Friday, January 13, 2012

Review: Aaron Patzer (mint.com) - The $170 Million Idea: From Idea to Exit in 3 Years



Summary


Mint: The product is FREE, we get money if we can help you save money. Our ad helps you save money: e.g. Save $200 on interest if you switch your current mortgage to this one.

  • Validate your idea
  • Prototype
  • Build the right team
  • Raise the funding
Real Business: Business is creating value (not just a feature)

  • Problem people will still have in 5-10 years
  • Billion dollar market
  • Sustainable advantage
Pasychology of Startup: Listen to Frank Sinatra - That's Life to counter Depression

  • Quit your job
  • Self doubt is okay
  • Work flat out hard
  • Can be very lonely: working in a room in a new city alone for 7 months, thinking you could change the world could be pretty daunting

Pre-launch Evaluation: +500K per Engineer, -250K per Business Person

1st 5 hires are Engineers, 6th person is Marketing

Profit Projection = Relistic Estimated User Base * Revenue per Year

Sunday, January 01, 2012

2012: Yet Another New Hope


100 minutes of the New Year just swoop by, while I spend my time watching the deep (by superhero movie standard) and twisted Watchmen. The sounds of fireworks outside reminded that the new year has arrived, yet I am too lazy to get up and go out, but I decide to make and effort and go out anyway, but all the fireworks are blocked by nearby buildings. I raise my hand in air and shake my hand and body like an insane person, saying “yeah!” to usher in the New Year. 2012 is no longer the future, it’s here.

New Year, New Hope, New Beginning, and Hopefully not too much of the same old shit.

Year-end usually felt slightly shitty psychologically (in regardless of the holiday mood, like a bad hangover), knowing the year had passed and the feeling of we accomplished so little and “wasted” so much time? What had we accomplished? What do we intent to accomplish? What are we doing? We are wasting time living our life. Perhaps we wish for more wealth, more acknowledgement, more gains, more love, less misery and misfortune. Then again, perhaps no news is good news. Then again, we are all greedy being which are not easily satisfied. We wish for the simplest thing, yet we always over complicated things. We always wanted the things we never have (or yet to have, like a child wishing to grow up faster, and later wishing to age slower), else life would have ended.

If I believe end of the world is coming, I am not quite sure what should I do; pack my bags and travel the world, or stop living my life, and how do we actually love our loves one more every day? Can we actually increase the amount of love pumped in per day, or perhaps the current dosage is just fine. So if the end of the world is coming, I would prefer not to be preempted about it, it just adds more misery and it lessens the hope for mankind.

Anyway, after the year end, it feels good because we are being reminded that the old just pass us a few hours ago, and the new is here. It’s like life got a reboot, where the machine is running faster again with more memory to spare (and all the bad problems are gone). We forgotten about the pain and despair, and we are all set to march towards our hope, to reach the destination which we missed last year, and to create bigger and better destination for this year. We are all pumped up, and ready to take on the world, as we have another 12 months to do a lot of stuff. We are going to OWN the world, and the people of the year shall be us.

2012 have to be a better year; else there is nothing to look forward to. In fact, it’s going to be a great year, a year of accomplishment and great satisfaction. Of course we would pray for world peace, less natural disaster and less financial crisis. We hope for less corruption, less stupid and greedy people staying in power, and more “right” things to happen. We want our loves ones to be happy and healthy, and wish everyone would find their dream and have the courage to chase that dream. I just wish everyone would be happy, in regardless of the long list of wishes and hopes.

Then again, if we aren’t specific, we aren’t going to accomplish anything and be happy about it, as the pursuit of hapyness is very broad and we might get lost within. My current ultimate dream is to go into semi-retirement within 3 years, and start doing things because it’s fun and meaningful, not because I have to. Until then, I would give it all out to give birth to 2 consumers Internet Application: Foodoly (morphing from Malaysia Most Wanted Food) and Travelopy, by working really hard and nurture them to grow strong and healthy. All out, not holding back, until I ran out of excuses in regardless of the outcome.

2012 shall be different, and great :) Happy New Year