After having failed at my first startup, and having partially succeeded in second, I couldn't agree more on those two points.
The debt accrued on my first startup still haunts me. And I really wish, I slept more and worked out more during the period. It is really a simple advice, to sleep and to work out. But when you are a sinking ship, you could hardly follow it.
To be honest, I never succeeded with goals. Those things that happen naturally , happens. Your comment made me self reflect, and I realised that , except point 4, nothing happened at my will. Point 4 happened because I found something that I enjoy doing. And finding something I love doing was a lot of trial and error. All the other points are just wishes.
I was wondering whether actually people set goals, remind themselves everyday etc, and go about to achieve the same. I think there is a lot of randomness in getting into a system and an outcome as a result of it.
Apart from one or two mental notes with a bigger picture, I am not sure whether the so called 'successful' people set those daily, weekly, monthly goals etc. I am genuinely curious to know if it worked for some.
I am Indian. (I used to work for Oracle). If I were to hire, given everything else is equal , I would prefer an Indian to a non-Indian. You can attribute it to cultural bias, or whatever.
But hardly 'everything else' is equal. I hire people who can get 'shi* done' , and who are easy to be managed. Period. And I assume most of the managers would do so. So if Indians are easy to be managed, and are getting hired, it is not racism. Because, they were getting hired for the easiness of managing them, and not for the Nationality.
The issue of white males getting paid more is certainly racist. But the sad part is one cannot verify it, because one cannot isolate the 'merit' part of the salary , from the part attributed to the 'race'
(By the way, I never hired anyone while working at Oracle.)
We landed on our first paying customer on a product that we had been working for more than a year and half. And many more sign ups later turned profitable too. And about to release a major upgrade in the first weeks of 2017.
The down side was that I hardly had any holidays in 2016 and was consistently clocking 12 hour work days. So exhausted to the core as well.
At http://www.reportdash.com we use backbone with backbone layout manager and jade. We have been able to design a pretty robust report and dashboard builder with just a single front-end developer.
Never once did I regret the choice, nor has been limited by the choice. I pretty much could implement everything I thought with minimal effort.
I would say backbone with backbone layout manager has the bare minimal abstraction. It just boils down to picking the right pattern. I use a state variable to hold everything related to the dom, and re-render the dom whenever the dom needs to be updated. May not be as fast as 'react', but at least in my case, it is good enough. ( Since my 'views' are nicely factored, I often has to re-render only a small part of the dom)
Without the framework, I would have taken double the time for sure. And boy, the code is nicely organised as well.
I did have some experience in developing spa's using jquery alone. Well, that was in 2009. On any day, I would vouch for Backbone+ Backbone Layout Manger + Jade over simple jquery
I used to wonder why it hasn't been as popular as react or angular.
As someone who runs a startup,here are some personal observations.
I would say, a PM has to understand the user needs, and drive the product.
The former has got two parts
1. Understanding the user needs which the user can articulate
2. Understanding the user needs which the users cannot articulate.
I have had the opportunity to work with some of the best coders. Though I greatly admired their intellectual capability, I was not a big fan of their ability to think from customer's shoes. I have figured out that "Common sense is not so common". Now, having an MBA does not guarantee common sense, but if you think that, you can communicate effectively with your users, understand their needs, empathise with them, and can comfortably put yourself in their shoes, your are definitely adding value as a PM on Point No 1
Understanding the user needs which the users cannot articulate - This is where innovation begins. Now, if you are a PM without the ability to code, you may be at a slight disadvantage here. The ability to code, or perhaps the understanding of the fundamentals, would help you to structure your thoughts. It gives you a clear picture on what is possible and what is not possible at the present, from where, you can start to innovate.
Yup. Truly understand that. Shall mail you a demo account. We are still work in progress, and many touch points are not the way we really wanted. A demo account is up there in our priority list.
Shameless plug : We have been building http://www.reportdash.com with a similar target market.
Datastudio appeared to be our startup killer in the beginning. But I guess, we may narrowly escape owing to the usability advantage, and the deep integration we have for datasources like adwords, fb ads etc
We are working hard to give a fight. We are about to release a major update in the coming months which makes slicing and dicing data a breeze.
On Education let me quote a popular writer from my place , Kamala Surayya (Madhavikutty) -
"I feel formal education here makes mediocrity's out of everybody. I don't think any genius can survive caught in the machine of formal education.
It works like a bulldozer with which everybody is brought to a low level. They won't tolerate brilliance, they won't tolerate independent thinking. I don't believe that one can be a pundit, great scholar, by digesting what other scholars have written. I think we must find our own conclusions from our experiences."
On Economics and Industry - It is interesting to look at the fundamental truths on how value get generated and distributed. But it calls for a different write up all together
1. Hated working for others. One day manager refused to grant hike (in salary). Googled for a resignation letter, and mailed him the first one found.
2. Didn't know what to do. Decided to do freelancing. Took up a project that was too big for my mouth (read, implementing an ERP for a small retail chain) . Took away some good 2.5 years of my life, for peanuts. But learned a ton. The project was a failure from client's perspective, but I had my contractual obligations met.
learning - Freelancing is not my cup of tea
3. Started an e commerce company. Was one of the first companies in hyper local space. But had a similar feeling that this is not my cup tea, since it required raising large amount of capital for a poor margin business. Shut it down after 2 years.
Learning- I want to build something organically
4. Finally I stumbled upon a business which I truly love. It is yet to make any money. Have been toiling for the last 2 years. But I enjoyed the journey hell lot. And most importantly I feel I can make this work
5. So I took some 5 years to find that one thing that I really love doing, and that I am reasonably good at. Still the unproven part is whether there is a 'need' for that in the market, to make it economically viable.
6. Was it worth it? It was hell lot of pain. Getting depressed at times. But to me there was no choice. So no regrets. I would have done the same , if I were to go back and do. And hopefully we (me and my co founder) will make it.
Overall learning- You cannot discover yourself without getting lost. And getting lost is painful, at times, very very painful. But some pain are worth it (for some).
Whether to float or to swim is a hard choice. But if you decide to swim, make sure that 'to swim' is the only choice you have. Else you are more likely to 'get' back to 'float'.
I have no problem in wishing to be rich. I have no problem is wishing to be powerful. I have a problem only when I want to be richer than someone else. Why on earth do I want to define my 'need' looking at someone else.
And if I do not base my needs with that of some one else, why should I even compare myself with others, so as to determine if I am mediocre or not.
May be I am dumb. But I am happy to be dumb. Forrest Gump is my personal hero. LOL!
Teacher -"Do you ever dream, Forrest, about who you're gonna be?"
Gump - "Who I'm gonna be?............. Yeah..................Aren't I going to be me? "
"We all want exact same thing" - May be, but not every one want that 'same thing' to the same degree. Any commendable achievement in one field is often at the expense of something else.
May be I want to become rich, may be I want to become powerful. But I may also want to watch GOT once again, I may also want to do nothing, I may want to travel the world, I may want to see my children grow, I may also want to be alongside my parents when they need me in their loneliest days.
True, all of us want the exact thing. But the real question is what are the things that are most important. You may have to pick some and ignore some. It is here the difference arise.
And I strongly believe it is foolish to compare my path with that of the other, when their priorities, instincts, skills, context etc are different from that of me.
If there is no comparison, there is no mediocrity.
True I can compare my wealth with that of the other. I can compare my 'power' with that of the other. But how can I compare my happiness with that of the other. How can i compare my content with that of the other. How can I compare my creative satisfaction with that of the other.
When I can compare each and every one of those things against those people around, I may be ready to do that comparison and accept mediocrity.
"Everybody is a Genius. But If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that It is Stupid."- Einstein
"Mediocrity" arises only when compared.
And comparison is plain stupid. My genes are different. The life circumstance through which I have gone through are different. My responses to various stimuli are different. My pleasure points are different. My pain points are different. My memory is different. The things that I consider important in my life are different.Every single thing about me is different from that of anybody else in this world. And yet, if I want to compare myself to some other person on a specific domain, I should be plain stupid.
Instead I would happily compare myself with myself. Am I giving my personal best? Am I getting paid in 'currencies that are important to me'?
Life is not single subject course. It is a multi disciplinary course. One may have ideas about becoming the greatest entrepreneur, the greatest artist or the greatest politician. But not many people talk about being a great child, being a great brother, being a great husband, being a great friend, being a great father or being a great grand father.
You may think that you got an "A' in a particular subject. But you may be a complete failure in other. If you are OK with it, no issues. But make sure that you scored 'A' in subjects that you thought important, and not someone else thought important.
I would love to believe that there is no such thing as 'Mediocrity'. The greatest tragedy is to not have lived the life that you wanted to live.
The debt accrued on my first startup still haunts me. And I really wish, I slept more and worked out more during the period. It is really a simple advice, to sleep and to work out. But when you are a sinking ship, you could hardly follow it.