud. So lets think about whats the most-likely outcome? Six months down the line you  have little money, one burned out brain and lots of frustration. And you go back to your Ivory Tower, doing what you do  best — talk,code and idolize. Till day it still confuses me, why are people lured by successes than be wary of tons of failures? People often underestimate the risks involved in doing a start-up, even worse when they have liabilities on them. I am by now way wanting to demean young entrepreneurial spirits like myself, however the following needs to be interpreted in right manner

• Burn your ships!: Doesn’t mean quit your day job to work on iPhone App right away, start putting debt on credit card, distant yourself from your social circle. The way I interpret it as — Don’t do half-baked stuff. Understand your financial capacity,means and figure out how much rocket fuel do you have. Plan wisely for contingency, if possible have a Plan D/Plan Z. Communicate with your friends and family. Then if things permit, go ahead give that two weeks notice and get choppin.
• But I read X on Y’s blog: If this is some one’s argument call it a BS and move on. Can you live a life by reading a manual that somebody has written? Similarly you cannot be in exact same situations, reasoning based on similar set of assumptions. Question everything and figure out why is a piece of advice relevant to you. Accepting some one’s advice citing you inexperience is also unacceptable. I think its anti-entrepreneurial if you do it. Take risks, if necessary fail — this failure will be a worthy teacher. USE YOUR OWN HEAD.
• Be yourself: There is absolutely no difference between being stupid and being arrogant. What I mean by this is, you might be missing on a great opportunity to learn new skill, meet a great personality and be part of change that happen every day in your life. Be open to change, specifically for skills that you lack. Be honest about it, ask for help if needed. And most important, respect others.
• Culture matters, thats why I am going to run my Startup like X: Never hire some one who begins every other sentence with at Lalaland we did…. You are not working at that place anymore, neither should you try and replicate the culture. Every place is unique, each company has its own soul.

I think its important to highlight importance of teamwork, and guts to compete. But I will have a separate posts for it. There is an exception for every rule.

posted 1 month ago

Business of Software

Engineers including myself have taken lots of basic courses including maths,physics,data structures etc while getting ‘formal’ education. What I really wished I had studied and learned more of was Business and Economics. I wish I know how demand and supply worked? how do you read financial statements? why do we pay taxes? what are deductibles? Well I guess its never too late.

And for my fellow develops, a humble request — take look at following articles by Joel:

1. Camels and Rubber Duckies — This one talks about how does one price/value a piece of code that you have developed. Also it gives some insight into art of making sales and relevant to it, how should you do costing?
2. Strategy Letter V — Joel explains the concept of substitutes and compliments from economic perspective. Contextually speaking more about it, he explains how did commercialization of PC hardware led to rising sales in Operating Systems.

While at it, you might also want to check out follow videos of talks given by Joel and Seth. These were eye opener for developers who treat their customers(a.k.a Noobs) with disrespect

• Joel Spolsky’s talk at Business of Software 2008 on being number one
  • Make users happier
  • Care about aesthetics
  • Understand the culture code
• Seth Godin on why marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department
  
  • Ideas that spread, win
  • Build marketing into engineering
  • Ask what products for your customers?
  • Commitment before success

posted 1 month ago

On Change!

There are truly remarkable stories out there about Change! Right from Obama, Evan Williams to mythical David and Goliath. Really, they are inspiring, scary and something that beats sense and reality despite you dislikes. The more I read about these success stories, I see some common patterns/traits/skills that needs to be developed. Some of the skills are naturally ‘hard coded’ into people some needs nurture

• Vision: As opposed to contrary belief, I am of opinion that vision is not something that comes to you in flash of a sec. Instead it comes from toiling with the problem, working in real-life situation as opposed to sitting in Ivory tower and making calls. Key difference between dreamer and visionary is at some point in time visionaries ‘execute’.
• Focus on bottom lines: You become a good artist by drawing more(and good) painting, you become a great programmer by writing more code. You become better Businessman by doing more business. All of this requires single minded focus. Its not so easy, considering that there are so many distractions and hurdles both nature made and man made. Biggest hurdles I see in front of entrepreneurs is themselves.
• Patience & Persistence: Patience teaches you when not to give up, and Persistence teaches you when to hang on. Both really important properties if you want to be king of an island.
• Honesty and Judgment: To asses one’s own strengths ans weaknesses one needs to be honest. Judgment is the intuition that guides you in darkest hours of life when things are foggy.

I have started making changes in my personal life, as I come step closer to reality, a step closer to becoming a ‘businessman’ from an engineer.

posted 2 months ago

Do we need Morpheus?

According to Wikipedia Morpheus is legendary greek god of dreams. In the movie Matrix he played as an important role, majorly as a pragmatist mentor to Neo.  Why such a divide, and do you really need one?

Following properties of Morpheus makes h(er)im highly desirable:

• Good Listener - Reading between the lines, and restating implications are just part of it.
• Highly Analytical - They have a clear sense of difference between 3.14 and 2.9. To  be clear they have been gifted with sixth sense of putting things in context, asking right questions and a+ grade mind-readers.
• Honesty -  If you are doing something wrong, they would be shameless in pointing it out. They will hand-slap you if you diveate, and curse to get you in senses.
• Fair - Being fair is not same as being honest, you can be honest and still choose to compromise. Being fair for them means living by the code, and dieing by it.

Why do you need such a person? Well the answer lies in the fact the people comply. Your parent comply, your girlfriend comply even your dog complies when you shout out loud enough. To progress in life, you need to stay on the track — Morpheus precisely help you do that. They make you realize of your shortcomings in hard/easy way. At times, they go a step furthure and show you how its done.

H(S)he is the person that asks you “Whats up ? How are things going on?”  when you are surrounded by aura of confusion and  frustrations. They are the people you look upto for getting unbiased ideas/answers. And them calling it a “bullshit” when needed is a norm. They might be the closest person in the family, whom you hate (for telling the truth). You might often refer to them as “Negitive Nancy”. But be open minded and listen to them carefully, you will buy into their talk. For me its mostly been my first cousin, for you it could be a close friend.  Find them and follow them.

So when the time comes to choose a red pill or a blue pill, you don’t have doubts about your choice.

posted 4 months ago

A wonderful journey comes to an end, yet another one begins

Today was my last day at Project Playlist. Its been a little over a year, since I oficially joined Playlist. I joined it to quench my thirst of knowledge, and for  thrill of working at a startup. I was ~10th engineering hire. Personally Jeremy Riney — founder of the company inspired me. Initially I reported to Ram Prayaga, another great guy taught me a lot. And not to mention countless people with whom I had interactions with.

I have made so many friends during my tenure, and learned so much from them. I learned a great deal of how leadership, passion and creativity gels together just enough to let magic happen. I saw the transition from Los Angeles to Sunnyvale, from Sunnyvale to Palo Alto. From 165 University Ave. to 444 High St. It wasn’t an easy decision.. But I had to take it.

Fortunately for me, I am moving back to India in search of next big thing. I hope I have equally challenging opportunity for me. Lately having followed news in India, it seems a little daunting and largely disappointing with the rate at which things are chaning. But I have hope and faith, one problem at a time and enough hands — we will solve some real challenges in time.

Sidharth — Playlister at heart.

posted 4 months ago

Wrote my first iPhone hello world app.

It was a little bit confusing, since I am not aware of the right lingo. But I must confess, Apple had a decent dev tools. Take a look at this tutorial.

posted 4 months ago

GTalk countdown code!

So I have been doing a countdown for 26th July. And have been updating it as my status message on GTalk. Nakul, a friend of mine asked me automate it, and so I did. I tweaked this code to update time left till 26th July.

posted 5 months ago

Wamlart effect

Walmart effect is a great book. This book gives a insight into one of biggest organizations in USA. How it effects not only americans but the rest of the world. With an appetite to reduce prices and leverage of selling stuff at volume, they have succeded in “Always lowest price”. But there are negitive implicatios to their actions, they have driven their suppliers out of business, offshoring local jobs overseas.

But in general its a great read. Highly recommended for people cursious of why walmart is so successfull.

posted 5 months ago

Got Mac?

I finally managed to get a 13” Mac Book Pro. And its awesome. Its crisp,simple and solid. Initially there was a little problem in using it. But once you get used to mac way of doing things. Life is all good. I have also ordered a copy of VmWare Fusion. My Sysadmin Steve Tidwell recommended using it. I want to start using this to do Python,Android,Gears dev.

posted 5 months ago