May

25

100% odds

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Being a computer scientist and math nerd, I like numbers. I like stats. I like probability, and I like to calculate risks. However, life is not so simple such that everything can be nicely fit into a mathematical equation that would compute and balance (although I wish!)

I think that’s the main reason techies don’t cope very well with uncertainty and when things are ambiguous. Anything that don’t fit the cookie cutter mould is shied away from. However, as an entrepreneur, one *must* thrive in a fast-paced and dynamic environment, watching out for land mines and charging ahead into the unknown. I saw this quote on YC/Hacker News today and loved it.

100% of people who succeeded tried. 100% of people who did not try failed.

Apr

13

What a week (or weeks ..)

Filed Under execution, failure, fear, goal setting, perseverance, quotes, things to ponder about, things to remind myself | 2 Comments

Wow, this is the longest lull in my blog since a long time. I have been sooooo busy. I know I’m always busy, but this week was my worse ever.

This past week has just been absolutely surreal for me. Been hit with so many things, in so many dimensions of my life that I’m just sitting here trying to figure out where I am right now. This week is also one where I had really high ups, and also extremely low downs. Standard deviation? Off the charts!

Seems like every time I double down and set my sights on something important, stuff just gets in the way to stop me short. Life has a funny way of messing with me like that. Everything I have ever wanted, I’ve always had to put up a fight for, and .. pay the price. Life has just never has been a walk in the park for me. This week I got slammed with so much madness, even from all the people I care about who cares for me.

Anyways. I can’t stop moving, I have to keep moving to stay alive. Keep my eye on the prize, and off all attractive distractions.

In fact, the more push back I get from seemingly random curve balls that life throws at me .. just gets me even more riled up and want to double down more on my commitment to executing my plans. All is fair in love and war. Life’s a game and I choose to play–even if given the option to observe and not participate. I know I will prevail, because I gots strategy. I recoup, plan, and execute. Bring on the problems!

A warrior of the light studies very carefully the position he wishes to conquer. However difficult his objective may be, there is always a way to overcome the obstacles. He verifies the alternative routes, sharpens his sword, and seeks to fill his heart with the perseverance necessary to face the challenge. But, as he advances, the warrior realizes there are difficulties he had not foreseen at the outset. If he waits for the ideal moment, he will never move from his position; he sees that a little madness is needed for the next step. The warrior uses a little madness. Because - in war and in love - one cannot foresee everything.

On a more positive note .. earlier this year I made a resolution to put myself out there and open myself up to the possibility of getting hurt. No pain no gains. Looks like I can mark that off my checklist now! That was fun. Fill ‘er up again!

A person can stand for the rest of his days facing one of the many doors he should go through, but he must understand that he has only truly lived up to that point. He may continue to breathe, walk, sleep and eat - but with less and less pleasure, because he is already spiritually dead and does not know it. Until one day when, as well as his spiritual death, physical death appears; at that moment God will ask: “what did you do with your life?” We must all answer this question, and woe betide those who answer: “I remained standing at the door.”

Thank you, Dr. Randy Pausch.

-If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.

-We can’t change the cards we’re dealt, just how we play the hand.

-Brick walls are there for a reason. They are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop people who don’t want it badly enough.

Apr

8

Lessons from the Warrior of the Light

Filed Under changing the world, entrepreneurship, execution, failure, fear, goal setting, passion, perseverance, quotes, regular reads, self improvement, startup, strategy, things to ponder about, things to remind myself, values | Leave a Comment

I’m definitely a fan of Paulo Coelho, the renowned Brazillian author. He has a unique way of teaching the lessons in life that he has learned through storytelling.

A few lessons from the Warrior of the Light.

Using one’s own madness

A warrior of the light studies very carefully the position he wishes to conquer.

However difficult his objective may be, there is always a way to overcome the obstacles. He verifies the alternative routes, sharpens his sword, and seeks to fill his heart with the perseverance necessary to face the challenge.

But, as he advances, the warrior realizes there are difficulties he had not foreseen at the outset.

If he waits for the ideal moment, he will never move from his position; he sees that a little madness is needed for the next step.

The warrior uses a little madness. Because - in war and in love - one cannot foresee everything.

Life is such that if you wait to gather 100% of every single detail before you can make a decision, others would have surpassed you. If you waited for the fog to clear, then what you see is what everyone else will also see. Given the perfect picture, anyone sane would make the same correct, best choice. This is exactly how *not* to beat the market.

CEOs often make decisions with incomplete data–and that takes a little madness. It’s about making decisions with the best information possible available at that time. Standing still through inaction is waiting to fail–and I’ll fail from action than inaction.

So when do you put yourself out there and wear your heart on your sleeve?
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Mar

18

The best thing I read today

Filed Under career, failure, fear, passion, perseverance, product management, quotes, self improvement, things to ponder about, things to remind myself, values | Leave a Comment

Question: Describe your job in one sentence.
Answer: The art of prospering between a rock and a hard place.

That reminds me of a quote:

There are really only two ways to approach life - as victim or as gallant fighter - and you must decide if you want to act or react, deal your own cards or play with a stacked deck. And if you don’t decide which way to play with life, it always plays with you.
– Merle Shain

Which reminds of awesome book I read titled “The Pathfinder” by Nicholas Lore–which I highly recommend. (Thanks for the recommendation, Becks!)

You can at any moment, take flight on new wings into an unprecedented life making a choice for vitality, for living fully, for LIFE spelled in capital letters. It is, however, an expensive journey. You pay by giving up the familiar, comfortable, everyday ways of living and thinking that are the wages and rewards of going with the flow of your programming.

The willingness to feel fear and keep going forward distinguishes the living from the merely breathing. In fact, it is not just the so-called negative emotions that are uncomfortable. When you choose to live fully, your palate of experiences, thoughts, emotions, and possibilities expands. This leads you onto new ground in other areas of your life as well. And, folks, all that newness swirling around just ain’t comfortable.

The question is not whether to take risks, but which ones to take. The peril of being reasonable is that you will miss all the fun. It’s not enough to cautiously edge your way towards the cliff. Learn to revel in taking risks for the sake of your soul. Every choice you make gives birth instantly to certain risks as surely as your shadow follows you.

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Mar

16

Failure quotes roundup!

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Time for another quotes roundup! These are things I wish to remind myself and hope to never forget:

Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.
–Winston Churchill

Not doing more than the average is what keeps the average down.
–William M. Winans

Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
–Ralph Ellison

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.
–Mohandas K. Gandhi

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: which is: Try to please everybody.
–Herbert B. Swope

The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and “mangled mind” leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
–Elizabeth Drew

My will shall shape the future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man’s doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny.
–Elaine Maxwell

The deepest human defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.
–Ashley Montagu

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
–Anais Nin

Feb

25

Fear of the defeats they will meet on the path

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Anyone who fights for their dream, suffers far more when it doesn’t work out, because they cannot fall back on the old excuse: “Oh, well, I didn’t really want it anyway.” They do want it and know that they have staked everything on it and that the path of the Personal Legend is no easier than any other path, except that their whole heart is in this journey. Then, the warrior of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the Universe is conspiring in his favour, even though he may not understand how.
– Paolo Coelho

Feb

9

Randy Komisar

Filed Under business, career, changing the world, innovation, mentoring, passion, people i like, quotes, self improvement, stanford, startup, things to ponder about, things to remind myself, values | Leave a Comment

Randy Komisar, when asked in an interview about how he would ever make his mark at VC firm like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers when they have a track record of investment home runs like Google says,

It’s a high bar, there’s no question about it. But I don’t feel competitive against that. I mean I think that the goal for me is to help create great talent in great companies, and what I’m hoping that in the process, they create wealth and opportunities for others. That being said, trying to measure up against something like Google as an investment return, that would just make you anxious. I don’t feel very competitive with that. I just hope that I continue to do good work and contribute.

I think that’s great advice. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of benchmarking yourself against a rare one time astronomical success. It only makes you more anxious and cloud your judgement in decision making, spinning you into an uncontrolled perpetual fall downwards. The negative energy just feeds back into the system and snowballs.

I think I have fell into that trap of focusing on the wrong thing. I think the reason why I fell for that is because I am very competitive. It’s only natural that when I see someone doing better than me, that I only want to do even better–to win. I’m not a life-is-a-zero-sum game guy, but I am competitive.

I think the other reason is because sometimes I care too much about what other people think of me. And it is so easy for external parties to view you from the outside and say, “Why can’t he accomplish this feat? Someone else has already done it, and therefore it’s possible. If he can’t do it, then he must be a loser”. It’s easy to benchmark others against the best. Not so funny when others benchmark you the same way.

That’s exactly what happened in that interview. The interviewer asked Randy a question that same line of external judgement: “how do you think you are going to beat the record?” In my opinion, Randy’s answer was perfect, “Look, I know it’s difficult, but I don’t ask myself that every time I go to work, or in every investment decision I mae. I focus on what’s important really here: contributing, creating wealth and opportunities to the best I can” I think I would have bombed that test. I would have said something that displays my naivete like, “oh, that’s nothing–I’ll beat it.” Sounds Dilbert-ish.

Towards the end of the interview, Randy was asked what his recommendation was for people who starting out and looking for a profession. The interviewer asked if he would recommend his own career trajectory he took, for instance. Randy says,

You should question authority, question convention, question other people’s expectations. We live in a day and time when all things are possible for people who have the raw intelligence, energy, and dedication to reinvent things. And that includes reinventing themselves. The shame of it is when smart people conform to conventional expectations and miss out on the opportunities to live a creative life. Within that confine, almost anything can be a great profession and can be a good and purposeful life’s work. But first and foremost, it’s gotta be important to you.

Randy Komisar one of the mentors at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.

Feb

8

The 3 kinds of people

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There are three kinds of people. Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.
– Author unknown

Awesome actionable quote, makes you want to spring into action, does it not?

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
– Author unknown

Feb

3

Steve Jurvetson: Failure is the magic sauce

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Failure is the magic sauce in entrepreneurship, it’s the magic sauce in innovation.

In the venture business, we look at thousands of business plans every month. The majority of them will fail, the majority of them will go out of business, but its the few that succeed that really change the world.

And you have to be prepared for that, as an entrepreneur, that on average, you’re going to fail. And not to take that too deeply, to realize that that’s okay, and luckily at least in America, there’s a culture that welcomes that; that says its okay to fail, especially in an entrepreneurial endeavor.

Embracing failure and failing early enough are positive aspirational goals. As venture capitalists, we often argue that we should often fail early enough to learn about new industries and learn to do what we do.

From an interview with Steve Jurvetson

Feb

3

A focus on human potential

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The human potential doesn’t really hit its highest mark unless it becomes just excruciatingly focused.
– Geoffrey Moore, Silicon Valley high tech consultant and author of Crossing the Chasm

Jan

9

What a man can be, he must be

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What a man can be, he must be
– A.H. Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation, Psychological Review 50 (1943):370-96.

Dec

19

Two Fishermen

Filed Under fear, quotes, regular reads, things to ponder about, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

Two men went fishing. One was an experienced fisherman, the other wasn’t. Every time the experienced fisherman caught a big fish, he put it in his ice chest to keep it fresh. Whenever the inexperienced fisherman caught a big fish, he threw it back. The experienced fisherman watched this go on all day and finally got tired of seeing the man waste good fish. “Why do you keep throwing back all the big fish you catch?” he asked. The inexperienced fisherman replied, “I only have a small frying pan.”

Sometimes, like that fisherman, we throw back the big plans, big dreams, big jobs, big opportunities that God gives us. Our faith is too small. We laugh at that fisherman who didn’t figure out that all he needed was a bigger frying pan, yet how ready are we to increase the size of our faith?

Great story, that I randomly stumbled on. This actually reminds me of something the famed VC Vinod Khosla once said in an interview, that sometimes entrepreneurs fail because they fail to think big enough. The problem is their self-imposed limitations, and they just don’t realize it.

Dec

13

You must want a big success and then beat it into submission

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I love quotes! And here’s a good one I picked up today from Marc Andreessen’s blog post today:

Marcus Loew, founding father of the motion picture industry and founder of Loews Theatres and MGM:

Ambition!

You must want a big success and then beat it into submission; you must be as ravenous to reach it as the wolf who licks his teeth behind a fleeing rabbit; you must be as mad to win as the man who, with one hand growing cold on the revolver in his pocket, with the other hand pushes his last gold piece on the ‘Double-O’ at Monte Carlo.

As quoted in Neal Gabler’s outstanding An Empire of Their Own.

On another note, today I learned that OLPC’s Linux-based operating system was available for download, and so I wanted to check it out for myself. It’s pretty neat. Now I know what my blog looks like when rendered on an OLPC:

times-jliew-olpc
Also interestingly enough, when I uploaded the above screenshot on Flickr, the admin of a group (on Flickr) for the OLPC: One Laptop Per Child group asked if I could use this picture, to which I said yes. Do check out their gallery for more pictures of this laptop.

Dec

9

Putting up with grief

Filed Under failure, fear, passion, quotes, self improvement, things to ponder about, things to remind myself, values | Leave a Comment

Retired Stanford business professor James G. March asserts that “short-term reality is an insult to the vision. You have to be self-delusional to create change - it’s a useful craziness guided and founded on your clear identity and knowing what you must do.” What lessons in leadership can be learned from Don Quixote? According to March, “We live in a world that emphasizes realistic expectations and clear successes. Quixote had neither. But through failure after failure, he persists in his vision and his commitment. He persists because he knows who he is.” Builders are not only willing but indeed determined to put up with the grief that results from pursuing their dreams.

The above was from a book review on Amazon. Some powerful stuff. I had to take a few moments after reading that just to fully absorb it.

Dec

9

What is your coping mechanism for bad news?

Filed Under failure, passion, perseverance, quotes, self improvement, things to ponder about, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

Today, I watched the 2007 keynote from TechCrunch40 where Mike Moritz interviewed tech heavyweights Marc Andreessen (of Netscape, Ning, Opsware fame), Chad Hurley (of Youtube fame), and David Filo (of Yahoo! fame).

Marc Andreesen has a point on being CEO, that it’s not a job cut out for everyone.

CEO job is an unrelenting stream of bad news. If it’s a international big company, then you get bad news from all over the world. The key is to be able to listen to and absorb all that news, then filter and act on it; not letting it get to you emotionally.

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Dec

1

When you’re at the very bottom, you can only go up

Filed Under backpacking europe, failure, fear, people i like, perseverance, quotes, self improvement, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

I read this comment below today by Pistolette and have many times thought of the same thing. To digress, the blog post where I read this comment is a great one — I’ll write up on that in a separate post.

It’s been two years since Hurricane Katrina desrtoyed the homes of my entire family, but now we are more successful financially, mentally, and career-wise than we were before. I suppose its like the saying goes “it’s only when you lose everything that you’re free to do anything.” After a few days of moping around we quickly regrouped and simply felt happy to be alive. Every day since then I have lived strongly in the present, and have an awareness of things around me that I did not have before. We lost most of our fears, and learned to enjoy life through experiences rather than material things. Perhaps a record-breaking hurricane seems like an extreme case of happenstance, but I think it still qualifies. I see many people around me trying to endure life here (in New Orleans) with the same old attitudes and they are suffering so much. I choose to see the positive things the storm brought here, and as a result I am “lucky”.

Don’t you sometimes get tired of defending all that you have accumulated in life? Ironically, sometimes it’s the things that you have amassed that now holds you back from otherwise going in a much different direction than you would like to; effectively becoming “baggage”.

Recently when I was backpacking Europe alone, I met this shopkeeper lady in the beautiful city of Nürnberg, Germany. She used to be a school teacher, she was old(er), but very upbeat, positive, and energetic. We had more than a superficial “tourist to shopkeeper-that-sells-to-tourists” talk. Turns out, I found out that she had recently been through some difficult times and as a result lost almost everything, including her house and her significant other.

She smiled as she said to me enthusiastically, “I have lost everything, and now I can only WIN!” (now imagine that, in a thick German accent)

We bonded with a short conversation about life in general, after just 5 minutes. I guess we hit it off really quick. Her name is Christina, and I’ll never forget her (I hope I don’t). She was shy in front of the camera but I insisted that I wouldn’t leave without a picture. So here it is, and I’m showing it although I look like an idiot (my eyes are closed)

Picture 023

To go off slightly on a tangent, Christina’s store is one of those makeshift ones. It was among a few others set up on a broad pedestrian-only bridge. Here’s a scene from the bridge, across from her little store. Pretty, huh?

Picture 107

Nov

23

If at least one person on this life has breathed easier, ..

Filed Under changing the world, microfinance, quotes, san diego, startup, things to remind myself, wokai | Leave a Comment

And today’s quote is .. *drumroll*

To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch… to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!”

–- Ralph Waldo Emerson

And on a related quote, by an unknown author:

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away.”

Speaking of changing the world, the non-profit microfinance startup, Wokai, that I am currently assisting on a volunteer basis is having it’s inaugural meet-and-greet for the San Diego team (and anyone interested). We’re hosting it tomorrow at Roger’s place at 2pm PST. Contact me for details (I’m not going to randomly posting someone’s home address on the web!)

Nov

16

What would you die for?

Filed Under changing the world, fear, passion, quotes, stanford, things to ponder about | Leave a Comment

And even if he tries to kill you, you’ll develop the inner conviction that there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they are worth dying for. And I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
– Martin Luther King, Jr., Speech at the Great March on Detroit

MLK would willingly die with no regrets for a cause worth fighting for. Do you know what cause you are fighting for? What would you die for?

From the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford

Nov

7

Be foolish enough to try make your dreams come true

Filed Under changing the world, innovation, passion, people i like, perseverance, quotes, stanford, startup, things to remind myself | 2 Comments

An entrepreneur is someone who dares to dream the dreams and is foolish enough to try to make those dreams come true. Innovative bottom up methods will solve problems that now seem intractable- from energy to poverty to disease. Science and technology, powered by the fuel of entrepreneurial energy, are the largest multipliers of resources we have to solve our many social problems.

– Vinod Khosla, founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, former partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, partner at Khosla Ventures

An interview of Vinod, from iinovate. I found this podcast by accident from browsing the iTunes store after purchasing my new iPod nano. I’m impressed by it, and I love having access to the audio and video podcasts on the go. It’s like having a small TV on demand wherever I go. Do watch the video clip below, and visit iinovate

Here are some of my notes that to me are the key takeaways:
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Sep

30

Extending the number of operations without thinking

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We advance our civilization — or at least our own best interest — by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.
– Dr. Roy F. Baumeister, Social Psychology Area Director and Francis Eppes Eminent Scholar (Princeton University)

The more I ponder about this, the more I find it to be true. The more processes you can automate with a machine, or if human-intervention is required, then the more projects you can outsource, such that the more things you can accomplish without having to actually “having to be there” or actively think about, the more you advance and move forward.

Same with saving money for retirement — you save the money and let time generate more money for you. That’s why good financial advisers always say that young people should start saving for retirement when they are young. So that you can put time to work for you, which in effect, is just another operation which does not require your active engagement.

To apply this concept into my career — I like automating stuff as much as I can. Let the machine worry about the processes. The more the machine can take work off my hands, the more time I have free to do something else and move forward. Some people actually like not automating stuff, because then it gives them some form of “job security”.
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