Lifetime Building Startups

I am really enjoying learning to code. It feels so empowering to finally understand more about what goes on under the hood of web applications.  Becoming a hacker is proving to be a really fun journey.  The Starter League classes have been great so far, I have also worked really hard to try and be ahead of the curve, working hard outside class.

Being here in Chicago and learning to code, is hopefully the first steps towards doing a startup.  I have been thinking about what the ideal setup would be if I would like to be involved in startups for the rest of my life.  Forgetting about the actual problems I would like to solve, and their solutions that could turn into businesses.  What is the skill set that I need to acquire, how do I need to set up my personal circumstances to be ideally suited for a lifetime building startups?

One of the keys for me to answering those questions is that I am really leaning towards bootstrapping, instead of raising capital early.  This is a little surprising to me, as I have always been inclined to go for more aggressive growth that raising capital can enable.  Not that I won’t raise capital again, but I would like to try get as far down the road as possible before I do.

I am also of the opinion that you should give yourselves as much negotiating strength when you eventually get to the point of raising money.  The stronger position the company is in the better, and having a real alternative to raising money is essential.

So bootstrapping a startup as long as possible would require keeping expenses as low as possible, so the paying big salaries to founders won’t be an option.  For me that has two big implications, 1) I need enough annuity income to support our own financial needs; 2) I need to be able to contribute in a big way to building the product.

By learning to code I start towards solving the second one.  To really get where I need to be however, may require working as a developer for a few years to really get all the skills I need.  This also gives me the time to make sure I set up the annuity income I need.

Having the skills and no need to ever earn a salary from a startup must be close to the ideal situation to be in! Achieving this in the next 2 -5 years is going to be my goal! In this time I can also look for the right problem to solve. As Robert Pirsig said in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”:

“You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.”

I am looking forward to a lifetime of building startups.

Willis Tower

I have admired skyscrapers for as long as I can remember.  So whenever I am in city with high buildings I look for one to go up in.  New York is always a great place to do this.  One my second visit to New York in 2000, we were on top of the North Tower of the World Trade Centre.  Since then I have also visited the Empire State building during the day and once at night.  The view after dark was something special.

Fantastic Views of Chicago from the Skydeck at Willis Tower

Fantastic Views of Chicago from the Skydeck at Willis Tower

So high on my priority list for places to visit in Chicago was Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower).  Willis Tower is the tallest completed building in the US at the moment.  But will be over taken by One World Trade Centre in New York, one it is completed.  The Willis Tower was the first building built with a bundled tube design; at the time of completion in 1973 it was the worlds tallest building.  A title it held onto for 25 years.

The Willis Tower has an observation deck on the 103rd floor referred to as the Skydeck.  One very unique feature on the Skydeck is four glass retractable skyboxes.  They let you stand inside hanging out over the street 103 floors below you.  This is not for the faint hearted or anybody scared of heights.

It was nerve-racking standing in the Glass Boxes on the Skydeck at the Willis Tower

It was nerve-racking standing in the Glass Boxes on the Skydeck at the Willis Tower

Obviously the views from the top of Chicago are pretty amazing.  Looking towards the south you can see US Cellular Field next to the enormous highway.  Towards the east are the rest of down town Chicago and the lake Michigan.  On a clear day you can see across the lake all they way to Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Willis Tower is one of Chicago’s most popular tourist attractions with more than 1,3 million people every year.  I really enjoyed it, and will try and do another trip at nighttime, to see what it look like after dark.

Think and Grow Rich – Review

Cover of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

Think and Grow Rich is a self-improvement classic; it is right up there with ‘How to Win friends and influence people’.  I must have read this book for the first time about 15 years ago, just after I’ve started reading.  It was an amazing read again after such a long time.  Some of the things he suggests one does in the book, I have been doing for years, only to realize now where I’ve learnt it from.

==> Click here to buy: Think and Grow Rich <==

In Think and Grow Rick Napoleon Hill sets out to teach you ‘The Secret’ to amassing great wealth.  He was inspired or rather guided to do this by Andrew Carnegie, one of the wealthiest guys in the world at the time.  Hill went on to learn from many titans of industry at the time including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and others.

The setting of the book is also fascinating.  After two decades of research the book was published in the late 1930s’, after the great depression but before World War 2.  This context makes some of the comments in the book even more fascinating.

What is also very interesting is some of the parallels to our own time. Like Hill’s reference to how the public has lost confidence in the banking business, or the lack of real leadership in politics.  He also got a few things wrong like he predicted that newspapers would need to find a way to stop depending on advertising revenue and also, newspapers that focus on publishing scandals will not survive.

Although I’ve found the unrelenting focus on only money in the book a little too much, the world these ideas were conceived in, explain it rather well.  But I am sure the techniques and thinking are applied to many other endeavours today.

==> Click here to buy: Think and Grow Rich <==

Think and Grow Rich is definitely worth a read, just make sure you see it from the context it was written, in a world far different from the one we live in today.

Macbook Pro 15′ with Retina Display

When I was studying in 2008 I bought my first MacBook.  I never used it as much as wanted or should have. I’ve tried to do my study work on it, but was a little frustrated that everything worked different to Windows.  Back then I didn’t feel like I had the time to spend learning how to use the MacBook Properly.

Since then I have not used the MacBook much. But when we went to Fernie I decided to take it along and started spending more time on it. The more I used it, the more I liked it. The only challenge was that it was now pretty old and slow. So when I got into Starter League, I decided it was time for a new one.  With the prices in SA and the falling rand, I could not wait to get to Chicago to buy one.

Picture of My New Macbook Pro 15' with Retina Display

My New Macbook Pro 15′ with Retina Display

So the day I landed in Chicago I made my way to the Apple Store on Michigan Ave in down town Chicago.  After some discussion with the sales rep, I decided to get the MacBook Pro 15’ Retina display with a 2.7 GHz processor and 16 GB memory as well as NVIDIA GeForce graphics card with 1GB on board memory.

==> Click Here to buy a MacBook Pro 15′ with Retina Display <==

This retina display is really amazing, it is crystal clear and at this resolution watching HD videos are really cool.  I also love the mouse pad without buttons, actually works much better.  Apple has also done a great job with all the added functionality through gestures on the mouse pad.

Picture of My coding setup with Terminal and Sublime

My coding setup with Terminal and Sublime

The battery life is also impressive.  Between Dropbox and iCloud my docs and personal info was synced in no time, and it felt like I have been using this MacBook for ages.  I am really looking forward to spending many happy hours on my new MacBook Pro learning to code! It is going to be awesome!

==> Click here to buy a MacBook Pro 15′ with Retina Display <==

I also got a snazzy hard shell cover to protect the Macbook. I looks really cool!

Day one of The Starter League

Today was the first day of class in season eight of The Starter League.  I have been looking forward to it so much, needless to say I was awake at around 0400 ready to go, but the rest of Chicago was still asleep.  So after another two hours of sleep, I was woken by my annoying alarm.

After a shower, breakfast and making lunch, I started on my way around 0645, the streets were still pretty quite.  It only took me about 30 min to get to Merchandise Mart. I was about an hour early for class, so I got online and did some work.

Almost everybody was on time so we started at 0830, where Raghu and Jeff our instructors, started to explain more about how the classes would work.  In class we need to do mainly listening, and thinking about questions.  We get all the notes and additional info on The Starter League’s own system, so no need to take notes in class.

I had to change the settings of terminal to look more like matrix - now I can look like a real geek!

I had to change the settings of terminal to look more like matrix – now I can look like a real geek!

We are learning from the beginning to do pair programming, the latest best practice.  This means that you will always be two people per iMac, working together.  To help facilitate this, you have to start to learn to articulate everything you do as you go along…. gonna take some time to get that right.

They also encouraged us to just try things, play around, and build things.  Try and have a pet project or idea that you can use to practice what we learn in class.  First they will show us something in class, then we should try and do it ourselves from scratch, and keep doing that until we can do it without looking at the code they provide.  Then use what we have learned on our own project.

We started playing with the command line, and doing normal folder operations from there.  Played with Sublime, a text editor that we are going to use to write the code in.  Then we played around with some basic html, create some .html files from sublime and opened them in a browser. Raghu also showed us a very cool app that helps you to snap windows around on a Mac.

Bettersnap tool is a great app from snaping windows around on a Mac

Bettersnap tool is a great app from snaping windows around on a Mac

Jeff explained a basic computer science model involving input – processing – outputs.  He showed how even a basic calculator can be broken down to fit into this model. The key they want us to take away after 11 weeks is to ‘learn to learn’, so we can go on and become ever better.

We all got a copy of ‘Learn to Program’ by Chris Pine, and we were pointed to online resource for HTML and CSS.  Now there is a heap of stuff to do before the next class on Wednesday!