Walking home
Posted from San Francisco, CA
Your daily dose of inspiring quotes for entrepreneurs, mixed with the occasional photo from my iPhone.
I'm the Founder of reMail, a mobile email startup.
Previously, I was the VP Engineering at Xobni (makers of a rockin' Outlook plugin), a Software Engineer at Google (makers of awesomeness in general), and a grad student at ETH Zurich (makers of smart people since 1855, such as Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, Santiago Calatrava, Herzog & de Meuron, Urs Hoelzle, and Niklaus Wirth).
This Posterous is for scribbling down inspiring and uplifting quotes that I come across. Positive vibes and good karma. Being an entrepreneur is hard and sometimes discouraging - come here for your daily dose of positivity.
(Yes, I'm going to try to post every single day!).
You can find my "real" blog at http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog - that's where I post original content, although less frequently.
My Twitter is at http://www.twitter.com/gabor.
Oh also, mail me your quote suggestions - my email address is on my homepage.
"Nailing down a profusion of tiny details"
"The Twitter app to use on Android, I’m told, is Twidroid. It’s okay but one of the benefits of using an application versus a browser is the ability to provide functionality you can’t do on a web page. Twidroid is a little chunky when scrolling, offers lengthy menus you have to scroll through when the phone is turned sideways, and generally feels rough to me. There is a “delete” option for every tweet, not just my own, but every tweet. When you push that option you are told, “You may not delete another users (sic) status”. They shipped that."
Andre Torrez, Notes on “Android Software (Day 3)”
Finishing a significant consumer software application is essentially a process of nailing down a profusion of tiny details like the ones Torrez calls out here. It can seem like death by a thousand paper cuts, and it becomes even more painful when you realize that you can’t market based on polish, and no user will laud you for making sure a button is properly disabled, an icon is perfectly aligned, or a design is properly thought out. One of the hardest things about shipping Birdfeed was staying committed to slaving away on such minutae while other, often less polished, clients beat me to market.
While such attention to detail may not be appreciated in the specific case, however, I’ve found that in aggregate it leads to an overall impression of quality that attracts the kind of fanatically devoted users who form the backbone of a growing, long term user base. Shipping quality is a longer, tougher road than just shipping whatever to be first to market, and its benefits tend to be realized more slowly, but if you want users to love your software as a brand, and not merely use it as a commodity, it’s the only way.
(via buzzandersen via ran-dom)
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Some potential Halloween costumes
Ppppp - thus I checked out some costumes on an unrelated trip to Tarjet today
Posted from Novato, CA
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Lessons from Lars Rasmussen
Lars and his brother created Google Maps and Google Wave. While I don't know him directly, a couple of my friends are working on Google Wave in Sydney.
Lard held a talk about his startup experiences in Australia which is summarized in this old-school PDF. So have I learned any lessons?Absolutely. Never give up! Running out of money and into walls, we were often tempted to simply give up and get a job. In hindsight, our finest work came exactly when we resisted that urge: recruiting Noel and Stephen, turning Sequoia's rejection into Google’s offer, and so on.
You can do more than you think. Innovation happens outside your comfort zone. Jens and I spend much of our time pushing, prodding, and cajoling our team to reach further than they feel comfortable. No, you don't need a map. Explorers share a willingness to embark on a journey without knowing exactly how they’ll reach their destination. On occasion, people have turned down joining our team exactly because we refuse to present a master plan. But you cannot cross uncharted territory if you insist on following a map. People on my team have been known to quote me as saying: “If you can sleep calmly at night, then you could be more ambitious.” I have said no such thing! Might still be some truth to it, though...
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Not talkers. Not dreamers. Builders.
"The good innovation -- the innovation that makes the world a better place and builds real wealth in society -- that stuff is done by radically self-reliant creators who get their hands dirty. Not talkers. Not dreamers. Builders."
-> Read "Build" on Garry Tan's blogComments [0]
More time for your breakthrough
"Earlier generations of scientists didn't have to wade through quite as much preexisting work before making an original contribution. Now innovators are establishing themselves much later in life. Over the last century and a half, the average age of a Nobel Prize winner at the moment of his great breakthrough has risen more than five years, from 34 to almost 39 years old. Run-of-the-mill inventors are also older: the average age for registering first major patents has jumped seven months per decade." - Tony Dokoupil
(Saw this in an inflight magazine somewhere)
Posted from Sultanahmet, Turkey
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