Alvin Lai

A water loving jack russell at Malibu beach.

The gorgeous beach!

First off, it’s really been a while since I’ve updated the blog, apologies friends, mom and pop who have been constantly checking back to see if there’s anything new :)

There’s just so much to do here besides working at a startup company and taking Stanford courses, meeting entrepreneurs, helping out with events & projects and having fun with travelling! Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Los Angeles to name a famous few :)

I’ve also found time to contribute a theme to an open source project Amahi :

Silicon Valley’s amazing. Lots of unexpected stuff, just a few days ago, a stealth startup entrepreneur I totally do not know sent me a private message on Facebook asking me to meet up at Starbucks for a cup of coffee. We met and had a good discussion on topics relevant to his stealth startup, potentially able to get him on as a mentor for my other friends at NUSEA.

Potentially many things to do here! Must prioritize! :)

A couple of people have been bugging me to show them pictures of what kinda house I live, so here goes :)

Hint: It's somewhere in Sunnyvale, California.

Rent's $2200 per month, shared among us 6 tenants.

View from outside.

Walking into the gate.

My backyard, got gardener come in every week trim one somore :D

From the main door..

My modest kitchen

Washing machine and dryer

My room upstairs. When we got the place, the room was EMPTY, my room mate and I had to sleep in sleeping bags! We gradually got 2nd hand furniture from garage sales posted via craigslist and made it nice and cosy.

Queen sized spring mattress, with Ralph Lauren comforter, and the reading lamp+chair combination that I've always wanted! :)

My rooom from another angle

The bathroom

It can be frustrating when things do not go as planned — miscommunication, technical difficulties, unexpected long waiting times you name it.

It is right for the service provider to test his system, but not at the expense of the waiting customer, who is already miffed at the problem.

The tipping point comes when the customer receives an insult in exchange for an attempt to seek redress for the inconvenience.

The business would not only lose that customer, but potentially hundreds that customer would recommend against the service.

A mistake a startup cannot afford to make.

-

Frankness is good in many aspects like maintaining healthy relationships to attaining better understanding.

But when it is used as an excuse for reckless venting, it might be better to remain silent about it in the first place.

One good rule of thumb when addressing an issue frankly is to ask yourself, am I using this privilege of being frank as an excuse for anger?

Some good silent thought process before a frank encounter goes a long way.

I really like Seth Godin phrase:

"Actually, every large company goes under... except for the large companies that take risks and reinvent themselves. The rest of us just fade away, sooner rather than later."

Then he goes on to prod us, even more so we should start doing our own thing if we were to succeed.

"Actually, the top spots and large investment stakes in big companies are pretty much all taken, so if you weren't lucky enough to end up on top, (or if you don't want to spend your career waiting for your boss to die) the only way in the world you're going to succeed is by doing your own thing, building your own division or starting your own gig... and by teaching the big guys a thing or two."

Aren't you convinced yet?

My professor John Nesheim challenged us to blog what we learnt each day, so there'd be a nice log of 365 entries by the end of the year to reflect upon when I get back to Singapore, so here's the first.

1. You can patent the non-obvious process.

2. It's not easy for big corporations who have established their brand name to emulate you and do a me-too — because it would only cannibalise and hurt their existing brand.

Finally, after wading through tons of work and distractions, I found some time to post this up. Enjoy!

Uncertainty was abound during the first week, when we arrived without knowing about anything. But it was also the period where everyone learnt the most about themselves. A wonderful experience!

Takeoff from Changi Airport

Transit in Narita Airport

2 hour wait, with Kaiwei looking funny :)

Esther and Quek

Kaiwei and I were bored so we went exploring.. and found a Akihabara store!

that sells delicious looking cuttlefish!

and some kinda small fish.

Finally, off to America!

Food-fare on board Northwest Airlines.

Some nice looking American bridge

Reach liao woo!

Breath taking scenery outside San Francisco airport

More breath taking scenery outside San Francisco airport

Waiting for seniors to pick us up. Still remember Devika coming to pick me up wearing her act-seh sunglasses :)

What's my first meal in America? In and out burgers!

The burger you guys saw in the previous blog post

Fries done animal style!

Seniors kindly put us (Bernard and I) up at their place, at Bernado's.

Bernardo's damn hip la.

As public transport is virtually non-existent here in Sunnyvale California, the first batch rented a Pontiac — USD$400 for a week man!

Weather's great, nice and cool with interest flora and fauna to see..

Beautiful leaves, aren't they?

The Vine's household, who put up the rest. Wonder what Bernard is really clutching. :)

Driving around in the rented Pontiac

Vine's mini eco-system in a rice-cooker..

David then brought us around in San Francisco..

The car got hyperdrive mode one u know.

You never know how it feels like in hyperspace.

Happy that we came out alive, 70MPH hyperspace haha.

Saw Gap!

The night streets of SF.

Try parking man.

Can eat happy liao :D

Shuyang no look tea pouring

Here comes the food. Jellyfish!

Crab! But still no match for my Dad's :D

The walnut prawns are seriously good.

Pork, I think..

A wholesome spread!

Awesome fish..

I couldn't resist a picture with this steep a car park.

We then drove up to Twin peaks and savored the stupendous scenery..

I've been selected for NOC woo!

What a night!

Got an sms from a friend who has a friend looking for someone to go on TV to talk about expectations of job seekers from the perspectives of young adults.

Just the topic that I'm passionate about!

Well the only catch is.. its on Channel U! A mandarin channel!

Oh man! Friends who know me all say I can't speak Mandarin for nuts and have all given up.

I prayed about it.

My friend arranged for her friend to give me a call to check me out.

Received a phone call from her and after chatting for about what seemed like 45 minutes (I was amazed at how God enables) in mandarin (unbelievable!), she told me I'm in!

Far East Plaza, this saturday, 12 August at 12pm.

Miraculous!

On my way back home, I've stumbled on the podcast of Steve Job's commencement address at Stanford university while scanning through for a song.

For the 15 minutes waiting for the bus, I went through his speech again and I thought it would be useful for me to jot down the salient points of his inspiring speech.

Here's it. I hope to make a difference like what Steve has done with his life and I believe you can if you'd like to, too.

1. Connecting the dots

   • Follow curiosity and intuition
   • Find out what's facinating, beautiful and subtle
     • Might not have any direct practical application
   • Impossible to connect the dots forward
     • Believe that God has a way for you
     • Trust in something, believing that the dots will connect down
       • the road, will give you the confidence to follow your heart
         • even if it leads you off the well worn path
           • that will make all the difference

2. Love and Loss

   • Still love what I do. Rejected but still in love. Start over.
   • Getting fired - heaviness of being successful replaced by
     • lightness of being a beginner again
       • Less sure about everything
     • Freed and enabled one of the creative periods of his life
   • Awful tasting medicine but the patient needed it
   • Sometimes life hits you in the face with a brick, don't lose faith
   • Only thing that kept him going was that he loved what he did
   • You got to find what you love
   • True for work and lovers
     • Work gonna fill up large part of life
       • Only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe what is great work
       • Only way to do great work is to love what you do
     • Keep looking and don't settle
     • As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it
     • As with any great relationship, it gets better and better as the years go on

3. Death

   • "If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you'll most certainly be right"
   • If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?
   • And if it's no for too many days in a row, I need to change something
   • Remember that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool that I've encountered to
     • help me make the big choices in life
   • Almost everything - all external expectations. pride, fear of embarrassment or failure
     • All fall away in the face of death
     • Leaving what's truly important
   • Remembering that you are going to die is the best way to avoid the trap of thinking
     • you have something to lose
   • You are already naked, there is no reason not to follow your heart
   • No one want to die
   • Death is the destination we all share
   • Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life
   • Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking
     • Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice
   • Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition
     • They somehow already know what you truly want to become
       • Every thing else is secondary

Early morning hitchhiking road, the kind you would find yourself hitchhiking on - if you're so adventurous

Stay young, stay foolish.

Why? Because you'd never know if the company you're interning at would be thinking to outsource what you've been doing for them.

My boss was thinking of this, but was worried about company policies regarding outsourcing work to students. Then I said no problem, my friend and I could easily set up a sole proprietorship.

Nothing's confirmed, but interesting developments nonetheless :)

Have a blessed weekend!

It's been a while since I've last blogged and apologies for the lack of updates. As some of you would know, I got myself a 9-6 job, and other than getting involved with the a group fantastic guys who are planning a major tech conference next year that aims to bring the tech student community to the industry, I've met up with up with the local Singapore Ruby community, not to mention undertaking freelance web projects and even meeting a brilliant IBM sales executive!

You could imagine how little time I've left after the routine work day, evening jogs, project management and squeezing a short period for quiet time.

TGIF and having some time on my hands after finishing 2 mini projects, I thought it would be only appropriate if I blogged my thoughts, analysis and important bits that I've learnt along the way during my absence from blogging.

You see, I've been a firm believer in carrying a paper notebook around, doodling whatever thoughts I might have in the interim. It might sound trivial, but it really helps in brainstorming and connecting the dots of whatever points on paper. This happens something along the line, like when you have the points on paper, your brain don't have to keep the points constantly in your head. Very much like Random Access Memory (RAM), once I've cleared and transferred whatever thoughts from mind to paper, ideas pop up easily, connecting the dots, which is pretty enabling to see new things that would never have materialized by mere mental idea bouncing ninjitsu.

One of the recurring thoughts I've been having during this period of working a day job (which was interesting in its own way, no doubt) and doing stuff you would normally classify as "extracurricular", is:

Would I want to work for someone else all my life?

Why do a startup?

Are startups for me?

In the process of blogging about this and referring to the thoughts I've jotted in my notebook, I hope to form a clearer picture regarding this issue. Feel free to comment, or blast me in anyway. I always welcome constructive feedback! Honest!

I made this a draft 1 as it's really a huge topic that would only get better with time and continual revisions. Feel free to comment and give suggestions for a better version 2!

Here goes.

Self Accountability

In a big company, you are inevitably accountable to your boss, and your boss is accountable to his boss and so on. Everyone is accountable to somebody else and are usually working on stuff that would matter to their boss. I'm not saying that you'll be working on pointless assignments, just stuff that would matter more to your boss in place of stuff that would really matter.

Work on Stuff that Really Matters

Why can you work on stuff that really matter in startups? It's pretty tied up with the previous point on self accountability. When you are accountable only to yourself or directly to a small group of people (and vice versa), it would be easier to bounce your idea off 3-4 people rather than whole hierarchies of hundreds or even thousands of people. Why? Again because an important decision would affect them and their bosses. This would inevitably result in dilution of the original plan, taking a less risky route with less potential pay offs.

The Big Corporation Image

Working in a big corporation, image, and standardization matters a lot. Putting the military example aside, big companies understandably have to uphold standards too, as it speaks something of their professionalism. As with word "big" in big companies intrinsically meaning many people in the organization, there are bound to be stuff that needs a consistent feel to everything, be it for productivity purposes (for massive collaboration/information exchange), or for branding. You might argue that the initial standardization can be handled and maintained by an administrative staff, thereby "outsourcing" the standardization task, apart from the knowledge workers. But don't the standards somewhat come across as rules that might be restrictive?

Cubicles and Zones

Been quite much of a knowledge worker myself, I know what it feels to be in the zone. Being in the zone would roughly mean in a state of high productivity, a certain momentum where you just keep on producing, be it coding or designing an awfully creative piece.

The catch is, it's easy to be interrupted exit the zone. Research has shown that it takes 15 minutes or even half an hour to get back in.

Cubicles, in my opinion, are quite bad for knowledge workers who need to be in the zone to get stuff done. Here's an example I got from Paul Graham: Imagine programmer A and programmer B in cubicles.

A forgot how to use a certain piece of code. He has 2 choices. Spend 30 seconds reading it up himself or spend 15 seconds asking B in the neighbouring cubicle.

Naturally the latter would be an attractive option, since it would save A 15 seconds. However when A interrupts B to save 15 seconds, B is interrupted from his zone, and it would take him 15 minutes to re-enter it.

So there you have it. A saves 15 seconds while B wastes 15 minutes.

If both programmers were housed in their own rooms, it would take A more than time to get out of his seat, open his door, walk to B's room, open B's door and ask him than to check up the code himself.

This results in increased productivity too.

I'm not saying that knowledge workers should always be left alone. They just need a period of uninterrupted time and a private area to work on their stuff.

Communicate all you want and get the info you need, then be able to retreat into your own caves and zones to churn out value.

Averaging

With bureaucracy, understandable risk adversity going on in big companies where safety and accountability is of preeminence, everyone is going to take the surest safest route to doing things. When you discard things that are potentially disruptive (yet valuable), the most capable employee would naturally be averaged out, because they can't do risky stuff that can potentially make them shine.

Get Done with Making a Living

Reading Paul Graham's article, thinking of a startup not in terms of a way to get rich, but to get done with making a living earlier. Compressing 30 years of work you love into a short span of 4 years, earning all the money you need to make a living.

What happens next?

You can then continue the work you love with a slight difference, you are no longer hard up for the cash. You can afford to drop bad clients.

All this rather than drag the whole process of making a living over a span of 30 years, a slightly different route which can be seen as risky as your rice bowl is controlled by someone else.

Constraints

This point is probably the biggest red dot, bundled with the previous points of self accountability and averaging.

Personal Bubbles

With all the talk about accountability, constraints and rules to adhere to, staff in a big corporation would naturally have a personal bubble, to protect their self interests. There is only up till a certain point where you can ask them about stuff, suggest improvements, get things done differently with the mere intention of really making things better.

How about startups? Because the survival of the startup depends on the founders, they often have to step out of their comfort zone to make sure they have the competitive edge for the startup. This results in better acceptance of change, again linked to the point of self accountability.

Motivation, Productivity, Reward Cycle

If you're sincerely passionate about stuff that you do, you'll tend to do a good job. Sometimes in order to do stuff the best way, you'll be better ready to take risks.

When you're allowed to do so, you'll see results.

This results in motivation to do even better, increased productivity and even more rewards.

And it repeats itself.

Some Lessons

Hierarchies

You must know where you stand in a big company. Be aware of personal bubbles, read body language and don't get carried away in exploring possibilities when it could potentially be unpleasant for someone else.

Big Companies are Here to Stay

Big companies are everywhere and with an emphasis on safety which results in steady progressive growth, they are here to stay.

Have to Work with Them

Even startups would have to deal with them at some point or another. So it would be wise to learn how to interact with employees of big companies.

Advantageous to

Knowledge sharing is good, as you rarely can hardly get anything done alone these days. When you can contribute to the big companies in a manner they are comfortable with, it often leads to win-win situations.

Better EQ Skills

Since not only employees in big companies have personal bubbles, everybody has their own bubbles to certain extents where change would be uncomfortable. It would pay to understand body language better , understand unspoken feelings and signs. Then complement the situation accordingly.

The user centered soft approach works most of the time.

Thank You. Please Try Again.

Back off if appropriate. Thank for opportunity, don't get discouraged and try again later.

• Waiting for Great Idea
  • Excuse for not doing anything - dangerous!
  • Waste time
• Success
  • Never comes from mind-blowing idea
  • Comes from a basic idea executed amazingly well
  • Rarely found by thinking
  • Are found by doing
• A great idea is a myth
• Now what?
  • Do better than most people
  • Stop searching and start doing
  • Identify a broad, high-level goal - an industry, lifestyle or financial outcome
  • Identify things you like and dislike - be brutally honest
  • Identify opportunities that open up more doors in the right area
  • Avoid jobs/projects/opportunities that lead to dead ends
  • Take multiple steps to reach a goal
  • Eliminating choices
    • Internships are like free trials at a company
    • Chalk up now-I-know-I-don't-like-that category
  • Start doing
    • Finding the right people to talk to
    • Finding out what people actually need
    • May be lacking in style, but doesn't matter
  • Remember
    • The Myth of a great idea is a great way to think yourself into oblivion and failure
  • At our age
    • Nothing wrong with not knowing what we want to ultimately end up doing
    • Stop feeling guilty
    • But there's something ENTIRELY wrong with not actively trying to find out exactly what we want.
    • Trying, not waiting.
    • Experimenting, not "thinking about it"
    • Give it a shot.

Abstracted from IWillTeachYouToBeRich

As many have found Paul Graham's articles too lengthy, here's an executive summary of salient points for you, which would also serve as a reminder for myself.

From Paul Graham, Hiring is Obselete

Market Rate

1. Undergrads can start successful companies
2. It's cheap to start a startup
3. Undergrads are undervalued
   • Tend to be evaluated to the "mean" - not too high
4. Especially productive 22 year old
   • Bypass company, go directly to users
   • Company only acting as a proxy economically
   • Can opt to be valued directly to users
     • Start your own company
5. Market is more discerning than any employer
   • Completely undiscriminating
     • No one knows you're a dog on the Internet
6. Both purchaser and startup owner can benefit from acquisitions

Product Development

1. Big companies stifle product development as they have their own agenda
2. Disruptive technology are developed by disruptive people who:
   • have no power
   • are outnumbered and outmaneuvered by yes-men
   • have comparatively little influence
3. Big companies build only 1 of each thing.
   • Many alternatives but cannot diversify
4. Bigger incentives for startups - they work harder
5. Startup personnel are forced to do everything - they learn things, understand and improve things.
6. Startups can get things done faster - no bureaucracy

Trend

1. Trend of acquiring startups (at an earlier stage) increasing.
   • Pay 1/20, guess 1/20 as well
2. Fusion of simultaneous recruiting and product development.
   • More efficient together - people are more committed working on their own stuff
3. Already have good teams that can work well internally with each other

Investors

1. Companies getting cheaper to start
   • Hackers don't have to depend on employers
2. Pumping more money != quality code produced quicker
3. A good sales force is worth its money, but getting irrelevant with the internet.
   • Anything genuinely good will spread by word of mouth
4. Investor placed business guys
   • Likely placed as COOs instead of CEOs

The Open Cage

1. Economic cage is open Quick prod yourself you caged animal!
2. Route to success is to build something valuable
   • You can do better on your own
3. Younger, should take more risks

Risk

1. Risk and reward are always proportionate
2. Young, have the time to invest
   • Have time to take insane career risks
3. Stability is going to cost you
   • People pay more for stability on the market
4. Riskier career moves pay more on average
   • Less in demand
   • Not much competition
   • Huge prizes at stake
5. 90% failure rate of startups
   • Fail, but get smarter
6. What better time to do a startup at 23?

The Man is the Customer

1. Why are undergrads conservative?
   • Spent too much time in institutions - familiarity, monotonous comfort
2. End of school - fulcrum of life
   • Transform from net consumer to net producer
3. You're steering
   • Stand back and understand what's going on, rather than doing something default
4. What customers want - more important than employers
   • Customers give $ to employers to give you

Grad School

1. Connected with other smart people
2. More time to work on your own stuff
3. Tolerant advisor
4. Try startups first. If fails, tanks fast.

Experience

1. Experience not intrinsically valuable
   • It changes something quicker in the brain
2. Startup requirements
   • Good people
   • Make something users want (experience changes this)
   • Don't spend too much money
3. Go find some users and see what they need
   • Don't sit around making up priori theories
4. Successful startups do something specific AND solve some problems people already know they have
5. The "thing" that experience changes
   • Learn that you need to solve somebody's problems
6. Employees are proxies for users where risk is pooled
7. You can go figure out what people want yourself
   • You're young - don't need to pool risk too

The article has warned you. Don't drop out of school. But be alert lest you miss opportunities.

Met up with BingXiong again for his birthday treat at the famous Bedok Blk 85. Had really really nice oyster omelette (sorry was too carried away talking forgot to take pics), real good bak chor mee (no ter kwa), so-so hokkien mee and fresh succulent sambal stingray.

After sharing about what has kept us occupied for the past week (I was just busy mucking about with Ruby on Rails features, setting up my inept 1GHz desktop PC as a linux server, helped out a day in Arts open house preparations and eating real nice Stamford House Japanese curry, you can read what BingXiong's been up to at his blog), we proceeded to have an interesting discussion about the entrepreneurship scene in Singapore, voicing our thoughts about what we want to do, which eventually led to some fruitful conclusions..

About how ProjectSenso decided its time for strategic change and stuff.

BX had plans for a online checklist for business start-ups, where they would login to update their status/progress, which was good in terms of providing value - something that protential start-ups would like to review and keep track, but I felt was somewhat limited and more apt to be packaged as a FAQ section, as I thought people wouldn't actually want to signup, login and remember their account logins just to tick some checkboxes to feel good. There must be something more compelling for them to want to sign up and keep coming back and logging into their account.

Soon it came to me.

What do I want to do?

I have a vague idea in mind of doing web development in Singapore, to construct customised web applications to facilitate business or any company workflow. Am I also looking at providing features similar to Basecamp? Maybe.

Why do I want to do this?

Maybe because I had experience in using web technologies to facilitate an organisation's workflow previously and had really enjoyed doing it. It just feels awesome when your application complements the organisation's workflow and triples productivity!

Other more reasons? Maybe but the former is probably the strongest reason so far.

Questions and Self Reflection

Soon after we departed, I took out a jotter book to pen down the thoughts that were swirling in my head.

Why am I bothered with Ruby on Rails?

It's fast

Can rapidly prototype and churn out rough sketches/design early and quickly for client's approval and correction.

It also gives me an edge over many other developers who use "more traditional" web scripting languages (read: PHP, ASP) and frameworks (like Tapestry).

Similar to what Paul Graham article on Beating the Averages, where he reveals that he used a powerful languge called Lisp in his early days to have an edge over his competitors in terms of speedy development.

It's easy to maintain

Many a times I've tried to go back to my old code to make updates, only to find that I've taken some obscure shortcut that would take me several hours to figure out before I can get back to the same mental state of mind when I was coding it.

With Rails where convention is emphasised, it would be more straightforward.

On the way back home, I realised that I've been too caught up learning about other Rails' features and capabilities and other sweet stuff like Automated Application Deployment via Capistrano and fussing about Subversion with Rails

They're just plain distractions from what I really want to achieve using Ruby on Rails. The above are secondary and should only come when I'm ready with Rails.

Well what's my Ruby on Rails mission statement? Thought about it for a long while on the bus and here's it.

My Ruby on Rails Mission Statement

To come up with a web application that has user authentication, login to user's own profile and space. An administration panel to manage users in groups where different roles and permissions can be applied to a single user or to a group. QUICKLY.

Next Actions

As in true GTD style, here's a list of next actions for me to undertake in line of my Rails mission statemnt.

1. Do Database Migrations - why: easy to keep track of db schema changes, don't need to write SQL code.

2. Clarify basic templating, hyperlinking from base controller actions via link_to

3. Clarify Hyperlinking to independent pages from independent controllers. Look at own experiment with railsapp alblog.

4. Clarify templating data, ie, using another controller's scaffolding.

5. Check out alternatives to authentication and different styles, decide which one best to learn and use.

Borrow designer handbags? I think it's a girl's dream come true..

Certainly an interesting and yet crazy idea!

Bag Borrow or Steal