Have you ever spent several years working towards something larger than yourself?  This was my first time doing that.

In college, you have projects that last for a few weeks.  Maybe a semester.   This one lasted me 5 years.  You know the difference between a 5-week project and a 5-year project?

If you’re lucky, if you really care, and if you’re good, you to put your heart into it.

It teaches you to think long term.  To anticipate risks.  To spot opportunity.

I’ve spent the last 5 years optimizing for maximum startup success.  Success is a tricky metric to optimize for because it’s about providing value to others.  After a few months, we discovered that, to be successful, you have to put model in place that allows you to optimize your product for maximal end-user value.  Since StepOut is a dating site, that meant optimizing for maximal quality end-user connections.  Those were my key metrics at StepOut.

I’ve since cleared a lot of headspace that was previously used for such wargames. So what should I use that headspace for?

To an engineer, that kind of sounds like an optimization problem.  What do you optimize for when you’re optimizing your life?  Depending upon your particular professional, politicial, or religious bent, you probably have a different end-game.

A politician optimizes for the most influence.

A priest optimizes for the least suffering.

A doctor optimizes for maximum health.

A teacher optimizes for knowledge.

An artist optimizes for the most beauty.

A marketer optimizes for conversions.

A financier optimizes for the most money.

Of course we all optimize for many other things beyond our purely professional aspirations.  Some are optimizing for the most money.  Others the most health.  The most love.  The length of life.  The least headache and the least heartache.

So what does an engineer optimize for?

Robert Prisig might advocate that an engineer optimizes for quality.  How does one optimize for the most quality in his own life?

There’s a post floating around the ‘net entitled the top 5 regrets of the dying.

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Paul Graham, in one if his essays, reverses these regrets into action items he can take daily, and then places them at the top of his to-do list, To remind him every day what’s important.

Don’t ignore your dreams; don’t work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy.

Good stuff.  I’m lucky to have these action items as most of my to-do list, not just at the top of it.

TLDR – Optimize for happiness.  Not for comfort.  Life is short.  Live it today.

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When we decided to become an Indian-based dating site, my partners and I sat down to have a really honest conversation about what our commitments to the company could be.   I’d consider my relationship with Dan, Adam, and Nicky to be really strong – and very honest — They are great guys to work with.  After weighing my own personal needs with what was best for our shareholders, I knew that I couldn’t relocate to Mumbai to be with my team.  The best move for the company would be to someday transition my leadership of our dev team to a new, India-based, CTO.

That day has come.

I’m excited to announce today that we’ve found a rock star to step in and to build the technology team on the ground.   It’s a humbling experience to be replaced by someone as talented as Suvesh and it’s an understatement to say that I’m really excited to work with him to position the company for a monster 2013.  This team has its best days ahead of it and while I’m sad to be stepping into a more advisory role, I’m comforted knowing that it’s the best move for the company.

What’s next?

Growing a company as founding CTO has a lesson in self-actualization for me.  I’ve formed some amazing professional relationships in the past 5 years.  I’ve learned lessons about my gumption, persistence, and ability — both personal and professional.  Most importantly, I’ve gained a kind of determined self-assurance that comes only from taking a bold risk on and landing on my feet.

My focus for the next few months is on ensuring a smooth transition for my team. I’ll also be doubling down on my running, traveling, hacking, and reading.  If you’re in New York, Philadelphia, Boulder, New Orleans, London, Beruit, Barcelona, or India this summer, I’d love to grab coffee.

Take it away David.  Ch-ch-changes!

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That hasn’t stopped me from developing my own theories.  Reading this quora thread on why many engineers detest their management reminds me, I have a theory that credible startup engineering leadership comes from three places:

1. Deep Technical Roots - I’ve found that the ability to code translates to the ability to estimate complexity, foresee and mitigate risks, and manage scale application scale.  Once you’ve spent years as an engineer putting out fires you learn to prevent fires.   At StepOut, we’ve come up with a set of code standards and architecture patterns that allow us to nip common technical issues in the bud.  If that prevent the anti-patterns, then we’ve got code review to give us an opportunity to re-grok them before they make it to production.
2. Credible Vision -   I’m OCD in that I like to have all of my tasks super-organized.  Our product management product, Wrike, is meticulously organized, tagged, and scheduled.  This allows me to plan weeks and months ahead.  The key is (a) know the business KPIs and (b) to strike a balance between meticulous planning and agility as they shift.  That, along with persistent follow-up on each element of the roadmap, allows me  to demonstrate progress over time.  Another part of having vision is effective communication — My general rule is to over-communicate your vision, thought process, methodology — communication on a regular cadence is the drumbeat of a team marching in sync.
3. Treating People like People - I think the most important thing about running a team is to treat the people you work with like people.   Be positive.  Build a dialogue with your team —  start by recognizing each individual member is a real 21st century person, living and breathing, with talents, flaws, warts and all.  And don’t abuse your power — make decisions with a clear articulate rationale.  Engineers like to know the why behind a policy.   It might be a little cynical to phrase this point as “treat a person like a person in order to be a better leader”.  A better place to start is probably “Hire people who you are interested in fully knowing and growing with.”

</ soapbox >

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I just coded up a bookmarklet that allows me to export anyone’s instagram photos.  Drag this bookmarklet into your browser bookmark bar and navigate to instagram.com to use it.

Export Instagram Photo

Cheers, and happy instagramming!

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I like to call my morning calls my “punch me in the face” wake up calls.  When you’re a web startup moving as fast as we are, capturing a billion+ person market, building a product across 9 time zones, shit is bound to break.  Daily.  From speaking with other founders, I get the impression that this is just what entrepreneurship is – a struggle.

Through all the shit that has hit the fan over the years, I’ve come to see the value in my team of one trait among all others – persistence.   You manage your future risks and you take your punches in stride.

It ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! ~Rocky Balboa

You said it Rocky.  Keep moving forward.

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When the site is experiencing abnormally high load, and you get paged, it’s time to jump into the fray.  Into the hot seat.  Where every second counts.  I often chat with DevOps engineers at meetups, each has a story of an extraordinarily complex and timely production issue they had to conquer.  They read like battle reports.  While the details of our own system are highly specific, it’s encouraging to know that I’m not alone in going into battle.

I’d like to recount a battle report of my own.

I was paged on a Monday morning at 9:15am because the logs had a lot of mysql issues.  I tailed the logs and saw the same.  Checked the production site, it was down.  Upon opening up mytop on all of the DB  servers, I saw that the slave lag on [Server 2] and [Server 4] were very high.  They were hovering at [redacted] seconds, which is the cutoff for whether our cron jobs will still query them.  Since our background batch jobs were running, I intuited that there were causing too many writes being processed to the master server.

Since I’ve battled slave lag before, I know that it is caused by having too many mysql writes or too many writes that are slow.  In this case, it was a combination of both.  Since the mysql slave thread executes slave queries sequentially, the slaves got way behind.  You can see the slave lag thread in this screenshot of mytop as ID # 5453272.

In any case, I watched the slave lag thread for a few minutes and intuited that [Feature 1] were causing an issue and that the [Feature 2] job was causing an issue.  Fixes here and here.  There was also a rogue mysql query being executed on the command line by the root user — A month ago I had set up an job to migrate the [Feature 3] and it never ended after they were all migrated.

[Engineer] then put the site in maintenance mode. It’s actually a really simple change that we make to the app code. If I remember correctly, I think there’s also a way to modify the nginx config to force this condition as well, but we find app-level changes to be a little more straightforward.

After I commited those fixes, I noticed that [Server 1] (the mysql master) was still overloaded.  It seemed like it was past the point of no return.  Since the slaves were all past their acceptable slave lag, the application was just querying the master server, which was the root cause of the overload.  [Server 1] had a load average of 20!  No good.  Especially since the mysql master is one of the single points of failure in our application.  I then restarted the mysql daemon on [Server 1].  That didn’t work, the process had runaway and was frozen.  I then executed a hard reboot on the [Server 1] server.  It was taking forever to come back online, so I had [Engineer 1] live chat with [Web Host] and they told me it was executing a file system check to prevent data corruption.

At this point, [my boss] was gchatting the hell out of me telling me he was in an important meeting with [important industry bigwig] and he needed to see the site.  Major facepalm!  You do not want to fuck up your bosses important meeting.  So I switch [Server 2] to be the master server (code line that I changed is here).  Note that [Server 1] has a master-master relationship with [Server 2]. That means that all queries executed on [Server 2] will eventually be executed on [Server 1] and vice versa.  All of the other servers ([Server 3],[Server 4], etc) have a master-slave relationship, so you should never ever ever eever ever ever ever ever ever set them as a master server or else the databases will get out of sync.

At this point, [Server 1] came back online.  I reverted the commit to the DB layer.

Oh, and also, php-fpm and nginx were restarted on the app servers a few times.  We needed to do this because, as mysql queries get backed up, application servers start to pile up threads of php-fpm and nginx and then themselves become overloaded.

And that was that.  Site came back online and everything was sunshine, unicorns, and rainbows.

For future reference, you can kind a list of ‘on call resources’ in our documentation, here.

</braindump>

One thing I’ve been concentrating on recently is providing adequate information to my on-call engineers so that they can make the right decisions when they are in the hot seat.  The hot seat requires a combination of experience, critical thinking, and mindful action.  It requires you to use a scalpel, not a knife.   It requires you to communicate timelines to your clients.  It’s live surgery, and you are the surgeon.

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Here are some historical predecessors to the Google Glass.  Some are consumer-facing, others have had more application in the military.  Others have had specialized applications, like in operating rooms or in race cars.

1850s: The Holmes Stereoscope

The Holmes StereoScope was a stereoscope viewer that consisted of two prismatic lenses mounted on a wooden stand.  The device was built in the 1850s and remained in production for nearly 100 years.  Click here to learn more about stereoscopes of the 1800s.

1930s: The ViewMaster

The ViewMaster is a stereoscopic device built and marketed in the US in the 1930s.  It featured ‘reels’, which were cardboard disks containing 7 3d image pairs.  While it was, for some time, used for tourism and military training purposes, most current View-Master disk reels are marketed to children.

1984: IHADSS

The Integrated Helmet And Display Sight System (IHADSS) was the first integration of a visual heads up display on an aircraft.  It was introduced in 1984. 

1995: Virtual Boy

The Virtual Boy video game system was built and marketed by Nintendo as the first ‘true 3d’ video game console.  It featured a head-mounted display  where the user looks into a neoprene eyepiece.  It was released in 1995 but failed commercially, with only 22 games ever released. 

2003: JHMCS

The Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System was a technology tested in the US Navy in 2003.  It was developed by Vision Systems International and integrated into the F/A-18 by Boeing.  JHMCS was used for target designation and ‘Lock On After Launch’ firing.  Integration of night vision goggles was a key part of the technology.

2008: Scorpion HMCS

The Scorpion HMCS was the first color head-mounted display introduced into the aviation market.  It was also the first display that didn’t need to mounted on custom helmets – it was standard issue on HGU-55/P helmets.  It is compatible with both panoramic and night vision goggles.

Future Military Head Mounted Displays

 Check out other head-mounted military displays here.  According to Wikipedia, future military-grade head-mounted displays may also include

1. Eye tracking software – This software will allow a device to know where a user is looking.
2. Direct retinal projection – This is software that will project information directly onto the users retina.

2013: Google Glass

The Google Glass is a consumer-targeted wearable computer and head mounted display.  It has gained considerable media attention due to its backing by Google, and is scheduled for mass-market release in 2013 for “around $1,500″.

The device uses the android operating system.

The eyewear is designed to be as minimal as possible.  The device features audio controls, a camera, and geolocation technology.  For example, a user can tell glass to “record a video”, “take a picture”, or “send a text message” to a contact.

Exciting Times

If the promise of google glass is to bring augmented reality to the masses, then I am excited that this year is the year it’s happening!  It’s encouraging (and scary) to think that in the future, perhaps our childrens generation will find it most quaint that we distinguished between real reality and augmented reality.

You might also be interested in:

1. Glass App Ideas
2. Glass App Mockups
3. The Google Glass Plus Page
4. A brief history of wearable computing

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If you are one of these people, you faced with a seemingly-monumental choice. How are you going to build the app?  The options are:

1. Learn to program.
2. Find a technical co-founder.
3. Hire an offshore team.

With a decision this big, there are a quite a few dimensions to consider. Is your first hire a co-founder?  A mini co-founder?  A contractor?  Do you want to have someone whose interests are aligned with yours long-term?  Or just something short-term?  Bringing someone on full-time is going to mean giving up a significant amount of equity, particularly if you are compensating only in equity.  But if you can get to a MVP prototype out yourself, you can gain some initial traction and investment and then hopefully pay a salary.

Let’s take a quick look at the pros and cons of each of those three options.

Learn to program

Learning to program can be an arduous task for someone who is not heavily analytical. On the other hand, it is a lot of fun, and your software development skills will be an asset to you forever.

PROS

• You’ll save equity and cash.
• It can be done.
• You’ll gain a valuable 21st-century skill.

CONs

• It can be slow.
• It can be tough.
• There is A LOT to learn.

If you’re not going to jump in the deep end and get a degree in computer science, I’d recommend code academy, or classes at a local tech space.  Also, network with other techies.  Nothing makes a tough task easier than a little moral support

Find a technical co-founder

As a technical co-founder of a NYC startup, I am the most experienced with this route.  I went through Techstars with my partners.  And we’ve been working together for 5 years.

PROS

• Given the right incentive package, you will find someone who is aligned with you for the long term.  You’ll have a partner to enjoy the highs and suffer the lows with you.
• It’s quicker than learning tech yourself.

CONS

• It’s tough to recruit developers.
• You’ll give up equity.
• It’s tough to manage the personality and the output of programmers.  Especially as a non-programmer.

Hire an offshore team

This is personally the option I have the least experience with.  I know folks who have gotten to MVP stage with this approach, and I know others who have wasted 9 months of burn getting nowhere and eventually re-writing from scratch.  Whatever you do – Invest in diligence on the team upfront and make sure your incentives are aligned with the team.   If you contact me, I can intro you to some vendors who do good work.

Enjoy

So there you have it.   The startup struggle is long and if you’re reading this post, your journey is likely just beginning.  Forgive the cliche, but Entrepreneurship is truly a journey —  Good luck and Godspeed

The post Who’s going to build my MVP? appeared first on Owocki dot com.

Ring.  Buzz.  Growl.  Chime.

By the time you are done reading this post, you’ve likely received multiple requests for your attention.  Perhaps they came in the form of notifications on a shiny new Apple device.  Or maybe they were interruptions from your office environment around you.   If you are not in your office on your Apple device, perhaps you are walking down the street.  Or sitting in a noisy cafe.  I’d venture to guess that, by way of selection bias of you being connected to the internet, you are in a place wherein you are consistently showered with units of new information.

Noise and Silence

The digital age is upon us and humanity is awash in a newfound abundance of information!  Glorious isn’t it?  It is wonderful, we truly do live in a gilded age.  A world of abundance!  Infinite possibilities!  That said, it is perhaps a world out of balance.  As the saying goes “Everything is good in moderation”.  I, for one, do get the feeling that our collective psyche has been struggling to keep up with the pace of digital innovation.  This struggle to keep up manifests as a race to increase output through consistent connectedness, skillful creation, and clever multi-tasking. It’s a struggle that for reasons economic, physiological, and psychological in nature, we 21st-century citizens must endure.

One wonders: Does information ever become just noise?  Is there ever more value in silence than in information?  Does that struggle to keep up ever become a self-destructive habit?  Based upon my own experience, I must answer:  yes, yes, and yes.   I have a friend who brings their radio into the shower because they “don’t like the silence”.   I know runners who jog to music because it “takes their mind off the pain”.  Have you ever found yourself mindlessly surfing reddit or clicking through a high-school friend’s photos? I have.  Every morning I feel the irresistible draw of my iPhone Inbox first thing in the morning.  I must admit that I am addicted to information.

Struggle and Suffering

So if information abundance is a modern reality — one which raises a nations GDP but not necessarily it’s citizens enlightenment — does the fact that we struggle with it mean that we must suffer in the meantime?

Forgive the hippie cliches emanating from my fingers through your monitor — but is there a way to free my mind from the tyranny of this struggle?  If the world won’t stop provoking me through eliciting my reactions to it’s information, then is my modern life condemned to a state of digital bondage?  Am I a powerless automaton floating in a sea of web marketers manipulating my ego for my attention (and my wallet)?  After 5 years of often-thankless 60-hour weeks launching my startup  – I believe there is something practical to be gained by studying my own relationship to information.   Since my chances of changing the media landscape around me are nill, I’ve lately find myself looking for skillful ways to cultivate boundaries within my own life to curtail it.  I know that I can struggle, achieve, even be more productive all the while not suffering.  And I think that it all starts with the mastery of the art of non-reaction.

If you’ve read this far — you must think I am some burnt out hippy.  Maybe I am.  Maybe not.  Let’s continue anyhow.

Undo-ing Conditioned Reaction

If you pay attention to your thoughts, you will find that your immediate reaction to big news, good or bad, is always the most primal.   You’ll see the irrational, sometimes unproductive, response sent directly from your gut to your lizard brain.  Usually it hits me physiologically — just as I hear it, my pulse quickens, my breath skips a beat, and my mind rushes to judgement.

• “Kevin, the site is offline”.  Fucking fuck fuck – seriously?
• “Hey Kevin, report X does not match up with report Y.” God damnit – again?
• “Hey Kee, the registration flow hasn’t worked in IE8 for the past 3 weeks. Our CPA is up 18%”  Srsly?  Christ. Kill me

For the sake of the struggle, it is important to respond.  And to do it quickly.  As lead developer at StepOut, I’m on call 3 days a week — I respond quick as shit.  Being Indias number one dating site, our peak usage time is in the middle of the night and I often have to respond then.  But sometimes if I am not mindful, this habit of impulsive responsiveness compulsively bleeds into situations with less urgency.

• “Kevin, what are you up to tonight?”
• “Hey Kee, can you deliver that ERP report by EOW?”
• “Hey Kev, how was your weekend?  Let’s get the creatives for project Y started.”
• … and the to-do list goes on and on…

This compulsive responsiveness isn’t just limited to direct queries for my attention.  It  happens with more implicit requests too.  Subliminal cues from my environment also elicit a lizard brain response.

• See brownie.  Get Excited. Eat brownie.
• See advertisement.  Want product.  Buy product.
• Bang knee.  Feel Pain.  Curse Uncontrollably.

Input begets Response.  Action creates Reaction.  Question solicits Answer.  Unless we can de-couple the length of our todo list from our mental well-being, the end result is a stressed mental state.

The world controls you through eliciting reactions. If you get a cookie, you react happily. Therefore cookies control you. If someone calls you a bad word, you react with fury. Therefore words control you. If you hate working, your job becomes slavery. Therefore…I think you get the picture.

But in non-reaction, there is bliss. You can look into the face of a miserable sunny day indoors and sigh contentedly.

How does this work? I’ll tell you.

During meditation, we watch our thoughts. Most people labor under the delusion that you have to clear your mind and push all of your thoughts away to meditate. This is wrong. Instead, you watch your thoughts. They come and go like fish in a stream and, like fish in a stream, you catch and release them.

By doing this, you eventually discover that you are not your thoughts but rather the space they appear within. You find a continuity of self between fleeting thoughts and sensations.

– Lazy Yogi

This month, I’m working on breaking the vicious cycle of stimulus and response.  I’m going to focus on skillful non-reaction.  When I receive a request that is not urgent, it’s going on my to-do list, not on the top of my mental execution stack.

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1. It’s easy to quit; harder to be persistent.
2. Derisiveness is easy; it’s hard to be thoughtfully decisive.
3. It’s easy to ignore the hard conversations; harder to have them.
4. What separates an athlete from the rest of us is will to practice.

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