Silicon Valley Code Camp 2012 – The Art of Raising Capital for Technology Startup Leaders

Silicon Valley Code Camp 2012 was great!

Douglas Crockford – Computer Programs = The most complicated things people make.

Like last year I attended it again to learn from fellow developers and industry leaders on the latest in the tech & business scene in Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley Code Camp is a weekend (Saturday & Sunday) community event where developers learn from fellow developers. There are around 200 sessions over those 2 days on every hot topic in the tech industry and it pulled in around 2,500 attendees at Foothill College in Lost Altos. Impossible to attend every session but you get to pick before hand which lectures interest you the most. Then it is a matter of showing up.

Always learning, always building products, always shipping. Left to Right: Dmitry, Ernest (me) and Andrei

So instead of covering the usual tech stuff in this post, like in my last year’s post, this time round I will focus on the most impactful presentation on The Art of Raising Capital for Technology Startup Leaders by Bruce Schechter from Band of Angels. If you are an active software engineer you are already capable of building products. The next step is how to turn that into a business with some acceleration in the form of capital. Having done it before (built an international business and sold it to a $1B silicon valley company), this presentation by Bruce was a nice reminder with more new knowledge (for me) on what it takes to validate a product and turn it into a business.

The Art of Raising Capital for Technology Startup Leaders

Everyone has ideas but few execute on them

The room was packed with attendees. At the start of the session Bruce asked the folks in the room to put their hands up who is thinking about an idea. Everyone raised their hands. Then to keep their hands raised if they have started working on it. A 30% drop. And then who has an MVP out testing the waters, a 85% drop. Yap, as we have heard it before from the likes of YCombinator, 500Startups and other investors.. ideas are dime a dozen in the valley.. Execution is where it’s all at! Using an ai photo generator can be part of that execution, helping quickly visualize concepts and bring ideas to life.

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free” ~ Michelangelo

Inside an investors mind

When you get a chance to present to investors, the questions running inside their mind which you should aim to answer in your presentation are:

Will I achieve a vast return?
Is she capable of growing a business?

Nail the answers to these and you are one step closer to getting funded.

Fundraising Tools

Make sure you have the following ready in this order. Be prepared.

Elevator Pitch
1. Email to investor via a trusted source.
  1. GDay from a friend of the investor introducing the company
  2. Who the team is and
  3. Ask whether exec summary can be forwarded
Executive Summary
1. One pager – just text, no graphs.
2. “People don’t buy what they don’t understand.”
3. “Investors don’t fund products, they fund businesses.”
4. Never tell what is good about your company (features) until you have fundamentally explained what you do = “foundation”.
5. Preferred executive summary format
  1. Problem/Solution Overview
    1. Clarity of pain: credibility
    2. “must-have” not “like to have” in the eyes of the customers
    3. Tie solution back to pain
  2. Market Opportunity
    1. Total market and available market – reference data source.
    2. Narrative equation: “If we sell X to Y at $Z we’ll achieve $N”
  3. Competition
    1. Be honest and open
    2. Worst possible response: “We don’t really have competition.”
    3. Why are you better than your competitors?
  4. Business Model
    1. How do you make money?
    2. Define unit economics – individual transaction cost.
  5. “Go To Market” Strategy
    1. Customer Acquisition – direct sales, channels, word of mouth
    2. Key marketing tactics including Social media and Buy Backlinks. Work with marketing firms for lawyers if you are launching your own law office or practice. This will help you build a good online reputation and reach potential clients.
    3. Social Networking
    4. Advertising – find reputable architectural signs manufacturers
    5. Put strong focus on near-term.
    6. Gains on every level – company better be worth more in 1 year else I lost value.
    7. How to get the next/X customer – what is going on right now to get there? Want specifics of the early days.
  6. Progress, Milestones
    1. Brag about accomplishments up to now.
    2. Clear steps for the next 6-12 months.
    3. Traction is the watchword.
  7. Team
    1. Give everyone a title – backgrounds etc. Shows accountability.
    2. They fund the people – Question – “who is in charge here?”
      1. Lay out the roles early on inc equity shares so they don’t let it foster in case things don’t go as well.
      2. Evidence of “done it before” – and if they exited before is huge deal.
      3. List advisors with credibility or “brand”.
      4. Throw away the inactive advisors.
      5. Delayed fee structure to pay once you get series A. Or get a friend (lawyer) to set it up.
  8. Final notes:
    1. No diagrams, just words.
    2. Domain-specific language.
    3. Tiny fonts.
    4. Year 1, Year 2.
    5. CEO’s that have a plan. No “we hope” or “we plan”.
    6. Test Refine, Test Refine, Test Refine etc…
PPT (powerpoint/keynote) Deck
1. Turn the Execute Summary outlines into slides.
2. Migrate the 1 page sections into a Slide per section with diagrams.
  1. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” – Leonardo da Vinci
  2. Guy Kawasaki – The 10-20-20 rule– No more than 10 slides, no more than 20 minutes (leaves 40 mins for talk) and no font then 30pts.
    1. ref: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html
  3. Learn from Steve Jobs– watch his presentations on how to present. The stories!
    1. How technology can engage customers in an emotional way.
Detailed Financials & DD (due diligence)
1. If you are asking for money make sure you can show where that money will go. eg. additional engineering, online marketing with guest posts, sales team, and don’t forget to also look at the crowdfunding options, where can also raise a lot money.

Create emotional engagement through stories

“People are story tellers.”

In the old days before internet & TV people would sit around fires telling stories. Those that spoke and gathered a large audience are what is referred to as a “Leaders”. Leaders create an emotional engagement. This still applies today. Learn to create emotional engagement around your service and people are you selling to. Inc. the investors. Find out what you have in common with a VC before you deep dive into your business pitch.

In Review

Tell ’em how they’ll make a fortune.
Investors fund companies, not products.
They don’t fund what they don’t understand.
Watch & learn from Steve Jobs presentations. He is the master story-teller.

~ Ernest

Rocket Space: accelerator for high-growth seed-funded tech startups

Hidden at the edge of Soma 181 Fremont in San Francisco is a kickass community of over 100 startups working in a funky environment changing the world. This place is called Rocket Space. It is situated in Soma, as is known as the Silicon Valley of San Francisco.

Rocket Space is best described as follows:

“RocketSpace is an accelerator for high-growth, seed-funded tech startups. We provide the fuel that every startup needs to accelerate: access to top talent, tier 1 venture capital, and blue-chip brands representing millions of users. Startup. Blast off.”

Startups in Soma, San Francisco – the Silicon Valley of San Francisco

What is Rocket Space

So as mentioned above, Rocket Space is an accelerator for high-growth seed-funded tech startups. Started in 2011 today hosts around 130 hot startups in two 3 level builds – plenty of room. Rocket Space provides fuel that every startup needs to accelerate: access to top talent, tier 1 venture capital, and blue chip brands representing millions of users. More about Rocket Space here. And it is open 24×7 to members.

Unlike HackerDojo which I have blogged about in the past Rocket Space is for the next level in a startup’s life cycle. Still lean but “after” the idea has been developed into a product and a minimum viable product (MVP) launched.

“If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.” ~ Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google

What I find cool about Rocket Space

The environment is kickass. From the decor to the energy. There is just a great vibe being there. It feels like Facebook inside but everyone is working on their own startups.
Let me touch on energy again. With over 100 startups here there are plenty of smart folks to hang with, learn from and collaborate. Just being around smart people changing the world is inspiring and motivating to get things done. Beats sitting at home listening to the fridge buzzing.
Plenty of meeting rooms scattered around the edges of the large open working space.
Conveniently located between Soma and the Financial District in San Francisco. Around 20 minutes walking distance from San Francisco Caltrain station.
Plenty of fuel (food) around Rocket Space. My favorite is the SF Soup Company since it is light and doesn’t generate any brain drain. They have great Clam Chowder. Yum!
Finally Rocket Space offers access to weekly community events, founder mentoring sessions, access to talent and education program called RocketSpace Academy (RSA).
Rocket Space and GTDfaster (my productivity app) both contain a “rocket” in the logo – I thin Rocket Space was meant to be! GTDfaster logo comes from the fact of getting stuff done fast – accelerating. Rocket Space is Startup and Blast off!

Want to get a tour? Get in touch with Rocket Space via their online form:
http://www.rocket-space.com/contact-us/

Is Rocket Space for everyone?

Nope. You must be at the right stage in your company’s life cycle to get accepted.
See the table below to see if you are at the right stage to gain the most value out of being a part of Rocket Space community.

Phase	Funding	Team size	Space
Exploring	None	Founders	Home / HackerDojo
Hacking that idea	None	Founders	HackerDojo
MVP out	Seed	Founders	Rocket Space
Scaling	Series A	Founders + 10 to 20	Rocket Space

Finally, if you see me at Rocket Space say GDay! I am disrupting the health industry and saving lives at medlertapp.com via leading edge mobile technology powered by high-tech event-driven python platform. If you want to learn more about Medlert say GDay! See you around.

David testing Medlert’s new Android app – medlertapp.com

How to connect with Rocket Space

Website: http://www.rocket-space.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/RocketSpace
Twitter: https://twitter.com/rocketspace

Keep your family safe today. Download the free app that with One touch calls 911 & notifies your family of an emergency.

~ Ernest

PHP Coding Horrors and Excuses for Poor Decisions

Having coded in PHP for 7 years I feel I can give a balanced feedback on PHP. Today I mainly focus on Python & .NET because these languages have stood the test of time and allow me to attract great talent. I find it amusing that engineering leaders in established companies make backward decisions today to use PHP to power their business/core sites. Not to mention software engineer newbies falling prey to using it as their 1st language to experience software development & put theory into practice. So let’s explore this in more detail.

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A quick story

Few years back while attending a Python class a young chap put up his hand, introduced himself as a long time PHP developer and asked the lecturer a question. “What is the difference between Python’s dictionary & lists to PHP’s arrays.”. Bang. This is exactly why I do not want newbies to go down that route. Data structures are fundamental to any software design. PHP will NOT force you to think about data structures when coding.. instead just stick a boot in your face and say walk.

As a leader

As a smart fast paced technology leader, you should NOT be suggesting or advising PHP as the company’s “language of choice”. If a company is using optimized wordpress hosting it’s typically for its blog (yes WordPress rocks), due to legacy reasons (we all learn right) or a variant of it. PHP is not even a great presentation language (so famous for years ago) lacking good support for a real templating engine. Going LAMP stack, as in Linux stack, is not about moving to PHP. Matter of fact LAMP stack is an old, beaten, used & abused lingo which means little today with the range of open source stacks that run on the Linux OS.

Let’s first look at what makes a good language. And if you are a leader looking at starting or moving to a new language this post should be enough to tell you what to avoid. Learn from other’s mistakes so you don’t have to make them yourself.

What makes a good language

Predictable
Consistent
Concise
Reliable
Debuggable

Check out the philosophies behind Python in Zen of Python on what a good language encourages.

PHP fails miserably here.

PHP is full of surprises: mysql_real_escape_string, E_ALL
PHP is inconsistent: strpos, str_rot13
PHP requires boilerplate: error-checking around C API calls, ===
PHP is flaky: ==, foreach ($foo as &$bar)
PHP is opaque: no stack traces by default or for fatals, complex error reporting.

PHP is NOT an enterprise language

An enterprise language is one that has good corporate support. Best example is Microsoft and their .NET platform.

Look at the support behind the PHP language. No corporation supports PHP’s growth & maturity like Sun & Google do for Java, Google (Guido van Rossum) for Python (jnc Django framework), Ruby (inc RoR) by 37 signals etc…

PHP is not supported by Yahoo. They failed to launch a version with Unicode support in the hyped up PHP6. And the father of PHP Rasmus Lerdorf is no longer based at Yahoo. Nor is PHP supported by Facebook. Facebook has been trying hard to move away from it’s aged roots and now compile PHP into C via HipHop – more on that below.

The mess that is PHP

There are plenty of websites covering the mess that is PHP. Just go and read them if you are still doubtful.

Some of those nasty PHP horrors

Unsatisfactory and inconsistent documentation at php.net.
PHP is exceptionally slow unless you install a bytecode cache such as APC or eAccelerator, or use FastCGI. Otherwise, it compiles the script on each request. It’s the reason Facebook invented HipHop (PHP compiler) to increase speed by around 80% and offer a just-in-time (JIT) compilation engine.
Unicode: Support for international characters (mbstring and iconv modules) is a hackish add-on and may or may not be installed. An afterthought.
Arrays and hashes treated as the same type. Ref my short story above.
No closures or first-class functions, until PHP 5.3. No functional constructs. such as collect, find, each, grep, inject. No macros (but complaining about that is like the starving demanding caviar.) Iterators are present but inconsistently used. No decorators, generators or list comprehension.
The fact that == doesn’t always work as you’d expect, so they invented a triple-equals === operator that tests for true equality.
include() can generate circular references and yield many unwanted and hard to debug problems. Not to mention its abuse to execute code that gets included.
Designed to be run in the context of Apache. Any back-end scripts have to be written in a different language. Long-running background process in PHP have to overwrite the global php ini.
PHP lacks standards and conventions.
There’s no standard for processing background tasks, such as Python’s Celery.

PHP presents 4 challenges for Facebook.

High CPU utilization.
High memory usage.
Difficult to use PHP logic in other systems.
Extensions are hard to write for most PHP developers.

Dont use Facebook as an excuse to have PHP as your core language.

Excuses for poor decision to use PHP

“But Facebook is all PHP.”

Boo hoo. Is that what your decision was based on? Seriously? It is well documented that Facebook uses PHP due to legacy reasons. It is what Mark Zuckerberg used in his dorm nearly a decade ago and somehow it stuck around. Later a top FB engineer called Haiping Zhao released HipHop literally rewriting the entire PHP language thus avoiding the worst attributes of the language. Since 2007 alone, Haiping named four failed attempts to move to Python (twice), to Java, to C++. The reason this did not work is due to incumbent inertia (it’s what’s there).

So you see it is not the same PHP you are coding in but a far superior subset of it customized for Facebook process & development efforts. PHP at Facebook was a mistake that had been corrected to some degree. Today the preferred strategy at Facebook is to write new components in a de-coupled manner using a better language of choice (C++, python, Erlang, Java, etc); this is easily facilitated by Facebook’s early development of thrift, an efficient multi-language RPC framework.

“But Yahoo is all PHP.”

Seriously? Shall we even go into this. A sinking Titanic that started its life as a manually maintained directory site. Today’s online apps are more advanced, demand high concurrency and dynamic nature – something more advanced languages are capable of delivering.

“But Zynga (a large gaming company) uses PHP.”

At the time Zynga started developing for the platform, there was no other official Facebook SDK available except for the PHP one. Naturally Zynga started its life on Facebook. The rest is history.

Looking for a better language? Guess! ~ Yes I drew that by hand 🙂 Hope you like it!

Technology breeds culture

Bring a bunch of core PHP developers (those that only know this language) on board and you get what you pay for. Someone that can hack a script and not really understand the fundamentals of software design & engineering.

Think about this. Your valued assets are the staff (people in your company). And the staff will naturally come from companies and/or backgrounds/experiences will align with the technology decisions you made.

How about rewriting your code base in another language?

There is also a lot of industry precedent (Netscape case or Startup Suicide) indicating that re-writing an entire codebase in another language is usually one of the worst things you can do. Either don’t make the mistake to go down the PHP route in today’s era or start thinking about introducing a new language into the stack for new projects. Having a hybrid setup is OK and actually allows you to iterate fast, gives something new to play for your engineering crew and should you ever need to switch stacks you are already half way there. Dont make the same mistakes Facebook did.

The only bits I like in PHP are its “save file, refresh page and there are your changes”. The language is “easy to use”, yes. It’s hard to figure out what the fuck it’s doing, though.

Happy coding!

~ Ernest

Attention Python Comrades

Goodbye, Bon voyage, Do widzenia, שלום!

I resigned from Coupons.com.

It was very hard to do. I had a comfortable 6 figure job at Coupons.com leading the International Engineering team. My core responsibility was to make sure the International business is supported and everyone is happy there. The company I built (Couponstar Ltd) got acquired by Coupons.com and that is how I ended up in Silicon Valley. I was fortunate enough to experience a lot of change there and rub shoulders with many smart folks from Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, MySpace etc… I also got to run internally Python & Django classes (“Snake Wrangling for Couponians” as I called it) and build out the International products in that stack. It was a fun journey and maybe too comfortable.

And then I quit.

Why I quit

Mainly for 2 reasons:

The Silicon Valley Entrepreneurial bug and
Large company syndrome of being cubed – I will leave this point for another post.

Moving on is about change

… but not the way you may initially imagine it.

Change works best from within and the environment. Just like when I moved from Sydney (Australia) to Silicon Valley (USA). This was a major environmental change. It also changed the network of people around me.

“You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with” ~ Jim Rohn

So moving on from the comfort of a job changes:

Your environment and
Your professional & personal network.

Change is not comfortable because it goes against the automatic programming known as the habit. But it becomes comfortable after a while and then your back into auto pilot mode.. again habit. To understand this and how to modify habits check out The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.

Change is difficult but you adjust and move to auto pilot. Just like when you first learnt to drive a car. It was tough but now you don’t even bother to pay attention to it. That part of you is in auto pilot mode. It’s a gift we humans all have. Just need to embrace it.

So lets say you have made a decision to move on from being an employee to an entrepreneur. After a while you will never want to go back to being an employee not because it may be more financially beneficial but because your mind no longer associates with that environment, network and habit of being a cog inside a machine.

This is why children of entrepreneurs end up being entrepreneurs because they too have grown up in that sort of mindset and moving to being an employee (the norm for most) just doesn’t comply. It doesn’t feel right. However coming from an employee’s mindset moving to an entrepreneur feels scary because you have yet not embraced the new way of living. You have a choice to embrace it and wait for the change to become a part of you or fall back into your old patterns. You choose.

Before, I was just another cog in the comfort machine. Now I will be rubbing shoulders with fellow entrepreneurs and business folks. Have full visibility across the whole business, full technology accountability and be responsible for making major impact and disrupting the medical space. Knowing that the technology we build and scale internationally is saving lives. I think I will enjoy the new journey ahead as the CTO of Medlert Inc.

If you are ever in SF ping me and drop in for the famous Samovar tea brewing & a cuppa! Medlert is located in 4 Embarcadero, San Francisco.

Samovar tea gets brewed here – drop by for a cuppa you wont forget!

The awesome team I worked with at Coupons.com

Finally thank you to the team I got to work with at Coupons.com. And all those that attended Snake Wrangling for Couponians classes and my tech talks.

My International Engineering team (left to right): Keyvan, Dilip, Steve, Me, JP and Oleg.

Technical Operations team helping us out on the International front (left to Right): Dilip, Matt, Russell, Manny, Me, Jennifer & Rich

~ Ernest

unSEXY tech companies that… Just Make Money

The 1-day conference about unsexy tech companies that…Just Make Money was organized by 500Startups and hosted at an unsexy company, Microsoft, on August 9th in Mountain View.

I got an opportunity to attend after helping secure Coupons.com CEO Steven Boal to speak at the conference. Steven and I have a good long 8 year history going back to Australia/UK when he first invested in our company Couponstar Ltd and later acquired us to extend the International arm of Coupons, Inc.

The day kicked off with Jeff Lawson, CEO from Twilio speaking on Self-Service Models for Growth followed by Steven Boal, CEO, from Coupons on Disrupting unSEXY: The Tale of a $1 Billion Company that Changed an Industry. Concluding the morning session with Sexy time with PowerPoint: Hacking growth for SlideShare by Rashmi Sinha, CEO, Slideshare.

The jist of the morning talks was ~ sexy or not there is plenty of opportunity to disrupt an industry and make money. Believe and keep on pushing.

Morning session

Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio highlighted important points around doers and how to sell to them. Doers are power users. “Make a hero out of your doers” and they will live and breathe your passion. Empower them via your site by giving them:

a tour – what your product does,
pricing – does it solve their problem at a reasonable price and
how to get started – empower them to start playing around. Self service.

No shenanigans. Internet sheds light so they do not have to put up with shenanigans.
Finally invert the traditional sales model. First success, then transaction.

Steven Boal, CEO of Coupons.com (a 13-year-young company) gave everyone insights into an industry which coupons.com has disrupted. Coupons.com was built without taking any funding. Recently receiving a $200m infusion of capital valuing the company at $1B. Couponing is now becoming more digital than ever before. The old paper industry is fading into the distance and getting replaced by online channels. Coupons is at the forefront of digital couponing with its leading suite of digital channels like GroceryIQ, Coupons.com, Brandcaster (whitelabel solutions) et al. Frugal is the new black.

“If you think it is an overnight success… it is a long night” ~ Steven Boal

Rashmi Sinha, from Slideshare finished off the morning session with an interactive presentation describing their early days to growth to Microsoft acquisition. Rashmi’s message was Build, Solve problem/s THEN get Distribution. The slides from the presentation are located here.

Aaron Levie, CEO, Box.net did an onstage debate on How Box Arrived, Survived & Thrived in a Hype-Driven World with Dave McClure, Founding Partner of 500 Startups.

Wrapping up the morning session was a comical, slightly weird in a good way presentation by the CEO of MailChimp, Ben Chestnut. He bootstrapped the company without any funding whatsoever.

Ben’s 3 lessons to the hungry entrepreneurs in the room were:

Stop obsessing about the competition or you will become and copy them.
Fight really, really weird – creativity is just connecting things. You do well if you make it different but you kill it if you make it funny.
Always. Be. Creating. (things) – encourage everyone to build fun projects on top of your API to show what is possible. No project should take longer than 2 weeks.

Afternoon session

The afternoon session was made up of 2 Tracks in 2 different rooms. Track 1 was all about Product & Customer and Track 2 on Distribution & Marketing with speakers like Jive, Yammer, Zendesk, Uservoice, Kissmetrics, Cloudera, SurveyMonkey etc. I must admit I wanted to hear both tracks but it was hard when they ran in different rooms at the same time.

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Some notable lessons:

“Use distribution hacks like Dropbox’s upgrade, refer, tweet for more space to reduce the cost of acquisition.” – Kissmetrics

“Before you do anything ask ‘Why’ NOT ‘No’.” – Yammer

“Features should announce themselves. Imagine a world without corporate training where no one has read a manual.” – Yammer

“Don’t anger a customer over pennies or they will try to destroy you.” – ZenDesk

“Do the math on how many $20 accounts you need to be a $100m business.” – UserVoice

Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey with Dave McClure

The day concluded with presentations from the last 500Startups batch of startups like…

Happy Inspector – Fixing the way inspections are done. Led by thunder from down-under Jindou Lee,
Teamly – People management made easy. Led by Scott Allison.
Etc.

I got a chance to talk to many interesting people, learn about great products and service and make new friends. Through this experience I meet Aussie founders of ScriptRock, Happy Inspector and Flightfox whom are all working on exciting products & services. Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi! Good to see Aussie power in Silicon Valley making a difference.

Finally, you can view all the unSEXY presentations from 500Startup’s SlideShare channel here.

There you have it. Plenty of kick ass companies disrupting their industry. The future looks exciting!

Safe journey!
~ Ernest

Startups and Equity: it’s all about being fair

Startups and Equity is often a complicated yet simple discussion that must take place before moving forward on a deal to come on board with equity in the compensation mix. It’s even harder when you are the 1^st hire or a co-founder. The topic has definitely been debated a lot and there are many varying opinions online. Having been through this process before a few, I want to put this into simple so you don’t have to spend reading through every one resource and be left confused more than ever. Understanding a startup’s current valuation is crucial to ensuring that your equity share aligns with the company’s potential growth. If you want to explore how valuations work for healthcare businesses, find out more about industry trends and best practices.

I will assume you are coming on board as a co-founder. Just the fact that you are at this point of the discussion with your co-founder is superb. Since this part only requires working out a “fair value” you both can be comfortable with.

Question 1 – are you both starting from ground zero?

An idea is still ground 0. If one of you have already executed an MVP then this is not ground 0.

If YES, Then Joel Spolsky’s advice nails it well. Split equity 50/50. Done.

Why?

Ideas are dime a dozen. It’s all about the execution of this idea. Both of you will work together to make it fly.
“Fairness, and the perception of fairness, is much more valuable than owning a large stake.” ~ Joel Spolsky
x3 the last point. I will expand on this in the next question.

If NO, then Question 2 – how much value has your co-founder already created?

There is no right or wrong here. Seriously. There is only 1 thing here. What was said above about “Fairness, and the perception of fairness”. Speak freely with your co-founder about this. Get external advice from advisors, friends, partner etc… You really need to be comfortable with whatever you finalize.

At this point you and your co-founder have to work out what is fair. For BOTH of you. There is no room for lies. Or cheating each other to gain the upper hand. This is NOT an employment contract. Successful founders are successful because they trust each other and are fair to each other. Angels / Investors invest in people. For this solid reason. Ethics are everything. When faced with the challenge of working in a discriminatory workplace, it’s imperative to address such issues promptly and ensure a fair and inclusive environment for all involved.

Remember that the journey ahead is long and so even if the company has already got traction you still will be adding a lot of value. What has been done to date will change. What has been done to date is the confirmation of something there which can turn into a successful business. Startup companies pivot frequently to find a business model that sticks. Most successful startups in the valley are not famous for what they started off. They are famous for their last pivot. Read Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston (YC partner) to get a feel for this.

Start from the back

It is easiest to just start from the back. The back meaning “how much ownership do you want after 3 rounds of dilution.”. The dilution comes from rounds of investments (A, B and C). It helps if you already have a feel for the equity value you believe is fair. Similarly, when considering other investments, like Bitcoin, a Bitcoin Buying Guide can provide insights into current market trends, best practices, and strategies to make informed decisions, especially in a volatile market. Visit www.cryptsy.com for the best crypto presales.

A typical funding round dilutions look something like this:

Round A – 20 to 40%

Round B – 10 to 30%

Round C – 5 to 20%

A great Infographic produced by BothSidesofTheTable.com and visual.ly explains dilution in alot more detail here.

Bingo. You are done!

Now start the discussion with your co-founder explaining how you got to this number. Remember, the outcome has to be that the both of you are comfortable and that it is fair.

Happy entrepreneurship!

~ Ernest

Migrating from PC to a Mac

This post is inspired by my wife, Urszula. Urszula’s Windows PC I nearly threw out the window.. if it wasnt for the data on it. But I did replace it with a MacBook Air! Win!

Urszula’s Windows PC (pictured above) was super loud humming and buzzing even when idle. It was also slow (time has shown its face), felt cheap (plastic build) & looked ugly (the case had line cracks) and has been blue screening every 2nd day. What a mess lol… This is what Urszula is now sporting! A sexy fast compact MacBook Air. I do not degrade windows, I know there are a lot of better and cheaper windows laptop compare to MacBook. I just find it really hard to find seller during that time.

It just flys! SSD drive, 8gig RAM and an i7 core CPU

I take full responsibility for the PC. People form habits and it takes a lot of work to change. But it is possible. I made my change to a MacBook Pro 1 year ago after getting fed up with my “fast” Windows PC. Before the Mac I even switched to a Kubuntu OS on the PC which to be frank ended up a failure. Too unstable for a development machine. Then I took a deep dive and got a Mac. It was well worth the initial pain of learning new way of doing things. Now m

Without further ado.. here are the reasons you should switch to a mac and some tips & tricks once you do. Enjoy!

The reasons

Reasons TO switch to a Mac – the pros

Mac’s crash less than a PC – no more blue screen of death. So you get more done and are less frustrated. This is especially a common signal for power users. The Unix Kernel of the Mac boots up faster and runs more smoothly overall. Especially when running several tasks at once. 1 crashed app won’t take down the whole OS. It’s a pleasure to be working on a Mac while being more productive.
You spend hours a day staring at a street. A Mac is not only pleasing to the eye in its design (shell) but all the applications are smooth, consistent and clean. The MacOS is the world’s most powerful and attractive operating system (eye candy) dictating how using the computer “feels”. Ref Kubuntu. Yes I tried Ubuntu, Kubuntu and all flavors of Windows. Mac wins hands down.
Stops new users from getting into a bad habit using the worst internet browser out there – Internet Explorer. Your choices are everything but Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. I prefer to use the fast and light Chrome from Google.
Always on. Mac’s are fast to go to sleep and especially to wake up. Just close the lid when done using it and open when you need it.
Easy installation of software. On my PC I had to find the .exe install file and run it with a million other levers to pull to make it work. On my Mac I double-click I package file, pop opens a window with the app icon which it asks me to drag to the right into the apps folder. Done.
No need to mess around the internet looking for free apps and hoping they are not virus or trojan infected. Apple’s iTunes / Mac Store is my 1 place shop for finding, researching, installing & upgrading apps.
Speaking of security. The Mac comes with an inbuilt firewall and a number of safeguard. Similar to security of Linux being based on a Unix Kernel. The list of viruses designed to wreak havoc on the PC dramatically outnumber the Mac. You can invest in additional Cybersecurity Solutions if you’re working on important documents.
Windows don’t do Macs—but Macs do Windows. You can read NTFS (Windows) drives using NTFS for Mac OS X and even run Windows in a virtual environment on your mac without rebooting via VMWare Fusion.
No more messy wireless internet connectivity settings to get a PC working. On a Mac select an available wireless network and enter your password (if any) and your online. Simple.
The OS mirrors that of the iPad and iPhone so user experience is consistent. Furthermore iCloud allows you to share content between all your Apple devices including SMS messaging. And AirDrop makes sharing files between Macs super easy without a network.

Then navigating the modern legal landscape also requires more than just basic knowledge; it requires a partner who can guide you through the complexities of your specific situation. Whether dealing with contracts, litigation, or regulatory compliance, the right legal advice is critical. It’s not just about defending against accusations; it’s about proactive protection and understanding. For those in search of such guidance, more information is available by visiting visit this website.

Reasons to NOT switch to a Mac – the cons

Learning curve. Oh no you have to learn how to do things differently. Ok it’s a bit of a pain in the bum at first especially that Command button but after you get familiar you wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.

Mac Book Air vs Pro vs PC – The Pro is to the right and PC to the left. Notice the thickness diffs?

Tips

So you got your Mac and want to get setup. Here’s a few tips to make this process fast and pain-free.

Recommended software

General

NTFS for Mac OS X (paid) to read Windows formatted drives (think portal drives).
VMWare Fusion (paid) to run Windows programs on you Mac without rebooting. It even integrated into your Mac OS X should you want a smoother transition or miss that old OS.
Chrome Internet Browser (free) – the best browser out there, hands down
https://www.google.com/chrome?platform=mac
Microsoft Office (paid)
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/?CTT=97
Dropbox (freemium) – store your stuff in the cloud. You start off with few free gigs of free space. The client runs quietly syncing your files. It is the most reliable cloud storage sync app on the market. It’s how software should be.
Evernote (freemium) – your notes in the cloud. Evernote is a freemium app designed for note taking, organizing, and archiving across all devices.
f.lux (free) – it makes the color of your computer’s display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day. This helps ease eye strain and sleepless nights from the blue back light of a LCD.
CleanMyMac (paid) – Clean, optimize, and maintain your Mac with the all-new CleanMyMac 3. It scans every inch of your system, removes gigabytes of junk in just two clicks, and monitors the health of your Mac.
Little Snitch (freemium) – a firewall protects your computer against unwanted guests from the Internet. But who protects your private data from being sent out? Little Snitch does. It protects your privacy.
Slack – a messaging app for 1+. Most people use this in teams but you can just as easily use it at home especially if you have IoT connected sending messaging directly to Slack. It’s brilliant.

Development

Home-brew (free) – package manager for OS X. Homebrew installs the stuff you need that Apple didn’t. Think of apt-get for your Mac.
Sublime Text (freemium) – your Notepad for Mac. Its also a sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose. You’ll love the slick user interface, extraordinary features and amazing performance.
Balsamic (paid) – a wireframing and mock up tool with a high focus on usability. Quickly come up with mock ups and easily share them with your clients.
PyCharm (paid) – the Most Intelligent Python IDE hands down. Got something better? Let me know.

Also check this out; a curated list of awesome applications, softwares, tools and shiny things for OS X: https://github.com/iCHAIT/awesome-osx

Most apps which you enjoyed on your PC will have equivalent Mac versions. If not just use VMWare Fusion to run Windows on your Mac and the PC apps inside that. Contact me if you need help getting this up and running.

Performance tuning

If you do not want your Mac’s performance to drop over time I recommend turning off non-essential Spotlight search results. Spotlight is the standard search on the mac located top right hand corner. It indexes EVERYTHING you do & surf on the mac. Over time this index grows too big and adding / searching it slows the Mac down.

Under System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results
disable the non-essential categories like “Messages & Chats”, “Webpages” & “Developer”.

Useful knowledge for exPats of Windows

GUI Shortcuts

The following are nowhere to be found on the Mac laptop. Only full keyboards. Use these commands to achieve the same effect:

Page Up/Down	fn + up/down arrow
Backspace	fn + delete
Lock your mac	shift + ctrl + eject
Force app to close	command, option + esc
Get out of full view	command, control + option +f

Terminal commands

The mac has a terminal like Linus flavors. This is great for running some powerful functions vs the GUI that can sometimes be slower.

Find in trash	find /Users/ernest/.Trash -name *.jpg
Force Safari to always open new tabs vs new window	defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

That should be enough to get your rolling in full swing. As always feel free to contact me if you need help or further information. If you found this post useful please share it around on Twitter or Hacker News.

~ Ernest

Floatation: Sensory Deprivation for Engineers by Scientists

I have blogged about Floatation Tanks, also known as Float Tanks, Isolation Tanks, Sensory Deprivation Tank et al before here and here. To get the detail, read those 2 posts first. Alternatively here is the skinny version. Floatation in a Floatation Tank was first invented and used by John C. Lilly (scientist) in 1954 for Sensory Deprivation experiments to “switch off” our senses. The goal was so our mind free of external stimuli could light up brighter and tap into the void… temporarily. Today, such floatation tanks are used mainly for meditation, relaxation and as alternative medicine to help Athletes (by Australian Institute of Sports) with faster recovery.

Where it all began for me

My wife and I have been floating in floatation tanks since 2008. It all started back when I saw a floatation tank being used in the 1st episode of Fringe. In Fringe Dr Bishop uses his flotation tank/sensory deprivation tank (sounds more scientific) to connect Olivia and Agent Scott’s mind. That was super cool. Being a body hacker I got interested in the perceived ability and started my research into floatation tanks. I took the red pill and went down the rabbit hole. And here we are today.

Floatation Tank in Fringe – notice the isolation tank behind Olivia

Now, “Floating” is the term commonly used when referring to an isolation tank experience, you float. You float inside the floatation tank like a cork. The high concentrate of epsom salt creates this effect. If you have been to the Dead Sea in Jordan you will know what I mean.

Are you a Software engineer? If so, you should float!

I use the floatation tank to turn off the noise from my primary senses (visual, auditory & kinesthetic) and accelerate the transition from beta brain waves (normal state) to alpha (learning state) and ultimately theta (dream state). This is the same process as meditation, but a lot faster. Way faster. It is like forced meditation without the pains of sitting up right and trying to detune the world around you.

The goal with both meditation and floatation is to reach the theta state. This is a powerful state where you can consciously listen to your subconscious mind. Usually through a series of what appears to be auditory or visual hallucinations. Monks train years to do this through meditation while staying consciously awake. Your body does this naturally every night but you switch off, fall asleep. Recall those auditory or visual flashes you get before you off switch kicks in and you fall asleep. That’s a glimpse into theta state. In an isolation tank you are consciously awake observing your subconscious mind. Most of the time. No years of training required. For me it was 3 floatation sessions and I was hallucinating baby!

Our subconscious is a powerful supercomputer (no surprises there) which constantly gathers, calculates, builds patterns & connections faster than we can consciously observe (process). I think this is a natural safe measure so we don’t go insane. However imagine having the power to tap into this wealth of stored info. You know when you sometimes get a gut feeling? I believe that is the output from all the processing making their way to your conscious mind. I use the floatation tank to tap into this and get my answers faster then waiting for them to bubble to the top.

The body and mind are a very busy and noisy place.

Especially if you are a software engineer you will know all about the noise and how distracting it can be to productivity. Hence why you like working nights pounding away at code, right. I know the feeling. But health wise, this is not sustainable. The answer is the floatation tank to help you calm down both mentally & physically and tap into your mind, the supercomputer.

The flotation tank immediately cuts out your auditory, visual and kinesthetic senses creating an environment similar to a womb. Allowing your mind to start exploring the inner self. Looking for answers to your questions. Tapping into the hidden recesses of the mind that are usually outside the reach of your conscious awareness.

Want answers to your software engineering challenges? don’t just sleep on it… Float!

Floating in an Isolation Tank

You may recall from my last post on how many of us get “cubed” and spiral down into learning helplessness. I needed some answers to some recent questions and thus decided to step up a notch and not only use the standard John C. Lilly isolation tank but also a Sensory Exaltation from Be and Be Well based out of Shanti & Jai’s house in Santa Cruz, California. If you went to Burning Man 2011 then you would have seen the Sensory Exaltation tank.

There are many scientifically proven natural ways of tapping into our brain, the super computer. Floating is the best one I have found in years of searching without going into the extreme of substance abuse. An alternative exists but you would need to spend few years with the Monks in Tibet and learn how to consciously be awake while your brain is in the Theta state. Same state that turns your conscious mind off and starts the dreaming process at night. However inside the isolation tank you are conscious when this change to Theta happens and thus get to observe interesting insights coming from your subconscious.

The 2 x Tanks at Be and Be Well

This is what you can expect from Be and Be Well down in Santa Cruz, California.

Sensory Deprivation Tank

The key to your mind. This tank is more advanced than the ones I have mentioned in my previous posts. Pictured below, the light inside can be switched on and off by pressing the black button next to it. So no need to freak out in pure darkness when the lid is closed. It also has great heating to keep a constant skin temperature as you float. You never get cold and is big enough so you do not feel claustrophobic.

Sensory Exaltation Tank

This is a dry tank. A pod with a sac filled with foam for comfort. You put on audio speakers to hear binaural beats and glasses with synchronized strobe lights over the eyes. This is often refered to as Photic Driving. Designer brain waves. This technique was invented in 1930s. It basically changes your brain waves to follow and pulse at the same frequency as the light strobes creating different conciousness states. Different strobes & beats affect your brain differently hence the designer brain waves analogy.

FYI, The design on the Be and Be Well Exaltation Tank (pictured below) is of Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic “Vitruvian Man”.

In conclusion

Float tanks rock! Note to newbies; you need about 3 sessions to really get into it and learn to let go faster.
Forget sitting meditation. Flotation therapy is the easiest way to get a brain and body massage. Don’t forget the heath benefits from the Epsom Salt used inside the tank to make you float.
If you code then you must try this!

The benefits

Relaxation (mental & physical) from the daily stresses of running your own business or writing ton of code,
Learning a new skill – play audio while you float to accelerate the learning process,
Get answers to questions faster – you’ve heard of sleep on it right and that it works. Well this is better because your conscious and you get more answers.
Better understand yourself – some call it enlightenment,
Faster healing – used by athletes in recovery and
At Stanford scientifically proved by studying monks concluding that “Essentially when you spend a lot of time meditating, the brain shows a pattern of feeling safe in the world and more comfortable in approaching people and situations, and less vigilant and afraid, which is more associated with the right hemisphere,” she said.

I floated last weekend and I got what I wanted from that session. The answers to questions that were lurking inside me. The answers now sync with the gut feeling I was getting and I feel mentally at peace.

Float like I did

Get in touch with Be and Be Well down in Santa Cruz, California.

Website: http://www.beandbewell.com/flotation/
To book an appointment you can reach Shanti at 408 691 7188 or
E-mail: beandbewell@gmail.com

Road from Mountain View to Be and Be Well.

Have you floated before? Share you experiences before in the comments below.

Also don’t forget to check out my previous posts on Isolation tanks:

~ Ernest

Cubed: learning helplessness

Feel like your role at work is minimizing? Or maybe the responsibilities you once had have shrunk? Or maybe you are feeling like you could do a lot more but no one seems to give you the opportunity? Or you are not being respected, acknowledged or rewarded for your hard work? Something is not right – and your not alone. You are cubed. You are being pushed to a habit of learning helplessness. One which is dumbing you down and making you a cog in a machine at your expense.

Let’s go back and explore where this came from and provide some enlightenment. Long time ago I had an awakening. “We are all capable of greatness.” You may or may not have heard these before. Either way here they are:

“That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

“Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint you can on it.” ~ Danny Kaye

“For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness.” ~ Carl Sagan

And you may have read or seen this man (Anthony Robbins) speak of greatness and how it’s attainable. All the formulas to it are inside his book. Get the book if you have not read it.

Ok so you now get it. Greatness is within you. I can even start quoting some religious literature if you like that we are part of God and if God is great we must also be great etc… but I wont go too deep. You get it.

Are you getting “cubed”?

What happens if this greatness starts getting stripped away from you.

Over the last few years working in both startup and corporate environments, I saw something which disturbed me and also started to affect me negatively. This deceptive art of the machine dumbing one down. It starts with getting “cubed”.

You are a go getter. You come from another environment (startup or not) where you were the man of the hour (all-rounder or a specialist) to a new environment (yes job) where things move slower and the room is filled with this political fog. Straight away you get confined to a cube (your new desk). Blocking the world around you. You are told it’s there to make you focus on your job. Then your new job turns out to be practically pulling a lever (minimized role). They call this specialization. You become a cog in the machine. Stripped of all those responsibilities which once made you grow into being better than before.

What’s going on here? 2 damaging factors are at play:

The environment and
The chap you report to.

Let’s face it. It sucks.

Point 2 you may be inclined to give them the book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us so he/she can go and bloody learn for them self how employees should be managed. Yes that is a start. But both points have deep roots. Let’s explore deeper.

We are constantly changing – like it or not

If you were a go getter type of character capable of turning mountains and getting stuff done this sort of “cubing” will slowly erode you. Obviously it wont if you are not getting cubed.

We (humans) are constantly adapting and changing whether we like it or not. The field of Neuroplasticity has proven that our brains change neural pathways and synapses due to changes in behavior, environment and neural processes for our entire life. Changing jobs is changing environments. Our minds change the most when we change environments. It is why people grow faster when they move to the right job or even country, and why joining the army changes everyone, for better or worst. Your environment is an important part of you and your identity.

Learning Helplessness

To further understand the psychology of this let’s step into 1960s when Martin Seligman (before becoming the founding father of positive psychology) studied the opposite of happiness. He was experimenting with dogs, pairing noises, like a bell, with small shocks to see how the dogs would eventually react to the bell alone.

Martin Seligman’s shuttle-box experiment with dogs

The experiment involved a shuttle-box with 2 compartments which a dog could jump over a small wall to each chamber – as shown above. Each time a bell would ring. In 1 chamber the dog would get shocked. In the other he wouldn’t. Before the experiment the dog would jump the low barriers easily at free will. After the experiments involving zapping the dogs they just stayed in the chamber where they would get zapped. The dogs learnt that once the bell rang a shock was to follow no matter what. Thus they learnt helplessness.

Seligman found the same behavior in humans. When we fail (life delivers a shock) we respond with simply giving up. Cubicles are the new shuttle-boxes and workers the new dogs.

Thanks to Shawn Anchor, positive psychologist from Harvard University for telling me about this story. It basically correlated to what I personally saw happening around me. Shawn has many great stories like this in his awesome book The Happiness Advantage.

Change now, Not later

If you are cubed you must change now. Negotiate your employment contract with help from a contract attorney Kansas City. No matter how hard or scary it is, it is NOT good for you now nor later. Getting emotionally shocked is not fun. The longer you are cubed the harder it will be to change as you become a numb cog in the machine. Just like the dogs taking the shocks. Until a day will come when you will be dislodged from that machine (by higher powers & against your wishes) and then you will be a lost soul.

Whatever your mind can conceive and can believe, it can achieve. ~ Napoleon Hill

A nurse in Australia recorded the most common regrets of the dying. At the top of the list was “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” Next on the list: “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard” and “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”. Get it? Dont be that numb cog on your death-bed.

Whether you think you can or can’t either way you are right. ~Henry Ford

Dont forget, you come from greatness therefore you must have greatness within you. Dont get cubed. Go and make a difference in your life. We create our own reality. The power is within you. How you decube yourself is different for everyone. But the power within you knowns what you need. Ask and you shall receive. Then gain the courage to execute.

If you have friends or family which are cubed pass this information on. Spread this knowledge to those that need it and empower them to take control of their life.

~ Ernest