5 ms·

sounds wild, would love to hear about this as well

robomartin 7y ago
Well, I'll keep it simple. This was before iPhone times. Apple, among other things, was focusing on the applications of its product in the media-related industries. I launched a self-funded startup to develop hardware (FPGA, embedded, real-time image processing, software) for this industry segment. After a year of very hard work I was able to emerge out of the garage with a fairly sophisticated product that was very well received. Only one problem: The product could work much better if Apple would only modify their newly-introduced Apple HD Cinema Display. I had already hacked the display and developed the modifications, I just needed Apple on board. I tried in vain to make contact with a number of people at Apple. I was getting nowhere. My work schedule was nuts, pretty much 18 hour days, 7 days a week. That's what you do when you are launching a business, particularly if you put it all on the line and have no outside funding or support. Which means it was normal for me to be in the garage up to 3 or 4 in the morning coding, designing hardware, or just generally working on the product or business. One morning, out of frustration, I decided to hunt down Steve's email address and send him a note. I found a plausible candidate and sent an email at 2:30 in the morning. I still remember the subject line: "Trouble doing business with Apple". That was followed by just a sentence or two which, frankly, I can't remember. Not much in the way of details. Clicked "Send" and went back to coding. Around 3:00AM I get a short email back: "What's the problem? -Steve" I sat there staring at that email for some time. I finally decided that this was either someone having fun at my expense or the real guy. No harm in trying. I typed-up a couple-page response with as much detail as made sense and sent it. I got a reply within thirty minutes or so. A couple of questions, which I answered. The conversation ended with another short email: "Thanks for reaching out. -Steve". It's was 4:30 AM or so. No point sleeping. I couldn't. Later that afternoon I got a call from a VP just below Steve. He said "Steve asked me to take care of this for him". We spoke for about 45 minutes. The following day he invited me to come out to Cupertino, meet with their engineering team, explain how to fix the problem and discuss a few other non-engineering items. Fast forward to a few months later, I designed an iteration of our product per Apple's request and we launched it at the Apple booth during one of the industry events. Pretty crazy ride. Like I said in my prior post, I don't think I slept in a year.
- hinkley 7y ago
  I wonder sometimes if I had less time to do dome things if I’d still have managed to get the most important bits done. If I’d have just been more circumspect about available resources. If, for instance, I’d gotten an hour more sleep a day, my output may have been better. Too often have I come in the next day and deleted all but four lines of what I was tying the day before. Sunk cost fallacy hits me less severely after I’ve “slept on it”. Maybe all those grandads were right.
  - robomartin 7y ago
    These are important questions with very difficult answers. I think one of the fallacies in business is to actually think you are in control. You can plan and have the best intentions, but reality is the business tells you what you are going to do each and every morning and it has absolutely no sympathy for the fact that we are a human beings with very real limitations. I equate it to sailing in stormy weather, something I've done a bunch of times. It is important to know the general direction you need to go and establish a few goals, yet is it foolish to think you are actually in control. The ocean tells you what to do from wave to wave and you work hard to do as it desires while constantly pushing towards your desired outcome. It's an art, a science and, yes, a bit of luck never hurts. That's the challenge of entrepreneurship. You can either let the ocean, the business, sink you by taking you off-course and causing you to make bad decisions and face dangerous circumstances or you can navigate what it puts in front of you every day as best as you might be able while also pushing hard to generally point in the direction you want to go. Sure, there are cases where people get on that boat and the thing just pushes forward with favorable winds and it's go-go-go (Facebook comes to mind). Yet that's not what a typical business looks like. Most businesses are like the aforementioned storm. Which is to say: Hard work, uncertainty, fear, joy, trepidation, doubt, bad decisions, good decisions, bad luck, good luck and, maybe, if things align, a good outcome on the other side of the storm. This is why I think --conjecture on my part-- groups like YC have found that multi-founder teams consisting of young people without prior business experience do better than single founders with the same life experience. Anyone can operate when the weather is great and winds blow in the desired direction. Yet that's not reality. You are going to tear a sail or break a mast here and there. In these situations the right team can be much better than a solo founder, even if they lack life and business experience. My best advice is to not use the past as a source of regret but rather as a source of wisdom. Failures hurt (I've had a few, I've been bankrupt, penny-less) but they are also absolutely invaluable if one is able to remove emotion and learn from them. At the moment I am in the process of starting yet another company, this time in the vertical farming space. I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that my failures in life and business have helped me and will help me along this new journey far more than the success I have enjoyed. Don't dwell in the past, use it to make you a better entrepreneur in your next adventure. Make something that solves a real problem and give it all you got. If you are willing to navigate the storm the market will reward you for it.

Well, I'll keep it simple. This was before iPhone times. Apple, among other things, was focusing on the applications of its product in the media-related industries. I launched a self-funded startup to develop hardware (FPGA, embedded, real-time image processing, software) for this industry segment. After a year of very hard work I was able to emerge out of the garage with a fairly sophisticated product that was very well received. Only one problem: The product could work much better if Apple would only modify their newly-introduced Apple HD Cinema Display. I had already hacked the display and developed the modifications, I just needed Apple on board. I tried in vain to make contact with a number of people at Apple. I was getting nowhere. My work schedule was nuts, pretty much 18 hour days, 7 days a week. That's what you do when you are launching a business, particularly if you put it all on the line and have no outside funding or support. Which means it was normal for me to be in the garage up to 3 or 4 in the morning coding, designing hardware, or just generally working on the product or business. One morning, out of frustration, I decided to hunt down Steve's email address and send him a note. I found a plausible candidate and sent an email at 2:30 in the morning. I still remember the subject line: "Trouble doing business with Apple". That was followed by just a sentence or two which, frankly, I can't remember. Not much in the way of details. Clicked "Send" and went back to coding. Around 3:00AM I get a short email back: "What's the problem? -Steve" I sat there staring at that email for some time. I finally decided that this was either someone having fun at my expense or the real guy. No harm in trying. I typed-up a couple-page response with as much detail as made sense and sent it. I got a reply within thirty minutes or so. A couple of questions, which I answered. The conversation ended with another short email: "Thanks for reaching out. -Steve". It's was 4:30 AM or so. No point sleeping. I couldn't. Later that afternoon I got a call from a VP just below Steve. He said "Steve asked me to take care of this for him". We spoke for about 45 minutes. The following day he invited me to come out to Cupertino, meet with their engineering team, explain how to fix the problem and discuss a few other non-engineering items. Fast forward to a few months later, I designed an iteration of our product per Apple's request and we launched it at the Apple booth during one of the industry events. Pretty crazy ride. Like I said in my prior post, I don't think I slept in a year.

hinkley 7y ago
I wonder sometimes if I had less time to do dome things if I’d still have managed to get the most important bits done. If I’d have just been more circumspect about available resources. If, for instance, I’d gotten an hour more sleep a day, my output may have been better. Too often have I come in the next day and deleted all but four lines of what I was tying the day before. Sunk cost fallacy hits me less severely after I’ve “slept on it”. Maybe all those grandads were right.
- robomartin 7y ago
  These are important questions with very difficult answers. I think one of the fallacies in business is to actually think you are in control. You can plan and have the best intentions, but reality is the business tells you what you are going to do each and every morning and it has absolutely no sympathy for the fact that we are a human beings with very real limitations. I equate it to sailing in stormy weather, something I've done a bunch of times. It is important to know the general direction you need to go and establish a few goals, yet is it foolish to think you are actually in control. The ocean tells you what to do from wave to wave and you work hard to do as it desires while constantly pushing towards your desired outcome. It's an art, a science and, yes, a bit of luck never hurts. That's the challenge of entrepreneurship. You can either let the ocean, the business, sink you by taking you off-course and causing you to make bad decisions and face dangerous circumstances or you can navigate what it puts in front of you every day as best as you might be able while also pushing hard to generally point in the direction you want to go. Sure, there are cases where people get on that boat and the thing just pushes forward with favorable winds and it's go-go-go (Facebook comes to mind). Yet that's not what a typical business looks like. Most businesses are like the aforementioned storm. Which is to say: Hard work, uncertainty, fear, joy, trepidation, doubt, bad decisions, good decisions, bad luck, good luck and, maybe, if things align, a good outcome on the other side of the storm. This is why I think --conjecture on my part-- groups like YC have found that multi-founder teams consisting of young people without prior business experience do better than single founders with the same life experience. Anyone can operate when the weather is great and winds blow in the desired direction. Yet that's not reality. You are going to tear a sail or break a mast here and there. In these situations the right team can be much better than a solo founder, even if they lack life and business experience. My best advice is to not use the past as a source of regret but rather as a source of wisdom. Failures hurt (I've had a few, I've been bankrupt, penny-less) but they are also absolutely invaluable if one is able to remove emotion and learn from them. At the moment I am in the process of starting yet another company, this time in the vertical farming space. I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that my failures in life and business have helped me and will help me along this new journey far more than the success I have enjoyed. Don't dwell in the past, use it to make you a better entrepreneur in your next adventure. Make something that solves a real problem and give it all you got. If you are willing to navigate the storm the market will reward you for it.