The Lifelong Learner :: Do what you can, with what you have, where you are -Roosevelt ::

Even a country with 1.3 billion of people can face workers shortage. Really? Yeah. And that’s what’s happening in China right now. Because of the shortage, the pay is rising (the minimum wage rose by 30%, last year) and workers are starting to demand more. Some companies are even moving to different countries, like Vietnam, where pay is cheaper. Is China losing its dominance? Read this article on IHT.com. I think it’s very good.

Paul Graham wrote an excellent article, How to Start a Startup. One thing about Paul Graham: there only a few that can write as well as him.

I’m going to extract couple things that I marked with double stars. However, go read the article as it was a joy to read. Highly recommended.

You might not start a startup right away, but you’ll learn what it takes and the whole process of creating a successful tech startup.

You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed.

Ideas for a startup?

look at something people are trying to do, and figure out how to do it in a way that doesn’t suck.

If you want ideas for startups, one of the most valuable things you could do is find a middle-sized non-technology company and spend a couple weeks just watching what they do with computers.

People

We could bear any amount of nerdiness if someone was truly smart. What we couldn’t stand were people with a lot of attitude. But most of those weren’t truly smart.

So as a rule you can recognize genuinely smart people by their ability to say things like “I don’t know,” “Maybe you’re right,” and “I don’t understand x well enough.”

Understand Users

If you can’t understand users, however, you should either learn how or find a co-founder who can. That is the single most important issue for technology startups, and the rock that sinks more of them than anything else.

What Customers Want

In nearly every failed startup, the real problem was that customers didn’t want the product.

The only way to make something customers want is to get a prototype in front of them and refine it based on their reactions.

It’s worth trying very, very hard to make technology easy to use.

If you build the simple, inexpensive option, you’ll not only find it easier to sell at first, but you’ll also be in the best position to conquer the rest of the market.

Raising Money

[What] most investors expect is a brief description of what you plan to do and how you’re going to make money from it, and the resumes of the founders. If you just sit down and write out what you’ve been saying to one another, that should be fine.

Type 45+12 into Google. What do you get? Well, you’re just going to see a listing of sites that contain that term. Wrong. Google is smart enough to invoke its calculator when you type a mathematical expression. So the result you get is 45+12=57. Neat.

Can’t find something on a website but you’re pretty sure it’s somewhere on it? Type the term you’re looking for and follow it with site:thesite.com. For instance, if you want to find out all the sites on this domain that I mention my wife (please don’t do this , type marta site:lifelonglearner.kubasek.com. I’m going to get killed…

Another cool thing is safe search. Let’s say you need to search for sex education but you’re not interested in all of the porn sites. Type safesearch: sex education. This will filter out the adult sites from your search.

This and couple more that you might find useful are on Google Help: Google Cheat Sheet.

I like Marbury from the NY Knicks as a player. He averages 20+ points per game. He gets 8+ assists per game. What’s not to like? However, he’s not a leader. He’s not a great point guard (as he proclaimed himself). Point guards need to be great leaders. Point guards need to make other guys play better. Marbury fails in both of those categories.

Jason Kidd from the Nets is the true leader that every team would love to have. He makes everyone around him better (just look at Vince Carter). Kidd makes everyone on the team work harder. He’s a team-first player. He’s not a selfish player, as Marbury is. Plus, he’s humble. To me, he’s the best point guard in the NBA (along with Steve Nash). There is no question about it.

Marbury, you’re not even the same league as Kidd is. That’s why I’m no longer a Knicks fan. I’m a Nets fan right now. I just cannot watch anymore the leader-less team as the Knicks have become. (Isiah Thomas gave up a lot to get him, just as I thought they were getting better. I think Isiah needs to go.) Marbury makes the team worse, not better.

Do you know? Well, you can find out by running the Browser Security Test. I just ran the test (with all options) on Firefox 1.0, my default browser, and on Internet Explorer 6.0 SP2. What are the results? Both of them passed the test with 0 volnerabilities. That’s good. However, if you’re not sure which version of IE you’re running, I would recommend running the test. Plus, if you want more security in the future, consider switching to Firefox. That’s my advice, plus, you’ll love it.