Lazyant

Ten Reasons Why Building a Startup is Like Riding a Motorcycle

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 10:57:00 -0500

Hello,

You probably know me as the ninja rockstar founder of social media local coupon friend sharing payment mobile startup really-er.ly

This morning while doing zen meditation at my stand-up desk a sudden realization struck me like a Techcrunch mention: Building Startups is like riding a motorcycle.

I’ve never ridden a motorcycle but I’m a seasoned startup entrepreneur (after all, I start feeling old at 23 surrounded my these younger SV wanabees and my extensive 6 month experience in my startup allows me to mentor early-stage startups).

Here are the reasons why building a startup is like riding a motorcycle:

You must train your mind to do things that are counter-intuitive to your body; what’s best for your startup may not be what you feel like doing now. In a motorcycle you have the countersteering technique for example, where you push the handlebar in the direction you want to go. At the beginning you can’t believe it’s going to work and you have to train your body to just trust and let go.
You have to hit obstacles head-on. In a motorcycle as in a startup is frequently best just to hit that obstacle in the road head on. Sure, you prepare for it as best as you can but instead of taking the problem at an angle (which makes it worse) you just attack your biggest problem right on.
Sometimes accelerating and swerving is better than breaking. We see a problem ahead and sometimes we tend to prepare too much for it, worry about it and as result the issue becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Often is better to quickly swerve or even accelerate to avoid the problem.
You are leading the pack but you are still alone. When riding in a group you are leading and therefore setting the pace for your people, and even if you are in the same group you are riding alone in your journey.
By obsessing about the destination you forget about the trip. Remember to stop and exercise periodically. Also stopping and pausing for a bit will let you check the map and the course you are taking.
When riding with a passenger, you both have to lean. If you have a co-founder this person needs to follow your movements on the motorcycle and lean into the curve with you, otherwise the motorcycle/startup becomes unstable.
You can crash at any moment. But you still ride. Riding is what you do, it’s your life. There are always risks but you have to manage those risks.
It will rain but you go on. If being uncomfortable because a bit of cold, or you feel it’s too hot, then riding a bike or building a startup is probably not for you.
If it keeps raining maybe is time to go home and plan another trip. You prepare for your trip, you soldier on when it rained but maybe riding a bike in Alaska in winter is not such a good idea: time to go home, regroup and pivot.

(Challenge accepted )

Mind hack: get yourself to sleep

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 14:39:08 -0400

I had trouble getting to sleep when I was younger and I was facing a test or something in the morning. Besides the usual no caffeine/moderate exercise/moderate eating etc good advice I came up with a “mind hack” inspired by Richard Feynman.

Summarizing: try to re-play or think about dreams that you had before. If you don’t remember any, think of a story that looks like a dream (with impossible things happening etc).

The trick is that when we transition between awake and asleep we have a train of thought and suddenly there are dream-like things like surprising jumps in the thoughts, impossible occurrences etc (this is what Feynman remarked and I observed too), so I try to recreate that state.

It worked for me.

Web servers of the most visited sites in the Internet

Fri, 28 May 2010 21:29:00 -0400

Google has published the 1000 most-visited sites on the web (they mention “Keep in mind that the list excludes adult sites, ad networks, domains that don’t have publicly visible content or don’t load properly, and certain Google sites.”)

An HN user got the response headers from these sites and I just parsed the given file and used Google charts to generate this images (yes, the default colors are meh and I know pie charts are bad)

Keep your computer clean with virtualization

Tue, 11 May 2010 10:44:16 -0400

Keep your computer clean with virtualization

I don’t like to just re-post something but this is too...

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:49:00 -0400

I don’t like to just re-post something but this is too good to pass up: contradictions in the Bible.

My MacBook power supply cable went up in flames. Same with a...

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:43:11 -0400

My MacBook power supply cable went up in flames. Same with a previous Dell notebook. WTF?

Mythbusters: they could use a scientist

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:25:00 -0500

The Mythbusters guys could use a science guy.

I’m all for practice instead of theory and I love this show but there are some instances where a scientist on the show with some back-of-the-envelope calculations could have predicted some of the experiments’ outcome (heck, I did).

Let’s see:

Checking if a coin (a dime or quarter, can’t remember) dropped from the Empire State can kill someone
Testing if you can kill or hurt someone by throwing a playing card
Checking if you get more wet if you run in the rain, instead of walking
Replicating a story about a Chinese king and a chair loaded with powder rockets

The first two can easily be calculated to be mostly harmless due to the low mass of the objects (coin and card). I mean Chris Ferguson can cut carrots throwing cards but that’s it.

The fact that you get more more if you run under the rain instead of walking, that can be proven with some math, a freshman in Physics should be able to do that.

For the rocket chair, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that the thing had no control at all; all the rockets cannot be positioned exactly a the same angle, with the same power and be ignited exactly at the same time, so any variation and the thing will go like when you let go a party balloon and that’s what happened.

Things I don't need

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:49:00 -0500

I got a suggestion from Amazon, it was a “watch mover” and for a moment I pondered if it was something different from what my initial thought was but no, a watch mover moves watches, what a surprise.

So are you kidding me? what kind of person has a movement-powered watch, doesn’t wear it but needs it to be ticking? Oh well, I guess somebody with 10 expensive watches who picks a different one on different days and can’t be bothered with setting the right time when putting them on.

I also saw in a toy store a cup stacker game. Can you believe? just a bunch of plastic cups, for the people who don’t have the imagination of getting them at Wall-Mart or whatever. But the jaw-dropper happened when I saw a rock, paper, scissor game, wtf?

I get a gratifying feeling sometimes when walking around a big store and thinking “you know what, I don’t need almost anything of this”.

This is fruit and not the tasteless stuff we get in Canada

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:08:00 -0500

This is fruit and not the tasteless stuff we get in Canada

"You're a joke, go do some real police work"

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 10:38:00 -0500

Teen arrested in Australia for playing ‘offensive’ rap music from car WTF?

Support Disaster Relief in Chile

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:33:19 -0500

On February 27, an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck Chile. Join recovery efforts mobilizing around the world to assist earthquake victims. Your donation will help disaster victims rebuild their lives and their communities.

http://www.google.com/relief/chileearthquake/

People’s favorite paintings (2)

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:06:00 -0500

People’s favorite paintings (2)

People’s favorite paintings, inspired in a Reddit thread

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:04:00 -0500

People’s favorite paintings, inspired in a Reddit thread

Who has given more to Haiti?

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:43:03 -0500

Canada on top 3 in all categories f*ck yeah!

http://infobeautiful.s3.amazonaws.com/haiti_550_2.gif

Laptop Batteries: I just take them out

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:59:00 -0500

For those of us that use their laptop as desktop replacements, should we leave the laptop plugged-in or should we pull the plug?

My battery life has been very poor in two different laptops (a Dell and a MacBook) when using as regular computer. I tried to use the standard advise of depleting from time to time the battery and charging completely etc to no avail; after 3 - 6 months the battery life will go to down to about an hour and after one or to years it will last only a few minutes.

My new battery policy? I don’t use it. I just took it out. Some place recommended leaving it at 40% capacity and storing it in a cool place, so that’s what I do in my house and I just take the battery along when traveling just in case.

Ha ha, it only took One day

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:46:00 -0500

Yesterday I predicted “Some “pro-family” (homophobic) Republican or pastor in the US who is a staunch defender of the “sanctity of marriage” (whatever that is, since they don’t oppose divorce) will be caught having a sexual relationship with another man.”, well this is just too easy: Roy Ashburn ARRESTED: Anti-Gay State Sen. Got DUI After Leaving Gay Nightclub, Sources Say

In all fairness leaving a gay night club doesn’t mean that he’s having a gay relationship. Also the news is actually sad at several levels.

The Best Song Lyrics in the World

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:36:00 -0500

And the winners are:

TROLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Prisencolinensinainciusol

Kalluri Vaanil

Predictions for the new year

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:58:00 -0500

Actually this works for basically any year.

There will be some big disaster caused by Nature (earthquakes, hurricane, volcanos etc)
There will be some big disaster in transportation: airplane or train crash. Of course if the train crash is in some distant place then we’ll know only if there are hundreds of victims.
Yet more compelling evidence of evolution will be discovered, yet the creationist will dismiss them based on a collection of stories written by cattle herders hundreds of years ago.
New intriguing evidences regarding the role of virus in life will be discovered. Actually I’l go out on a limb and drop in here my hypothesis that the beginning of life wasn’t a ‘miracle’ (as in a very improbable occurrence) but actually given sufficient initial conditions for life, life will occur inevitably (this will also mean we’re not alone in the universe). More and more extremophiles are being found, if life hangs on to anything perhaps it also just starts unavoidably.
Palestinian terrorists will kill x innocent Israelis, in retaliation Israeli ~~terrorists~~ defence forces with better weapons will kill about three times x innocent Palestinians. European countries will protest meekly without doing anything and the US will express once more their commitment to Israel and their right to self-defence.
Some loon in the US will open fire in a crowded place. Guns don’t kill people, people with guns kill people and a law-abiding citizen can be very law-abiding until he starts gunning people down. There will be again the eternal discussion between gun-control and pro-gun people when actually both of them can be wrong (or right); given the amount of armed people it may not make a lot of difference one way or the other. The outcome of a dangerous situation involving guns is unpredictable, so we don’t know if in the USA it’s better to have students with guns in classrooms (they can fend off an attacker but they can also kill somebody by mistake or someone may snap etc) or just ban guns in the campus. In Europe the decision is easier; since there are way less guns and they are controlled is better to stay that way.
Some “pro-family” (homophobic) Republican or pastor in the US who is a staunch defender of the “sanctity of marriage” (whatever that is, since they don’t oppose divorce) will be caught having a sexual relationship with another man.
More discoveries in the brain will support the idea that we have less free will (or none at all) that we think.
In summary, the world will accommodate my world view.

Why am I not surprised?

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:50:00 -0500

From the Globe and Mail: Immigration Minister pulled gay rights from citizenship guide, documents show . The funny thing is that in 5, 10 or 30 years gay marriage will be as natural (and rightly so) as interracial marriage or woman’s suffrage.

To be fair, next day’s update: Jason Kenney on gay-rights removal: ‘I did not do such a thing’

Testing 1,2,3

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:34:00 -0500

Very original title!

Deciding between ycombinator’s Posterous and tumblr, I guess I don’t need so much the “post form email” feature and tumblr has an iPhone app. I like to have a more personalized design.