Three important concepts for startups

Eric Ries and Steve Blank are two successful serial entrepreneurs and fantastic thought leaders. If you are at all interested in improving you start-ups chances for success check these out:

1. Retooling Early Stage Development - Steve Blank (Stanford audio podcast)
2. Evangelizing for the Lean Startup - Eric Ries (itunes podcast - search itunes Stanford Technology Ventures Program)
3. Minimum Viable Product - Eric Ries (blog post here)
   

I recommend consuming these multiple times and then searching their blogs as well. A ton of great content here. Enjoy.

Reporting on a few personal goals in August

I am continually striving to improve myself and have personal integrity. It’s important to me to set personal goals and work on those. I find being successful in these goals I am more prepared and capable to achieve public victories as well. Here is a great quote:

“…there is enormous power in the principle of keeping promises and honoring commitments. It leads to strong self-esteem and personal integrity, the foundation of all true success (Principle-Centered Leadership by Stephen R. Covey – Pg. 73).”

Each month, I typically set three to five goals and then rigorously record my progress. In an effort to be both transparent and real with how I did, this post highlights my personal victories and/or failures in the month of August.

Here are my simple but foundational goals including results:
Exercise 3 times each week
I exercised a total of 12 times which for a 100% success rate which consisted of:
• Distance running 7 times equaling 19.1 miles total distance (average of 2.73 miles each run)
• Trail run
• Kayaking ~ 2 miles in Santa Barbara
• Mountain biking - twice
• Lifted weights at the gym

Read and study scriptures for at least 15 minutes/day
I studied scriptures 27 days of the total 31 days in August. This means I was close but not perfect. I can still celebrate an 87.1% success rate.

Wake up at 6:30 AM every morning
I was successful at getting up at 6:30 or before a total of 5 times. Resulting in a ~16% success rate or around a 25% success rate if you exclude weekends. My average wake up time was around 7:15 AM. Note: I made it to work on time every day....for the record. See graph below:

Go to bed by 10:30 PM every night
I completely failed this goal and did not do this even once all month. Failed with a 0% success rate! I really stuggle with going to bed at a decent hour because I am either reading or focused on doing something else. It's always something productive but it just keeps me engaged to where I don't want to go to bed. (note: I have had this problem since I was a baby. I still hate going to bed.) See graph below:

Spend 30 minutes either studying to take the GMAT, CFA, or writing a blog post every weekday
I failed this goal too however I did spend about 19 total hours over approximately 8 days studying Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) material. This effort probably amounts to a 50% success rate. After this deep dive, I decided not to go down that path and so my goal in September will be to study to take the GMAT. I only posted one blog post at work and one on this blog.

I am really proud of my exercise and scripture reading goals. Next month, I will need to continue those and focus on these other goals until they are mastered. Sharing my goals and progress made holds me accountable and provides small insights into who I am and what I am trying to accomplish in life. Of course, these are just a few smaller goals. I am a goal junkie so this post would be way too long.

What goals are you working towards now? Do you track your goals? If so, how successful were you in August?

Way to go Netflix

A co-worker shared this presentation with me today and I love it. The power in mastering these values alone would be significant. Enjoy.

Culture

View more presentations from reed2001.

Sometimes I can't help but speculate

I am loving working in the software industry. I simply can't learn enough and I am always, always pushing myself to learn more about emerging technologies and software trends. As of late, "Cloud Computing" has been a big topic of discussion. I would explain cloud computing as data storage and services running in data centers stored somewhere other than your physical location or directly on your PC. For example, QuickenOnline stores your financial information on a servers and databases behind highly secured firewalls and other security devises. Intuit manages or outsources the management of these data-centers to host other services that are accessed via the web browser.

What this allows us to do is to store very little on our computers and have an internet connection. Cloud computing has stimulated a large technological change. For example, the netbooks or mini-computers require few software programs installed or even data storage (i.e.: most commonly called Hard drives). They simply process the browser and you can virtually run a word processing program like GoogleDocs, other applications provided through the browser.

I have been speculating myself about this growing trend to run software in data-centers through the browser without installing software on individual machines and think that one day most if not all software will be run in data-centers in "the clouds". This, of course, has its down falls to which I will explain in a minute. I came to this conclusion by watching more and more software written to be run using a web browser an not installed on individual machines. These browser run programs could be written to run on mobile devise browsers too. Consider iphone applications, browser add-ons linking to web applications, and stand-alone web applications.

Without a ton a research done in this space I blindly assumed that this will be one of the next great technology shifts. However I recently come across some news articles that explain why it may not happen as fast as I think or possible not at all.

Jonathan Zittrain of the New York Times writes the following, "Internet evangelists insist that it's only a matter of time before we stop storing information on our PCs and instead keep it online-or as the geeks say, "in the cloud," said Jonathan Zittrain. At first blush, this seems like a "sensible and inevitable" development. With your stuff in the cloud, it's not a catastrophe to lose your laptop, anymore than losing your glasses would permanently destroy your vision."

But the cloud "comes with real dangers." For one thing, the Internet is far more vulnerable to hackers - just ask folks at Twitter: a hacker who guessed an employee's password was able to snoop through "a trove of Twitter's corporate documents stored too conveniently in the cloud." What's more, thanks to the Patriot Act, federal investigators can track your online wanderings via your Internet service provider without you ever knowing about it. "The FBI's own audits have shown there can be plenty of overreach" in such searches. Now imagine how much more nosy an authoritarian government like China's could be. Some consideration of unintended consequences is in order before "we fly directly into the cloud." (excerpt taken from the Week - July 31st 2009)

This is a fun trend to watch and I hope cloud computing technologies overcome the technical difficulties and go on to expand even more the definition of being mobile. I love the thought of accessing all of my data, services, and applications through the internet. So, we wait and see...

Pixetell: Another exciting technology coming soon

Today I was going through my outrageous unread rss feeds and found this awesome new offering called Pixetell through a VentureBeat blog post. The company name who created and offers this offering is Ontier Inc. I would love to see this be adopted. Here is the demo.

My Personal Mission Statement

Last week I started to write a personal mission statement. Actually, everyone should write a personal mission statement. Lately, the following books have prompted me to be even more self reflective than I already am.

Personally I had never tried to write a mission statement before but I’ve always wanted to. I am a very goal oriented person. In fact, if you were to ask me, I could show you my periodic and annual goals going way back, the metrics I used to track those goals, and how successful I was at accomplishing them. It is amazing to see how much I have achieved just by simply setting goals and focusing my energy.

What I am missing is the over-arching goal, my life’s mission and purpose. Do I have a core purpose from which all my efforts in life are working to accomplish? Such direction would help me stay on track and focused by aligning my various goals and desires with my larger life mission.

It is interesting to me that organizations of all types and sizes spend enormous amounts of money, time, and energy understanding their purpose and mission in the world. I wonder if people spend enough time determining and achieving their mission.

This exercise could take weeks, months, or even years to complete. However, even after it is finished it will remain a living document that will change as I better understand what I want to achieve in life and who I want to become.

Do you have a personal mission statement? How has it helped you?

Don't be a slave to your inbox

This was an efficiency tip of the week in a publication I read...

Don't be a slave to your inbox
1) Step away in the a.m. "Establish your day's top priorities" before ever opening your inbox. Begin with creative or urgent work first, mail second.

2) Give it time. Don't leap to answer every time you hear a new e-mail arrive. "Better yet, turn off the alert sound." If you must check your inbox regularly, choose as long an interval as possible - try 2 two hours.

3) Wait to respond, especially to mass e-mails. Ask yourself, "Does everybody really need to weigh in?" Often, interoffice e-mails "generate more work for everyone."

4) Single-task. To avoid mistakes, give your full attention to incoming and outgoing messages. "Don't email while doing something else."

5) Lie about your whereabouts. E-mail systems allow you to "create an outgoing message that says you're out of the office." You can also use it what you're in the office and just "need an e-mail break."

Source: O magazine --> then re-published in THE WEEK dated November 7, 2008.

Early History of the Internet

Interesting early history of the Internet. (~7 minutes)


History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

4 Main Reasons 2 Hold Mtgs-GIDG podcast

*Share Info(bad reason)
*Decision Making
*Team Building
*Brainstorming

Test

Posting on my blog using my BlackBerry (text message-SMS). Crazy COOL!