Skype conferences, real time iterations and entrepreneurship as a social process

Just finished a programming/design/translating session with Gracjan (my business companion) over Skype. Since Gracjan went back to Poland a few weeks ago we have been skyping our updates on the latest progress with our project skrivaPå. The skyping has been every second day at 9:00, just before I start working and 4h after Gracjan has started working (thats right he gets up at 5 am to start programming, he´s hardcore).

It´s been a good procedure. But something has been missing and I´ve felt quite alone in my work with skrivaPå, even though I know Gracjan is hacking some great stuff over in Krakow in Poland (i live in Stockholm in Sweden). I could first identify the feeling a few days ago when I got a really interesting link from my friend Martin Eriksson (by the way, I´m really proud that they closed a really big deal recently, INSPIRING! Check out Artilect). The link is a blogpost from the CEO of a lucrative IT biz with the programming team spread across the world. Even though everything was going really well they had some problems with inspiration. So the CEO summoned the forces in a 5 star hotel in Bangkok to spend a week or two programming together. Apparently the "vacation" was a real boost to the productivity of the business. Aside from partying, sightseeing and good food they got some really high quality programming time and all went home super inspired. So they decided to work in 6 month periods. 5 months from home and 1 month together at a 5 star hotel in a low price level country. Except from being a good story the blogpost tells something really interesting about the importance of human interaction. The importance to be a part of a community. A good business isn´t enough of a motivator. You need to do it together with others, that´s the real thrill, the sharing. Maybe it´s not true for everybody. But certainly for me. We are social animals.

This morning it so happened that Gracjan was still online at 10 so I Skyped him for a quick question and we ended up doing some collaborative iterations and paralell working. It was really nice to do it together so we decided to do some more hacking when we got back home at 22. And now I´m just done with the second and I´m really happy about it and all inspired. If you´re separated by space I recommend using Skype or some other co-lab tool to make some real time connection. Its great.

BTW

I´m realizing I haven´t blogged almost anything about skrivaPå. Quite strange as so much is happening and we are about to launch the beta in just 4 days. Next blogpost will be about skrivaPå. Stay tuned. And until then check out this great talk from Lisa Lambert at eCorner about Intel Invest and life as an A-type person with high ambitions.

Entrepreneurship: I don´t really believe that it´s about risk taking or calculating. It´s rather about the ability to believe in creativity.

Yesterday I was talking to my friend Therese Gedda over the phone. She had just come back from a TIE event in the Silicon Valley and was fueled with interesting experiences of the world wide indian entrepreneurship network. As we discussed her experiences we started talking about entrepreneurship in more general terms and at one point, in passing, the old entrepreneurship truism "entrepreneurs are not risk takers rather they take calculated risks" was stated. It was just a passage meant to build an other argument, but we got stuck there as I surprised myself with the following analysis:

"I don´t really believe that it´s actually about risk taking or risk calculating. I rather believe it´s about the ability to believe in and understand creativity. The ability to believe in the gut feeling that ones "brain-laboratory idea" could actually be better than reality. The problem is that most people believe that most good solutions have already been done and tested. They don´t trust that gut feeling that this might be a real challenger to common practice. Most people sincerely believe that the solutions adopted by the society today must be really good as they are so commonly used. The belief that proof of concept is the same as proof of a good and possibly the best concept. Well, out of that perspecitve it´s logical not to believe in creating something new and disruptive. Why challenge the best? You´re facing an obvious defeat, so why bother? It seems crazy and because people don´t want to offend anyone they name it "risky". If they are really nice they will call it "taking calculated risks". The entrepreneur instead keeps an open mind and has an unsentimental relationship to common practice. It can always be questioned and the question is always valid. And when stumbling upon something really interesting in his "brain laboratory of ideas" he is capable of taking that idea into serious consideration as a possible challenger to the real world common practice."

When done with my analysis I really wondered, where did that idea come from? I was quite happy about it. Of cause the reasoning is really simplified. I don´t state it here as my ultimate belief. Just an interesting thought possibly worth sharing. Thanks Therese always nice to talk to you.

Google Apps free email hosting through MX-records (in Loopia)

For the skrivaPå project I bought the domains of skrivapa.se and skrivapa.com through Loopia. But because the project has some special requirements for security, for hosting Haskell-code and because we consider speed essential their hosting solution doesn´t really match the criteria. So far I have handled all the business in the startup phase through my private email but as our beta launching date is approaching quickly it was time to set up some real email accounts for skrivaPå. As I didn´t want to buy hosting just for the email I started to look around to find a way to host our domain-specific email-accounts for free. The obvious choice fell on Google Apps with their excellent spam protection and reliable email-service. This is how to do it:

1. Choose a cheap registrar and register the domain. For swedish domains Loopia is one of the cheapest. For international accounts GoDaddy has good prices.

2. Go to Google Apps Standard Edition (the free version) and set up your account.

3. Verify ownership of your domain through the following steps:
a. Go to "Domain Settings" in your Google Apps account
b. Choose to verify by "CNAME records" you should see some instructions plus a code
with something like googleffffffffeef5c1c0
c. Open a new tab in your browser and go to your registrar and go to "Domain
Settings". Depending on your registrar you do differently. For more detailed info
see Google Help for creating CNAME records. For Loopia try this: choose subdomain "*".
Press "DNS" and choose "CNAME". Copy the verification code that´s something like
googleffffffffeef5c1c0 to define your CNAME record at Loopia. Rewrite the code to
something like googleffffffffeef5c1c0.yourdomain.com. Press save. Now further down see
"Skicka vidare till extern URL", in swedish that is "forward to external URL", write
http://google.com. Press save.
d. Now go back to your Google Apps account and press "control and configure
email-delivery". Now you should see instructions about how to configure your MX
records. You can also find the instructions at Google Help.
e. Go back to your registrar. For Loopia you do this: Go to the button "E-mail" in
your admin account. Press "E-postval för domännamn", that is "email choices for
domain names". Choose "Hantera e-post med extern server (MX-pekning)", that is
"handle e-mail through external server".
f. First remove all existing MX records. Now you start adding the MX serveradresses
given in your Google Apps account (or found at Google Help)and the priorities in the boxes
and you have to press save after each add.
g. Go back to your Google Apps account and press "I´m done with this step"

4. Voila! Now wait for up to 48 hours for the changes to take place.

If you already have an email account that you want to move be aware that you wont be able to recieve any emails during in the meantime, though when its all done you will recieve the emails from the past days in your inbox. They should be accessible for your server for up to 4-7 days. So if you dont go over that time you should be safe that no emails get lost in cyberspace.

If you have problems in Loopia try this:

1. Go to "Domäninställningar".
2. Choose your domain and press "DNS editor"
3. Post the code given from Google Apps as your subdomain for example
googleffffffffeef5c1c0
4. Choose "type" CNAME
5. Put "TTL" 3600
6. Put "Data" google.com.