Hi, I’m Hsu Ken Ooi

There’s this great quote in Frost/Nixon that goes like this: “In boxing, there’s always that first moment, and you see it in the challenger’s face. It’s that moment that he feels the impact from the champ’s first jab.  It’s kind of a sickening moment, when he realizes that all those months of pep talks and the hype, the psyching yourself up, had been delusional all along.”

It’s one thing to know how strong the champ can hit, and something quite different to feel it.

That’s kind of what it’s like to start a company: “Yeah, yeah … I know it’s going to be hard – everybody has told me it’s going to be hard – but I’m ready for it, and I can handle it.”

Trust me, you’re not, and no matter how much you think you know about what it’s going to be like, when that first jab comes, you’ll begin to truly understand for the first time.

Paul Graham says that good startup founders can be described in two words: relentlessly resourceful.   I agree, but I would add two words of my own: arrogant and naïve. Arrogant enough to get in the ring, and naïve enough that you still think you will win after you feel the first punch.

I think it's true for most of the really important lessons in life. Everyone knows how it's going to be or how it should be but actually getting there or doing it is something different entirely.

Everybody left, and the next day, I was the only one who came in the office

Blogger, a project that he had worked on for 2 years was out of money, his cofounder left, he had to lay everyone off and he broke up with his girlfriend.. jesus what a night.

He still came to the office the next day and kept working. For the next year he worked by himself keeping the service alive. A year after that Google acquired the company.

It's crazy how quickly things can change. Startups are like looking for the light switch in a dark room, you could be standing right next to it or be on the other side of the room, you just don't know.

Evan Williams is the CEO of Twitter and one of it's founders.

I remember early on someone saying Twitter is fun but it isn't useful and Ev said 'So what? So is ice cream'," Stone said while warning to be wary of skeptics. "We liked it. So we kept working on it.

awesome.

Not defining the Product Manager role clearly in a startup, and dedicating someone to it as quickly as possible is a mistake.

i think it's pretty true. i've been through projects where a product manager wasn't clearly defined and things weren't execuated properly.

what do people think? is it necessary to actual dedicate an entire person to this?

the first 30 seconds are hilarious. first there is a joke about real numbers then aaron gets applause and a hi-five because it was an all cash deal. love it!

Here are some more companies that only saw huge success after a good bit of evolution:

• Facebook was briefly a "Hot Or Not" for Harvard.
• AOL began as a videogame on-demand service.
• Twitter started as podcast delivery service.
• Intel sold computer memory, not microchips.
• Microsoft wanted to build software tools.
• Tiffany & Co sold paper.
• Google wanted to search bulletin boards.
• Silicon Graphics got its start making graphics terminals.
• Avon sold books door to door.

We definitely have done this. There are so many unknowns that contribute to a companies success that you simply can't predict.

if you hire all the smartest people and put them to work on a problem where their success can be measured, you win.

i think the measuring part of this equation is over-looked, most people focus on hiring the smartest, but measuring success is just as important.

People are good and trustworthy and generally just concerned with getting through the day," Newmark says. If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. Any additional features are almost certainly superfluous and could even be damaging.

he's right.

Another way to think about this is it's five or 10 times easier to get into Harvard University than it is to get venture capital.