Archive for September, 2006

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Web proxy appliance performance

Friday, September 29th, 2006

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.

Posted in geeky, humor | Comments

Foo camp 06 – Paul Graham on startups

Monday, September 18th, 2006

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.

Posted in innovation, passion, startup, technology | Comments

Defeat is temporary, giving up makes it permanent

Monday, September 18th, 2006

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

Posted in passion, quotes, self improvement | Comments

The art of being a Mensch

Sunday, September 17th, 2006

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

Posted in quotes, self improvement, startup | Comments

Nerdy jokes — math geeks inquire within

Friday, September 15th, 2006

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

Thanks Carny.

Posted in geeky, humor | Comments

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