Rob Robinson, a business school professor at the University of Hawaii, asked me to speak to one of his MBA classes recently. I did that this morning.
I mostly spoke about entrepreneurship in my life and what I’ve learned from running Blue Lava. The students were awesome and they asked some great questions. One thing that was different from when I was in school was that a lot of people had laptops in class. Nobody carried a laptop to class when I went to university – and I majored in Computer Engineering. I was also surprised that of about 10 laptops I saw in the classroom, only three were Mac. I would have guess that there would be more.
It was kind of strange being asked to speak to an MBA class. I never went to business school but I’ve given it some thought over the years. I think if you had asked me a couple of years ago, I would have said yes, I’ll definitely go. At this point I’m pretty sure I’ll never go.
As an academic exercise, I think it would be great. I consider myself an eternal student. Right now I need to buy a second bookshelf because I’ve got about 50 business books overflowing from the 200 or so I already have stacked. And that’s just books I’ve bought in the last 2 years (no, I haven’t read them all – I’m working on it!). Amazon loves me.
It would be awesome to go to school for two years and do nothing but study business. But that would probably last about a month for me. I’d be off starting a new venture about as soon as I’d settle into the academia. I imagine that the coolest thing about business school is the people you meet. What a great place to make connections and meet future business partners.
A couple of our guys, Jason and Chad, are going to the WWDC in SF next week. We’re going to have a table at the student fair where hopefully we’ll recruit the brightest Cocoa programmers on the planet. Anyhow, as if our software isn’t cool enough, we’ve actually gone to the trouble to create some nifty give aways. I’m still torn on whether they’re worth the money, but, as a recruiting expense, if we’re successful in recruiting even one kick ass candidate, the answer will be yes.
We got branded memory sticks from MemorySuppliers.com (red with our white iLovePhotos logo) and branded pens from 4imprint.com (ditto). So far so good. Hopefully the actual items are as cool as the pictures. I’ll post an update!
UPDATE: The memory sticks were awesome. The pens never made it there on time and 4imprint customer service sucks.
Recently I’ve come across some software that’s completely changed the way I work. I love it when start-ups take the time to create high quality desktop software, instead of another “digg meets flickr on steroids” website clone. Here are some apps that I find indispensible these days.
Evernote lets you pretty much store and organize any sort of information that might possibly enter your brain. In fact, their slogan is “Remember Everything.”
Things is the best GTD task organizer I have ever used. In the past, I’ve always just ended up going back to notepad. But this one is super simple and BETTER than notepad 
Rescue Time helps me track where my time is going. It runs in the background and logs which applications and websites I spend my time on. At the end of the day I can see where I’ve been wasting time and where I’ve been productive.
Sugar Sync gives me peace of mind. It auto syncs all my important files both online and to my desktop computer. As soon as I make a change on one computer, it gets stored and synced everywhere. I never have to worry about losing my data.
Skitch is just a simple photo editing app that does 90% of what you need it to do. It’s no Photoshop, but it’ll do most of what you need when you need it.
The last one isn’t a desktop app, it’s Google Sites, their Wiki product. I’ve become addicted to it as a personal data management tool. I use it for almost everything instead of Word these days. It’s simply the best Wiki out there.
UPDATE: I forgot to add one piece of software that I use ALL THE TIME: Launch Bar. It lets you instantly open any application with a few key strokes. It’s like Spotlight on steroids. It’s amazing.
April 29th, 2008
4:05 pm
Random
Great site for live club house music sets: http://killingbeats.com.
“There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.” - Laurence J. Peter
Today, I failed. After running the Honolulu Marathon in December I challenged myself by running the 8 mile Great Aloha Run in under an hour. After all, if I can run twenty-six 10 minute miles in a row, I should be able to run eight 7 minute miles in a row.
I didn’t even come close. I did, however, learn a lot from the experience.
To train for speed, I started running timed miles on the treadmill at the gym. Every minute running on the treadmill was excruciatingly boring. My eyes were glued to clock in front of me. Watching the seconds tick by killed all my passion and love for the sport. Running a 7 minute mile was really hard for me. I could barely do two in a row without feeling like my lungs were going to explode. Without passion, I simply couldn’t devote the energy needed to succeed.
I didn’t fail because I didn’t enjoy running fast. Being good at something often requires that you endure some sort of overwhelming hardship to get to where you want to be. I’ve never been a fast runner, but I want to be - and that desire is enough to get me there. I failed because I didn’t change my approach when it was clear that what I was doing wasn’t working.
I find this particularly relevant when I communicate with people. It’s like vigorously trying to change someone’s mind by repeatedly telling them they’re wrong. Sometimes an approach just won’t work no matter how many times your try it. That doesn’t mean your goal is unattainable. It just means you need to be smarter. Take a step back and get a fresh perspective. Better yet, get someone else’s opinion.
The irony is that had I just trained normally by running outside like I did for the marathon, I would have done far better than I did. I would have run at least twice a week for 8 miles at a time, greatly increasing my cardiovascular endurance and speed in the process. What I did instead was half heartedly run a couple miles a week on the treadmill.
I like to think that if you don’t fail, you’re not trying hard enough. Some people venture to say that you should fail as often as 50% of the time, just to make sure that you’re trying hard enough. I don’t know if you need to fail any set amount of times, but I do know that the ultimate failure is not learning from your mistakes.
Isn’t it funny that your $300 digital camera needs a $1500 accessory to be properly used? People used to buy a film camera, take photos with it, and take negatives to the printer. A simple process that involves one simple device. Now you have to own a computer if you want to enjoy digital photography.
I wonder how this is reflected in consumer photography trends. There must be a whole contingent of people out there who don’t own a computer or would have no idea how to use one. Do those people still take photos? Are they using film cameras? Do that have someone to manage their digital photos for them? Has photography shifted to younger demographic as a result?
We’ve been cranking out code for over a year and a half. It’s been a labor of love building our platform. This weekend we finally hit our Alpha release.
WOW. It’s rare that I try something that I think will completely change an industry. Yes, I’m talking about a product my team has built, but I like to think I can still be objective. And there’s a big difference between thinking that something is good and thinking that something is game changing.
iLovePhotos is game changing. I’ve never seen or used anything like it. Even though I’ve been closely involved in the development of this software since day one, every time I see a new internal release, I’m blown away.
This isn’t a Twitter meets Flickr meets Facebook meets YouTube clone. This is a completely original concept. In a sea of companies trying to build a better mousetrap widget, iLovePhotos is a completely new way of thinking about and interacting with your personal content.
Think text based interface evolved to GUI. Think Game Cube evolved to Nintendo Wii. A desktop photo application that automatically organizes your photos and brings them back into your life. Yes, automatically. It’s so simple, anyone can use it, even the most tech illiterate of computer users.
I can’t wait to release Beta!
January 10th, 2008
4:54 pm
Random
It’s been so long since I’ve blogged I had trouble remembering my user name and password.
In the last month I’ve…
- run my first marathon
- raised our second round of funding for Blue Lava
- celebrated an amazing new years with my closest friends and family
- not spent enough time with my parents who are visiting from Germany
- met lots of amazing people both professionally and socially
In the next month I’ll…
- Go to the Wayne Brown Venture Capital conference in Utah in early Feb
- See snow (at said conference) and snowboard for the first time in years
- Do some business in SF around mid-Feb
- Do the Great Aloha Run (come join me, it’s only 8 miles!)
- Meet many more amazing people both professionally and socially!
Today, I miss Black Rock City. I’m listening to Burning Man mixes from the Deep End. I can’t wait to go back. Music just sounds better in the desert.
Happy New Year to everyone. May all your dreams come true this year….
Check out this video of the Singapore government trying to encourage more tech companies to set up shop over there. Maybe we should try something like this in Hawaii!
Thanks to TechCrunch for finding this video.
