Hello HN, author here. If you've ever wanted to get into data analysis, this is my best attempt at getting you past that first hump. A lot of these concepts are easier than you might think.
708 karma · joined January 22, 2008
It's meant mainly to encourage people not to be intimidated by some of these concepts. Once you understand them, they turn out to be much simpler than would appear on the surface.
Any and all feedback is appreciated. Thanks!
Mike, your work never fails to inspire. The cubism slides (http://bost.ocks.org/mike/cubism/intro/#0) read like a revelation. It astounded me how much data you manage to beautifully convey.
- Saudi Arabia has 18 million nationals. The vast majority of which are sunni salafis (the nomenclature preferred to "Wahhabism"). If Wahhabism was driving motivation for ISIS, then ISIS would have been at least 1000 times the size it is now. Which is clearly not the case.
- While ISIS has similar sounding rhetoric to some hardcore Saudi hardliners, it is almost uniformly reviled and regarded by almost everbody in Saudi as an extreme perversion. And not only since they blew up a number of mosques in the country (or since releasing that video of a Saudi ISIS member executing his own cousin who lay begging for mercy in the begining of that fateful video). But their gruesomeness is as repulsive to Saudis as it is to everbody else in the world. And they are seen as one of the biggest obstacles to the ouster of Bashar Al Assad in Syria (who is responsible for a civil war that has killed more than 200,000 people, mostly Sunni).
- The article makes little effort to distinguish between the Saudi people and the Saudi government. It demonizes the saudi populace even though it is at times the first victim of some of the unsavory consequences of the alliance between the monarchy and the "clergy" (a rather inaccurate term since there is no real hierarchy. The closest thing there is a counsel of elder scholars and those are usually selected for being unwaveringly loyal to the government). There is a subtlty to the dynamic of the populace, monarchy, and clergy that few in the west try to understand. I can expand on this later.
- None of this is to deny the existence of an activist, xenophobic, hateful, Quran-thumping segment that is a loud ultra-minority from which Alqaeda and ISIS try to recruit (with Saudi being one of the first places they often like to target). The government have clamped down HARD on the vast majority of this segment ever since the string of terrorist bombings in Riyadh in the early 2000s.
- Like I try to explain Saudi here, I often try to explain the US to people in Saudi. If there's anything you'd like me to clarify about Saudi, AMA.
I'm the founder of one of the very few funded Internet companies in the country. Spent the last 24 months fundraising with little luck. My God what a brutal time it's been.
When the company ran out of money, I talked with our leading investor about my need for temporary employment (we were talking with a couple of VCs at the time and I didn't want to commit before hearing from them). He ran an Internet company as well, and I worked with them for a while.
I did that for about six months till I knew the investments were not coming. After that I polished my resume and started contacting people and companies about possible full time jobs.
The first question that came to my mind was about which type position to apply for. Before starting the company, I was a software engineer - so I could always fall back on that. But the years I spent working on the startup forced me to be a generalist. It really worried me to think I wasn't sure what sort of position I should be seeking.
It came down to three main options,
1- managing a software product team (which aligns well with my passion for building things) at a software company.
2- working with investment companies interested in Internet/tech investment. What helped me in this area was that I did my homework when we were discussing the term sheet for our seed investment. And that I blogged and spoke about the experience (Arabic content about the topic is very rare, aside from general entrepreneurship hype).
3- working in digital marketing. This drew upon our experience with digital marketing our product. This was my least favorite option, but it had the most market demand.
One of the things that really helped me in this job hunt was that I was visible to the local industry in my attempts to promote the company. I spoke at events about lessons learned, I blogged about the various experiences... Etc.
I was thinking in general as well as things like partnerships and what not.
My startup, Qaym.com is a restaurant rating site in Arabic. We're located in Saudi Arabia. April fools isn't a big thing here or in the Arab world in general. But people know the concept. Today we announced that we're changing the site to become exclusively a camel rating site.
We even made a logo: http://blog.qaym.com/2010/04/blog-post.html
And a homepage to boost: http://www.qaym.com/
Most people got it off the bat. Many were confused. And a couple were actually upset, even after they've figured out it was a joke!
2) Didn't apply
3) Didn't start looking. It's bootstrapped so far and I want to continue doing it this way until I no longer can. Not that there are any valley-type VCs in Saudi Arabia, but was approached by a couple of interested investors. One didn't really get web startups. Still in talks with the other one though. Investment is not currently needed, but can certainly accelerate growth.
4) http://www.qaym.com (in Arabic)
I'm really looking forward to reading about Brad Fitzpatrick. He founded Live Journal, and made or started a lot of the software that powers many giant web startups (Memchached, MogileFS, OpenID...etc).
What kind of arrangement do you have though? Do you have employees? Are you assigning things to co-founders? outsourcing to another firm?