dubious.biz(ness)

Stretching back into the history of time, when I was a youngin, which in fact now about 7 years ago, I used to have what I thought were a lot of really great ideas. Really revolutionary, world changing, life altering ideas. Most of them, in retrospect, were not that good. I even tried a few out.

But then again, something was missing. I could say that it was the team: that I hadn’t surrounded myself with the right people. I could say that it was the timing: that I was going into a bear market. I could say that it was the resources: no money and no idea of how to get it. But none of those are true. The real truth is this: my ideas were bad because I didn’t think big.

To be honest, leaving my job to go to Cambridge is not thinking big, it’s thinking a bit stupid. I thought it would be cool. And I thought that if I got away from my circumstances I would be likely to succeed. But mostly I thought it would be really cool. It turns out, it’s actually not cool. But getting away from the circumstances has helped me a lot.

When I first went to Cambridge I went to a few meetings of the entrepreneur society. I talked to some greenhorn engineers who had ideas like “pneumatic tires that never deflate” and “scale free kettles” (you gotta be from a non-US country to understand that one). These ideas, in word form, are great, but they had no real idea of how to execute, and further they hadn’t ever thought of the fact that kettles are so cheap that manufacturers would rather sell you a new one rather than coat it with some expensive polymer. I got so depressed that I was shooting down their ideas that I didn’t go to the entrepreneur society meetings anymore. I got notices for idea contents, many of which offered a chance to pitch to investors, but I didn’t pay attention because I didn’t have a single good idea.

In fact, this pessimism had been with me all the time at work and it was constantly working away at my head. I honestly thought the chances of succeeding at a wireless venture were pretty slim. Turns out I was wrong, thank god for all my friends continuing and me keeping my mouth shut. Sure I still talked the entrepreneur talk: I said I liked starting things and I wanted to start them. And somehow that was true deep inside me. But I didn’t walk the walk.

Assuming that some “good idea” ever did cross my mind, I immediately shot it down. No need to talk to someone, to have a think, nope. They were all too expensive, too marginalized, too copy-cat, too undisruptive, too, too, too… bad. Maybe they were. I never bothered to remember any of them.

Being an entrepreneur fundamentally means you gotta believe. You are allowed doubts, maybe those doubts keep you up at night and eat you up inside, but you believe in that glimmer of hope. You have to keep rubbing those sticks together to kindle that flame, and you have to build that flame into a bright, burning fire. You have to be able to stand in front of someone and sell them your idea, not just tell them, sell them. And ideas are free, so no one’s buying. But you still have to sell. And when they give you lemons you make lemonade, and when they give you rotten tomatoes you make ragu. And that’s just to get a little bit of money to give it a try. If you can’t stand up in front of absolutely anyone and pitch, you’re not an entrepreneur.

But, in the first three weeks at my internship, two brilliant ideas have struck me. One of them is astounding. My heart beats faster when I think of it. It’s executable, it’s sustainable, it’s unique, it’s hard to duplicate, it’s… everything. And it has nothing to do with anything I have been doing anywhere. It’s just a really great idea. Not many people have this mentality so they don’t understand but the eureka moment for entrepreneurs, the germination of the idea, is so much better than everyone else’s eureka.

…Wait, did I say that? The mentality bit? Yep, there it is, right up there. Do I have this mentality, this entrepreneural mentality? An affliction that makes you numb to normal needs and desires while making the high of doing something different and amazing completely irresistable. I guess so, after all.

It must be something in the water out here.

Courtesy of Grand Central. It’s like gmail for phones. Very awesome. I have a new number:
(859)353-4225, which also spells (859)ELF-HACK.

I also have invites to the beta of Grand Central, and if you have multiple phone numbers (like I do) it’s really awesome. GiveLip, by the way, now forwards to ElfHack :-).

One of the cool things about the current job is that I get to sit around and look at new ventures as part of my job (or that’s my excuse). I’m so excited by a few of them that I want to post about them… so I can say I told you so when they hit the big time.

First up is swivel. Basically it’s just a bunch of interesting statistical data in web form with a few twists: users can upload new datasets and write articles about datasets. The real benefit of course is that with openly accessible data (import/export via excel) you can compare, say, the percent of females in the workforce over time with the unemployment rate, which with a bit more statistical analysis would yield this relationship: during economic dips, gender discrimination increases. I didn’t do the analysis with swivel (I already knew this) but I could now easily back up that statement with statistics from swivel’s database.

Swivel offers geographic, time series, pie-chart, and a load of other types of data. It’s fairly clever in figuring out how to compare your columns but it is definitely rough around the edges. What it does have going for it are the beginnings of a great interface and USA Today “infographic” style graphics are are easy on the eyes.

Oh and did I mention they implement Google Gadgets, Google Spreadsheets, and a custom Google search :-)

In the run up to Boat Club dinner, I found a lot of people mentioning that I was going gray. I thought it was a bit odd that everyone suddenly noticed, but then I got a gift certificate for a “cut and color” as my gift for being the 1st Men’s captain so I sort of wrote the comments off as build up to the gift.

But today I went for a good inspection in the mirror and I’ll be damned if I’m not going gray. Even when I was 18 or so I had a few stray white hairs. Of course that’s not too abnormal but now I have an uncountable number of gray hairs. I’m nowhere near salt-and-pepper stage but I’m definitely going gray… but I’m only 25, hell I haven’t even graduated yet. It’s a bit frightening.

The fact is that I don’t want to be gray at 30, as much as I might have thought that such appearance value judgements were pure ageism, when confronted with my own premature graying, I can only conclude that “something must be done”. I have always had a face that was 4 years younger than I am, and I am not going to combine that with graying hair.

The first question is what to do about it. I can attempt to pluck the hairs out or dye them, and the dye can be professional or at home. I don’t know the first thing about dying hair so I suspect I will have to find some lady friend to do it for me if I do it at home. As I cannot really number the hairs I don’t think pulling them out is a good call.

The next question is where did they come from? Dad is now gray but for god’s sake he’s 50. I do remember he was gray when he was 40, but I don’t think that was the case at 30… at the rate I’m going I will be. On my mom’s side, my eldest uncle is balding but I don’t believe he went so prematurely gray.

This is, quite literally the first sign that I’m old, and just after I reached the quarter century mark. Pretty frightening as I was planning on living to 200… I suppose that will have to be with dyed hair.

So I’m now in San Francisco. Specifically I’m a street away from one of the most scenic cable car lines, Powell and Hyde (here comes one now), near the top of one of the highest hill (the peak is about a block away), close to the original Swenson’s… etc etc. To put it simply, there aren’t many places in the world quite so touristy. And yet, on the relatively quiet street I live on, the main noise I do hear is the bell and grinding of the cable car coming up the hill. I have the front room, with a long window looking out on to the street. We live what I assume is the third floor, because the staircase, while a continuous flight, is definitely longer than one normal floor.

My room is big, no, huge. It’s two of my dorm rooms, has a TV, couch, desk… really really great. I absolutely cannot complain. We went up to the room on the fourth to watch fireworks. I’ve run down the hill to the bay, around the embarcadero and up market, and back to my house. I could go on. It’s completely amazing here.

I will admit, however, I’m a bit lonely. The flatmates consist of a pretty clever old dude who runs the joint, so to speak, a frat boy who has had his friends sleeping on the couch for a week (the old guy says this is not normal), a guy nobody ever sees, and a fellow googler who seems even cleverer still. The main problem is that nearly all of them seem to stick to their rooms, except the other googler and the boss who sometimes hang in the kitchen. The apartment is big enough and the rooms furnished enough that people can pretty much live out of their rooms, which makes it more like my dorm than a house as I’d think of it. There are a lot of amazing things to do in SF but a lot of those would be much cooler with a few mates. As of now I’ve failed to raise any mates… Working on it.

As for the other, big part of my summer vacation… wow. Before I say anything I should say that work is a bit weird in one way: they take confidentiality very seriously. If you look at the means of communication windows to the outside world, you see mostly blogs. In fact blogs often serve as press releases. But, everything is very carefully crafted and insiders are told to follow rules one and two of the fight club, so there is actually very little coming out of the company that isn’t approved.

It’s hard to know when that veil ends. It certainly does not seem to include bitching, because nobody every seems to do that, at least not publicly. But obviously it does not extent to the day’s menu at the cafes. I think it’s so very well enforced because nobody wants to give up their ride on the gravy train, and no ex-employee is so disgruntled or stupid that they actually want to piss off the hand that used to feed them.

So I will be guarded in my posts. I want you to know why I’m guarded, it’s really because I don’t have a good idea of what’s considered kosher and what’s not. Certainly one of the most unkosher things to share are statistics. So those, while absolutely amazing (every single one of them) have to stay under my hate. Some of the things that seem to be kosher or semi-kosher: discussing the digs. So away we go…

Google is essentially paradise on earth, or as near to it as you might imagine would happen at a workplace. Within at least 150 feet of every desk is a microkitchen which is stocked with: not coffee but espresso, not tea but daily custom herbal tea and hand wrapped full leaf tea, not soda but secret sodas like “chardonnay soda, not Red Bull but all organic Guru. And for food there’s dates, figs, bananas, oranges, grapes, strawberries, organic string cheese, granola. It’s California convenience store cuisine. And this is just the microkitchen (which is by no means micro).

Next to my nearest microkitchen (well I’m split between two, but we’ll pick one) is a pool table, a vibrating massage chair, and a real massage booth. About the same distance further away from my desk is a cafe. Not all Google employees are as blessed with cafes as I happen to be, some are only within two minutes of one. I’m in two minutes of four. They’re all different, two of the four serve three meals a day (the other just do lunch) and like the contents of the microkitchens, it’s all free. In fact, only one thing so far costs money, the massages. Apparently there are a few other items which cost a bit: oil changes, hair cuts, laundry. But the fact of the matter is that you could live in the Googleplex from Monday to Friday.

It’s actually really hard to figure out why people aren’t lounging around eating grapes. As best I can tell the reason they do work is that their needs are taken care of. I know, I know, “keep them hungry”. But it turns out if you feed them and attend to their needs, their so grateful that they work very very hard for you. As if they’re obligated to do so. During lunch times, people burst out of the cafes, finding seats can be a battle, but come back an hour later and the place is a desert town. Everyone is back in the cubes hacking away.

That is, except my cube. Well I say cube but in fact I live in a tent. No. Really. A tent. I’ve never seen one before but they’re a great idea. It’s a wired, lighted, ventilated frame with padded canvas walls and plastic windows. It is unique in that it has a sliding door, making it nearly as good as an office (which also exist albeit with about four occupants per office). My tent contains me and two Korean engineers currently. I’ve seen both sleeping, in the middle of the day. I suspect they will not be here long, but then they may just be pulling all nighters. As a further downside, despite their effort they do not understand English well and speak it even less well so it’s not exactly a lively cube when they are awake. On the upside, there will be a new employee starting (as indicated by the magical arrival of two 24″ widescreen monitors and a linux desktop to the last unoccupied desk) on Monday.

As for my work, I can say I’m on the News team. I am also happy to say that there are a lot of really amazing things in News. Hell, there are a lot of amazing things happening nearly everywhere around me. That’s the one great benefit of being an APM Intern (my title) is that the APMs have their hands not deep in single features but spread broadly across the whole product line. And that’s how Google wants it to be. Someone who can fit the many puzzle pieces and properties together is a key asset.

There’s not much I can say about what I’m specifically working on. Nor anyone else for that matter. But it’s really cool, and I hope that it rolls out before I leave.