What if I Sold?

Posted by Scott on 2. March 2009 05:20

Lets say, Lets say you sold your company or start up tomorrow and never had to work or worry about money again.  Putting it at a nice round number of $10 mil ($10,000,000).  What would you do next?  Where would you go?  Are you happy with what you have right now?  I contemplated this idea that if I did have that kind of money after just selling my business, I wouldn't try to blow it. Though I would do a few things like pay off my bills of course which would be such a small sampling of that money.  So what would I do next?

Photo by Alaskan Dude

• I would leave everything behind and go travel for a year.  Get away from everything and just live.
• I would keep in shape with my new Erg (rowing machine)
• I would stop setting the alarm clock.
• I would stop saying I have to work.
• I would spend more time with my lovely girl friend.
• I would throw deadlines out the window.
• I would study up on things. Learn another language that I never had time for while I traveled.
• Start a charitable foundation that allowed me to improve the world by small increments.
• Invest in developing nations, give people in third world countries micro loans.
• Invest in an incubator for other start ups.
• Live somewhere long enough to learn their language.  Tuscany always sounded nice.
• Get my teaching certificate and teach kids how to create software in high school, NOT college.
• Tutor kids.
• Spend some time in quiet reflection.  Take a few months to clear my mind and gather my thoughts on self worth.

• I would do it again.
• Create a hacker house for the like minded.
  
• Once is luck, but twice is a skill.

Thanks for letting me share.  What are your ideas?  I would love to hear them and see what you would do.  I hopefully one day will have something like this. Lets see what I can do.  

It is possible to make $10 Mil. Just stop telling your self someday.

Remember that:

1. You make your own choices, and there is always tradeoffs.  Start trading something else for creating a startup.
2. Stop telling your self someday.  It can easily turn into never.  Don't wait for the stars to align to get it done, just do it now.

"Shoot for the stars and Land on the Moon" - Anonymous

Making It Big!

Posted by Scott on 18. February 2009 05:18

I am now 24 years old soon to be 25. I have worked for a fairly decent company over the past 2 years and have had a GREAT boss while I was in college.  Before college I was in high school where I created a few websites.  Nothing dynamic as what can be done today, but something that could have made money.  I canceled the site and never saw it again.  I created my first website over 10 years ago and what can I show for it?  I am at my current job creating web services.  I feel more capable on the web than on desktop applications.  I feel in tune with the code on the web than on the desktop.  In the beginning I was a website creator, I was a fairly new internet user in that time and I never truly implemented a business idea in that time.  I never truly made money from any idea that I had except for "the getting paid to surf programs" which were a miserable failure and put a lot of companies out of work. 

I remember when I first heard about a guy who was writing about his daily life and it was called blogging.  I didn't jump on. I remember hearing about Google adwords and adsense, yet I didn't jump on the bandwagon.  I wanted to create a large blogging community.  I wanted to use adsense in the community, yet I didn't.  I had ideas and never used them.

Photo by Daveybot

I am pretty sure there are plenty of people out in the world with billion dollar ideas but have never implemented them.  They have never tried making their ideas worth anything.  I am here today to say that I have created my first business idea.  Its not much and is my first real business idea on the internet in the past 8 years, but I still got it done.  I am tired of wasting time.  I am tired of not getting things done.  I am still working on my ideas and still heading them up.  One idea at a time.  Baby steps until I can some day quit my day job.  Work hours that I choose on time that I choose.  I commit my self to getting out of this work environment and I have a personal goal of doing it in under 2 years.  I want to move on.

For anyone else out there with an idea, put it into motion. Make it happen.  Do good and become successful. Become the person at the party who brags about how you made it big.  I want to make it big and get out of my 9-5 job.  I hope you do it as well. Don't quit.

In programming, clever != smart.

Posted by Scott on 10. November 2008 21:52

You ever have one of those days where you think you are the smartest man in the world and the best programmer at your place of work?  Then some clever kid comes along and does something that speeds up your code by a few seconds/minutes?  Ease your self.  Just because that person just solved your problem, doesn't mean they are smart.

"In programming, clever != smart." - anonymous

You work all day on a certain project, take a step back and look at it.  Its some of the beautiful code you just created, but you are hung up on this little issue.  Along comes some programmer and they solve it for you. When I was in high school or middle school and I was getting off the bus.  One day I heard one of my bus drivers say to a girl.

"You might be book smart, but your not street smart" - anonymous 

I tend to think that I am about in the middle of this quote.  I tend to think I am both book and street smart.  I imagine most people do.  Book smart programmers tend to be better at writing code then their street smart counter part.

The book smart programmer (smart):

1. tended to focus more in school on classes including algorithms.
2. tended to have less of a social life due to studying more or less depending on how fast they got solutions to projects.
3. tended to be either inside playing video games or working on a cool project that could solve the way USB drives communicated to computers.
4. tended to have soda cans and candy around while staying up late around his computer.
5. tended to get better grades.

The street smart programmer (clever):

1. tended to focus a bit more on going out and socializing.
2. tended to focus a bit more on girls.
3. tended to copy and paste code.
4. tended to join a social organization.
5. tended to have a bit more fun in the activities they thought up.
6. tended to get a little lower grades.

This reminds me of the movie "Real Genius". Where Chris seems to have both of these types of people tackled.  He sees Mitch and he sees the old him.  The book smart programmer(laser tech).  Mitch is stuck with trying to do the best in college that he can. Then one day, Chris gives Mitch a little lesson. He lets Mitch know that college and life can't just be all books.  It has to be books and fun.  It has to be smart and clever. Sure clever != smart, but wouldn't it be good to be both? Wouldn't it be satisfying to be Chris and let Mitch slack off a bit.  They are both geniuses.

I went to college for four years, I did my fair share of partying and I didn't graduate with the best GPA.  For a Computer Engineer, it is a pretty shameful GPA.  Though I got a real job before even graduating.  I had done some work on the side while still in school.  I got an intern with my college Fraternity. This advanced my ability to show my future employer I can have a real job and keep it.  I am not saying stop all your studies now, but live life.

Programmers need to both be smart and clever. Not just smart and not just clever.  If you want to tackle the real issues, you can't keep writing code all day and every day.  You need to just step out and have some fun.

"Don't let Life pass you by..." - Scott

I am not trying to be a philosopher, but what I am saying is find your true happiness in life.  Be smart and clever.  Don't get stuck on always trying to be the best or smartest, but make sure you Get the Job Done at the same time.

P.S. I always tend to start on one subject and completely finish with another by the end of the post.  This one is no different. hah.