Article on the tragic death of my former colleague: http://bit.ly/UV2hL7

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My first job out of college was working the swing-shift on the helpdesk of a little media company called Premier Retail Networks. The pay was not anything to brag about, the hours were horrible, and I commuted 90 minutes each way, every day.  

Every day, when I got off my shift in the morning (usually disheveled and tired), I would often run into this woman walking out of the elevator in her way to work. She was usually the first person to walk into the office, and like clock-work, the doors would open, she greeted me with a huge smile, ready to start her day. Later, I would learn, this person was Natalie Egleston, a tenacious VP in charge of PRN’s Checkout TV Network.

Natalie probably didn’t remember those days, but I do — because she left such an impression on me: How can someone walk into work so early AND be awake AND be so happy doing it? Later, I would find out that not only was she the first one in the office, she was usually the last one out. It was this work ethic and dedication that, undoubtedly, contributed to her meteoric rise to PRN’s executive ranks: from VP, SVP, EVP, and eventually Chief Strategy Officer. 

As I grew into my product development career at PRN, I had the opportunity to get to know Natalie and work closely with her over the next six years. Almost every month, it seemed, I would find myself on a plane with her and other PRNers to a meeting that would either make or break the company. There were many times where we would find ourselves holed up in our satellite offices, working on the presentation deck or demo until 1:00 am the night before the meeting — because everything HAD TO BE PERFECT.

Often times, Natalie’s perfectionism prevailed. And while I only played a small/junior role in these meetings with our customers, I was fortunate enough to learn and observe — first hand — how business was done, by watching Natalie dazzle in these meetings.  Our customers loved her because of her boundless energy. Competitors feared her because of her sharp wit and tenacity. She always knew exactly what to say and how to say it — and watching her work was simply inspiring.

Depending on how these meetings went, we would either be sadly eating airport/hotel food or celebrating with bottles of wine at a nice Italian restaurant. And when it came time to debrief the meeting in her BRIGHT YELLOW painted office (the color yellow made her “happy”), we would spend the first 30 minutes laughing about the most random crap that happened on the trip — “Did you see that huge stain on his shirt?” “Man that guy was really sweaty.” “Her shoes did not match her outfit.” She was hilarious.

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I learned so much from Natalie and I am sad that she is no longer with us. She had a brilliant mind, people-savvy, and personality to get anything done — and she could have gone on to do even more amazing things in her career. She was taken away far too soon.

I will miss you Natalie. Thank you for everything.

Here’s a challenge most non-technical startup founders go through: They have a brilliant idea, they don’t know how to code, they think they can just outsource the development to an offshore development firm. Sometimes non-technical founders become convinced that they will meet their unicorn CTO at a startup mixer, who will work incredibly hard to “build everything for them” with no pay and millions in sweat-equity. While this sounds wonderfully idealistic, it’s incredibly naive, dangerous, and expensive. 

Products always take longer to build than you think. Offshoring development is a headache with time/language barriers. A technical team is not going to respect a manager/client without technical chops. Your unicorn CTO just isn’t that into you.

Having been through all of this pain before taking the plunge to go work on my startup, I thought I could provide some insight into how I overcame some of the initial “non-technical founder” hurdles, taught myself to code, and build my product.

Full disclosure: I have a bit of technical background. I took a bunch of computer science courses in college, built HTML-based websites for clients as a consultant, and led product development teams for years. However, before venturing on my own startup, it has literally been *years* since I’ve sat down and wrote a line of code. And if you don’t use it, you lose it… so I had to reteach myself from the ground up.

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• Code Academy: The last time I coded a major website by myself was when HTML 4 just came out — So the notion of CSS was completely over my head. I went straight to Code Academy and spent two straight weeks (4-5 hours per night) getting up to speed with HTML 5 and reacquainting myself with JavaScript. The tutorials are super easy and free | Web: codeacademy.com
  
  
• Twitter Bootstrap: I had the pleasure of randomly discovering the Twitter Boostrap Framework. Though this framework has been out for a while, it is super easy to understand — All the JavaScript libraries are in place and the authors (who work at Twitter) did a really great job documenting everything. To practice what I learned on CodeAcademy, I took the Boostrap Framework and built a clickable prototype of my product (i.e. no backend logic or databases). The process of building the frontend, over a very long/sleepless 10 days, helped me work through the design and User Experience, which made it easier for me to speak with investors and potential customers. | Web: http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/
  
  
• Mattan Griffel’s Ruby on Rails Skillshare Class: After building and designing the clickable frontend, I decided to go through a formal Ruby on Rails online training course. I picked Ruby on Rails because: (1) the ramp up time is faster, (2) there’s lots of open-source “gems”/plugins you can use, and (3) it has a large developer community for support/help. Mattan’s class is designed to be “learn at your own pace” — but I ended up finishing all of the material in about a week, where I essentially built the rough framework of a service like Twitter. I highly recommend this course for anyone who is new to Rails development. | Web: http://bit.ly/PsqMOi
  
  
• Michael Hartl’s Rails Tutorial: After wrapping up Mattan Griffel’s online course, I decided I need to deep-dive on Rails. So I spent another two weeks going through Michael Hartl’s Rails Tutorial, chapter-by-chapter, exercise-by-exercise. The tutorial is extremely valuable and teaches the fundamentals in an easy-to-understand way. | Web: http://ruby.railstutorial.org/
  
  
• Stack Overflow: As I was going through the process of building my product, I found myself getting stuck on specific problems. At this point, I would Google the error message and generally, the first result I receive was a thread on Stack Overflow — a Q&A site for developers. I would say Stack Overflow helped me solve 80% of the issues I came across while building my site. | Web: stackoverflow.com
  
  
• Other Resources: Railsforzombies.com, and Codeschool.com, Railscasts.com were also extremely helpful in my Rails education. I also attended a bunch of Hackathons and Rails Meetups to meet fellow Rails-peeps.

SO…. in about 6 weeks, I learned how to code and in about 3 weeks after that, I was able to produce my MVP (minimum viable product) and get the product in a closed Alpha program. By teaching myself how to code, I think I was able to save about $10K in teacher-led courses and $20K in outsourced development. 

I highly recommend everyone to learn how to code, especially if you have anything to do with internet technology. It’s an extremely valuable skill and has practical applications — Like taking an idea in your head and turning it into a real product people can use!

It’s the beginning of a new year and I resolved to blog more — mostly for posterity-sake. So I’ll start from the beginning of what I call “Act II” of my career.

During the Fall of 2011, I was canned from my job as a Product Manager at a company where I spent the better part of my twenties (8 years!). Things were pretty rocky towards the end of my tenure (which I won’t get into), so I was pretty relieved when the cord was cut.

I spent a lot of time trying to rediscover myself: I traveled, took up long-distance running, and hiked for hours in unclaimed forest. After months of trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life, it was only after Steve Jobs’ death where it really started to sink in. After immersing myself in the numerous online tributes to the visionary, it was his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address (an amazing piece of oratory) that made me vow to never take a “job” ever again. I need to “do what I love.” Life is too damn short.

It was also around this time where I expressed my desire to work on starting my own company. But before getting there, I wanted to educate myself. So I took on two jobs helping two startups get off the ground (and working 100+ work weeks). I immersed myself in startup culture: I learned how to code, read Lean Startup cover-to-cover, attended meetups, hackathons, and fireside chats with Silicon Valley luminaries. In the Fall of 2012, I decided to take the plunge, quit my jobs, and work on my boot-strapped startup full time. 

The journey, to this point, has been enlightening, testing, and rewarding. While my words will sound familiar, I thought I should jot down some practical lessons I’ve learned over the past few months:

• Start-ups are hard. This is something that people say, but you won’t really understand why startups are hard unless you’ve been through it. There are so many facets of building a business that you continually find yourself outside your “comfort zone.” You learn to become a better sales person, to build products, and find talent — not because you want to but because you have to/forced to in order to succeed. All of these activities have a way of grinding/gnawing away at your mind and body, which, I think is why many entrepreneurs have problems sleeping and find themselves in general poor health.
  
  Advice: If you are going to work on a startup, you need to be willing to put everything into it (time, money, relationships) because startups will literally take everything out of you. Exercising is a great way to clear your head, be productive, and kick a sedentary habit.
  
  
• Rejection & loneliness. Being an entrepreneur is kind  of a lonely road to travel. Most people you talk to won’t understand your idea, no matter how good your pitch is. Investors sort-of understand what you’re trying to do, but they want to see who will lead your fundraising round before signing a check. Your parents think you’re crazy to give up financial stability to go chase a dream. Sometimes you even question yourself if you’re doing the right thing. It takes a different type of person to dismiss/accept rejection and continue marching down a path with no clear end in sight.
  
  Advice: Find yourself a co-founder who shares your vision. Surround yourself with supportive people. Rejection is quite possibly the biggest source of motivation to prove people wrong.
  
  
• Figure out what’s important. Bootstrapping a startup makes you ultra-conscious about your lifestyle choices. Do you hang out with friends or do you spend time working on user on-boarding processes? Do you go out for sushi or will ramen suffice? Should a button have a 5-pixel radius edge of 7? All of these little decisions affect how much sleep you get, the balance in your bank account, and your relationships with people. 
  
  Advice: Life is full of decisions. Time is a luxury. Choose wisely.

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I’ve found these past few months to be the most scary, frustrating, exciting, fun and self-enlightening experiences in my life. In fact, I recommend that everyone should try to make something of themselves, because life is too short to NOT find out. There’s no harm in trying and you’ll learn lots, promise.

PS. If you want a preview of what I’m working on, check out www.dandilyapp.com

Yesterday, after years of preparation, Austrian-born Felix Baumgartner successfully drifted to the edge of space @ 128,000 foot elevation, plummeted to earth, and broke the sound barrier along with many other world records. While watching the live stream, I was thinking about space, my youthful infatuation of Star Trek, while concurrently researching about the significance of Space Race to America.

In the summer of 1969, during the midst of a decades-long cold war with the Soviet empire, Americans demonstrated our technological prowess by answering Russia’s Sputnik  launch with something so bold, crazy, and visionary: We dared to send a man to the moon and bring him safely back to earth. As fate would have it, Felix Baumgartner was born the same year we sent a Neil Armstrong to the moon. And perhaps destiny would also have it that  Baumgartner jumped from the edge of space only months after Neil Armstrong passed away. 

Then a thought hit me…. Baumgartner is our generation’s Neil Armstrong. 

What Baumgartner did yesterday was symbolic and an important reminder that as humans, we need big, hairy, audacious goals to continue pushing ourselves further, faster, and higher. As humans, our duty is to continue to push the human race forward: for posterity, for future generations, for the sake of innovation, and probably most importantly, for our own survival. So perhaps it is not so ironic, that in addition to humans breaking the speed barrier through a freefall from space, in the last six months we have also managed to explore Mars and send a bionic man to compete in the Olympics. 

While it’s easy to shine the spotlight on one individual (Baumgartner, SpaceX, Oscar Pistorious), these historic feats could not have been accomplished alone. Teams of highly-focused, highly-talented people innovated, created new technologies, and developed complex systems in preparation for these historic moments. In the case of Baumgartner, he put his life in the collective hands of these teams and had faith in them to bring him back safely. Together, these teams made history, and collectively, they pushed the human race forward. 

…

I asked my parents what they thought of when they watched the moon landing over 40 years ago. My dad, now wiser and grayer, could only sum up the event by saying “It was awesome.” I felt the same way yesterday…. and I hope 40 years from now, I can tell my children about this event because I witnessed, not only a man falling to earth from the edge of space, but the awesomeness we can achieve when ordinary people can work together to achieve extraordinary things.