It's true that in uni we saw the basic principles of php, apache and mysql. We even used them in some labs. But I haven't touched those technologies in a long time. And now I find myself trying to develop a website using those programming languages and servers, DBs etc. They have evolved, and other stuff has come up as well, like Ajax or Ruby on Rails, or flash.
The other day I was installing and getting a hello world with LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP).
Today I am trying to set up Ruby on Rails and get a hello world as Don Quixote did a while back. I am using Instant Rails and Aptana plugin for eclipse.
As for the Flash server, I am using the free trial version of Flash Media Server 2, although other options we are considering are Wowza and even the free Red 5, though this one seems to be more buggy.
For the moment I haven't purchased any single development tool. And it wouldn't make sense indeed, as I am just trying them out to see what fits me. I can't really start giving away money 400$ here, 3000$ there, without having a clear idea of what I need of want.
I hope I am not being too naive trying to use all these technologies I don't even remember and using them from scratch. Anyway, I'll keep posting my progresses.
Recently we have changed our area of interest to video on internet (why not!)
Here some links I've found interesting this week:
- Voicethread : This site is impressively designed. Beautiful, allows audio or video comments on pictures, videos etc. I love this one in particular el coyote!
- The secret strategies behing many viral videos: Dan Ackerman Greenberg has written one of the most controversial, compelling and eye opener posts I have read in a long time. I love it! - Snapvine: Allows voice messages between friends, and posts in blogs by mike or calling to a regular phone number. Has a Facebook app as well!
- Porvoz: The creators of "the voice bar" bring the magic of voice comments and posting to your blog. In a sense its similar to snapvine.
- Flikzor : This is kind of a video and audio comment system for blogs. Possibly a similar idea to seesmic.com but without the backing of a bunch of influential contacts that Loic Lemeur has. - OhMyMode: A website still in closed Alpha where people will create mode trends and play with the mode!
We haven't been posting for a while, so I will try to start doing it again somehow regularly.
Right now we are having several problems with the startup, and I am sure these are common headaches for many people out there:
1- Physical distance with your cofounder. Not living close to each other is a problem, add that the 7h time difference between London and Hong Kong, and there you have a problem.
2- Doubts. It is normal when a cofounder doubts whether to go on or not. No more comments for the moment.
3- No cashflow. No money, no security. An internet startup for someone without contacts or large amounts of money is something like this: You work for a while, maybe several months, to get a first version of your site to hit the internet. Then you keep working on it while doing marketing to try to get people to use it, and at the same time try to get investors to make your original homemade cake a bigger, more sophisticated and expensive cake.
4- No concentration. Our situation is this: I am part time employed, devoting afternoons-evenings to the startup. Don Quixote has even less time as he is full time employee. No concentration means less productivity, because you can focus less time in the same task. This ends up in frustation and slow delivery of stuff.
5- No support. Coming from Spain, where internet entrepreneurship is still a quite difficult thing to find, there is a sense that nobody really takes you seriously. Even here in Britain I can sense lots of scepticism from my colleagues in my morning-job. I think that is normal at the point we are, without a prototype to show, so people think you are all blabla and no real thing. I WILL MAKE THEM SHUT UP.
6- People might not like it. Yes, we have ideas and some people don't like the idea, or don't believe in it, or we ourselves think it might be crap. Who knows? All good ideas have been looked down at some point. Again: who knows?
7- No clear business model: Sometimes it seems that web/ internet businesses are a win all / lose all game. If your website is not popular, you will earn pocket money from adsense. On the other hand, if it is very popular you might become millionaire instantly. Are there examples of people making a decent living of websites without being millionares? Middle class entrepreneurs? Do they exist?
8- That the big fish come and eat us. That we do something and google or facebook or youtube copy us in a sec (as opposed to buying us for millions) . That has happened in facebook before with some popular apps (Top Friends I think? can't remember).
That's the depression list for now. I'll come up with something more cheerful next time.
I have just been watching some interview to important Internet entrepreneurs like Martin Varsavsky, Loic Lemeur or Mark Samwer (he sold alando.de to eBay for 50 M Dollars).
In particular this video is great. I already know Martin's story but listening to Mark and Loic was very interesting.
The interviewer made a question to Loic: which advice would you give to a young entrepreneur?
Loic answered: I will not tell you what to do, but I will tell you what NOT to do:
BIG DON'Ts in INTERNET ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Don't be waiting for the great idea. It will never arrive
Don't keep your idea in secret. Spread it as much as possible. You will get interesting feedback
Don't be worried about the fact that your idea is already implemented. All of them are implemented
Don't be focused on getting money. Focus on changing the world
Well, I think that I have already made all these mistakes
We have talked before about the Myth of the Great Idea of Ramit Sethi, and Paul Graham talks as well about the fact that the most important thing in a new venture are the entrepreneurs themselves rather than their ideas.
The concept behind all that is the mantra "What matters is execution", and that the original idea always ends up changing, sometimes completely.
I am aware as well of success stories as Google or Facebook, who challenged the existing status quo and became leaders in their fields. But they are only two. I think there are out there thousands of startups with few or no success.
Sometimes I have serious doubts about the viability of pure web based businesses. It is a very competitive field. Is it any easier in real "first world" ventures? Maybe not, I don't know. The business model of having thousands of users and pageviews to make it sustainable and make a living out of it, or the other one of charging the users, freemium ... I have lots of doubts, I'm afraid.
Currently, our process goes like this: - We have an idea. We think it's genius! we discuss and become enthusiastic. - We start researching the market to see if there are similar things around. SimpleSpark is a good place to start. - After some research it becomes clear that we are no pioneers. The idea is always done already. Sometimes the idea has been done exactly as we thought (not only the general concept is similar). Then, we check how successful these startups are. They are implementing our idea (it was ours!!!!!). - The research has another side effect, as you start to realize the dimensions to the task. Things are always more complicated that we thought. This, as members of the microwave generation, is painful and difficult to accept. I feel discouraged. - Then we have another idea and the cycle starts again.
The whole cycle usually takes up to two weeks.
Of course, there is fear involved as if you are going to implement something, you really have to believe in it, and finding the right idea seems to be important if you are going to commit yourself to the task of bringing it up to life. I am fully aware that this cannot go on, as otherwise we won't be doing anything and just losing time.
Gut feeling
On the other hand, I must say that the best decisions in life may not come after a full research and analysis of all data available, but following gut instinct instead.
Get some data, let your brain process it in background and it will eventually come up with a "gut feeling". That is how I decided to go to London for the first time 3 years ago, and how now I am starting to work part-time to devote the rest of my time in our startup.
I'll jump into the pool, and think about how cold the water is when it is too late. It won't be that bad, I'm sure.
Netvibes is my favourite website, my Start (Home) Page and I use it all the time.
It is one of those pages that allows you to have all your RSS feeds and other widgets/gadgets neatly arranged.
Basically a gadget is a box you can add to your personalized page (or blog or whatever). There are thousands of gadgets, with functionality as diverse as 'Weather' or 'Stock Exchange', 'Mail', 'News feed from NYTimes' etc.
There are competitors around. The biggest search engines start in an advantageous position. iGoogle, MyYahoo, MyAOL, Live.com have great audiences, so redirecting traffic from their traditional start page to the customizable one is easy. This has indeed a side effect, as their userbase numbers may be misleading, many people have a google account but this doesn't mean they actually modify actively their iGoogle start page.
I would divide the competitors in two categories, and show some graphs according to Alexa:
As we can see from the graphs, yahoo and google are close competitors in the market of the big ones, reflecting their position in other areas.
In the market of the small ones, Netvibes is the clear winner, although PageFlakes shows signs of strength, and it is showing to be very innovative, allowing users to share their personalized pages. Here and here it is suggested that this is a move that both PageFlakes and Netvibes will undertake eventually, in order to assault the 'Social' market where established sites as MySpace and Facebook live now.
In future posts I will try to further analyze this market, and the strenghts and weaknesses of each company.
I cannot concentrate properly in several things at a time. Some brain studies suggest that women can. I might need to get more in contact with my feminine side.
Soon, in October, I will start working part-time, so part of the day will still be devoted to my old office job, while the rest of the time I will start starting up our Startup with Don Quixote.
Study case: During the last weeks I was unfocused, disperse. I was thinking of my startup while working, then thinking -of rather feeling guilty - of my work while working on the startup. And of course, every five minutes checking my multiple email accounts (gmail, hotmail and work one) and Facebook. Luckily, I use Netvibes as my home page so checking all this wasn't that bad. Add to this checking out throughout the day the latest posts in my favourite blogs, the latest news in my favourite newspapers, my sacred Dilbert and mobuzz... What do I become beyond being a geek (we prefer to be called technophiles)? I become a veeery unproductive person. Add to this a sprinkle of perfectionism and you get a massive amount of stress. Remember a perfectionist is not person who does everything perfectly, but one who suffers and gets anxious when something he/she has to do is not perfect.
From the stressed unproductive geek to the highly productive and mentally healthy technophile in easy to use steps (try this at home and tell me how it goes):
1. Do all that one-off stuff In the morning, take 30 min to do all your daily stuff that happens only once (like Dilbert).
2. Check less, live more Checking email for a geek is like smoking for Humphrey Bogart. Essential. However, try to check less, and surprisingly your quality of life goes up. I was inspired by The 4 hour work week by Tim Ferriss.
3. In the morning, my job In the morning, I will do my job. I won't answer emails related to the startup, I wont have startup calls. And I will try to think of my job only. For getting focus, try the dashes technique for instance. Or this funny Instant Boss program I just found -while procrastinating, of course-.
4. In the afternoon (and possibly beyond), the startup Guess what goes here.
5. Time for yourself, away from the computer Life is short. Go out, see the sun (unless you happen to live in London). Talk to humans. Enjoy.
Note: I did this post is supposedly work time. It won't happen again, I swear! I am a new man, blablabla.
Recently we have changed our area of interest to video on internet (why not!)
We haven't been posting for a while, so I will try to start doing it again somehow regularly. 
London again, dark, foggy, cloudy and cold as Monet painted it, but without a trace of that gloomy light. 
With Ruby on rails, you can develop anything in two weeks.
We have talked before about the 
On the other hand, I must say that the best decisions in life may not come after a full research and analysis of all data available, but following gut instinct instead. 
I cannot concentrate properly in several things at a time. Some brain studies suggest that women can. I might need to get more in contact with my feminine side. 
