Before starting F16Apps
Before I started F16Apps I was not the perfect employee, in some sense I was a trouble maker not because I want to make troubles it is just me trying to understand what they want, I have a problem with type of work that is vague and undefined, unfortunately this is the case in software if you are working for someone don’t use a clear methodology.
Which take us to what I used to do, previously I mentioned that I had a problem finding a master and the only thing I could do or get my self to do is doing lot of mistakes and read a much about other people and what they used to do, I think I got better slowly, I used to use whatever I really understand which was so little considering the amount of knowledge I used to consume.
When I was junior.
It was the hardest because I wasn’t a algorithms wiz or anything like that, I was interested in assembly and low level stuff that no one absolutely cared about, I had to do what market is requiring, which was lot of VB and C#.
In my heart and spare time I used to do whatever I feel my self around which was C++ and some assembly then things got better and I found a job in where I like to be and life went on and on.
Right before starting
Right before starting F16Apps I think I was in very good shape in my domain, I was able to do anything (Secure Video streaming over iPhone 3G) + the kind of problem I was faced was not that complex, even with some freelance job it wasn’t that hard.
I started to work on my master, my plan was to do something with data mining then something came up, it is F16Apps, I started building my company.
Then the masters took less priority and I dropout, it was little bit hard because I spent some effort and money on it but mathematically the amount of kndowlege I will get form my startup even if it live for 1 year will be way better than whatever I will do in my master.
Building something.
The first thing I did was hiring people who will work with me, I tried the usual professionals who will do it fast but none of them was interested to join me specially that I have some rules one of them was (No more than 5% for co-founder)
Then a better idea came, what if I manage to get a group of juniors to do it, it will be even better story to tell + less cost + why take from the pool while we can add to it.
I hired 4 juniors + 1 year experienced as part time, we started working, the magical moment when you take 4 juniors know nothing about certain platform and get them to produce something in less than 2 months (internal demo day was 21 day before the real demo day), not only that these guys are working on really hard problem.
The distraction
Now, I found out how to get juniors to work simply let them work don’t interfere, give them the problem and resources to fix the problem and they will do it, I needed to focus on other stuff that I know nothing about.
Finance, it is shit, simply you have to write everything you do, you know the cup of tea that you got for someone related to work, yes you have to write that, not becasue you are cheap but because in the future it will help you predict how much you spend EXACTLY specially that the people who will do that will be different people.
Marketing, get people to know what you are doing in away that make them interested, this is not fun at all because for some reason you need to know lot of information about the market and about your product, in my case I didn’t know much, I knew that there is opportunity because it is common sense back then that Twitter will grow and the numbers is adding up very quickly, I didn’t know how to reach those people and that was huge mistake, I thought I will be able to do something viral and get people to talk about my product, I didn’t have a valid viral coefficient.
Unnecessary free travels, I was lucky enough to visit 14 countries while I was running my startup, F16Apps nor me paid anything for at least 10 of this travels, some of them was total waste of time and there was better things to do with the time and fake appearance.
Raising fund, I really don’t have much to say except “Fund raising is a full-time job”
Stress, the feeling of something is not right was with me all the time, I tried many things to get over it but I couldn’t really know or put finger on it.
Change of mind, the mediocre mistake of changing my mind very often which waste lot of time and effort from me and my team.
Office logistics, before I get office manager to F16Apps I was so wasted in the nonsense of paper work, which is a major killing factor for time if you plan to do something in your startup.
Now What
After this distractions hunted me for almost 2 years (I used to write some code and being involved in the product in the first 6 months), I used to write less than 5% of what I used to do, I thought I will never lose the skill of writing code but guess what, it is like a muscle if you didn’t workout regularly you lose it, it get weaker and weaker until you have nothing.
The good thing I am trying to be as pragmatic as possible, I am trying to build my self, I am accepting the fact that I am probably producing less and working on enhancing that, I use every chance to write code and polish my skillset which got enriched from many aspects but not coding.
So I assume I will be doing something beyond awesome soon, I managed to write 6000 lines of code while solving a complex problem :D, I like it because it is one positive thing I have done sense long time.
Wish me luck and thanks for reading my nonsense, I promise the coming is way better.
