Eric Ries’s Lean Startup – Tech Talk

I just watched a talk by Eric Ries (IMVU founder and investor) that he gave to Stanford ETL. He goes over stuff that’s mostly taken for granted at startups in the valley, these days. (I picked up most of these lessons from working at Facebook and Quora over the past two summers.)

But, I’ve never heard these startup ideas articulated this clearly before. This is an excellent talk.

How I Learned to Program Computers

I’ve been asked this question a lot lately, especially after I built YouTube Instant. So, here’s the answer, once and for all, for those who are interested.

In short:

I learned how to program by building lots of websites.

The full story:

I learned how to program by working on lots of different website projects starting from a pretty young age. What follows is a full account of all the major websites I’ve built, back to the very first site I made when I was 11 years old. What I hope the reader takes away from this full retelling is the importance of doing lots of side projects if you want to learn to program well.

The best way to learn a new skill is to practice, practice, practice. All the best programmers that I know sincerely enjoy programming — it’s something that makes them absurdly happy to do. And, so they do it a lot. Often, an unhealthy amount. Learning how to program — and how to do it well — doesn’t take superhuman ability. It just takes a willingness to get your hands dirty and build stuff.

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None of Us Knows What We’re Doing

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend among a few of the young programmers, designers, and entrepreneurs who I know at Stanford. I’ve learned that many of them share the same mistaken belief about success and how it works.

The Myth of the Superhuman

They believe, it seems, that “successful people” like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Paul Graham, Walt Disney, etc. have some sort of in-built superhuman awesomeness that makes them smarter, cleverer, more brilliant than the rest of us.

They believe that something about these people is unique, that their feats would be unachievable by anyone else.

To be fair, it sort of makes sense, right? I mean, these folks succeeded spectacularly where thousands of others failed forgettably. So, the successful people must be more brilliant than average folk like you and me, no?

An Anecdote: YouTube Instant

Something about this line of thinking doesn’t sit right with me. I know from my own experience building YouTube Instant that success oftentimes just happens without any foresight, pre-planning, or exceptional skill.

When I built YouTube Instant, I was certain that someone else had built something like this before. Sure, I thought it was a neat idea, but it didn’t seem that special to me.

I certainly had no idea that writing those 190 lines of JavaScript would change my life forever.

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Instant.fm Tech Stack

I’ve received a lot of emails asking about the technology stack of Instant.fm, so I thought I’d share this publicly.

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Speaking Event: How to Become a CEO by 21

On February 26, I will be featured in a speaker panel called How to Become a CEO by Age 21 at a Stanford Asian-Pacific Student Entrepreneurship event geared towards high school students. I’m flattered that I was invited to participate.

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