Sunil Kowlgi
@kowlgi
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OODA but for self development
Houston
Joined April 2008
Startups that figure out how to get customers to talk on a consistent basis, have one of the key answers to the growth question.
OK, we all need help on this. Let's help each other. At least 10 times in the past month, someone has said to me: >>> I want to talk to customers more, but they don't respond to requests for meetings, nor to surveys. What do I do? Pay them?? <<< Let's give ideas. I'll start:
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Some things you do compound, even if linearly. Some things just happen and that's the end of its impact. Lots of things in life are the latter; that's fine. But the more time you allocate to the former, the greater you become over time.
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For companies, sales is downstream of marketing. For startups, marketing is downstream of sales.
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there's a unique software development challenge to video editing apps... The app has to get the same visual result from the html/css/js frontend and the ffmpeg/moviepy backend despite the two being unrelated.
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Interviewers look at a software candidate's Github to see the quality of their projects. They should ask for the candidate's StackOverflow too. Knowing how to ask coding questions on SO to elicit answers is a key skill.
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Posted and commented on Reddit for 5 years: earned x karma Posted a video featuring the Southpark creators: overnight 5x karma
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Woz's tips for makers: - use few parts, so everything is clean & orderly. Results in fewer bugs - all the great things he created came from 1. not enough money and 2. not having done it himself before, ever. Designing his own without knowing how others do it made him very good
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After Apple IIs success, Woz wanted to pursue his pet projects. He told Apple he was leaving to build a remote control. Woz and Jobs got along very well and never really had an argument. Any disputes they had were rare and minor.
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He'd stayed up 4 nights long working on the Apple II and was very tired. It was also due to mononucleosis, which he suspects he caught from Jobs when they shared a soda. The tiredness made him get into a really creative state and he got an idea on how to do color at a low cost
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Initially Jobs and Woz couldn't afford to build the Apple II. They went to Commodore for money. Commodore refused as its chief designer thought color display support on Apple II was exotic and couldn't be done cheaply. But Woz had figured out how to do color on the cheap.
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The big break came with the Apple II computer. For a few years in the early 80s, it was the world's largest selling computer. Its success led Apple to IPO in 1980, just 4 years after company founding.
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Woz and Jobs joined the Homebrew computer club. Members were software people with no hardware background. Woz was to show the club how to build a computer, but Jobs said to sell to its 50 members a PC board. They could insert chips to complete the build. They called it Apple I.
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the Steve Wozniak interview in Founders at Work has extensive technical details on how Woz built Apple I and II, which put Apple on a dizzying trajectory. Woz's technical skills dovetailed with Job's charismatic salesmanship to take Apple from 0 to 1
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A summary of video creation activity on Klip, in 2022. In an unparalleled year for video content worldwide, Klip played a key role in screencast video creation.
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5. Exit strategy 6. Money needed 7. How to market 8. Kind of people needed 9. Tech/execution/mktg risks Bhatia says good products don’t try to change user behavior dramatically, rather they make a small but important change. Source: Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston
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Bhatia says founders must write a business plan. Writing helps crystallize thoughts and communicate ideas with others. The Hotmail business plan answered the following: 1. What is the company going to do 2. What is the problem 3. How big is the market 4. Sources of revenue
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Only when a VC showed genuine interest in giving funding did they talk about the Hotmail idea with them. They eventually got funding but Bhatia says he gave too much power away to VCs. He regrets not having a good lawyer before signing the term sheet.
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About to embark on building Hotmail, Bhatia asked Smith to quit his job to work on the startup full-time and offered half his own salary. When they went to VCs to fundraise, they pitched a decoy idea and didn’t disclose the Hotmail idea upfront as they were wary of idea theft.
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