atiw

Oh and the part where he says "We are sitting where the gatekeepers are no longer in control" is awesome too.

Seriously guys, anyone (including me) who is killing his dream or slowing down on it, because no one gives a shit, and isn't working on building a brand equity, and is on the verge of giving up, or at least even thinking about it, is missing out big time.

We have this gift to make and build stuff which don't exist, to make a dent in this universe.

And the best thing is, no one controls stuff anymore. We need to remember that. We need to remind ourselves that. We control a big chunk of our destiny.

Remember the time when all the companies and all the politics and everything was hierarchical. When sons got their big ass companies from their parents. When it was so hard to make stuff and actually claim and launch it. When we were just used, and never given their worth. Let's not be one of them. Let's realize we have something great inside ourselves. We have the ability to take risks, to claim our worth.

I keep forgetting this, as I keep hearing things from family and friends, how it might be better to keep it part time, and how it might be a good, better and easier life.

I hate myself every weekend for not going out so much, I feel I am and always have been working, first student worker work , then research, then studies, then startup, and job.

And every once in a while, I keep reminding myself that probably this is a mistake. Maybe I am just being stubborn. Maybe I should just do a normal job, and just enjoy life after hours.

But the good thing is every once in a while, I keep coming back to my senses and realizing, bars and chicks, and friends' "outings" and "fun times" and "watching games" is not what I want.

I have found meaning in my life, I have found purpose, and I feel ALIVE when I am working on my startup and dreaming about how one day a butt load of people would be using something I made and how I might be able to live my dream. That I want to change this world, for better or for worse. I want to make a difference. That I want to help make other's lives better/easier because of what I have done.

Boy, This is awesome !!!

This guy is awesome.

Love the part "We are building businesses here....this is not about parties"

Yeah. Get well soon, Paul. What's one more day when we have waited all this time (all our adult lives? ).

Appreciate the effort you guys put into making this whole thing work.

They are now...they weren't when I posted this....

The links are not working ... could you please fix that ?

Rg3, I went back and had another look.

I take my words back (if that's ever possible :) ).

I assumed the purpose of writing that article as saying I pick this, if pushed to the corner (as is the case in our startups).

I will have to say it's a fairly good introduction. I like the amount of details provided.

Apologies, I just got too excited and started asking questions and crying for help about finding customers, probably inappropriate for this discussion.

Desperate times... :)

Working on finding out newer ways my technology could be used. Already know and have tested 4 applications. Thought of another silly use while replying to rtm thus sunday. I actually have been trying to get back to coding, but things are not so good. Hoping to kick off some of the 8-10 hour streaks of coding sometime tomorrow and all over the weekend.

Do you guys know, when we might get emails ??

Also, I am really kinda hoping to get my product out there and get some preliminary customers.

Any good ways to get some university people interested and try out our web app? How does someone contact university people?

Anyone a university department head/ faculty here by any chance?? If yes, do you guys HATE emails as way to introduction to products ??

My first focus (without funding way) is to sell a service to universities.

What kind of app are we talking about ?? Could you disclose that at this point now that you have a provisional patent ? Just curious.

oops, meant to say OSX

Ok, I'm a little intrigued.

Does pg still think that way about Java today ? Or does he think Java proved him wrong and turned out to be more successful (different?) ?

What about all the other hackers here?

I, for one, have used Java extensively. And, lately I am back in last couple of months, in using Java. I am actually thinking about taking it more seriously this time. (Although last time I used it for around 2 years on and off alongside Prolog and C#). But more and more it feels like, it might be worth it to go back to Java, instead of doing everything in PHP/HTML/CSS way.

Now, mind it, I realise there's always a lot of learning curve in Java towards the beginning, and I am not the best guy in Java web programming still, but I am pleasantly surprised the way people have used it.

Also, it seems like it might be a good investment of time, since everything is so Object Oriented, and once you get the basics covered, you can use Java pretty much on anything now.

To make an android app, to make blazing fast, best practices driven Google Web toolkit apps, to use the vast majority of libraries and snippets available, and to use the Best design patterns.

It seems like a good choice that way.

Also, it helps in being organised, and so the transition of people joining might be easier.

On other hand, younger developers, especially web developers kinda seem to like the whole <insert your favourite scripting language here> (PHP, Ruby) world better, my guess is because deploying is so much easier and the learning curve is much smaller in the beginning. I wonder how bad the learning curve is for bigger PHP projects, when you bring in new developers to the team, since there is no particular pattern and people design the app according to their coding style too much. Again, I am quite ignorant here, and would love to know about some organised ways to PHP, pretty much OOP programming in PHP :) , that sounds weird though. That's like saying I want to do procedural programming in Prolog/ LISP.

Now, just like pg was in 2001, I am not used to programming in PHP and the likes....although I have made my basic web app in that (click here for a crappy looking demo www.skejulers.com/demoing)

would love to know other's perspectives on this.

I would go with mercurial. It just works well with both Windows and Linux (I don't have a MAC). And like alfred said, hoping is not a good option for you. I would always go with any tool, that's proven that obscure. Playing around with it, and testing it is fine if you are a <4 people team. Anything more than 4, and I think it's time to google "XYZ number of users" and it will show you stuff.

If you still need more information to be sure, I think I trust these two, esp recommend the google code link.

http://code.google.com/p/support/wiki/DVCSAnalysis

http://rg03.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/mercurial-vs-git/ This one is a little balanced. more like a good info on internals of both. A little too long, and I didn't like the fact that the guy says both are great, in summary. I knew that already...pick a side if u write a VS article...or else what's the point.....

awesome post. I really agree and almost totally believe that constructive failure is a very important factor for both personal and professional growth. In fact, that is one of the reasons I am willing to have a go and work without any salary or income of any sorts, and try to build a good (great? only time will tell)product. I think we all should get out of our comfort zones and then try doing something which almost ascertains our failure.....but also has some good chances of success...... For that matter....even if you succeed....at such a risky venture.....you would learn so much from that success if you know for certain that chances of failure are really high...and of course the confidence boost would be awesome too...

Exactly !! The ironic part is startup founders and VCs are probably the people who need to network more and learn more from these conferences.....however, we startup founders need to work on our startups too....and more than anyone else, I think.

Totally Depends... That's the real quality of us startup guys (entrepreneurs as they call us), to make changes to our mindset, to keep judging things constantly, basically no absolutley solid rules...it all depends...I believe no two situations are alike... In fact, I think at some level, that's the reason we all love doing this so much....that creates the excitement.

I would just say this: Life is not Black and white....there are degrees of gray in there.....now it's each individual's call at any given point. So, this philosophy might work for some people in some scenarios, but will you back down from a difficult project because it involves much more work than you can see ROI. In most cases, I would rather go with it for a few days and then see, if that HELL YEAH feeling comes...

Well, let me put it this way. I am not going to abandon my prof in any case, both due to respect and sense of legality and righteousness. What I want is to figure out a way to make everyone happy, future investors, and both of us. But I agree with yalurker, in the sense that: yes, this is something invented in the lab, only by me and my prof, and we want to sell it since it's so matured now. The university is going to release the IP to both of us, and we will be paying the university an agreed upon share, it's 10% as we have been told. So, really it's more like an issue between our shares that's troubling me so much. In a perfect world, he could have joined me in the venture and i would have gladly made it 50-50 (hell, i would have even gone for 55-45), or maybe i wouldn't have told my peers this and never would have been asking this question anyways, both to myself and to all of you. If only it was a perfect world....

I hope somehow we get close enough to the magic number, which would make everyone happy.

P.S. - I might have said something that led people believe he is bringing investment too. Well, He is NOT. He is NOT investing or bringing in money of any sorts. So more I think about it, it's more like consulting.

Now, what are your thoughts, after I told you guys this explicitly (somehow I thought it was obvious...should have mentioned this in the minus points, now I don't seem to be able to edit the post...anyone willing to help me with doing that....that way whoever reads the post gets the whole scenario.)