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I started to read more entrepreneur related books. Two weeks ago, I finished reading a book named "Hackers and Painters" written by Paul Graham. Now I'm reading another very interesting book named "The Lean Startup". I finished half of the book and found the concepts helpful in building a small&beautiful tech startup. However, practise is somewhat more important. Shamefully, the readpeer project didn't really follow the lean startup approach, but more of a traditional way. We didn't plan for the MVP(minimum variable product) the users' need. Instead, we focused too much on completing features we thought the users might love. We really need to test on the ideas before driving too deep to the development. We've tried to use Scrum for project meeting. However, the fact that most other teammates are part-time undergraduate students made it very difficult to build a real startup. The productivity is also quite low. In the past one month, the PHD and I are the two major contributors, however, I didn't find self-motivated developing Drupal in the old system. The only moment I found exciting in the past one month is when I used angular.js to polish the reader. One entrepreneur once told me that "To focus on building the team, not the exact product". I think that's a fair suggestion. However, the fact that the current company didn't spend enough energy strengthening the team made the so-called startup vulnerable. I may spend some extra money and energy on the human resource development of the company. Otherwise, it's very unlikely to become a dynamic&healthy growing startup.

Yesterday, a hacker from Beijing introduced three ruby books which can help me better understand the language and the framework. Thanks to his recommendations, I will read the books to better understand the fundamentals.

Other good things:
I started to play keyboards on sunday worships.
I bought a nexus 7 from Amazon. Android is cool.

End with a note from "Hackers and Painters". There is no ending for a paint, it's just that you no longer draw it.


Comments

  1. Ben Leong28 October 2013 at 19:55

    "To focus on building the team, not the exact product".

    Your insights are exactly right. :-) You're doing well on your growth. Keep it up. :-P

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shao28 October 2013 at 22:59

      Thanks a lot! It's hard to tell whether I'm drawing a masterpiece or a doodle until it finally takes off or I give it up:-）

      Delete

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