HD DVD vs. Blue Ray, it doesn’t matter at the end. The content has won!
Not too long ago, when high definition video format come about, (naturally starting with Shawshank Redemption, no less!) a new kind of war format broke. The battle was for the complete domination of optical disk format, with the main contenders being HD-DVD and Blue-Ray. You may google it up for more info.
What I want to highlight is that both supporter of those format work so hard to be the dominant format that they lose sight of what is important, the video content itself! Many years later, nobody care about these optical disks. High definition video won, and the internet, mobile phones and satellite broadcasting become the preferred delivery of these high def content.
Well, this is just a reminder to myself to look beyond the delivery method of the value and focus on the value that it delivers. Delivery methods changes frequently, but the core value that it deliver, really doesn’t change that much. Take our need to know what happen around us. It was once smoke signal, followed much later by newspaper and now twitter, but what we get from it is still the same, news.
Perhaps, despite all the technology, human has largely remains the same. We’re just too lazy to change.
Unlimited book budget, why our company can afford it.
At my company, we have unlimited budget for books or any other (educational) reading materials. I am actually proud of this policy and tell practically everyone that comes to our office for interview. I keep saying this to my team repeatedly, but most of them don’t take advantage of this. Perhaps mostly they just google up things and maybe they don’t quite see how books book can be useful.
Let me explain how unlimited book budget is feasible. It is really simple. You see, for what we pay our developers, a typical book cost roughly an hour or two of their working time. If, by reading this book, they manage to save an or two of their time, the book already paid for itself. Now, if the book is shared by a few developers, the book basically paid itself many times over. What if this time saving is continuous, 1 hour of saving per month, the ROI of a single book is now a few hundred percent!
There is nothing magical about this. It is simple mathematics, simple economic. And me, I always believe in simple economics!
Ok, I give up! waiting for things to happen that is.
Occasionally, I have this wonderful delusion that somehow, my company’s product, become ultra famous literally within a single day. You’ve heard it before. Some product gets features somewhere and suddenly become an overnight success, or that out of nowhere, a new product takes over the market by storm. Oh, and the famous “I don’t spent a single cent on marketing” bullshit.
They all seems wonderful, but they really an exception, not the norm. For most successful companies, there is an unbelievable amount of work that goes into it, including marketing the product. The work involved are tough, gritty and took very long hours. No ones likes to do it, but it increases your chance of success by 1,000 fold!
The sooner we accept that we really can’t skip the “hard work” part and that waiting for that magical moment of success to happen is not going to take us forward, the sooner it is we can get back to work and make things happen. Acceptance is the key!
Web 2.0 Expo 2010, iPad and other business thoughts
Just a quick review of my recent Web 2.0 Expo trip, while it is still fresh in my head.
Firstly, almost everyone there rocking an iPad which is really amazing. Some of my friends dismiss the iPad as a fad, but I really think what we have here, while not perfect, is a glimpse into the future. It is a world where we are no longer carrying a keyboard bolted to a LCD screen, with limited computing hours. One day, when our portable computing device runs as long as the iPad, we are going to look back on how silly we were running around looking for power supply every few hours.
Now, let’s get back to business. I was there basically to recharge my entrepreneurial battery. The last 1 year has been a busy year and was filled with ton and tons of “executions”. It is fun to get into the strategic thinking mode again. The Lean Startup sessions were excellent. Although they use fancy words such as “pivot”, which simply means “change”, I was happy to be reminded that startups jobs, like mine is to continuously test new business model for maximum growth. There is no right or wrong about what we do. The very nature of startup is that both problems and solutions are not as clear cut or as well defined as traditional business. We have a vision how the future might look like, but the solution needs constant tweaking and sometimes, even the vision needs updating.
Less experienced individual might pee in their pants when facing with the uncertainty, but for me the challenge of building something new, and trying to steer the team is my daily morning coffee. It feels good to be surrounded with like-minded people who are as crazy as me.
Another important lesson from the expo is the idea that you should not be building a product, but instead a platform. It is a simple idea that many of us forgot. When we talk about platform, we sometimes overwhelmed with the thought of trying to create another iPhone platform or building another Facebook, the chances which of course, is as slim as anaroxic under-aged models. But it doesn’t have to be that massive. A good platform simply means that the core value of your offerings can be derived through multiple channels, your website being just one of of them. We need to starter thinking about multiple channels, mobile devices, phone, iPad, refrigerator! A solid API can do this, which is what we will focus on.
Third important lesson is perhaps the human analytics. Silicon valley startup are extremely aggressive in chasing leads and sales. It seems as if their marketing department are run by a bunch of Skynet-manufactured terminators, bend on hitting their sales numbers. There are exceptions of course, but by far, the more successful ones are pretty much sales driven. They are crazy about measuring their website analytics. So you are tracking your site daily traffic? That’s lame. These guys are tracking your daily visit to the loo!. Oh, you stopped reading this blog for 5 minutes, did you just come back from the toilet?, click here to have order your toilet paper.
Forth lesson, is the importance of customer development. However, this topic really deserve its own blog entry and I will get back to this later.
Now, I need to get back to my mind-numbing wait for my flight…
5 stages of Bug fixing
This is a reminder to myself, an important lesson I sometimes forget.
The most important step in fixing any programming bug, is accepting the fact that there is a bug in the first place. After years of coding, sometimes we think that we are immune to writing buggy code. If a customer complaint or an issue,we might think, “ah, he just misconfigured his server” or that something went wrong during installation. That would be the first hurdle towards finding the bug, fixing it and making our software better.
So, if an issue arise, accept it as a bug in our code and start looking for solution. Ehm, this actually remind me of the 5 stages of grief.
Stop whining
This would be my last post ever whining about how bad Internet connection is, here in Malaysia. I am so tired of talking about it and I know that this is getting nowhere. I suppose I just have to work with what is available and make the best of it.
P1 wimax sucks!
Server-less office
Over the last month or so, I’ve been spending some time searching for a new office. Our current office is almost full, flaky internet connection has been driving us all mad and the selection of lunch-time food is… well, there isn’t any selection really. There is only one mamak stall with questionable hygienic standard downstairs.
While looking around, one thing I notice is that, the moment I mention that it will be a software house, everyone seems to think that we need a server room. At our current office, we have a small dell server that runs our bug tracking and subversion system but I always feel that it is unnecessary. All these application can really be hosted somewhere else. So, I have decided that our office shall run completely server-less!
Seriously, there is no need for us to have a server at all!. Almost everything that we need can actually be hosted somewhere else, on a remote server. There are several advantages of running all these application on a remote location. First and foremost, continuity. Most competent hosting environment should have a good continuity and backup strategy. Other than full raid setup, regular image backup normally comes standard. You will also never need to worry about hardware failure. They should also have reliable network which makes access from any location a snap. Again, any competent hosting company should have a technician on stanby 24/7 . Trying to replicate all this in-house takes a lot of time away from your real work. Having our data off-site also means that we don’t have to worry so much about theft or fire, or flood destroying our work. The office runs quieter, cooler, cheaper.
Amazingly, going server-less is easy. I grab a cheap Windows VPS package (hosted in Malaysia), with just 380Mb. I successfully moved all svn data to the new server. Next, I’ll be moving our fogbugz on the new server and perhaps relocate our build script on this server too. I can then shutdown our dell server forever or donate them to charity. Anyone wants one ?
Its all in the cloud…
How to nail an interview
In my work, I have to go through tons of resume to find great people to work join our team. It isn’t as easy as you might think. Some people might actually do have what it takes, and can actually do the job well, but the way they present themselves, their resume, they way the talk and dress might not do them justice.
As an employer, I am always on the side of cautious. Do understand that as employer, we are actually scared to get that offer letter out. Just work a little harder and you will be fine.
I could not have summarize it better than this. http://www.howtonailaninterview.com/
P1 Broadband Review
I am curretly using P1 as my primary broadband provider at home. This isn’t a review, but rather a rant on one particular issue with P1 broadband.
For the most part, P1 is OK. During the first week of using their service, it wickedly fast. For 1.2 Mbps package, I can consistantly hit 900 kbps. On international sites, speed of 500-700 kbps is not uncommon. But obviously as more as more people are signing up, I rarely see the 900 kbps nowadays, with 600-ish being a norm. These figure, isn’t bad at all, ad is comparable to StreamyX on a good day. All and all, it does edge StreamyX slightly.
Now, the bad news. For some reason, P1 seems to enjoy a late night detour. Almost every night, the service will go down at some wee hours in the morning, typically 15 to 30 minutes, sometimes up to an hour and even a few times a day. The excuse given is ‘maintenence mode’, which is acceptable if it was done on a monthly, or even a weekly basis, but come on, this is becoming a daily occurace. P1 might think that no one uses the internet at night and it is ok to disrupt the service, but imagine is TNB uses the same logic. Hey, at 3 am, most people are asleep right ?, lets cut off the electricity for a while, no one will notice.
My worry is that, there is no sign of this getting any better and P1 seems to take it for granted that no one complaint. So, here I am now. For those thinking of signing up with P1 and work late at night, be prepare to have your chat with your business partner across the globe to be cut short.
Web 2.0 Expo reflection. Airport Edition
Here I am at LAX, bored out of my mind, waiting for my flight home. So I figure I could write a few words, reflecting my recent experience in Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.
1. My first session, which is also one of the most useful one was about Economic 2.0 . Oh man, we are so far away. The world are moving at such a rapid pace, I don’t think most of us realize what’s coming. I thought I knew what Enterprise 2.0 is before, but to the extends it is being pursued is mind-boggling. It is a challenging environment we live in and the pursuit of business efficiency has never been this ruthless.
2. I feel that, we have an unhealthy culture of celebrating those who talk about entrepreneurship rather than those who actually do it. It is liberating to hear stories and experiences, direct from the actual entrepreneur themselves. They (most, but not all) talk with such passion, clarity and honesty, which are rare, locally.
3. Get real. We need to be honest to ourselves and start asking some real, hard questions. Will our business survive the global competition. Do we really have any competitive edge, or are we just syok sendiri ? Is our revenue model sustainable ? 5 years from now, how will people remember us? a loser who talk to much? Have we been resourceful ? or have we been complaining about lack of resource ?
