Books vs. Internet

I’ve been getting some email from interested readers wondering what I’m up to lately. It turns out that being a tech entrepreneur isn’t all that exciting day-to-day, especially when you’re in stealth mode… because there isn’t much to talk about!

Especially in my case, since I’m in full-on learning mode. I hereby present exhibit A, my stack of programming-related books. (I’ve run out of space on my bookshelf so they’re sitting on the ground.) The top 8 books have been acquired within the last month, and I still haven’t even gone through 10% of any one of them. On the other hand, in the last month I’ve probably learned more than I have in all of 2006!

This leads me to a tangent — books are still the best way of learning stuff, even in this age. I first thought I could do away with books and just rely the internet for what I need to know, but it turns out that when I find a webpage or a forum posting about how to do something, I can never be sure what version of the software the answer applies to. Is the answer about Apache 1.x or Apache 2.x? Is it about PHP 4 or PHP 5? I can make a guess based on the date, but that obviously sucks. However, when I buy a good book, I know that the quality of the writing will be high, and I can be sure that it covers the latest revision of the software.

Anyway, all this to say that I’m in hermit-hacker mode these days, with the accompanying hermit-hacker schedule in full effect. This means rarely going to bed before the single digits, and rarely waking up before the double digits. But don’t get me wrong… it’s freakin’ fun.

Besides, it’s minus double digits outside… What else could I possibly be doing? :)

Blogging from Startup Canada

So here I am in the Loews Le Concorde hotel lobby, because I can’t get the wireless network to work in my room. I was only able to connect to the hotel next door. (Oh well, there’s another pain point to solve for some enterprising entrepreneur!)

So far, it’s been a great conference. Speakers so far include Ken Morse from MIT, Guy Kawasaki and Bill Reichert from Garage, and a great panel of successful entrepreneurs led by Guy. Sitting on the panel was my friend and mentor Austin Hill. The panel discussion was particularly interesting because it reflected real-life experiences of those entrepreneurs trying to start companies in Quebec (except for Patrick Lor from istockphoto.com, who is based in Calgary).

I met a couple of guys here, Mathieu Ouellet and Carl-Frédéric De Celles, who are covering the event live on their blog Les Bonnes Frequentations, so I won’t recap the talks here. (Their blog is in French, but like Ken Morse said to me today… “Suck it up”.)

Speaking of Patrick, he just joined me on the couch here and we had an interesting conversation about BarCamp, the fact that developers don’t read stuff like Joel on Software, the fact that business guys don’t read stuff like GigaOM, and the lack of “Clued In” Angel Investors in Canada. I mentioned that Austin is trying to change that by convincing other former tech execs to start angel investing, and perhaps they should team up in some way. As more entrepreneurs become successful in Canada, I hope we will see such a network develop up here like it has in Silicon Valley.

I will leave you with a true story of the silliest thing I did at the conference so far. The event started last night with a “meet-and-greet” of fellow attendees. At some point I spotted two Asian guys talking to each other, so I approached them and said “Hey, I decided to come talk with the only other Asians here.” Since I approached from behind I did not realize that I was rudely interrupting Guy and Patrick! Being the great guys they are they welcomed me into their conversation about Hockey… And that’s the story of how I met Guy Kawasaki and Patrick Lor.

See you guys back in Montreal.

Startup Canada this Weekend

I’m scrambling right now to get ready for Startup Canada, which is being held Thursday (tomorrow) to Saturday in Quebec City.

I really should have posted about this earlier in order to get a bigger Montreal delegation going, but that’s my life right now. Always “should have done this last week.” Still, there are at least a few of us from the Montreal tech scene going, including Ben Yoskovitz and Austin Hill. I hope to meet other familiar Montreal faces there.

What I cannot believe is they had the audacity to assign me homework… THIS MORNING! Actually it’s not so bad, only about 40 pages of assigned readings. I’ve gotten through about half of it so far and it’s actually quite interesting. The readings that are available publicly are linked below. Sorry, no time for commentary…

• Success Factors in Technology-Based Entrepreneurship [PDF, free]
• Success Factors slides [Powerpoint, free]
• Spotfire: Managing a Multinational Start-up [$]

Well, I’m quite looking forward to the event. I mean, when is the next time I will get to meet Guy Kawasaki? Ah, yes… entrepreneurs are also susceptible to celebrities… Except I’m much more inclined to go to an event featuring Guy Kawasaki, than, say, Britney Spears.

As an aside, I just finished Art of the Start a couple of days ago. Recommended reading for any startup entrepreneur.

Props go to Garage Canada, who is one of the primary organizers of the conference and a sponsor of BarCampMontreal1. Thanks for bringing Silicon Valley to us, Garage.

Contactboxen

I totally need one of these. Basically it’s a box that holds the transformers from all of your little electronic toys and hides them away, exposing only the dongles. You just hang the box up near your front door, snap your devices in with the elastic bands, hook up the power, and they’ll be all charged up and ready for you when you leave in the morning.

From a geeky point of view, it’s sort of like how we hide information when practicing good software engineering. “I don’t care about how it’s implemented, just show me the interfaces.”

I have often thought about building a wooden box to do exactly what the Contactboxen does, but for some reason it did not occur to me to turn it into a product. Sometimes, I think the secret to entrepreneurship is just being able to act on common sense! It also reminds me that there is pain around us every day, very obvious pain, just waiting to be solved. So, open your eyes, budding entrepreneur, and go solve a problem!

Thanks to Francis of fsbrainstorm for posting about this neat contraption.

The Startup Lifestyle

So, it’s official. After spending over 6 years at Matrox (hey guys!), my last day was two Fridays ago. I have now committed to being in the startup world, and nothing really gets your butt in gear like resigning your job.

I have to say, though, I could really get used to being an unemployed bum.

Take today’s schedule, for example. This morning, I headed to the CUSEC conference that is in town this weekend. (Thanks John!) I took in the morning presentations, talked to a few of the local companies about possibly sponsoring BarCampMontreal and DemoCampMontreal, and just generally basked in the great feeling of being around passionate people.

Then I headed home for lunch and did some hacking. I was so deep the zone that I almost did not notice 6:30pm sneaking up on me. But I did, and so I ran out the door to attend DemoCampCUSEC1.

DemoCampCUSEC1 was absolutely amazing. The presentations just blew me away and simply reinforced my belief that Montreal has great technical talent and all we have to do is come together (Right now…). Did you know that the lead developer of ReactOS, Alex Ionescu, is a Concordia student? I sure didn’t, but I should have known. Alex’s presentation got a huge applause, by the way.

Now, I am home again, and after enjoying a nice dinner, am going to do some more hacking before going to bed. It is absolutely wonderful.

I am possibly the busiest unemployed bum ever.

So my stated goal when I started this blog was to chronicle my experiences as a startup founder. Without further ado, let’s begin.

Staff your startup by only hiring swingers

In his latest blog post, Austin Hill talks about staffing your startup by only hiring swingers.

Personally I don’t understand what’s new here. I’ve only ever hired swingers at Cat’s Corner. <Channeling Seinfeld>What’s the deal?</Channeling Seinfeld>

Seriously though, when hiring someone you better make sure that your new guy’s swing is the same as the rest of your team’s swing. And what happens then? If you remember your differential equations, when the frequency of the forcing function is the same as the natural frequency of the system, you get a phenomenon known as resonance.

And resonance is a great thing to have when you’re talking about a team’s efficiency and productivity.

Stay tuned: I have a sneaking suspicion we are going to have a lot more to talk about hiring and job seeking in the next little while. :)

Son-of-Google proves Hiring is Obsolete?

Yesterday I saw an article on CNN called “Is Google too smart for its own good?”

The premise is that even in a company like Google, famous for hiring only the best and brightest, there is enough rote work to do that those very people will eventually get bored and leave. When they do, they will create a wave of innovation that will be called “Son-Of-Google”.

If a company the size of PayPal can kick off a second wave that includes LinkedIn, Slide, Yelp, YouTube, Clarium Capital, and Room 9 Entertainment, among others, the sons-of-Google wave should be a world-changer.

Furthermore, the article hypothesizes that these world-changing startups will simply be brought back into the fold again.

But what will it mean for Google? For starters, it’ll provide an additional food chain for new products and features. The profligate M&A spending of all the GAMEY (Google, Apple (Charts), Microsoft (Charts), Ebay (Charts), Yahoo (Charts)) companies has touched off a run of feature innovation over the last few years. You can be sure Google will be on the inside track to acquire the latest ideas of former employees.

It would appear Paul Graham’s prediction is becoming more correct every day:

I think there are a lot of undergrads … [that are] … only a few steps away from being able to start successful startups, if they wanted to, but they don’t realize it. They have more than enough technical skill. They just haven’t realized yet that the way to create wealth is to make what users want, and that employers are just proxies for users in which risk is pooled.

If the son-of-Google hypothesis is true, then hiring really is rapidly becoming obsolete.