Strikes & Gutters

1 year ago

10 tips for launching a startup.

This is a comment I made on an SAI posting which was covering a post from Chris Dixon. I don’t claim to know everything about launching a business, but I know what’s worked for us since we launched in late 2005:

I don’t agree with all of them, but here’s mine.

1) Believe. Believe. Believe. Think about it hard for awhile (how long depends on the person), there won’t be any going back.

2) You must have experience in the area you’re looking to get involved in. If you don’t, go get it before you start.

3) Be ready to be involved in everything. The broader experience you have before you pull the trigger, the better. Be technical. Be a salesman (or woman). Be a manager. Be a lawyer. Be an asshole. Be a big brother (or sister). Even if you’re not great at all of them, you WILL have to be comfortable doing it all.

4) Be ready to sacrifice everything in your life for a couple years. People say there’s a work-life balance, that’s BULLSHIT if you want the best chance to be successful at your first startup (or any). You’ll be doing everything from day-1, get used to it. If you’re not ready to sacrifice your bank account, toys, comfort, and the good life you had working for someone else, you’re not ready to create a startup out of thin air. You’ll have an obligation to yourself, everyone who works with you, and everyone that helped you to do everything in your power to succeed. Be ready to to fill that obligation, or stay with the Normals.

4) Talk about it with everyone you can. Listen to their feedback, but don’t follow it. Use it as a guideline for how to proceed. If all your friends tell you it’s brilliant, ignore them they’re just being nice. If nobody tells you it’s stupid, you’re crazy, and there’s no hope, you’re talking to the wrong people. Refer back to #1.

5) Don’t worry about the “Team”. If you’re not ready to be the foundation of your idea and do it from the ground up, by yourself, keep working for someone else (there’s nothing wrong with that, and your life will be much easier).

6) Start building it by yourself. That means hire contractors/friends to do tech work if you’re not technical. Get something built to prove the idea to yourself. Then get some customers/users (it’s like pulling teeth at the start, that’s ok.. don’t give up. refer to #1).

7) From the time you start, remember everyone you talk to and keep track of those who you think you can get involved at a later date. They’ll be the first ones you call when it’s time to build a Team.

8) Do not EVER try to do your first startup while working a normal 9-5 job. You will fail. It’s fine to start toying with the idea while you have a stable job, but once you decide it’s going to be a startup. Quit. Ya that’s rite, quit your nice comfy six-figure job and start buying Cup-O-Noodle. If you don’t show commitment to your idea, nobody will.

9) Stay hungry.

10) Refer to #1.

-mike
1 year ago

having trouble with mysql integer columns wrapping?
we ran into an interesting mysql issue today. since i was having trouble finding a solution among my database friends, i figure i’d post it up here to help others.

the basic problem is this: if you’re storing counters, currencies or other numbers which should be zero or greater you probably have unsigned int, mediumint or bigint columns in your database tables. you’re also probably doing simple things like ‘set column_a=column_a+Y’ or ‘set column_a=column_a-Y’.

this works well until you’re trying to subtract a value greater than the current value. at which point, mysql will either wrap value (unsigned column) or turn it into a negative (signed column). for most cases, neither behavior is desirable and depending on the data type, wrapping can be *very* bad. in our case, we had a virtual currency that was going from near 0 to MAX_BIGINT-{a few} …. lol?

here’s a quick test case:
```
mysql> create table test_table (column_a bigint unsigned not null default 0);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.19 sec)
mysql> desc test_table;
+----------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field    | Type                | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+----------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| column_a | bigint(20) unsigned |      |     | 0       |       |
+----------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> insert test_table values (10);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> select * from test_table;
+----------+
| column_a |
+----------+
|       10 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)
mysql> update test_table set column_a=column_a-11;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
Rows matched: 1  Changed: 1  Warnings: 0
mysql> select * from test_table;
+----------------------+
| column_a             |
+----------------------+
| 18446744073709551615 |
+----------------------+
1 row in set (0.02 sec)
```
obviously we don’t want that number in the database, even if it’s mathematically correct! the solution? wrap the columns in the update sql with the GREATEST() function and CAST() the result of the decrement to signed so that it’ll end up being less than 0 instead of wrapping:
```
mysql> select * from test_table;
+----------+
| column_a |
+----------+
|       10 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> update test_table set column_a=GREATEST(0,CAST(column_a-11 as signed));
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
Rows matched: 1  Changed: 1  Warnings: 0
mysql> select * from test_table;
+----------+
| column_a |
+----------+
|        0 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
```
viola! no more wrapped integer columns and no need to do followup select queries for bounds checking (which also leads to race conditions and wasted database cycles).

-mike
1 year ago

tumblr, zero hour, 10am.

finally got around to creating a tumblr account, not that anyone was waiting.

the UI is really nice. a little buggy, but it looks great.

wonder how long until the spammers find me…. back to work!

-mike

10 tips for launching a startup.

having trouble with mysql integer columns wrapping?

tumblr, zero hour, 10am.

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