Hitchhicker's Guide To Startup Survival

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Hitchhicker's Guide To Startup Survival

• Choosing startups as a career path DONT PANIC!

Feel free to interrupt me any time satisfactory
answer not guaranteed P
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Choosing Startup as Your Career Path in Hong Kong
Means

• Youre leaving the tried-and-true ways of
  survival here
• Youre leaving the mainstream salary men (or
  salary women) culture
• Your answer to whats your occupation? will
  feel distant to most people
• You say startup, people go huh?
• Youll see a whole new world opening to you

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How Im Doing It

• Got an old 386 from a friend at 10
• Learned some MS-DOS and Quick Basic at 10
• Went online and participated in computer
  newsgroups at 12
• Started learning UNIX and C via Netvigators
  one4all server at 14
• Made newspaper headlines for cracking
  Netvigators user accounts at 16 but not
  charged because no harm was done

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How Im Doing It

• Started my first open source project (BitAnarch)
  at 17
• Joined the first startup (PePLink Ltd.) at 18
• Started the second open source project (WT
  Toolkit) at 20 as FYP
• Joined a major open source project (FCKeditor) at
  22 as my first full time job it even paid well
• Started my own startup (Think Bulbs Ltd.) at 23
• Left FCKeditor to run my own startup this month
  at 24
• Made newspaper headlines again for Think Bulbs
  iPhone app, Puri!
• Im a troublemaker

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Problems Faced by a Startup Person

• Social pressureYoure a geek, and its very a
  uncool thing to do, both at school and in the
  adult world.
• Engineers have no future in Hong Kong so they
  thinkPePLinks engineers sighed tech was a
  sunset industry in Hong Kong in their budding
  years the company ended up growing many times
  over.My takeJoin a community newsgroups,
  forums, open source projects, BarCampPassion
  therere other beautiful things in this world
  that money cant buyPositive mental attitude
  look at the data, tech is where is action is at

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Tech is Where the Action is At

• Think of the ways peoples lives and businesses
  have changed in the past 20 years because of
  tech, and how many people have been fired because
  of new tech
• CRM, ERP, POS
• High frequency trading
• Electronic air tickets
• Wikipedia
• Online media
• Social networks
• More examples?

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• Unless youre Ben Bernanke or Dr. Evil, you
  wouldnt call 1 Trillion Yuan not money.

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Problems Faced by a Startup Person

• No partners to actually start it upStart early
  as early as youre still in school!Advertise
  yourself as someone crazy open source
  projects!Seek out smart and crazy people
  actively. If you see someone always bemoaning
  about other peoples inefficiency, stupidity,
  what if things are done like that, etc. Talk to
  that person more!!How do you find your partners?

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Problems Faced by a Startup Person

• No money/family to supportWork on it besides a
  full time jobChoose a full time job that
  doesnt require tons of OTYou may even work at
  another startup to see how its likeHow do you
  get your fix on money?

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Problems Faced by a Startup Person

• Teacher/parent wants me to be a doctorIf Im
  really as smart as you think, why should I listen
  to you?
• I know nothing about businessGoogles founders
  didnt care about a business model either.
• I like playing computer games morePlaying the
  real world is much more fun, think of the
  possibilities.
• Your problems?