FB builds its own data centre

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/21/facebook-data-center/trackback/
Okie, other than the obvious points in the article, what strikes me is that the energy saving techniques that FB is employing. That to me, is supremely interesting as someone who is looking for solutions to solve climate change while also maintaining quality of life.

The solutions are sometimes kinda duh, but hey, what works works.

startup concepts

A very brief post here, but I just like to capture some validated concepts from the speakers for the last 2 days.

1. Product/market fit
Google this. Very important.
http://startup-marketing.com/the-startup-pyramid/
http://andrewchenblog.com/2009/06/15/why-you-should-make-it-easy-for-users-to-quit-your-product/

a. good problem, good solution > b. no problem, good solution > c. bad problem, no good solution > d. no problem, no good solution
My understanding so far is that a is the best. Your startup will fly after you achieve this. b is not bad, but you need to work harder cause you got the ass but not the head. So you find the right head since you already have a good ass. c is bad cause you tackled a problem that is too big to be handled by your team (assuming you have a team). d. Don't give up, talk to more people, do your groundwork.

2. MVP, Pivot
Google this. If you find the wrong results, cannot help you sia..
MVP - minimum viable product
Pivot - Validate, then change slightly to test hypothesis, then measure (which leads to pt 3)

3. Metrics
Choose the proper metrics to measure success. What they are, I don't know. I'm also figuring out for my own startup.
Common ones are:
1. Traction - new subscribers, new users, new sales accounts, people calling to complain (sometimes the best source). Unfortunately, press is not a metric to rely on, unless your business is in the media industry.
2. Finance - Cashflow, revenue from advertisements etc..

4. Negotiation skills
Err.. mostly applicable during major crunch times, e.g. Loss of major customer account, equity sale, exit stage

5. Don't feature bloat
Listening to your customers (or whom you thought were your ideal customers) would cause you to add more features to satisfy them. Super Bad. This pt is also closely related to..

6. Talk to the REAL customers
Very applicable to the geeks (sorry, I'm not a geek yet, I only have friends who are geeks). Geeks are not the real market for most of the projects. Not many people need a command line interface that makes it easier to hack a consumer-focused application. So don't build it.
Summarised in one short snappy sentence:
"Talk to your MUM."

7. No money, no talk
You can ask during trials/alpha launch etc:
"Do you think this is a good feature? Does it solve your problem? What improvements do you want?" etc etc. All very good questions
But the most important questions might be:
"How much would you pay for this? If I remove a few features, would you still pay for it?"

8. Focus

9. Saying No
No to partnerships when you have not figured out your product/market fit, no to miscellaneous requests, no to blah blah blah that distract you from your focus. (If you don't have a focus, ho sei.. )

10. Relentlessly resourceful

Go figure

Just summarizing my thoughts after the last 2 days, so I might be wrong. I have not been through the whole journey from start to exit, so I can't comment much except for what I understand from people whom I've talked to.

Stupid to make mistakes people already made, Stupider to repeat mistakes.

Singapore's future 5 years

I guess I am pretty paranoid, but I am very concerned for Singapore. This was exacerbated by attending 2 recent networking events. Both were very useful to me as someone interested in China and entrepreneurship.

It seems that many of my peers are in a cocoon of blissful ignorance. However, we must realise that China's impact will cause Singapore to lose certain advantages that we take for granted in 5 - 8 years time. We are no longer as advanced or as rich as we think we are. There will no longer be jobs in MNCs or banks. The moment that China's business environment becomes more stable and easier to do business, many of these MNCs will seriously contemplating uprooting their operations. My major takeaway from the event is the deadline that is ticking, a window of 5 years for us to exploit our bilingual advantage. Miss that, and we are useless. We are clearly ranked after Hongkong, Shanghai and Taiwan in the pecking order as an entrance into China.

There are a lot of attitudes towards China that I am strongly opposed to. Singaporeans seem to think that China is a hardship posting and that we can always rely on the U.S. market for jobs. Singaporeans also have a biased attitude towards the Chinese. However, I think it should be an attitude of mutual respect.

Singapore is not a gateway to Asia. It can only be a gateway to Southeast Asia, which is a geographically diverse region with many smaller regional economies. It is not a region with market economies of scale. Infrastructure and language problems plague the region, and there is no semblance of connectivity between the countries. Taking a wild shot, Indonesia, Vietnam and Phillipines seem promising. I personally would be most interested in Indonesia's and Vietnam's development over the next few years. I only know Indonesia and Vietnam superficially through holidays and short trips, but I feel that it's time to put in some effort to understand them better.

I will add on to this post with further thoughts, but I thought it's better to publish this first and get feedback.

Things I should have done before programming

1. Sleep
2. Write on paper first the steps in the process
3. Plan list of variables, function names

1 hour of planning saves 10 hours of debugging. Argh...

Same steps apply when debugging, except
1. SLEEP

Why sleep is important for peak performance

Err.. Don't agree with the "If you don't sleep, you get a lot of things done."

Sorry guys, if I am really tired, you will see me sleep. After the nap, I will be more productive than a zombie sitting there dozing off.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080609071106.htm - "..more specifically, how sleep is a significant factor in achieving peak athletic performance.."

"Mah offers these tips to help athletes improve their performance by maximizing their sleep:

• Make sleep a part of your regular training regimen.
• Extend nightly sleep for several weeks to reduce your sleep debt before competition.
• Maintain a low sleep debt by obtaining a sufficient amount of nightly sleep (seven to eight hours for adults, nine or more hours for teens and young adults).
• Keep a regular sleep-wake schedule, going to bed and waking up at the same times every day.
• Take brief naps to obtain additional sleep during the day, especially if drowsy"

Seen too many friends just crashing or zoning out, when they think they can survive on 4 hours of sleep each day.

Nite!

Making what the customer wants and SV style vs China style

Okie.. We've (E3Alive) changed our idea like for the 4th time already. Luckily, we have not did serious work on it. Firm believer of asking what the customer wants, and doing it. Phew, did not waste effort.

Meeting more people this week, gotta prepare name cards! =) I hope I meet interesting people.
Interesting: intelligent, good character, passionate.

Okie, interesting conversation of the day. There are 2 conflicting entrepreneurial mentalities that I have sitting in my brain.

1. The SV style
Find your passion and do it.
Do it - gather a team, find resources, work your ass off...
Money comes as a aftereffect due to the value you've created.

2. The China style
Find the opportunity, make tons of money, then think about social good (building schools.. donating money)

Err, good friends in both camps, and I don't think they will like talking to each other.

The lecture on how to talk between programmers and non-programmers

Err. Dammit. Took me so long to google the stuff covered in the lecture. Should have taken this module earlier. Haha.. oh well..

Lame jokes

1. 4 million lines of code - [printf "you are screwed.";] x 3.9999999 million lines

2. 50 million lines of code, 500 million bugs

3. Non-programmers are useful.

The CS3216 seems to be teaching basics that students should already know.. Or maybe our education system is not teaching the things that people should be learning first? Or are our students just happy to take modules, pass them and forget them? (I am supremely guilty of this, and regretting it.)

Interesting lecture by the previous students. It's good that they have real life experience working to help a client (CVWO - http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/vwo/aboutus.html). Pretty smart way to achieve the objectives of:

1. Getting students to appreciate the power that they have been gifted with through their training

2. Using the resources of the school to benefit society (public funds for social benefit)

3. Management, teamwork, leadership

4. Professionalism

The first result for "Scrum" in google shows the software development model result, not the rugby related result (wert..).

Lol.. major takeaway lesson when managing your own business: Cannot tio smoke by anyone. Must have some experience yourself in as many areas of the business as possible.. (So why hire managers from biz admin without real-world experience?) (I have a lot of biz ad friends who are my good friends. =p) Kinda reminds me of the time when I took a class on VC investments, but the lecturer seemed like he never invested before.

Okie, I sensed a lot of groups floundering. I guess my group is still searching for an idea, but we've thrown away a lot of paper already. Our KPI is probably to hit 100 pages of crap before finding something good.

I realised there's a big difference between Sebastian, me and Jonathan. Not sure how to resolve it, but I wish Jonathan can just push back against our stupid ideas. Maybe the 2 of us are just too intimidating..

The USD1,000 iPhone App: Why?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/17/most-expensive-iphone-app-barmax/

Okie, why does this iPhone costs USD1,000?

I think it's cause users find USD1,000 of value in it.

1. Provides highly specialised knowedge

2. That people are willing to pay for

Which leads me to think of other kinds of highly specialized exams.. (MCAT?)

I wonder whether there are any good iPhone apps that teach people basic English. The English teaching classes offered by the tuition chains in China are ridiculously expensive and quite scam-riddled.

Responding to Paul Graham's essay on "Can You Buy a Sillicon Valley?"

The original essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/maybe.html

"They're just a couple founders with laptops."

Hmm.. NUS has plenty of people with laptops. (Surfing FB, playing games, emailing, reading notes... creating value??)

"There are two ways to do that: have rules preventing them from leaving, or fund them at the point in their life when they naturally take root. The first approach is a mistake, because it becomes a filter for selecting bad startups. If your terms force startups to do things they don't want to, only the desperate ones will take your money."

Okie, slightly tougher. But does it make sense to really uproot the whole team to a place like SV? (Not very sure about this, as I want to start by solving the problems near me first, before going global.)

"For the price of a football stadium, any town that was decent to live in could make itself one of the biggest startup hubs in the world."

Starting to get interesting.. There's already a lot of money floating around in Singapore from the various funds.

Okie, that last part is the selection process for choosing the startups. Do we have a big enough community of angel investors in Singapore who have the experience to be mentors? That's an answer that I myself would like to find out.

Hmm, what is the net effect on the economy if we sacrificed 1 IR for 1 Silicon Valley experiment?

Of course, Paul makes it sound easy. I'm not sure how such an experiment would be conducted. However, I am quite sure that given the amount of bureaucracy, controls and checks over public money, it would be quite difficult to do.

In fact, I don't even think that there are that many technically inclined people in Singapore who want to start their own businesses. Most want to work for MNCs..

Okie, I may be wrong with this post. Hope that people will give some other points.. Really hope that Singapore becomes known for innovative startups. I don't think that we are any less capable, so there must be some obvious reasons why we have the technical training but not the culture.

Blog moved back..

Okie, so the sina.com experiment was a failure =)

moved the content back to http://sharetheconversation.blogspot.com/