My view on Flappy bird

The Flappy bird sensation this day is insane thanks to the media. I know that some guys out there will get hyped over the success and tell themselves “I hate my job/major. I am gonna learn how to code tomorrow and do a startup the next day.” Please don’t =)). To me, his success should not be taken as a model for your long term career because at the end of the day, it is no more than a lottery ticket. What is the chance of a person to have 3 games on top of the iOS store? And knowing that, do you still want to take the ride?

The luck factor is what I love about the risky but rewarding entrepreneurship route. It doesn’t matter how many times you fail, you just have to be right once then everyone can tell you how lucky you are. I tell people I am just a lucky guy to get to Vandy. No one believed. People just keep saying that I am so good to get into that school and that I just fake my humility. sigh. Looking at the list of schools that I got rejected in, you would understand.

But anyway the guy deserves it. Because how many of you are willing to keep making simple and stupid games with basic graphic when those you created did not make it before? (in this case i gotta to agree that passion does matter a little bit.) How many are willing to roll up your sleeves after your day job to learn something extra, let alone work for YOURSELF at nights? I have a massive respect for him (well, I respect those who build things from scratch and work for themselves, something I wish I could do.)

The more I appreciate his story, the more I love his personality and maturity.

https://twitter.com/dongatory/status/430756179132702720 @joekloc Hi Joe, I think press should give my game some peace. Its success is really overrate! I’m sorry, I refuse to answer questions.

https://twitter.com/dongatory/status/430754512928641024@edwardphampoker I saw your email but I’m not looking for investor. I am no businessman.

The above tweets are funny at different levels. First, the guy with twitter name “…poker” contacted Dong (I can tell how much you love money just by looking at your nickname. Sorry but I love stereotypes. And it is stupid to say the world is changed because of this game.” He asked Dong to invest in the successful app. I mean…he is now successful and you want to jump in and “invest”? That is stealing. And of course Dong was not dumb to decline the stupid offer. He also tries to stay away from the US media because he knows it loves overnight success story like this, distracting users from the product. Or he is just smart enough to focus on his work instead of spending time answering questions from the journalists literally half the world away.

I haven’t caught with the startup world in Vietnam for a long time since freshman year, but I guess this would be a healthy dose of encouragement for startup people and for high school kids to go with STEM and entrepreneurship road. I am sure we wouldn’t care about this stuff if Dong were not Vietnamese. In the next couple days, he will make millions. That’s wonderful. Life goes on. There are still a few tickets out there to win. Take the bait? Even if you do and fail to make even a couple thousands, again I still have a massive respect for you.

For me personally, I still have to get over my big ego and the shame of my terrible coding skills to try this out :-)