Sep

29

Web proxy appliance performance

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This is a true (or fictional - for plausible deniability reasons) story at Websense:

Prospective customer: What kind of load will the Resilience Netsquad 05 handle?

Sales representative: I don’t know, why don’t you try throw an elephant on top of it?

Courtesy of Nigel Atkinson.

Sep

18

Foo camp 06 - Paul Graham on startups

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I stumbled upon Venture Blog by accident as a result of Googling for “sand hill road” and was pleasantly surprised to find yet another interesting blog to add to my RSS reader.

Paul Graham recently gave a talk at Foo Camp 2006 about what the Y Combinator has learned from building startups. Here’s my compressed version of the entire post on Venture Blog by David Hornik.

Paul Graham: What We Learned So Far From Y Combinator About Startups

  1. The biggest weapon entrepreneurs have against failing is focus and determination. Startup success is the absence of failure. Let’s face it, there are infinite ways a startup can fail, and most do. Astoundingly smart people fail because they lack the maniacal focus required to help a startup succeed against the odds. Paul goes so far as to say that smart isn’t that important. There are lots of smart people. To him, smart pales in comparison to focus.
  2. Make something people want. The easiest way to make something that people want is to make something that you want. Yahoo! started out as a directory of Jerry and Dave’s favorite links. Jonathan started Friendster to find a girlfriend. Zuckerberg started FaceBook to find a girlfriend. If you build something you want, chances are pretty good that someone else with want it as well.
  3. Build something you know others will want. It requires a lot of listening and a lot of luck. Truly successful startups solving other people’s problems are often started by domain experts who see big problems with the status quo and leave their industries to go solve those problems. That might work. But it is still really hard. It’s a lot easier to really understand your own problems than someone else’s.
  4. Listen and react. Even companies building something that the founders themselves want need to listen to feedback on their product in order to morph their idea to appeal to the largest (or most valuable) constituency possible. It is OK to be stubborn and have good judgment, but it is still better to have bad judgement and not be stubborn. Startups are necessarily fluid and agile. It is what gives them a chance of succeeding despite the long odds and giant competitors.

Sep

18

Defeat is temporary, giving up makes it permanent

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Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.
– Marilyn vos Savant

Sep

17

The art of being a Mensch

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The best index to a person’s character is

  1. how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and
  2. how he treats people who can’t fight back

–Abigail Van Buren

I first learned about the meaning of the word “mensch” from Guy Kawasaki in his book, “The Art of the Start”. Leo Rosten, the Yiddish maven and author of The Joys of Yiddish, defines mensch this way:

Someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. The key to being “a real mensch” is nothing less than character, rectitude, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, decorous.

Menschdom in a nutshell (see Guy Kawasaki’s blog post for more):

  1. Help people who cannot help you. A mensch helps people who cannot ever return the favor. He doesn’t care if the recipient is rich, famous, or powerful. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t help rich, famous, or powerful people (indeed, they may need the most help), but you shouldn’t help only rich, famous, and powerful people.
  2. Help without the expectation of return. A mensch helps people without the expectation of return–at least in this life. What’s the payoff? Not that there has to be a payoff, but the payoff is the pure satisfaction of helping others. Nothing more, nothing less.
  3. Help many people. Menschdom is a numbers game: you should help many people, so you don’t hide your generosity under a bushel. (Of course, not even a mensch can help everyone. To try to do so would mean failing to help anyone.)
  4. Do the right thing the right way. A mensch always does the right thing the right way. She would never cop an attitude like, “We’re not as bad as Enron.” There is a bright, clear line between right and wrong, and a mensch never crosses that line.
  5. Pay back society. A mensch realizes that he’s blessed. For example, entrepreneurs are blessed with vision and passion plus the ability to recruit, raise money, and change the world. These blessings come with the obligation to pay back society. The baseline is that we owe something to society–we’re not a doing a favor by paying back society.

As competitive as I am in almost everything I do, the fact remains that not everything in life is a zero sum game where someone has to lose in order for you to win.

The Art of the Start, by Guy Kawasaki:

The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything

Sep

15

Nerdy jokes — math geeks inquire within

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I read it from this blog: http://immense-world.blogspot.com/2006/09/mathematics-genius.html

Thanks Carny.

Sep

10

At least buy a ticket

Filed Under business, career, passion, self improvement, startup | Leave a Comment

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Many times we wish for good things, but they never happen and we wonder why. Some of those times, it is possible that it is through our own actions that the success we envision slips away. Of course you can wait around and hope to wake up one day to be accidentally successful due to external circumstances (e.g. you found out that Bill Gates named you in his will) — but that is largely unrealistic. This week, I quote Brett Johnson. Brett Johnson was a partner at Computer Sciences Corporation and KPMG Peat Marwick, and was a senior manager at Price Waterhouse. He has served as a advisor to a number of Fortune 1000 companies and has twenty years of experience helping major corporations develop creative business strategies.

We need to give ourselves — and God — the margin needed to make things happen. Some years ago I met a Jewish believer who had worked a steady job as a schoolteacher in New York**. As a new believer he realized that if he stayed in his job and failed to risk, there would be little opprtunity for God to bless him. So he took a job for less pay, worked for a tough boss, and became a millionaire. I am not a “name it and claim it” proponent, but his advice to me as stuck: Put yourself in a position where God can bless you.

I know the term “tough boss” might have a negative connotation to some, but for young professionals like myself, you stand to learn a lot from a boss that is tough on you. However, there is a line between being tough on you because you are an asset to be grown, and tough on you because you are a resource to be consumed (you want the former, not the latter — the latter is a slow painful death for career builders). Think of going to the gym, you exert yourself by pushing yourself to build up strength & stamina. If you don’t push yourself, then you’re just wasting your time in the gym. Walking through the gym doors alone does not equal better health.

A rabbi told a story that went like this: A religious man stood in the synagogue and asked God to help him win the lottery. That week he won nothing. The next week he was back in the synagogue asking a bit more fervently. Silence from God and no big win. By the third week he was prostrate before the Ark, begging God to help him win the lottery. Just then, a voice came from the Ark. “Look, would you mind meeting me half-way. At least buy a ticket!”

We’ve all been like that man. We want the joy when God does great things in and through us, but we are so busy getting ready in the locker room that we never get in the game. To win, you have to be in the game.

Convergence, by Brett Johson. Thanks to my buddy Phil Lee for the book :)

Convergence

** Nothing against being a schoolteacher — I think it’s a respectable profession that sometimes doesn’t deserve enough credit, my mother is a schoolteacher and I have aunts who are also schoolteachers.

Sep

4

Pachelbel Canon in D

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Johann Pachelbel’s Canon rehashed — with an electric guitar! Awesome clip.

Happy Labor Day!