TJ's Kaleidoscope

MacBook Pro and Stability

Hello, my name is TJ and I’m a recovering PC.

As you may know, I have had nothing but problems (documented here and here) with Windows, both Vista and XP. Finally, after the third crash and the third time having to rebuild my hard drive, I decided to make the switch to Apple. I’ll have more on that later, but this little thing I just had to share.

 

I’d like to bring your attention to the little timer in the middle of the screenshot (the Mac by the way, makes it super easy to take screenshots). That’s my VPN connection, and it’s been continuously connected for 57 hours, 34 minutes, and 25 seconds. This was virtually impossible in my Windows machine (even in the uber stable—by Windows standards—XP). Without exception, the connection would randomly drop, and I’d have to reconnect. Not only that, it’s been more than a week since I’ve rebooted my Mac. In the windows world, if I didn’t reboot every couple of days, I knew I was headed for trouble.

This brings me to my first observation about Mac and the need of a stable OS. In all fairness, Vista does almost everything that the OS X can, but it does it in such a clumsy way that it’s near impossible to be productive. The best an OS can do is to get out of the way and let you do your work. The OS X, does that very well for part of getting out of the way is being a stable platform.

Quote of the Day

Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works.

                                                                                          --Steve Jobs

Startup Lessons: Passion

I had the good fortune to work with hardworking and passionate people all my career, but I’ll say this, in a startup, passion is not an optional ingredient. It is in fact, essential to survival.

At IBM, I probably put in just as many late nights and weekends, but somewhere deep down I knew that if I didn’t work one weekend, or went home at 5:00 PM one day, the stock’s wasn’t going to tank. However a startup requires hard work at a level of consistency that is impossible to sustain without passion. Startups are run during the week, but built over weekends. Every weekend not spent building, shows up in lost opportunity the very following week. Such sustained efforts are impossible without passion.

Passion gives you hope, makes work it's own reward, and provides the needed focus. On the other hand, hard work without passion is an affront to intelligence, and will die a quick death. This is especially true when building a company for so many things will grind you down, beat you up, that hard work by itself wont have a chance. A startup will dispense with cold efficiency any effort that is abundant in hard work but lacking in passion. There will be so many pitfalls, setbacks, and missteps that you will lose the will to work hard. As I look back at the almost two years with CallFire, and all the ups and downs, I realize what’s kept me going (and still is) is passion--a passion for technology, for problem solving, and for challenges.

Passion, or loving-what-you-do, is hard to describe and probably the reason why this post might make little sense. Passion is emotional, and emotions are hard to put into words, especially so in the confines of a blog.

This post also concludes the first installment of my startup lessons: ignorance, arrogance, and passion. As I said when I first started on this series, these are just my lessons, and a description of my still on-going journey. They are by no means a prescription. Every journey is unique, I'm just sharing mine.

Quote of the Day

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen. 

                                                                     --Frank Lloyd Wright

Do you Buy or Build?

My previous post got Dinesh--one of my business partners at CallFire and I talking about the core argument behind cloud computing.  Do you buy or build software? This is a decades old question in software and a complicated one at that, for the argument can be made either way. Think about it, if integrating your application with the telephone is critical to your business, then you can go one of two routes. You can either say "It's core to my business, so I'm going to build it from the ground up", or you could say, "Because it's core to my business, I'm going to let the experts take care of it, and hold them accountable". Of course, CallFire would encourage the latter. Telephony in all its glory and complexity has been the overriding focus of our lives for more than two years now and we could think of many reasons why letting us worry about managing calls makes a lot sense. There are many objective factors to take into account like cost & quality, however many decision makers overlook the human factor i.e., the teams that will implement these decisions.

 

 

Our own internal decisions have invariably leaned towards build. The way we looked at it, the only way we could perfect the trifecta of quality, growth, and scale was to build our stack from the ground up. I know there are some techies out there that are shaking my head as I'm saying this (and perhaps some competitors snickering), but it works! The overriding reason being the team at the core of this effort. We have a crack group of people that know every aspect of what goes on in our servers. Komnieve is our system architect and asterisk compiler. Punit is our Java code hacker, and resident asterisk coder. Vijesh spends his time at the application, ui, and db layer. What we share is a propensity for lateral thinking. Between these three and myself, we can recompile kernels, deploy on-demand backups, launch complex features, and trace any of the millions of calls that go out of our system. This team has the ability to look at a problem, and figure out how to approach the solution in non-linear ways. In other words, instead of spending time analyzing the problem, figure out the end-goal, and then try anything and everything to get there.  Working with the three of them (and of course, let's not rule out Dinesh, even if he's 'only' marketing), only reaffirms what I've known all my career: You can go to hell and back if you have a great team with you in the trenches.

If you have a similar group amigos, then by all means go ahead and build your telephony stack. We'd like to think we're special, but realize we're hardly unique. However, if you don't have the time or resources to build such a team yourself, then definitely consider this critical aspect of your decision. It's easy to fortify yourself behind elaborate spreadsheets filled with numbers, but in the end it's people that build value.

Quote of the Day

Individual commitment to a group effort — that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

                                                                    --Vince Lombardi

The Secret of Cloud Telephony

Given that at CallFire it’s my job and my obsession, I feel it’s time I talk a bit about cloud telephony.  The term, combined with it’s elder cousin—cloud computing—have become buzz words, and as is usually the case, truth is the first casualty marketing.  Nevertheless, cloud telephony is real. You have only to look at our success as proof of this  idea. Our web presence makes it simple to dial thousands of  phones,  run national Get-Out-The-Vote operations, and create American Idol style call-in numbers all in the matter of minutes.

 

 

 

The secret is creating what Grady Booch calls the illusion of simplicity. It is an illusion because building quality software is essentially complex.  Yet abstracting this complexity from the user is the value we create. For example, any developer can use our API to make calls without ever having to know the first thing about VoIP. This is the true beauty of cloud telephony.  The idea that you can outsource  gargantuan tasks of setting up telecom trunk groups, allocating channels, managing carrier relationships and simply focus on your core bread & butter business. In the end, cloud telephony is about peace of mind, the guarantee that the light will always turn on when you flip that switch, and in the rare cases it doesn’t, you can simply pick up the phone and call (or yell) at someone.

Quote of the Day:

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

                                                             --Leonardo Da Vinci 

Startup Lessons: Arrogance

Entrepreneurs have to have a high degree of arrogance and perhaps the reason why brash, loud, arrogant are some of the popular adjectives when describing them. One of the things I’ve learnt is that you have to possess a certain degree of arrogance to let people know you mean business. Now before you start shaking your head in disagreement and disbelief, let me try and define what I mean by entrepreneurial arrogance.

Arrogance is confidence on crack. There’s a fine line when confidence turns into arrogance and startups straddle that line a lot. Confidence is an function of training, a fundamental belief that you know what needs to get done because you have the right tools and training to do so. Arrogance on the other hand, is confidence in spite of training. It is the belief that you can meet the problem head-on and solve it regardless of sparse your intellectual and financial arsenal maybe. It is the conviction that you are no way less than the other guy who claims to have the solution to the problem you’re trying to solve but won’t show you how.

Arrogance is a also a good way to compensate for size. When at IBM, you had to be humble because you were compensating for being a 800 lb gorilla with an huge arsenal of resources so even the slightest stench of arrogance and you’d put off your customers. In other words you had to speak softly because of the big stick you were inadvertently carrying. However, as a startup you don’t have the same brand recognition, and hence the person on the other side of the table can easily mistake your humility for a lack of confidence. This is both contagious and deadly and must be avoided at all costs.

Keep in mind, that I’m not giving a blank check to arrogance. The willingness to learn from our mistakes and listen to our customers requires a high degree of humility. However, when you’re in a startup you deal with so much C.R.A.P (Crticism, Rejection, Assh*les, Pressure), that just being confident doesn’t cut it. You have to be arrogant enough to shrug it all off and continue to dance to your own music, no matter how off-beat it may sound.

Now, the problem is you can’t be selective with arrogance and perhaps the reason why entrepreneurs get the reputation they have. You cannot turn it on and off at will and more often than not end up overdoing it before you find the balance. I don’t think I have, so if you do find my head is up my butt, do let me know…..nicely.

Quote of the Day

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

                                       -- Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Looking for Deals

I’ve blogged at length many times about Mattias—my colleague from my days at Nissan. The project was a colossal failure, but from it emerged some nice friendships. It’s interesting how camaraderie in a crappy situation can last long after the situation has long past.

Mattias too has started his own little venture called DefinitiveDeals.com—a site that aims to be  your one-stop-shop for deals & promotions for all major online and real-world retailers. If nothing else, it saves you a lot of Google searches and for last-minute shoppers like myself a good place to find deals. For example, I would never had known that Things Remembered had a 10% off sale.

So go ahead and drop him a line, and while you’re at it, wish him happy birthday (March 16).

Quote of the Day:

If you deal in camels, make the doors high.

                                       --Afghan Proverb

Trouble Keeping Your Resolutions?

February is here, the month in which most new year resolutions fall by the wayside. I haven’t made my resolutions public because I want to see how many of them make it past this month. You can see this phenomenon in the gym. January is usually the busiest time for any gym with people all worked-up to workout but by February the traffic dies down to its usual levels. There are many theories and studies as to why this happens, but I think it’s just a question of setting expectations. Yes, the new year is a chance to start things anew, but you are still the same you. So if we don’t change what it is that required the resolution in the first place, that resolution itself isn’t going to have much of a chance.

While it is good to have big goals, what we should be focused on breaking bad habits and creating new ones. As you might suspect, this is easier said than done, for by the time we become self-aware of a habit, it is already well, a habit. Yet it is repeated action that begets habit which in turn creates excellence. The correlations between habit and  excellence has been a lot in the news lately mostly due to Malcolm Gladwell’s latest installment, but also because of recent press coverage on change. One study however, on swimmers and their stratification I believe brings forth all that needs to be said about habits. The study, conducted by Daniel Chambliss in 1989, makes many conclusions, the most prominent being that excellence is mundane. In fact, Chambliss argues that,

Excellence is accomplished through the doing of actions, ordinary in themselves, performed consistently and carefully, habitualized, compounded together, added up over time.

Chambliss argues that competitive swimmers are excellent by repetition. He observed
that the Olympic class swimmer practiced for about the same time as a county
or a league level swimmer, however the Olympic swimmer did things
qualitatively different, focusing on the details and converting them into habit. It was a qualitative improvement, but within the framework of repetition and habitualization.

Now, there are other theories about habits and excellence, and about what drives certain individuals to make excellence itself an habit. Yet, one fact still rings true, all habits start with what we do now in this moment.

Quote of the Day

Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.

                                                    --Robin Williams in Dead Poet’s Society

Startup Lessons: Ignorance

My blog is in danger of going stale due to my schedule-induced blogger’s block. Since life’s been getting in the way, I figured I’ll just blog about life itself. This new series I’m starting is a laundry lists lessons I’ve learnt in the past year and a half at CallFire. It’s not without hesitation that I share these lessons. Not only are they a reflection on my many personal shortcomings but also reflections on a journey that is very much in progress. So take it with a grain of salt, and of course, feel free to disagree.

My first lesson was revealed to me a couple of weeks ago when I was part of a panel discussion at the Bren School’s HiTEC competition kick-off. The panel consisted of Karim El Defrawy and myself and was moderated by Jeff Greenberg. It was a very open and honest discussion about our experiences, mine in running a successful startup, and Karim’s in winning last year’s competition and his subsequent efforts to launch his company.

The hITEC competition tries to foster innovation and entrepreneurship among Bren school students by providing a level of formalism to the creative process. I felt I dropped a minor bombshell when I mentioned that when we started out we didn’t have a clear product spec or a business plan. The focus was on delivering features that our customers would want in a market space that was (and still is) very nascent. All action came from that single focus. It was very short-term, very quick paced, and with little time for long-term vision and mission statements. I guess what surprised the audience the most was the consistency of the short-term focus, i.e., since I didn’t know what was going to happen tomorrow, let me focus on getting things done today.

Learning to accept the feeling of “not knowing” is a tough pill to swallow. All your adult you’re programmed to seek to be the expert. You get your first job, build your career by showcasing what you know not what you don’t know, yet entrepreneurship is the perennial discovery of your own ignorance. In fact, I would argue that a significant portion of the infamously long work weeks is spent discovering of all the ways that don’t work rather than finding ways that do. It is demanding, and can be very demoralizing. What keeps you going is a focus on problem solving, and of course passion for your product. So while we may not have had a business plan, we never lacked business focus. While we may have not known, we never lost our tenacity and at no point did we lose sight of the customer’s need. Instead of focusing on defining the problem, we defined the solution, and then work our ways back from there.

This was, and still is, a tough skill for me to practice. Conventional logic asks you to state the problem before you solve it, however more often than not, you have to state the solution (or desired result) and see how close you can get to it. You have to turn the problem on it’s head and use unconventional approaches to get to the solution. Sometimes those approaches will not be pretty, but as the rodeo credo goes, you have to “f**k the form and grab the horn”. So, to all those starting new ventures, I’d suggest that it’s OK to have a big goal and yet not have an effin’ clue of how to get there. Just take one step at a time, keep learning, keep trying and just maybe you’ll get close.

 

Quote of the Day

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

                                                     --Socrates

PS: The HiTEC site mistakenly lists me as a co-founder. I am a partner in the firm and employee number five, however the title of cofounders rests with others.

Toogoodforwords.com

My friend Punit just started his photo blog called toogoodforwords.com. It’s a log of pictures that he feels are well, too good for words.

 

 

Keeping with the spirit of his website, I’ll keep this post brief as well.

Quote of the Day

A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.

                                                    --Diane Arbus

Blackberry Bold & the Power of Ads

Blackberrys will always have a special place in my heart, mainly because it was my first smart phone and showed me the joys of always being connected. And truth be told, had my Curve not died, I would never have switched to the iPhone. The iPhone is great, I love it and wouldn’t go back, but the Blackberry has a better OS and still unbeatable when it comes to push email. And of course, the iPhone comes with the baggage of AT&T, which is another discussion.

I just saw this ad for the Bold, and it made me yearn for my days with the Blackberry.  The the graphics combined with the great music managed to create a feeling of joy and promise.

Incidentally, the music is really catching on, turns out everyone wants to know the composer. If it is indeed custom music for the ad, I think Blackberry may have an excellent viral marketing opportunity here.

Quote of the Day

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

                                                      --Bob Marley

FriendCast Taking Off!

Friendcast (CallFire’s iPhone app) has been downloaded more than 3,500 times! It’s become popular enough for TMCnet to feature a video demo on the application. Cool stuff!

So if you have an iPhone and haven’t downloaded it already, do so. I’m sure there are people in your contact list who would love to hear from you.

Quote of the Day

Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.

                                                               --Anais Nin

Some Things Can’t Change?

This is how a station looks at 5:30 AM in the morning when you’ve missed your train by two minutes. Reducing personal tardiness would be a good goal for 2009 don’t you think?

Quote of the Day:

Dost thou love life? Then waste not time; for time is the stuff that life is made of.

                                                               --Benjamin Franklin

Looking Forward, Leaning Back

Judging solely by my December experiences, I’d be lying if I didn’t look at 2009 with apprehension. This past month has taught me a lot, yet few of those lessons have come in a palatable form. In fact, I would argue that 2008 has been a year of tests, tests, and more tests. Some I passed, some I failed, and some I ignored. However, I look to 2009 with a renewed sense of optimism and hope. The trials of the past year were part of growing, and growth is a non-linear process. Seldom products of choice, challenges are the boot camp that test our beliefs and will. In the new year may we continue to have the courage to meet them head-on.

My dad told me many moons ago (he too has since forgotten he told me this): think with your brain, act on your feet, react with your wit and relax on your misses. As our engines rev up for 2009, let’s look forward to the new year with curiosity, wonder, humor, and hope and may it bring us all peace and prosperity.

Quote of the Day

I’ll let my favorite Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip be the quote of the day

I Say Music, You Say Moozik

“You tend to listen to the same song quite a lot, do you like it?”, said Vijesh the other day, poking fun at my playlist. He should know, for him and I trade DJ responsibilities through the workday, the notes from our speakers wafting through the air, blending into the office noise that is the CallFire hustle. Jesting aside, Vijesh has a point, for when I like a song (I mean really like a song) I tend to go overboard and play it repeatedly for a long time. This can go on for months until I’m so tired of the song that I stop playing it, and then go out of my way searching for music to fill that void. This approach has served me quite well for in the quest to fill the void my music collection has gotten very diverse, eclectic, and large. Now, if only I could consolidate all of them into one gigantic drive that I can take everywhere I go, life would be good.

The reason for this post, however is to let Vijesh know that I’ll be dialing down the frequency of Rilo Kiley’s “Silver Lining” and ramping up Raphael Saadiq’s “100 Yard Dash”. I like both songs mainly because they are new songs by contemporary artistes that have recreated sounds of a previous era. Rilo Kiley creates the sounds of seventies pop that’s oddly reminiscent of songs your parents used to play on an idle Sunday afternoon and came to like because you were too young to have a say in the music choice. Saadiq on the other hand, is doing a new cover of an old song, but brings an edginess to the song that seems to belong to a different era. Perhaps it’s the use of sticks instead of brushes on the snare drums, or just his voice, but the moment it plays you picture yourself in an jazz or blues club back when cigarettes and big-print bell-bottoms were cool. Both songs come recommended via different paths. Rilo Kiley got shuffled into my playlist by the majicomputer at Pandora, while Saadiq came highly recommended by NPR. You can purchase both, like I did, DRM free from Amazon.com.

Interestingly, as per iTunes, I’ve played Rilo Kiley only 13 times, though by Winamp’s stats (which is my primary player) I’ve played it 19 times. Thirty-two times since October 29 (when I bought the track) isn’t too bad is it?

Rilo Kiley Video

Raphael Saadiq Audio.

Quote of the Day

Without music, life would be a mistake.

                                        --Friedrich Nietzsche

Merry Christmas

If you’re one of the sixty odd readers of this site, or just happened to stumble upon this blog, Merry Christmas to you and to all.

(Above: our home Christmas tree)

Quote of the Day

What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future. It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.

                                                                      --Agnes M. Pharo