How to be LUCKY

In Australia, people are mostly employed, but in debt and practising frugality out of necessity.

In India, youth are "atrociously educated" but under-employed.

In Israel, researchers noted that very efficient and capable brains can be more error-prone.

In England (this one is not recent), coaches find that the more familiar you are with success,  the calmer you will be.

No connection among these pieces. Except I happened to read them in a row ;-)

Attention Economy and Virtual Hurricanes

According to Esther Dyson's Attention Economy,

But many individuals, most of the time, go online without any interest in buying something. They are there to find out about the world, catch up with friends, play games, listen to music, chat, or just hang out – and, increasingly, to get the attention of other people. Thanks to highly productive surplus economies, they can spend a lot more time being economically inactive.
...

Will the world of cognitive surplus make it easier for us to be environmentally responsible, guided also by the inclusion of externalities in the prices of physical goods, so that we end up “consuming” fewer physical things and spend more on virtual value?
 

Please also read Chinese Thriving in Hard-hit Spain

Chinese immigrants to Spain have managed not only to survive the economic crisis; they are thriving, buying distressed properties and starting businesses.
 

Now, spend your time creating amusement for others and consuming amusements created by others, on 1-to-1 or many-to-many style.

Then,

1. when you go hungry, first go to a Chinese restaurant , like the Spaniards are doing now.
2. If you cannot even afford that, go to a virtual restaurant to feed on virtual foods.
3. when you get sick, take some virtual medicines.
4. when Sandy, Katrina, etc come, get under virtual shelters.
5. (as my son points out) even to access your virtual world, you need virtual electricity and virtual batteries etc.

Don't think too far ahead. Don't be a visionary. Attention Economy or Virtual Entertainment World is thousands of years away and when it does come it won't last more than a decade. What about decadent empires in the past?

Business and Technology Lessons for Web Startups

on December 27, 2009

I am describing these lessons from my own personal perspectives. However, these lessons apply to most web startups, esp. those with severe restriction on resources.

First, you need to ensure the smooth distribution. Translation : Choose your platform well. Ask, "Can we really deploy your applications? Can we really pay for the costs of deployment? What about scaling up or down?" You must consider these issues even before you write a single line of code.

Second, you must keep the development and research costs down. A small web application that takes 2 years to research is not worth doing. You had better find better things to do instead.



Third, dogs must really like your dog food. Like Guy Kawasaki says, if you are not sure about this point, you should just develop the product for yourself. Be honest, do you really like your own app? Is it useful to you in a real way?

Finally, --- now you have got a cost-effective, deliverable, really useful product --- but that is not the end of the game. Like Trout says , your app/product/concept must "explode" in the potential customers' minds. Or else, you will have to burn wads of dollars to promote your stuff and still the success is not certain. Your site or app will be drowned out in the multitudes of similar offerings. How are you getting your buzz in an over-crowded market space?

In short, distribution, cost, usefulness and buzz, not necessarily in order of importance.