Teaching Myself Python - Part 1

I've always wanted to be a better coder. However, it's in direct opposition with my passion, which is to be an entrepreneur. The problem is, I only learned how to code in order to build something interesting enough to convince a better coder to work along side me, for nothing but a mutual dream (and some stock, not yet worth anything to speak of). But, one can only sit beside great coders for so long, without being drawn back in.

Previously, I've experimented with a few languages, but my core development has been in PHP, with my theoretical background coming from high school AP classes, which at the time, were taught in C++ (if that doesn't date me : P ).  But, for the purposes of this blog series, I'm 'learning' Python.

The good news is, I've started already.  The purpose of blogging about it is to share my experience and plans, as well as get encouragement and guidance.  Hopefully, you all will keep me honest and on course.

Now, why Python?  I wish there was a deep, meaningful reason. But, there's not. I'm learning Python because it's concise and powerful...and all the coolest kids I know do it. However, I did read a Quora post, What are some signs that someone is an inexperienced Python programmer? that helped spark a memory.  This question, and responses, showed me how powerful Python is, in terms of saying a lot with very little code; it reminded me of the power of recursion.  As mentioned, I come from a for(int x = 0, x=string.length(), x++){ if(conditional)...} kinda world...so, if I keep at it, I'll have to write a lot less code.  Less code makes the base easier to maintain and easier to read (all good things).  Plus, it has it's own command line shell.

So, the plan.  I'm doing LPTHW (on lesson 39 atm), Python Challenge (Challenge 4) & I'm replicating the programs found on Python.org SimplePrograms, varying them slightly (On program 8).  I'm also using Python to write the middleware on a side project, failrecovery.com (though i'm working on this with a friend).

If you all have any thoughts on my plan, words of wisdom or additional resources, feel free to leave me a comment.

With me luck.

So, I Built The MVP, Now What?

In my previous post, Where Ideas Come From, I talked about an idea that came to me.  Without re-hatching the post, I was left with this idea that every social complaint is should be an actionable customer-service ticket, and making it public could put some social pressure on brands to pay attention.

So, I built it.  You can check out failrecovery.com and let me know what you think in the comments below.  The MVP is truly simple.  We have a small number companies to choose from and a list of top, most complained about companies.  I posted it on HN, sent out a few tweets and posted on my social networks.  So far, traffic is pretty abysmal.  Don't people care which companies ignore their social media complaints?  Don't companies care about knowing how many people are pissed off at them on Twitter?  I think they do.  So, now what?  Why isn't the traffic coming hands over fist?

Obviously, we have made ourselves relevant.  It's that age old question, "How are you going to get users?"  The way I see it, we only have a few options that really make sense.  One, we can increase the number of companies we are collecting information on, or two, we can directly create some way to motivate the customer or the company to engage with the site.  But, only one of those options has any chance of getting us users.

One thing that previous projects have taught me is NOT to work on creating a pretty website or extensive backend stuff / re-writes...when you don't have something people want to use, don't polish the turd; find a way to make them care.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, go with the option that has a chance at making your product more relevant to your users.

Where Ideas Come From

I remember interviewing for a position and I was asked, in reference to a startup project I was working on full-time, "That's a GREAT idea.  How do I know it's not going to hit in 1 month and you're going to leave?"  To which I answered, "You don't.  But, it's not about finding the right idea.  Once you start looking at the world through an entrepreneurial lens, you see them everywhere."

Everyone has problems.  But, entrepreneurs can quickly identify which ones are general enough to make a business out of and which ones are too niche.  They also see minimum viable products that provide value and don't take a ton of time / effort / money to build.

That brings me something that happened a few weeks ago.  I don't recall what I was doing, but I got a text message stating something like, "You just won $1000 gift card to walmart, click-thru to this url (which had walmart in the name) to redeem your prize."  I whois looked-up the domain and found that it was owned by some sort of hosting / advertising company and this was clearly some sort of lead-gen scam or worse.  I put together a 140 character response and took to my twitter account.  I sent tweets of a possible scam to various @walmart accounts and heard nothing.  I was so shocked, not because I didn't hear back (though that made me upset), but because I never considered how a company that big would ever manage my message, regardless of how important it was.  

I thought about the idea for a while and this past weekend, I started building failrecovery.com.  I don't know whether or not this will turn into anything, but that's where my inspiration came from.  So my advice to anyone looking for an idea is to become an observer.  Keep your eyes open, talk to your friends, co-workers, whoever.  Eventually, if you are paying attention and channeling your inner-entrepreneur, and idea will come out of nowhere, like a phishing / link-bait scam.

Is This Offer Fair - The Real Risk of Joining A Startup

It's no secret, startups are sexy again.  I've been getting calls from friends and helping them evaluate offers.  Since I just finished reading Mark Suster's TechCrunch article on dilution, which you should also read,  I'm writing this post to illustrate my POV on equity, as an entrepreneur-who one day hopes to be hiring and divvying it out.

My framework is loose, but valid in explaining non-investor risk among *venture-backed startup* operators (in both actual and perceived terms), so here goes.

*Venture-back startups are, by definition, companies that have to have to return 10X or better to be considered successful*

Founders:

The greatest risk applies to the founding team.  They have left real jobs, are working unpaid (for some period of time), get to draw a significantly less than market rate salary upon raising a seed round, don't have cash on-hand to cover salaries and operational expenses for more than 3-6 months (if lucky) and are compensated for their risk with more lottery tickets, so long as they stay around and keep hitting milestone.  If you don't get passed the seed stage and go broke, the experience gained is only incrementally valuable to a handful of companies in the market at large.

Employees hired after the first priced round:

This area is dicey, because you need top talent and can't pay premium prices.  As a founder, I couldn't hire someone that early without telling them upfront how many months I can guarantee their below-market salary;  the longer I can pay them, the less risk.  There is a resume risk b/c the startup is (usually) unknown and unproven and there is an opportunity cost, which incrementally tick up the amount of risk the first (few) hires are assuming, which has to be fairly compensated.  However, most early hires are exposed to valuable experience and are assuming titles that garner both respect and greater consideration / compensation if & when they leave the startup venture, not to mention they get veteran consideration in the startup community if they choose to move on to their own venture.  And oh yeah, institutional investors are really quick to snatch up these guys and move them to other portfolio companies.

Admittedly so, quantifying and rewarding these hires is tricky.  However, generally they are brought on for comparable, if not higher, equity to the packages received by seasoned / experienced, VP-level post A / B round...which sounds like a decent benchmark for fair.


Engineer 6+ or anyone that comes in after a $3-5 A round:

Effectively, you have no significant risk, besides a below-market rate salary risk, if you are getting paid below market rate at all.  And, since your equity is priced, you know you are being compensated for the gap and an average bonus as soon as you do the math on the equity offer...but you are also getting a better work environment, solving problems you are passionate about and greater marketability later.  So, I'm not sure what the bitching is about?

Most of the posts I see or personal inquiries I get seem to revolve around perceive risk and not real risk, since most people fall into that 6+ or post $3-5 A round category.  Just because the company may not be around, you will most likely have a job for 12-18 months (minimum).  You are not entitled to get rich, a big nest egg, or anything in return (beyond the aforementioned non-monetary compensation). In the likely event that you're not apart of a home run, you worked at a really cool small business.  Newsflash, if my argument doesn't convince you a startup is worth joining, don't do it.

For everyone that is joining a company at or around series B level...that's not a startup.

Here's the good news, if the company hits the home run that it promised it would when it accepted VC money, everyone gets paid more then they were actually worth...that's the whole point.  Equity is gravy...the sooner you get it, the better off you'll be.

If you have ever seriously entertained a thought like, "If I can get a bigger piece, in the event of a not so hot exit, I'll still get PAID", while negotiating with as engineer 6+ / $3-$5 mil A round, don't make the leap. You just don't get it and the mentality won't help the team that's extending you an offer.

As you saw from the infographic in the aforementioned article, deals aren't usually optimized for not-so-hot exits...and they shouldn't be.  But then again, equity is designed to motivate for the BIG EXIT.  In the event of a fire-side sale or flat exit, you'll be lucky to be made whole in-cash, but the experience gained will ease the pain.  But then again, you knew going in what the risks were.

Facebook Let's You Increase Security, If You Don't Use Chrome

Edit: After being schooled for shooting off a hasty post, this clearly isn't a Google specific problem.  I will keep up the previous post and Mea Culpa as a reminder for next time.  However, the larger issue is that in order to enable this security feature, which could cause you to lock yourself out of FB, instead of warning the user why this could cause problems or building a forgot your password recovery tool, FB chose to create require me NOT to clear my cookies.  It is a little ironic that by enabling device level security the trade off is allowing FB to track my activity via web/mobile device?

Facebook and Google don't like each other.  It's nothing new and it isn't going away.  In a big dollar, Highlander world, you do what you have to do.

Today, I was reviewing my privacy settings after the new FB release and I wanted to enable "Login Approvals", under the general settings>security tab.  After all, it's probably a good practice to ask for credentials when logging in from an unrecognized device.  By default, this setting is set to "Approval is not required".

After checking the box to enable the feature, I got this message:

After closing the box, the setting remains unchecked.  

I get it, I really do.  Facebook makes privacy hard because they don't believe we need it & it's bad for business.  I was unfriending people today and laughed when I realized FB didn't use check boxes to allow me to unfriend in mass.  To make it worse, I had to mouseover a box, scroll to the bottom of the list which was one space from a list of ~4 options, click & then confirm (via pop-up) each unfriend.  It's no secret security settings have always been unnecessarily difficult, but saying, "Want security?  Can't use Chrome!"  Sure, it's a swipe at Google, but it's a big FUCK YOU to all of us...your users...the ones that made you what you are today.  

Message to FB: I'm apart of the vocal minority that care about my privacy and browser choice, so ignoring me doesn't seem like a big deal.  There are 650+ million other users, who you are trying to earn revenue off of and most of them don't care.  But know this, I'm on every new social network, evangelizing and seeding the nascent community, just like I did for you FB.  I'm not asking for default privacy, b/c you err on the side of openness and that's your choice.  But this kinda shit drives me crazy and keeps me looking for somewhere better.

  

Yahoo! Fix? - It's Not About the Chief, It's About the Indians

Yahoo is all the rage again, this time it's b/c Carol Bartz is out and everyone has an opinion on how to fix Yahoo's problem...For all of those who think a product visionary (Steve Jobs) is the answer...it's not about the chief, it's about the indians.  The tech community talks a lot of shit about how Yahoo! is done.  They aren't.  They've got the biggest email user-base in the US (where they do well in content), are in fantastic positions in several markets abroad (in content and email) and make tons of money.  The next CEO needs to figure out how to retain, excite and recruit guys like Paul Tarjan (Yahoo! Resignation Video below).

Approximately 2.5 years ago, every day TechCrunch was flooded with who's leaving Yahoo! now articles.  Some people left for Facebook/other startups, some founded their own ventures and others jumped to other tech giants.  People jumping around isn't new or necessarily news worthy.  After all, certain types of people always leave big companies, they just don't fit and can't stay.  Their thrill comes from figuring out solutions, as opposed to executing/maintaining established systems.  With some of those types, even if you have cool projects in the pipeline, a lot them just like changing things up or want to launch their own venture.  On the other side of the spectrum, many people will never leave the company they work for.  They are good / great at their job, settled into their responsibilities and work-to-live, as opposed to those who live-to-work.  There is nothing wrong with either types of employees or their professional proclivities.  What we saw with Yahoo!, and the sign that their culture was broken, was when the movers-and-shakers, the creative/quirky people, the ones who epitomize your culture (the stereotypical company XYZ employee we refer to when we talk about your company) and those management wanted to cultivate into future company leaders, up and left, in droves.  That exodus was the sign the culture was broken and no one with the power to do so cared enough to fix it.  When the culture that brought them to Yahoo! was gone and it became clear it wasn't returning, everything got tainted and they could only stomach it so long, before they left.  

What's left is a money making machine, that's not beyond repair.  However, greatness comes from your companies culture and Yahoo! has to get that back internally, before they can project an external image that attracts the types of people that left, back in the future.

How can they do that?  They have to break a few eggs.  Yahoo! has a lot of talented engineers, why not empower and motivate them to start solving problems?  Yahoo needs to spend a small fortune (how about the $10 million they don't have to pay Bartz for disparaging them?) on an all-hands event that expresses their appreciation for their current employees,  rallies the troops, forces product managers to experiment on their products and ends with announcing a new initiative that rewards and allows individuals to incubate Yahoo!'s future products.  Then, hold a small-group Hackathon, see what floats to the top and support the most promising projects.  Then, hold the hackathons every month (keep them themed.  One month is new features for existing products, then mobile, then deals, then whatever) and keep supporting the best projects.  That will build morale, buzz and excitement & that's what'll attract others to Yahoo!.  Oh yeah, you'll probably get some great products / features out of it too (and don't forget to tip your innovators).

Kinda sounds like a place I'd like to work.

  

The Law of Sexual Chemistry & Google+ - My Review

The tribal knowledge surrounding the casual dating scene is filled with wisdom.  For example:

1) Gain Their Attention - successfully approaching a potential interest and carrying on an interesting, balanced and engaging conversation with her and her friends.

2) Stay Out of the Friend Box - use appropriate touching to make your intentions known to the person of interest w/o freaking them out.

3) Separate the Sheep from the Herd - if interest is reciprocal, a soft suggestion is all that's necessary to get the person one-on-one...keeping rhythm -> would you like to dance, I'm stepping outside for X -> I'll go with you.

Failure to execute on any of the previous steps can be a powerful de-selector, though not impossible to recover from.  However, before any of the aforementioned can come into play, one must address the Law of Sexual Chemistry.  

The Law of Sexual Chemistry states that, "A person of the opposite sex knows instantly whether or not they want to have sex with you."  This law speaks specifically the high correlation between initial attraction and willingness to close the deal and not to whether or not you can overcome a lack of initial animal magnetism (IE: The Art of the Slow Play, The Last Call Exemption, Getting Out of the Friend Box - The Underdog Story).  

What does this have to do with Google+.  Google's nascent attempts in social were akin to the smartest kid in high school going to college.  For those of you still with me...

I won't talk about Orkut b/c I've never used it (I'm US based).

Buzz - This product had a double dose of confidence.  Unfortunately, it felt like Google's answer to twitter...which no one was asking for.  The nerdy kid got the courage to approach the group of girls, led with, "What did you get on your SATs" in hopes they would in turn ask him back and be impress with his 1600.  However, he got 3 faces staring at him and smiling awkwardly and then started to wet himself.  However, after studying the case, Google learned the power of integrating social w/ gmail and what that did to initial user adoption.

Wave - A heavily anticipated next attempt at social, more geared towards social collaboration in a professional environment (my opinion). This was an interesting twist and probably related to a sophisticated understanding of what % of gmail users used gmail for work, as well as an attempt to better position Google's b2b offerings.  The buildup leading to Wave, as well as the types of problems Wave attempted to solve, showed a refinement and understanding of the right type of confidence.  However, upon first logging into Wave, I had no earthly idea what the fuck they wanted me to do with it, I didn't know where to start and whatever problem Wave attempted to solve for me wasn't bad enough for me to invest anymore time into trying to figure out.  After mastering the approach and interesting, casual conversation, the young man started racking up female friends like it's nobody's business, but that's not gonna get your laid. 

Google+ - This offering is different and Google is making sure everyone knows it.  First, it speaks succinctly to the growing feeling that one network is better than nothing, but filtering / grouping is more trouble than it's worth (currently).  The current solution is that we have a professional network, a social network, a short-form / asymmetric content discovery network, etc.  To make matters worse, companies are popping up all the time that want to give us even more networks...politics, health, hobbies, family, close friends, etc.  The average user balances the number of networks they are willing to maintain, with the amount of spam they are willing to sift through.  For most of us, there has been a noticeable degrading return to our existing social experience.  Google+ is trying to be a better way to manage the people in our lives, as well as facilitate more meaningful interaction with those we choose to, when we want to.  The message is clear.  It has become obvious to all parties involved who fancies whom and exactly what his intentions are.

What remains to be seen is whether or not Google+ gets it right.  As someone who is eagerly waiting my invite, watched all the demos and read all the reviews, I have the problem they are trying to solve.  And from what I've heard, I'm not the only one.  After mastering the first two steps, separating the sheep from the heard is the current focus and it doesn't look like it'll be much of  a problem...she's biting her lip and playing with her hair.

However, I couldn't help but notice in the time leading up to the announcement, Google has made some changes.  There has been a noticeable commitment to design.  First, whispers of Google hiring designers,  even better Google Doodles, and visually compelling / meaningful commercials / videos.    Then, changes to plugin placements in my gmail, which let me know that my gmail can be the center of my online experience.  Finally, the screen shots of Google+ & demo videos with simplicity, color, panache and an impressive UX...that is both visually appeals to and leads the user through the experience (and name-dropping the guy who is responsible for it).  No one is really sure exactly when it happened, but the socially awkward, nerdy, skinny guy put on some muscle, got a new wardrobe and his confidence projects in a way that people respond to.

If you've made it this far...this analogy has gotten a bit uncomfortable.  All that's left to figure out is if he's gonna close the deal...Methinks he might.