Programmers ,Please Come and Accept My Worship

November 2, 2011

Programmers in Singapore, please come.

Whatever your age, nationality, race, rank or religion,
Whatever your language(PHP or Python, Scala or Smalltalk, Ada or Assembly),
Please come, I want to worship you.

I am not being sarcastic. Maybe a bit desperate ;-)
There is no hidden agenda. The agenda is very open: I want you to work for me free for many months. ( As a bonus advantage, I may even allow you to worship me about once a week.)

There are many reasons you can be happy about my open agenda. Before I go into that, let me tell you why I am so happy to worship you.

Let's start with just 2 main reasons:

1. You are a creator.


2. You are a potentially big earner.

You Are a Creator

You can make a pile of plastic, rubber, wires and metal sheets walk, sweep, climb stairs, arrange dishes, play with kids, and so on. Robots.

You can make any fairy tale jump off the pages and sing, dance, move, quarrel, fight and entertain our kids. Games and animations.

You can sponge off and siphon off an experienced but very expensive physician's hard-won knowledge and wisdom, and make it come alive in our laptops, PDAs, and mobile phones. Expert systems for diagnostic purposes.

You can help people choose tailor-made financial products, insurance policies, travel packages, rooms and houses, even the right KG's, schools or colleges to attend.

You sit on the same floor as Picasso, Van Goh, Lennon but you sit a bit higher. Their works do not come alive for many types of people. But your works --- Google search, Facebook, Halo, Warcraft etc --- come to live for many kinds of people.

Books need to be read. Book-readers(doctors, lawyers, stock traders, teachers etc) need to be consulted. But your works, your programs, your softwares, your apps are in our fingers literally --- there to help us, guide us, comfort us 24/7 under any weather in any place.

Can you imagine life without an ATM, Google search engine, Yahoo/Google mail, Facebook friends, Monster job postings, craiglist, Amazon books, youtube clips? No ipod, iPhone? No Excel, no MS Office, no PowerPoint?

Can you run any business without Quicken, Access, MySQL, Oracle or some other database?

There are still many types and fields of knowledge that haven't been put into program, put into software. You decipher them, specify them and code them into something like Excel or Facebook or YouTube and the world will become a better place for you, for your spouse, for your family and friends and for us too.

Oh, come, accept my Worship, you Creators.

There are still many stories that haven't been told in software.
There are still many games that haven't been played in software.
There are still many services that haven't been rendered in software.

Tell them.
Play them.
Render them.

O you Creators, come, accept my Worship.

You can change the world, you can change its course of history. Even if you are not that ambitious, you can still make the world a better, safer, more beautiful, more abundant, more convenient, more hassle-free, more pleasant-to-live, more efficient place.

You Are a Potentially Big Earner.

I won't go into details here either as I haven't research this at all.
So, just help me answer some of these questions:

How much did Alibaba Employer No. 3 earn?
How much did Yahoo Employer No. 4 earn?
How much did Google Employer No. 5 earn?
How much did Microsoft Employer No. 6 earn?
How much did Facebook Employer No. 7 earn?
How much did Creative Technology Employer No. 8 earn? (When I was in NUS, one such guy came to lecture us. He told us that at one time, more than 2000 people reported to him. His MBA came years after his job. I suspect that the NUS MBA school won't even consider his application before he worked for Creative.)

You may not have been one of them. But you still have such chances almost every week in your software industry.

Why not come and accept our worship?

george and family

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Singapore 111ZZXX

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.

How I Would Be Able to Run a Successful Technology Company

Nick Felker

on Google Plus asks recently

Hey guys. I'm a techie. I've built a few websites, although I'm interested in learning more about the business culture and how I would be able to run a successful technology company.

George Naing 

answers

First, I'll scare you. But don't worry too much, I have some answers you can choose from.

"Scare" Part
(1) The first few partners/hires will determine your company's DNA.

(2) Stock options, company laws, remuneration packages, contract laws will take you 10 years to study and 10 more years to understand.

(3) Lou Gerstner: Culture is not part of the game, it's the whole game, from the CEO's point of view.

"Reassure" Part
(1) Matsushita : Out of billions of humans on this planet, how many hires do you want?

(2) Only 1st time treps want partners. After their first, whether they fail or succeed, they don't want partners any more.

(3) E-Myth Revisited : See an opportunity/biz as a product on a store shelf. If OppA requires partners that you cannot find, why not wonder up another Opp that doesn't?

(4) Find poeple you can trust, advice of so many books. This is not difficult. just fail faster.

(5) HBR -- Kiva the Disruptor article : If no trust, reduce theri risk and your risk as well.

(6) "Code is the best junior developer," some one says !!!

Satisfied? I can go on .....

Thinking Up New Products and Thesis Topics

on October 14,2011

1. Steve Jobs once said that he's proud of products that he had done and maybe even prouder of products that he had chosen not to do yet.
2. According to Bootstrapping Your Business: Start and Grow a Successful Company with Almost No Money, searching for business opportunities and great products is like mining: out of 10, you get 3, and out of those 3, you dig into 1.

1. Is thinking up new products tough?
2. Is thinking up thesis topics tough?

Thinking up thesis topics is(well, at least, was) easy.

Thinking up new products is even easier. Here's how:

1. In academic world, if Student Number 138765 has registered to do "Abraham Lincoln's Logistical Problems in the American Civil War," the prof won't allow me to do that.
   
   In real world, after Friendster, MySpace, Facebook and Google+,(if I chose,) I am still free to do MyFriendsterSpaceBook+, right?
   
   
2. In academic world, the devil is in the details.
   
   In real world, it is even more so. All Intuit founding team needed was the "47th mover's advantages." Then, Mint.com that Intuit bought out must have "57th mover's advantages."

Online banking, online teaching, social networking, job sites ... are all today's offerings 100% complete, perfect? All the necessary inventions have been done?

As Mr Henry Ford remarks, whatever you think is right.

Now, I am writing letters to Singapore software development companies, asking them to customize Moodle for independent private tutors.

Moodle is too good to be let go to waste. And it is easy to customize.

But then, the devil is in the details, and even more so in the software world.

What Business Are You In?

One of the late Peter Drucker's famous questions is : What business are you in?

Theodore Levitt too asked this question, observing that the rail road businesses in the US in the early 20th century failed to become players in aviation because they myopically stuck to a narrow definition of their business as "rail road business" not as "transportation business."

Here is a collection of such definitions.

What business is Starbucks in? Coffee business serving people or people business serving coffee? Business of making people feel valued at a personal level or business of running stylish coffee shops? The source of these ideas.

What business is Coca-Cola in? Like Pepsi, in "taste" business or in "fun" business?

What business is Revlon in? In perfume business or in business of selling hope, dreams and fantasy? I got this example from E-Myth Revisited.

What business is a tuition center in? In the business of teaching certain concepts and skills to youth, or in the business of inspiring and instilling confidence in them?

How you define your business will determine how you define your value to your customers, how you position your offerings to those of the competition, what acquisitions you go after, how you do your R & D, and so on.

Therefore, take your time until you get a crystal clear and compact answer that excites both yourself and your troops.

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.

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?