Software business is uncertain. So?

March 15, 2015

Software business is uncertain.

Then how can we make it certain?

No need to spend lots of  money. ...

we can embed very certain things inside it.

That way,  it can become more certain.

Software Secrets --- 1 : Let's be humble

We love Disney. So, last week when we watched Looney Tunes ... for the first 1 or 2 episodes, I felt really sorry for Disney.Whatever Disney team can do, Warner Bros Team can do too. Then their episodes started falling apart.

A movie, even a short episode, is more than cameras, sounds, lighting. images, effects and animation. There are higher level structures and systems too.





So, software is more than iOS, javascript, and Hadoop and Radis. It is even more than data structures and algorithms. Let's be humble.

Innovation, Arts and Singapore, Sarah Lewis

Sarah Lewis points out why and how art is important to innovation in MIT Technology Review, of May/June 2014 issue.

What the arts allow us to do is to develop the muscle required for discernment, and also strengthen our sense of agency to determine for ourselves how we're going to tackle a given problem.

In my paraphrase and in elaboration (with me adding a bit) :

1. Arts develop discernment muscles.
2. Arts strengthen initiative, independence and tolerance of ambiguity.  
3. Arts help you learn to stay "hopeful" even when you feel "helpless".

These days, countries  talk a lot about "soft skills," "liberal arts,", "innovation," "high value add," "going higher up on value chain," etc. Many (including Singapore) even include Literature in their school curriculum.

May they be able to go

beyond Metaphor and Metonymy,
beyond Simile and Synecdoche,
beyond Prosody and Personification,

to developing discernment muscles,
to developing initiative,
to developing courage,
to developing creativity.

Entrepreneurship and Singapore, Richard Hartung

Richard Hartung  points out what to emphasize and what to de-emphasize in teaching Entrepreneurship to Singapore's youths in Today newspaper, of June 18, 2014.

What to Emphasize

Brainstorming
Creating ideas

Help students become entrepreneurs
Developing an entrepreneurial  spirit

Coming up with new ideas that solve problems
Guiding students to come up with and design solutions that work
Analyze, uncover people's real problems, and brainstorm solutions
Creatively meeting real needs

Overcoming difficulties
Creative intelligence

What to De-emphasize

Help students become  shopkeepers
Business skills needed for managing a company
Workplace skills
Just running a business better


Well, it's hard to say this better.

Startup Wing Chun - Intent

I once read in Wing Chun Compendium that Intent is more important than force, muscle pressure, energy etc. The book explains the concept of intent (in my paraphrase) as

"Just think about it. The hand will hit the target, the foot will raise and kick the target, all by themselves."

Doesn't it sound as magical as the Law of Attraction folks?

The I recalled what I often see in TV documentaries on wild life.

Fish flying from holes to holes in their muddy banks. Fish climbing walls, scaling mountains.

Birds diving deep into waters. Birds swimming across waves.

But fish remain fish and never leave the essence of fish. So do birds.

Apple engineers did study Jelly bean factories. But they are not turning Apple into Food and Beverage business. They were there to study how to make Jelly bean colors of their iMacs enticing.

Adaptability doesn't mean scattering, splintering, dispersing one's time, attention and resources.

Startup Wing Chun

I don't know Wing Chun or any martial arts. Rather like the guy who "can't even catch a chicken" in Water Margin (or Outlaws of the Marsh)

Aside: that book was Mao Zedong's childhood favourite and adulthood manual. Both version, 70 or 120 chapters, are good.

Wing Chun somehow came from Shaolin.

Differences, as far as I can see:

1. Shaolin was invented when China was "the center of the Universe."
2. It is full of ornate, impractical forms like, tiger forms, monkey forms, snake forms, crane forms, drunkard forms, etc.

1. Wing Chun was invented when China was under the Manchus.
2. It is frugal, even miserly.

What Startups can learn form Wing Chun

Twist, turn, spin, wiggle, rotate, shuffle, crawl ...
Twist the wrists, the fingers, the waist, the ankle, the knee ...
Rotate the wrists, the elbows, the fingers, the waist, the ankle, ...

To generate force, do whatever
To avoid force, do whatever
To hide your own move, do whatever
To gain time/space on the opponent, do whatever
To gain leverage on the opponent, do whatever

To surprise the opponent, do whatever

It is total humility, total innocence, totally instinctive actions.

Startup Lessons from Chinese Classic Literature

Last 2 or 3 days, I read

1. Water Margin (or Outlaws of the Marsh). This was Mao Zedong's childhood favourite and adulthood manual. Both version, 70 or 120 chapters, are good. 
2. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 4-volume version and 10-volume comics version. This was also Mao Zedong's childhood favourite and adulthood manual.

As usual, I draw some weird lessons:

1. Water Margin methods are good for rebelling against your own emperor, but not against the Mongols!
2. Zhuge Liang was so full of ruses and stratagems that even Sima Yi had to admit a few times that, "Zhuge Liang is a genius," "Zhuge Liang's methods are out of this world," "I am no match for Zhuge Liang" etc. Still, Sima Yi won.

Thus, Zhuge Liang's methods are good enough to win battles, but not wars.

No wonder, Carl von Clausewitz didn't think much of initiative.

Entrepreneurship, Buddhist Style, Building One's Means

Entrepreneurship is defined by the Harvard Business School as, in my paraphrase, the pursuit of opportunity regardless of the resources that one controls.

It sounds as if the entrepreneurs were setting themselves up for failure, courting failure by deliberately biting more than they can chew.

What we often miss is their ability to build their means as they go. In the Jazz improv style, they create as they go till their resources become commensurate with their goals.

This is most lucidly illustrated in the following Buddhist story.

The Mouse Merchant

Volume 1. Story Number 4: CULLAKA-SETTHI-JATAKA

1. The young man picked up a dead mouse on a street and sold it for a farthing at a tavern for their cat.
2. With that money, he bought molasses and drinking water, and gave them away to flower-gatherers returning from the forest. He sold the flowers they gave him, to some customers.
3. After a storm, he noticed fallen branches and boughs and leaves in the king's pleasure garden. Children's playground gathered them for him, "by bribes of molasses". He sold the branches etc to the king's potter.
4. "... the vicinity of the city-gate with a jar full of water and supplied 500 mowers with water he struck up an intimacy with a land-trader and a sea-trader a horse-dealer with 500 horses .." He was setting up trade intelligence networks of his own!
5. "... his sea-trading friend brought him news of the arrival of a large ship about a hundred merchants came down to buy the cargo ... " He seized the chance to obtain the exclusive rights to the whole cargo of the ship, and sold these rights to other merchants for profit.

Reference

The Jataka, Volume I, tr. by Robert Chalmers, [1895], at sacred-texts.com
THE JATAKA OR STORIES OF THE BUDDHA'S FORMER BIRTHS.

TRANSLATED FROM THE PALI BY VARIOUS HANDS
UNDER THE EDITORSHIP OF PROFESSOR E. B. COWELL.

Having Fun

on May 11, 2012

E Myth Revisited is a very old and good book.

It opened many doors, many scenes, many panoramic views and vistas and many new worlds to me.

Just imagine how an entrepreneur sees

1. the world as a treasure hunt.
2. the customer as an opportunity
3. the workers as a fleet of dragging feet.
4. a business as a product, just one of many on a shelf.

Can't you also wonder like the entrepreneur in the book? : What that 'ideal' business would be for me?

Life can be exciting seen this way.

More to come.

Admiration : Instagram

Importance of Networking

“Who’s, like, the smartest person I know who I can call up?” Mr. Systrom remembered thinking. ...a former chief technology officer at Facebook ... Mr. D’Angelo became Instagram’s lifeline.       

Mr. D’Angelo, a 2006 graduate of the California Institute of Technology, helped him find engineers, set up databases and flesh out features.

...

Instagram took off like a rocket, in part because Mr. Systrom had whipped up demand. ... Mr. Systrom let some influential technology bloggers and contacts, like Mr. Dorsey of Twitter, try a test version of the app before its official release.

One Billion in Two Years

How Instagram founder Kevin Systrom became insta-rich

Insta-Techno Stack

1. Keep it very simple
2. Don’t re-invent the wheel
3. Go with proven and solid technologies when you can

Choosing Technologies for Your Web Startup

All very cool readings.

Product Strategy and UX: Admiration: the Bump iPhone App

In a recent FastCompany's Article, we read this:

Consider Bump, an app that lets users swap data between phones simply by bumping them together. Its cofounder, Dave Lieb, notes that in the first dotcom rush, online enterprises had to build their infrastructures from scratch, so engineers were paramount. In our app economy, everything has changed. Bump had 1 million users before it spent $1,000. It didn’t need infrastructure, thanks to Amazon’s server-hosting service; it didn’t need advertising because of social media; and the App Store solved any distribution problem. Development was a breeze, too, because of Apple’s software developer kit. "These are all things that used to cost millions," Lieb says.

That is profound. It should open our eyes as well as our minds.

Yes, there are caveats:

1. We are not headquartered in America.
2. We have missed that wave.

Then, there are counter arguments:

1. There are customers outside America, too.
2. Missing one wave is no big deal. There are new waves almost every month or year.

Can we build an app like that outside America too? In places near where I'm living?
And I also read that mix/matching API's can be easy too:

For our geo-search API, we used PostgreSQL for many months, but once our Media entries were sharded, moved over to using Apache Solr. It has a simple JSON interface, so as far as our application is concerned, it’s just another API to consume.

HopeHero's Offer

If you want some "bump ideas", we can help.
If you have ideas already, but you want help with UX/UI/content/copy writing,  then we can help too.

Whatever role, level, pecking order --- we are willing to play, to help.

All we ask is: don't pay us in cash or salary.

Am I asking too much?