desperate for change

Did anybody watch Google World on CBC?

If you follow the online grapevines and feeds, there would be nothing in this documentary that would be particularly shocking or new. In fact I would say that quite a lot of it is just old news. However, I did find the part about the beginnings of the company interesting. Upon discovering that they had the magic formula for determining search relevance using a system cobbled together with spare computers and cheap parts, it was a matter of going all out and taking the idea to the end.

For the true academic, he or she might have been satisfied with publishing a paper and getting a PhD. Fortunately for Larry and Sergey (and fortunately for users of Google today), they set out to see how far the rabbit hole goes.

“I think to build a great company you need to have a well defined hypothesis based on a theory for a market’s evolved future. And I think the most effective way to enter that market is to build a company like a scientist testing the theory. As an experiment.”
-Dustin Curtis on The Science of Entrepreneurship

At the heart of all entrepreneurial efforts are experiments to test out different kinds of theories: Can I provide something of value? Can I build it with a minimal defect rate? Are there people interested in what I am offering? Can I make money out of this (which in Google’s case wasn’t even an issue at the beginning!)?

I have followed some rabbit holes in my days – going to grad school, starting new hobbies, online dating, starting a blog. Some have turned out to be more interesting than others. If I give some advice to a younger Alfred – go down rabbit holes, and don’t be afraid to go all the way to the end; who knows maybe a Wonderland of some kind is at the bottom.

(PS – I originally came across Dustin Curtis’s blog and essays through Hacker News. There is a Seth Godin-ness about the writing, if you enjoy that kind of thing.)

(Fail Snail used under CC license; originally from http://flickr.com/photos/ronin691/2634356788/)

Note to self: “If you aren’t making any progress, you are probably doing it wrong.”

I have been following the YCombinator scene since the beginning. For those who are not familiar with the recent rumblings in the industry, there has been a resurgence in the hi-tech sector in the last couple of years. I am sure you are familiar with the biggies: Facebook, MySpace, etc. YCombinator is a startup incubator program for highly-motivated people to create the next big thing.  While the YC program is a pretty high profile face of this bubbly web activity, there is certainly much, much more Web 2.0 startup activity than you can shake a stick at.

Back a few years ago, I certainly was chomping at the bit. Why not? I certainly fit the profile of someone who could do a startup. I started drinking the Kool-Aid pretty heavily. Metaphorically, this was reading the writings of Paul Graham and following the crazy startup activity. Last year, I even took a trip down to check out YC’s one-day Startup School at Stanford (I went in 2007). I shook hands with of one of the founders of reddit. I took a few months off work to see if I could make something.

But alas, I really don’t have anything to show for. If I actually try to put a time-wasted estimate to this, I wouldn’t even be able to tell you what it would be. Let’s just say that some weeks I wasted more time than other weeks.

Recently, I have been having an awakening of an epic variety. It was time for a good hard look at the mirror. I think I finally understand.

All this time I was merely greedy and actually didn’t have the passion or drive to follow through properly. For example, it is pretty clear that I needed some kind of co-founder but I didn’t do any networking; I needed to recognize that my technical skills are a tad outdated and I needed to train in the mountains for a bit first. I had been massively underestimating what it took to do a startup.

The thing about this “trying-to-do-a-startup” thing is that you don’t fail in a noisy crash-boom-bang kind of way. My quiet non-productivity was really failure but at a much slower rate. It is easy to have the illusion that web surfing or reading articles about startups is actually productive. Lusting for the success perpetuates the fantasy of winning the Web 2.0 lottery jackpot.

I am going to officially shut down this activity. I am not sure if I would return to it or not eventually. If you catch me talking about Web 2.0 startups, please give me a hard smack to the face.

Time to do something fun for a change.

I came across an artful and interesting game. Only takes 5 minutes:

http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/

I wished that I played it through once without reading the spoilers – but the experience is not diminished even though I know what will happen. The article (yes it has spoilers) where I originally read about Passage pretty much gave everything away if you can’t spare 5 minute (or you are having technical difficulties running it).

I like reading Jeff Atwood’s Coding Horror. He writes about issues and ideas that are about the similar level as Mythical Man Month: programmer and team productivity, software processes, tools, industry trends, etc. You don’t have to be a down-in-the-trenches programmer to appreciate these types of discussions.

A recent article on Coding Horror struck a nerve with the readers. In The Two Types of Programmers, Jeff talks about the difference between the 80% and the 20% programmers in the field. The fact of the matter is, any profession or field will have its own kind of divide. Perhaps this is more so in the software world than other professions, because “writing for a software” is barely a profession depending on where you go. There is not a specific certified training program or certification tests that is used to judge the level of skill of a programmer.

Did the article struck a nerve for me? Perhaps yes, but not in the mouth-frothing rabid commentary that he got for his article (to which he came back with a crowd-calming response). I have been wondering about my passion for doing software for a living as of late. I think that we all have our ups and downs with life: in my case, I think my “bumming around” was really a chance for me to really ask myself what I like to do for fun. While putting together alfredpang.com is not exactly the same level of difficulty as actually writing software, there is a similar element of making public, my own personal work. In other words, expressing myself is fun for me.

More recently I realized (probably because of something else I read), that doing a startup is just another form of personal expression, except that the tools are business plans, venture capital and management skills. Perhaps that is why my fascination for all things startup; just can’t get enough of that startup Kool-Aid. (I’ll have to write about ycombinator one of these days.)

Lately, I feel like I am starting to get a bit more clear about what I am supposed to be doing. Or to be more precise: what I want to be doing. It is a good thing.