uite often, entrepreneurs build their product first before coming up with a price. Here's an interesting article on why we should do the reverse. Determine the price first then try to justify it. This is makes a lot of sense for those of you who sells your product online.
wrong: build something and then figure out how much you can charge. right: choose your desired price, then figure out how to justify it. -- Amy Hoy (@amyhoy)
A leaked 28-page internal memo in 1991 - written by then-head of Disney's film studios, Jeffrey Katzenberg about why and how the company can recapture the magic. Long but worth the read.
It's been a while since I last posted anything but this TED talk is just so inspiring that I had to share it with everyone
Are you going to chase after your passion? You will most likely fail unless....
In recent months, I've been reading a couple of really interesting books. They range from Steve Jobs' biography, a book on how to generate your business model, Michael Lewis's Boomerang on the European Sovereign Debt Crisis and the grand design of universe by Stephen Hawking. The book that I've found to be the most insightful and a must-read for entrepreneurs out there is The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. It's so good that I've put in at the No. 1 spot on my books page.
The great insight that Eric had about startup was the goal to learn as much as you can in the shortest amount of time possible. You do this by conducting experiments to tests your hypothesis. He called this validated learning.
In the spirit of Lean Startup, we are conducting a simple market survey to gather some information and validate certain assumptions we have for our mobile budgeting app. If you got a few minutes to spare, help us out by completing Budgetarian's survey. Thanks!
Back in August, I've mentioned about all the things we've done so far this year, but nothing could have prepared us for the crazy month of November. On November 4th, we had our fourth and biggest Webcamp KK ever. With the support from SATA, we flew in 3 awesome speakers from KL. Premesh Chandran (MalaysiaKini CEO, Allstars.my), Kamal Fariz (Founder of Bitfluent & Fluentspace) and Wu Han (Chief Designer of Mindvalley, Founder of Webcamp KL).
The day after, John and I joined Sabah Got Ideas, a pitching competition organized by SATA. This was the Kota Kinabalu District level and we finished second to enter the finals. 2 weeks later, at the finals, the unthinkable happened. We managed to finish in the top 6 for 20k.
Our pitch was about a mobile budgeting app dubbed 'Wife in your pocket'. For all the insights and lessons we learned, check out my previous post on how to craft a memorable pitch.
Then on the final weekend of November, an old friend of mine, Edham Arief together with the support of Sabah Computer Society organized our first ever Hackathon in KK. We were tasked to build a working application in 24 hours. Our team (John , Isaac and I) finished first with the app (CityQuest) that rewards you for exploring the city.
To end the month with a bang, on the last day of November, we attended the Sabah ICT Month Gala Night to receive the prizes for Sabah Got Ideas and Hackathon. Crazy month indeed...
Recently, we (John and I) joined Sabah Got Ideas (a pitching competition organized by SATA) and we unexpectedly ended up in the top 6. That was awesome! Something else was awesome too. We realized that our pitch was one of the more memorable ones. Some refer to us as the guys who are building the second wife. Another one even ask if it could replace his real wife.
We pitched what we dubbed a 'Wife in your pocket'. It's a mobile budgeting application that's a little different than the rest. We want you to consult it before purchasing anything similar to asking your wife for permission to buy the latest gadget.
Of course, I wouldn't say we are an expert at pitching as this is only our second time trying to present our ideas to the world. But I do want to share what I think were important factors that made our pitch memorable.
These are just some of the points you should keep in mind when preparing your next pitch. Pitching isn't science so there are many ways to deliver a memorable one. Happy pitching!
Stumbled upon this interesting talk by Professor Philip Zimbardo on how our perspective of time affects our health, well-being and work.
Are you past, present or future oriented?
As you all know, we have lost the greatest inventor of our time. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple and creator of the Mac, iPhone and iPad has passed away. Like many, I've been reading a lot about Jobs' inspiring journey. There's a particular interview with him by Playboy that reminds me on how different he sees the world compare to the rest of us.
When answering a question on why would someone take the leap of faith and buy a 3000 dollar Macintosh, he said this.
PB: Then for now, aren't you asking home-computer buyers to invest $3000 in what is essentially an act of faith?
SJ: In the future, it won't be an act of faith. The hard part of what we're up against now is that people ask you about specifics and you can't tell them. A hundred years ago, if somebody had asked Alexander Graham Bell, "What are you cooing to be able to do with a telephone?" he wouldn't have been able to tell him the ways the telephone would affect the world.
He didn't know that people would use the telephone to call up and find out what movies were playing that night or to order some groceries or call a relative on the other side of the globe. But remember that the first public telegraph was inaugurated in 1844. It was an amazing breakthrough in communications. You could actually send messages from New York to San Francisco in an afternoon.
People talked about putting a telegraph on every desk in America to improve productivity. But it wouldn't have worked. It required that people learn from this whole sequence of strange incantations, Morse code, dots and dashes, to use the telegraph. It took about 40 hours to learn. The majority of people would never learn how to use it.
So fortunately, in the 1870s, Bell filed the patents for the telephone. It performed basically the same function as the telegraph but people already knew how to use it. Also, the neatest thing about it was that besides allowing you to communicate with just words, it allowed you to sing.
PB: Meaning what?
SJ: It allowed you to intone your words with meaning beyond the simple linguistics. And we're in the same situation today. Some people are saying that we ought to put an IBM PC on every desk in America to improve productivity. It won't work. The special incantations you have to learn this time are the "slash q-zs" and things like that.
The manual for WordStar, the most popular word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel––one that reads like a mystery to most people. They're not going to learn slash q-z any more than they're going to learn Morse code.
That is what Macintosh is all about. It's the first "telephone" of our industry. And, besides that, the neatest thing about it, to me, is that the Macintosh lets you sing the way the telephone did. you don't simply communicate words, you have special print styles and the ability to draw and add pictures to express yourself.
If I were to analyze why telephone is such a big leap forward compared to telegraph, I probably would talk about how it is much more efficient and faster because you are transmitting voice messages instead of just dashes and dots. Or I could say how it's more usable and easily adoptable since there's practically no learning curve.
But Steve Jobs sees the potential of telephone way beyond the specifications (speed) or even the experience of using it. He realized that the fact telephone is able to transmit our voice, not just words but the tone too, changes everything. This means that we are able to express ourselves when transmitting our messages. We are not just sending words over copper wires but also our own interpretation, touch and take on the meaning of our words.
If there's only one thing I could learn from Steve, it would be his insight, vision and foresight on how technology can change our lives. It is sad that such a great visionary had his time here cut short but what he did with it makes all of us feel so insignificant.
Thank you for everything, Steve. I will try to stay hungry and foolish.
Even though I spend most of my professional career as a software developer, I do have interest in web design. I have also done some design work for clients and Flexnode's own sites. Since I couldn't get someone else to present at Webcamp KK so I decided to try it myself. Here are the slides and a ton of useful links for web design. I'm glad I decided to do this because of the sheer amount of things I've learned in the process. Hopefully, you'll find something useful here.
You can also download the pdf version of the slides.
After about 8 months into this year (2011), it feels that we at Flexnode did a lot of stuff but yet seems like we aren't really moving forward. Here's a short recap for 2011 so far.
There's still 4 months left before the year is over and hopefully there will be more awesome stuff in store for us. The next 2 months will be exciting as we are going to work with a client in KL on an interesting project.
How's the year been treating you so far?
