Category Archives: musings

Exploring the new

In my car, I keep a pile of mp3 CDs containing various mix tapes. The mixes range from 70’s funk/soul, to 80’s big hair band rock, to 90’s old school hip hop and current house and trance music. 90% of the time, I toggle through different mix tapes when I drive. There is so much good music that has already been made that I don’t ever get bored of it all.

But every so often, I get this itch, and think to myself, “hmmm, something good must have come out”. I switch off the CD player, flip on the radio on, and then spend a few days toggling through various radio stations.

Every time I do explore the radio, something interesting happens.

At first, everything sounds so new.. and so weird. I notice how musical styles have changed. And, I notice that new artists have come onto the scene. If I’m being honest, most of it sounds pretty bad. And most of it is bad! Compared to the great 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s, there is a lot of bad music on the radio.

I don’t know why, but I always persist with my radio exploration anyways. I think it is because I am inherently a hopeful person. I want to believe something great has been created, and I want to be delighted.

And, if I stick with it long enough (usually it is just a few days), invariably, the same thing always happens. First, I start to gain a taste for some of the new styles. Second, I always stumble across a few artists or songs that I really love. Third, and most importantly, I almost always love these new songs/artists for a new reason. A while ago, it was an obsession with John Legend. I loved how he created a modern version of the best soul music from the 70’s. Later on, it was Lil Wayne. His music was so different and out there, but his flow and his word combinations were just ridiculously awesome. Lately, I’ve grown an appreciation for Macklemore and Lady Gaga, both because they mix pop music with very important social messages.

The pattern always repeats itself. I get an itch, explore, find a lot of crap, and then find a few awesome things.

Yesterday, I kicked off the pattern again. This time, as I switched the radio on, I began to listen, and came across a bunch of crap. And then, I had an epiphany.

I knew I would come across something good at some point. And I was glad that I knew this. Exploration is the only way to discover anything new. It is the only way to keep up with the times. To some degree, it the best way to stay mentally young.

How many times have you heard the following:

  • Aww, the radio is full of shit. Back in my day, the music was way better.
  • Kids these days have crappy video games. Back in my day, we were way better off.
  • All these new apps are shit. 140 characters? Disappearing pictures? We solve real technical problems and solve real challenges.

This is what old people say. They have formed some connections in their brains, and are done with it. They have a mental model that seems complete, and they are willing to just go with it.

If you tell them to explore, they will tell you that the new stuff is full of shit. And they will be right. Most of it is. But some of it isn’t. Some of it is brilliant.. just in a different way. And these old folks who are mentally inflexible will never realize it.

So, as I switched on this radio yesterday and listened to bad music, I had this epiphany and smiled to myself. I thought of all the great artists I have discovered. I thought about how quitting my job 18 months ago to explore the new world of web/mobile technology is the best thing I’ve ever done for my career.

I know I will grow old of age, but I don’t want to grow old in the mind. I hope that I will always explore and wade through the new shit to discover the new gems and understand why they are so brilliant.

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P.S. This is post number #74 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Or, check out my current project Soulmix.

Living online documents

pages

I haven’t been treating this blog as an “actual” blog.

As a reader, I view blogs as a place for regularly published posts which are read and then immediately forgotten. As a writer, I view blogs as a place to publish a piece of writing and then move on to the next piece.

I can’t think of my blog this way.

Instead, I think of each post as an unfinished piece of work that acts a stake in the ground for an idea that may be worth thinking about. In the future, I may come back to fix up typos, grammatical errors, add/remove sentences, or even add/remove entire ideas.

This means that each post is a living online document. I wish that there was some way for the public to view it as such. Instead, people just see the new posts within their email or RSS readers. To my subscribers, I’m sorry about this. It is unfortunate because all of the ideas are half-baked and may contain some horrible typos/errors. I hope you still find the ideas interesting, and perhaps find your way back to some of the posts in the future (after the 100-day challenge when I can revisit posts).

This points to an interesting thought about online publishing. Most content online does not change. News articles don’t change. Most people don’t change their blog posts. Facebook and Twitter posts don’t change. And at the same time, content is growing at and exponential rate. The Internet is becoming a firehose of half-baked articles that could be better, but never will be.

The current Internet rewards quantity. Yet, over time, it is the evergreen quality posts that really matter. One could expect writers to publish fully formed evergreen content, but this is very difficult. What makes sense is to revisit ideas, iterate on them, and then iterate on the writing.

Is there some way to support and encourage living online documents? If someone could figure how to make living documents engaging, IMHO, the Internet would become a much better place.

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P.S. This is post number #70 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Or, check out my current project Soulmix.

Will we see more successful startups with single founders?

cofounders

Historically, most tech startups have multiple founders, especially the ones that have made it big. Think Steve & Woz, Larry & Sergey, Bill & Paul, Hewlett & Packard, Brian & Joe & Nathan (AirBnb), Drew & Arash (Dropbox), Jack & Noah & Ev & Biz (Twitter), Ben & Evan & Paul (Pinterest), etc.

It has become so ingrained in Silicon Valley wisdom that life as a single founder is very difficult. Because of this, it people seem to take founding teams more seriously. As an example, it seems that accelerators highly prefer cofounding teams. The partners of accelerators often say so. And from experience, I know teams of smart people with no product that have gotten YC/500/Techstars/etc. interviews (or into the programs), but very very few single founders that have gotten interviews in the same position.

To some degree, it makes sense. A startup is hard enough that it is extremely difficult for one person to get something off of the ground. And even if a single person gets something off the ground, can they build a team while growing and scaling?

Things may be tough for a single founder, but times are changing quickly.

  • Services such as  AWS, Heroku, MixPanel, MailChimp, etc. make development simple. More and more startups are popping up to improve the toolchain and sell shovels to the startup folks. It is never been easier to get a product up and running.
  • The world is becoming increasingly connected with the growing social and interest graphs. This means that for many consumer apps, distribution has never been easier.
  • Crowdfunding is starting to gain traction, as well as Angellist. It has never been easier to contact investors, as well as close a round (from what I’ve heard).
  • Accelerators are picking up and learning how to improve the chances for startup success. At the same time, founders/investors are becoming increasingly open with advice on blog posts, Hacker News, USV.com, etc. It has never been easier to gain a basic education in startups, marketing, positioning, distribution, etc.

All of these trends are continuing, and they may even be accelerating. This means that as time goes by, the amount of work necessary to build a startup decreases quickly.

It would go against common wisdom, but if the trends continue, it intuitively makes sense that we should see more single founders build large successful startups.

What do you think? As I am working alone at the moment, I surely hope this is the case.

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P.S. This is post number #69 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Or, check out my current project Soulmix.

Where ideas meet reality

tree-root

I was talking to a fellow founder today about the lessons we have learned. It is always interesting to go back and reflect on lessons learned.

Over the last 18 months, I have learned a whole lot about building a consumer product. The biggest lesson I have learned is this:

There are interesting ideas, and then there is the reality of what people want.

The reality of what people want always wins out. An idea is only good if it touches this reality. If there is a gap between your interesting idea and reality, the idea is a bad idea.

I’ve often found myself lured by the trap of interesting ideas. I don’t know if all entrepreneurs have this problem, but I surely have. I think a big part of it stems from my experience in academia where novelty is rewarded with publications.

In the real world, novelty means almost nothing.

What matters is:

  1. Whether there is a market for your product,
  2. Whether your product satisfies this market,
  3. Whether you can build this product, and
  4. Whether you can get it into the market.

And by market, I mean people. There have to be actual people out there that need your product because it dramatically changes their lives for the better.

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P.S. This is post number #68 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Or, check out my current project Soulmix.

Overvalued personal traits

halo-effect

One of the most frustrating things about human psychology is our tendency to overvalue a wide array of visible external traits.

The obvious one here is with beauty and attractiveness. When someone is attractive, we tend to assume that they also possess a number of other positive traits. Psychologists refer to this as the halo effect. This isn’t hard to believe. Just look out at the world. Look at the beautiful people in advertisements, and ask yourself, why do these beautiful people have to do with the product?

Attractiveness is overvalued within our society, even though it really has no correlation with the other positive traits.

This is just one example. There are many more.

We assume that those who are taller are more powerful, even if they aren’t

We assume that people well groomed are more respectable, even though being well groomed has no correlation to one’s integrity.

We assume that the loud ones will make good leaders, even though loudness has nothing to do with leading people.

We assume great public speakers, or charismatic people are fit for important jobs, even though they may have nothing to do with doing the important job.

We assume that decisiveness matters, even though the only thing that matters is the ability to make good decisions.

These false assumptions strongly affect the world that we live in. All of these overvalued personal traits shouldn’t matter, and yet they do. Attractive people get treated better than unattractive people. At work, the loudest are often heard the most. The charismatic interviewer tends to get the job. Our leaders tend to be tall, good-looking, well-groomed, and exceptional at public speaking.

And these false assumptions about external traits mask the important internal traits. Does someone has a strong set of values? Do they stick to their values? Are they trustworthy? Can they think through a problem? Can they think out of the box? Do they genuinely respect others? You can’t immediately tell whether someone has these positive traits, but they are the traits that really matter.

What can we do about these overvalued traits?

  1. First make sure you have the traits that matter. Be a good person. Hone your craft and up your skill level. At the same time, be aware of the overvalued traits that you can take advantage of. Some are natural, but some can be improved.
  2. If you find yourself dazzled by someones overvalued traits, be especially careful to look beyond it. If you don’t do this, you may be stuck with a bad boss, coworker, employee, friend, or significant other.

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P.S. This is post number #67 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Or, check out my current project Soulmix.

The world is gray

blue-flower

No one person is entirely smart or dumb. Instead, a person may be smart in a specific scenario. Or, they may be dumb. More often than not, they are somewhere in between.

Likewise, no decision is entirely right or wrong.  And no person is entirely right or wrong. There are reasons why something is right, and reasons why something may be wrong. For the toughest decisions, there is no right or wrong answer. You win some and you lose some.

As I grow up, this lesson continually reveals itself as one of the most important lessons in life. Most human problems are not black and white. There are too many facets of life, too many dimensions of our personality, too many potential people to deal with, and too many situations within the world for things to be the case. Instead, human problems tend to live in a gray area. And because business problems are often human problems, business problems also tend to live within a gray area.

Here are some important caveats:

  • People like to argue the two ends of the spectrum. They forget there is an entire gray area in between.
  • When you are presented with a problem, think hard about whether it actually is a problem. If you don’t think there is a problem, try to figure out why there might be a problem. Things aren’t as simple as problematic or unproblematic.
  • When you are presented with a few options, there are usually more options available.
  • If you think you are smart or dumb (or, right or wrong), you are probably somewhere in between.
  • If you think someone else is smart or dumb (or, right or wrong), they are probably somewhere in between.
  • In general, when you find yourself or someone else judging another person, the judgement is probably not entirely right or wrong. If the judgement is good, that isn’t always a bad thing: you just gave someone more credit than they deserve. If the judgement is bad, it is almost always a bad thing. Why put someone down like that?
  • If you are arguing someone who can’t consider the other side of something, it probably isn’t worth arguing with them.
  • When you think you won something, think about what you lost. And vice, versa.
  • When you see someone who tends to quickly and confidently come to decisions, they tend to be full of more bullshit than you can imagine. When you see someone who is tentative about being right, they probably have something interesting to add to the discussion.
  • When you give advice, there are reasons why it is right, and reasons why it is wrong. Same thing with when you get advice.
  • People who truly understand that the world is gray tend to be more humble.

Got any more? Let me know in the comments!

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P.S. This is post number #66 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Or, check out my current project Soulmix.

Looking stupid and going back for more

Today I tried Hot Power Yoga for the first time in my life.

I’ve done some yoga classes before, but this was the brutal. It was the hardest yoga class I have ever taken. And, it was in what felt like 90+ degree room.

The result?

It killed me. After the first 15 minutes, I hit a wall. The yoga moves were getting difficult, and the heat was unrelenting. I was sweating like crazy, my muscles wouldn’t do what they were supposed to do, and I would occasionally get light headed. I started taking breaks every few minutes. Halfway through the class, I just walked out and created an extra long water break. After my break, I went into survival mode: I just wanted to keep trying to do what I could, and then get out of there.

yoga

Not me.

The crazy part is that there were these girls that did it all. Yes, they were also sweating like crazy, but they could actually do all the advanced poses continuously without much of a break. They definitely belonged.

Me? I felt out of place, and being somewhat inflexible, I’m sure I looked pretty stupid there.

But that’s cool. Because it reminded me of many of my other firsts.

The first time I let loose on a dance floor, I bet I looked stupid. (Most likely I still do).

The first time I hit the bench pressed in high school, I probably looked ridiculous lifting just the bar.

The first web product I built after quitting my job was pretty bad. To an educated product person, it is probably just plain horrible.

At the beginning of anything, you always look stupid. They only way to get past it is to just own it, and keep moving.

And so I’m going back for more hot yoga tomorrow.

If I keep trying, one day I hopefully won’t look too stupid on the yoga mat 🙂

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P.S. This is post number #64 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Or, check out my current project Soulmix.

 

On rituals and special days

thanksgiving-dinner-holiday-feast-turkey-wallpapers-easter-wallpaper

Societies and religions have really figured something out with the ritual of special days.

Growing up, I used to think of these days as stupid. I wondered why we needed a day to celebrate our moms, dads, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. Shouldn’t living a good life and being respectful to others be good enough? I had the feeling that these days were created to indulge our consumer culture.

Recently, I’ve started feeling differently about special days. My new belief is these days are good for pretty much everyone in society.

Let us use Thanksgiving as an example. It gives us a great excuse to consume a ton of food, but also exists to celebrate the practice of gratitude.

  1. For those that don’t practice gratitude at all, it gives them one day a year where it is normal to show your gratitude. This is a big step up from not practicing gratitude at all.
  2. For those that occasionally practice gratitude, Thanksgiving becomes a regular reminder to be grateful. It becomes a great regular reminder to be thankful about what you have in life.
  3. For those that regularly practice gratitude, it gives them a day where they can practice it with their loved ones around them. Even someone who is full of gratitude will enjoy the practice of having friends and family all congregate for this purpose.

This extends to all of the special days. In general, the holiday tends to be:

  1. An example that something special exists, or
  2. A reminder that you should appreciate something special, or
  3. An excuse to have an extra special day for something special.

All of them are great, and obviously, (3) is the best. I suppose what matters is that you can never have enough thanks and appreciation for others. Whether you use the special day as an example, a reminder, or an excuse, more appreciation is always a good thing.

Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you are stuffed, and had quality time with friends and family.

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P.S. This is post number #63 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Or, check out my current project Soulmix.

The fear of immediate loss

Loss is a fascinating thing. It taps into some of our greatest fears, and causes us to make irrational decisions. My past two posts have been on managing the fear of loss, and the fear of future loss. This post is on the flip side to the second topic: the fear of immediate loss.

This fear commonly occurs when we find ourselves in sub-optimal positions in life. We know that we need to change our circumstances, but know that this change will cause immediate loss, which leads to immediate pain.

This is the person stuck in a relationship that they aren’t happy about. Or stuck in a job that they aren’t happy about. They know a change is needed, but doesn’t it need to be right now? The immediate pain of a breakup sucks. Losing a current job, and a current paycheck also sucks. Beyond that, job hunting can be stressful. A career change can be even more stressful. We respond to this fear by procrastinating on making the proper change in our lives.

When we procrastinate on these changes, we introduce another kind of pain into our lives: the psychological pain of knowing we aren’t living the way we should. This psychological pain is initially small, but over time, it grows and eats away at one’s soul. With enough time, the pain becomes a large enough that we make the change we intended to make in the first place.

But do you see what has happens here?

The immediate pain is necessary. The psychological pain isn’t. It only exists because we wait and procrastinate. Sometimes it is days.. but more often weeks, months, years, or even decades. By then, we have (1) suffered an intense amount of psychological pain, and (2) potentially lost years or decades of our lives.

There is only one case where the immediate pain doesn’t occur, and that is when the procrastination is indefinite. This isn’t any better. In fact, it is much worse. Imagine living an entire life that is inconsistent with what you actually want in life. I wouldn’t wish this this pain on anyone.

The moral of the story?

If you know something has to happen, but fear the immediate loss, just get it over with. You don’t have any better options

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P.S. This is post number #62 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Or, check out my current project Soulmix.

Retirement and the fear of future loss

montgomery.sydney.lakem_

Yesterday, as I finished writing on managing the fear of loss, I realized that the topic could easily be a much much longer blog post. One of the problems with this 100-day blog challenge is that don’t have the time to write longer posts. So here is an addition to yesterdays post.

This post is on a particularly insidious type of loss aversion: the fear of future loss. The main example I have here is dealing with money and retirement, but there may be other examples.

As a guy that has quit his job and burned into his savings for the past 18 months, I am often in a strange position when I interact with most of my friends and acquaintances. My financial situation isn’t particularly enviable. I don’t have the money to live like a 30+ year old with a well-paying Silicon Valley job. Yet, my work is somewhat enviable. I will occasionally hear:

Man, what you are doing is great. I have a few ideas and would love to try them, but don’t think I can step away from my paycheck. The pay is too high, and I’m not sure I can eat into my savings and my retirement.

Basically, people occasionally envy that I am able to burn money that they can’t, or won’t. Strange, but I hear it fairly often.

So why won’t they do it? My take on it is that it is the problem of dealing with future loss. And it can be a big psychological problem; especially with money.

Let’s do the math here.

Let us say that a 30-year old is thinking about the value of a dollar for retirement and estimates a 10% growth in investments per year. This would mean that each dollar this 30-year old has will be worth over $28 at age 65, and over $72 at age 75! That is quite a multiplier, huh?

This 30 year old looks at their savings, does the math. If they stop taking a salary, they will lose out on a lot of retirement money. And it is worse than that. They will need to burn money, and they will lose out on the growth from that money also.

When looking at the numbers this way, it is a no brainer that this 30-year old should save their money and keep in the job. In fact, you can get as extreme as you would like. Why spend $1,000 on a vacation when it will be over $28,000 for retirement? Why buy a $1 Coke now, when you could have $28 in the future?

A person who is sufficiently afraid of this future loss will skimp on everything right now in order to reap the benefits in the future.

And in doing so, IMHO, they will have done themselves a great disservice.

Why? We only live once. At each age, there are things that we can do that will maximize our life experience. Vacations and trips may seem frivolous, but can turn out to be life-changing and eye-opening. Some vacations are best done when you are young. Others are best when you have a family. Quitting a job to start a business is requires energy. You must start relatively young. At the very least, you can’t wait until retirement age.

It is possible to push off some experiences for months or years. But thinking about retirement is insidious because it requires pushing things off for decades. At this point, it isn’t even pushing them off — it is ignoring them. It may mean ignoring experiences that will greatly add to your life. It may mean ignoring your hopes and ignoring your dreams.  By the time you retire, you will be too old for many of these things.

Of course, planning for retirement is important. These days, we can’t count of pension plans or social security for retirement. But, be careful with how you think about these things.

Valuable life experiences are invaluable — you simply can’t put a price on them.  It is tough to reconcile these experiences with the loss of future money, but it is tradeoff everyone needs to figure out at some point. When you decide, just make sure that you understand the price you have decided to pay, and that this price doesn’t lead to large life regrets. Because if does, you won’t realize it until it is far too late.

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P.S. This is post number #61 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

P.P.S. I realize that this blog post is useless for the starving artists of the world. They clearly don’t have this fear of future loss. However, there are many people I know who aren’t these starving artists, but sometimes wish they could let go and try something. This post is for those people.

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Or, check out my current project Soulmix.