Side Projects of the Past ...

Doing side projects are fun because they keep you active and thinking when the routine of normal work starts to get boring and repetitive. Sometimes we start side projects knowingly by planning what we want to do and setting out goals to achieve before we start. However sometimes side project start and it doesn't occur to us that one has started until we are at the deep end . This post is about one such time a *side project* crept up on me totally unexpectedly.

During my stint working in south-east Asia as a systems engineer for a telco startup I had a chance meeting with someone at a bar when having a night out with some work mates. I have no idea what grab his attention our way except possibly for that fact that some of us spoke english very well (very aussie non indonesian accent) even though we looked indonesian. He joined our group and asked me where i was from and what i and the rest of the team was doing in indonesia. I described to him that we were all expats working for a telco startup setting up systems for messaging, billing and parts of the SPN mobile network.

One discussion led to another and at the end of the night he got my contact details and told me that he knew someone who was interested in setting up networks for parts of indonesia that were currently still *back on technology*.

A few weeks later i had a chat with his friend and soon found myself at the head office of urban development Jakarta office. At the head office I was introduced to the deputy minister of urban development and told him about what i did. He then started to make conversation about extending the reach of telephony and internet to communities that were still very behind on technology and I explained to him that this was achievable through VSAT communications. I knew a little about VSAT because of the discussions i had with the RF team from the telco startup i was working for. The RF team dealt alot with BTS's , antennas and satellite comms.

After discussions he asked me if i would mind doing a presentation to a small group of people about how it could be done, describing it all at a high level. What the technologies were and how much the whole exercise was going to cost. I wrote a small paper on the technologies required, the benefits , the expected cost in capital and operations and did a little presentation on the topic.

At the end of the presentation they asked if i could do a demo site and at the completion of the setup they would pay for the setup and any additional costs i would charge. I put a little price plan together and upon agreement i began to look for a team. It was at this point that i thought to myself "what in gods name am i *FREAKIN* doing ?!?" Previously it was all soft stuff, talks, presentations but now i actually have to set something up ?!?. I thought, yes i will give some ideas, help out with some technical aspects and someone else would be contracted to execute the idea, NOT ME, I was just there to do a job at my company I was working for, not to setup a company and do something i had never tried before !

Anyway, I had promised to have something working, a demo that was a self contained unit that we could deploy easily anywhere and i hadnt the first idea about setting up a satellite comms system using VSAT, i had the pricing of equipment (roughly) but that was about it! I knew all about the IP side, the VOIP side but the main back-haul was a total mystery to me.

I rounded up some of my friends from the RF side and they told me a little about what was needed for the VSAT backhaul. After a quick run through over a few days i understood enough to know what i was looking for (brought some memories back from UNI days). I was even put in contact with the sales director of one of the local VSAT providers who one of my colleagues in the RF side had worked with. I met up with the sales director and told him what i needed. He provided me details of a VSAT supplier that could provide the dish, LnB, antenna and all the housing.

After totaling the cost of the VSAT system, the networking equipment, the computers , the wiring required and the man labour required to setup the VSAT system the total was about 9000AUD. Even though i knew i was going to get that back (should i get all this setup) it was to much for me to invest alone so i asked a friend of mine to help fork the bill. He trusted me so together we invested 4500 AUD each. I hired 3 VSAT engineers to help with the VSAT modem configurationg,bought the computers and the networking equipment second-hand and closed of the required deals with the VSAT comms provider. After negotiations with the sales director we were able to get 6 months free connectivity for the pilot site.

The team spent 5 nights in total setting up the VSAT system facing multiple different problems, misalignment, tripod that didnt fit the VSAT dish as expected,malfunctioning oscilloscope , leaving the laptop cable at home so after the battery ran out no more work could be done and so on. After working through each of the problems we eventually got the system functioning and were able to do the demo on time. Calls could be made and we could surf the internet. To the people of the area this was a great leap to what they currently had.

At the end i couldn't believe we had got it done. What was initially just an idea and a talk, turned into a fully fledged implementation that was totally unexpected, something we were totally not ready for but something which i learnt alot from! We didnt make alot of money but it was a good little profit and we did it 2 more times (each time easier then the first). After the 2 sites *money* had ran out to build more sites and next years budget would be needed to futher progress the project but my stint in indonesia had finished so i didnt continue.

When i think back on this i think im very lucky in many different ways. Lucky that i got the experience to learn about VSAT and the technology in detail, lucky that we actually got it working and lucky that this opportunity even fell into my lap in the first place. After this experience i approach things with a more positive attitude and i tell myself we did it before, we can do it again.

So this side project sorta crept up on me, but at the end it was an experience i would never forget. Below are some of the pictures and documents i wrote from the setup. Enjoy:

• Paper on the benefits and the VSAT/VOIP technology
• Quick overview and of the equipment required
• More images and pictures of the setup team

Saving money with "The Virtual Office"

As a small bootstrapped startup it is important to keep costs as low as possible. This is imperative because spending even alittle more then you *REALLY* need will not only kill your startup it will also bite into life outside your startup. For us bootstrapped guys the same pot of cash that we use to initially fund the startup at its really early stages is the same pot of cash we use to put a roof over our heads and food on the table. Remember that it is important to spend money wisely and negotiate everything (have no shame!) because if your startup fails your life isnt over and you need money to live of.

Together our team has learnt that are many ways of keeping things on the cheap. Money can be saved on items such as servers (specially with good negotation skills) a large saving can be had by moving back home or together with family, possibly moving into a cheaper location and on the food front buying healthy but bulk buy groceries also adds to savings. If you do your own research you can also save money on some company paperwork by doing things on your own though just be sure your not setting yourself up for pain later. Do what you can now and what you cant leave till later. (either after you have done more research, raised some money or bumped into that great friend of yours that did law during uni ;))

Also remember that when you start a startup there is a commitment to be made so the amount of activities that you used to indulge in prior to your startup such as scuba diving, sky diving or overseas trips need to change ($100 MATTERS! Its half a month cost for servers). Suggestions are bushwalks, the beach, getting the guys around for soccer or football, pool and even some poker nights where its just a couple beers, couple guys and alot of screaming. These activites are cheap fun and keep you sane and relaxed after a hard session of coding. There is no reason to get unhealthy and lock yourself away for months on end without seeing daylight, the only thing to remember is when you do go out your activities need to change from what they previously may have been.

One of the things that you can also save on is your working area. Whether its the garage, your room, the lounge room or the local library with wireless access its important that you still have the office feeling where your focused, serious and where work gets done. Its also import that you can easily colaborate with the team such that you feel they are next to you even if they are on the otherside of town. Thanks to alot of other startups there are many tools online that have been developed that help with making any location with a wirless access feel like a fully fledged collaborative capable office.

Some of the tools that that help you build your virtual office that i'd like to talk about and that i have found exceptionally useful are dropbox, google apps, gmail/gtalk and etherpad.

Dropbox: Dropbox is a great tool for sharing files without any overhead. Once dropbox has been installed dropbox basically creates a folder on your local harddrive that is sync'd to the main dropbox servers. Dropbox can be used as a simple backup system but it also allows any files within those directories to be shared to others who have a dropbox. Any file that has been placed within the shared folder will be present for any user to see who has the right privlidges no matter where they are. Extremely useful and in a virtual office dropbox acts as your fileshare or network drive that most corporates have which is usually used to store documents etc.

Google Docs: Google docs is basically the online replacement for MS office/Staroffice/Open office. There is the spreadsheet tool, the presentation creator (similar to powerpoint in Ms office) and the document editor (similar to ms word). Basically all the tools required to open, edit and modify documents.

Gmail/Gtalk: Allows the team to communicate in realtime. Gmail used as the email system for your virtual office and gtalk for discussing issues and problems in realtime either through text chat or webcam.

Etherpad: Etherpad is a great tool for discussing and correcting code in realtime. When there is some problem with the code or anything related to the code that we want to discuss etherpad makes it easy to paste the porition of code in question by either marking, moving, highlighting and writing in suggestions on what can be done to rectify the issue. If Mark can fix a problem that i cant, i simply paste the portion of the code in question, he edits it with his suggestion that i can see in realtime, then once we are both happy i will copy and paste the code back into the code base.

So there you have it, some cool tools that can help save you and your team money whilst still allowing you to have that office feeling and the ability to collaborate seemlessly from any location powered by a wireless.

Startup Founders and Superhero's

Some of us like to think that one day, if successful we can contribute to the world and help in some way, I peronally have a few ideas of my own that i would love to execute should that day come where i have enough money to be comfortable plus have alittle extra. Personally, my standards are pretty low and i dont have many views of grandeur such as rolling up to a party in a ferrari, buying the biggest house in the most expensive suburb or owning a private jet, yeh sometimes we say these things but its really just for fun. When your used to having just the basics and you know exactly what you want to achieve and do if you had alittle more money then those big boys toys dont really make it high in the priority list...

Anyway... thats not what i wanted to talk about here, this post is more light-hearted and less serious then "how can we help the world if we had a chance to ". What i wanted to talk about is to compare startup founders to superheros (not in the real life sense) but those found in comic books and sci-fi movies (why not, we love sci-fi and possibly read comic books in the past so lets have abit of fun).

(A bit of background) In my little work area at home where i code when im not doing my day job i have posters all over my wall just to give it abit of character. I have posters of spiderman, ironman, transformers (optimus prime), serenity's river, arnie from terminator and Neo from the matrix.

When im waiting for my code to build or for the application to startup i sometimes pickup my guitar and play alittle tune or i may spin around on my chair waiting. A couple of days ago as i was spinning it occured to me that there is alittle bit of superhero in every startup founder (well the ones on my wall anyway) and maybe thats why my subconcious decided to have these specific posters plastered on my wall covering that boring orange brick. So i guess lets have some fun and look at the similarities:

• Ironman/Tony Stark: Tony stark isnt an entreprenur himself but even though he inherited stark enterprises from his dad, in his own right, with his intelligence and brilliance he would be able to create and build his own technologically advanced companies. In most of us entreprenurs/founders there is alittle bit of Tony Stark/Ironman. We work well with technology, we have ideas for new and wonderful things, we love tinkering and building, we think robots and high tech equipment is cool and that is why we all dream of flying around in a metal suite that has its own mobile phone and communications system ... ;)

• Spiderman/Peter parker: Like peter parker most of us startup founders have too much on our plates. We run around doing many things trying to make it all fit in the short time we have everyday (start a company, go to conferences, do our hobbies, try to get the girl etc). Most of us are quite intelligent(or think of ourselves as alittle above average) and usually we do well when it comes to academia similar to peter parker. Yet because of our lack of time sometimes we find it hard to finish (hence all the little half finished projects and code snippets in our directories from old and past projects or maybe that girl we just cant fully commit to because we know she'd leave again because we just cant give her the time she deserves). Only when we focus that energy, that intelligence and that will do we actually achieve something ...

• Optimus Prime: Optimus prime is the leader of the autobots, just and fair. As startup founders and leaders of our own companies many of us adopt leadership qualities that we believe are just and fair such as that displayed by optimus prime. Sometimes we make sacrifices on our social life, on our relationships and sometimes on our health to see the companies that we lead through the tough and difficult times. Just like optimus prime, to ensure the survival of the autobots and the humans, he risks his own life and own well being to ultimately lead the autobots to saftey and victory ...

• Terminators: This similarity is not quite as easy to see as the others but i think founders of startups definitely share qualities similar to terminators. Terminators are relentlessly resourceful, they have a mission to complete which has been programmed into their chips and they do whatever it takes to achieve that mission. Whether it is to pose as foster parents, imitate the checkered tiles on the floor, artifically enlarge the bustline to get away from the police or to sustain massive bodily damage terminators do what it takes. Similarly we founders take whatever measures we need to take (hopefully within the legal scope) be as creative as we possibly can, work crazy hours, eat and drink whatever is within an arms distance and also many times need to "hack the established system" just so we can finish our mission ... to sucessfully launch our startup.

• Neo: He's a hacker and so are we. We like to see ourselves as able to fly and navigate our way through code just as Neo can fly through the matrix. We like to see ourselves as able to decipher and see things in computers and in code that *normal people* can not see. He is the chosen one within the matrix and is a hero within the matrix. Our matrix is cyberspace, where we unleash our applications to the world in the hopes that it makes life easier for our users by helping them solve problems and thus giving us a sense of satisfaction.

• River from Serenity: Also not quite as obvious and (and in this case) may not apply to all founders. For readers that dont know who river is or what serenity/firefly is, its actually sci-fi show. River is the quiet, weird, outcast characeter who doesnt get involved with much of what the crew does. In many cases though she always comes to the rescue when things get hairy. She poseses a high-level of intelligence and is able to think out of the box but she rarely ever shows it. She has quick reflexes and an innate ability to understand others and her enemies. I think like many geeks during highschool who are now founders its easy to relate. Like river most nerds in highschool were also quiet, they studied for exams but not in those large noisy groups, they knew what was going to be taught in the next classes because they studied just alittle ahead of class to make sure not to be left behind, usually the geeks were not in the popular group who went to the best parties and in general the geeky group is usually viewed as the outcast such as river was. Now this geeky group are the ones starting companies, who might actually help contribute to the economy, just as river would come to the rescue of her more outlandish, loud, gun-ho, gun-blasting crew mates at just the right time ...

Well there you have it, a little bit of fun comparing superheros to startup founders. Maybe one day for the founders that are successful we can be real superheros and help with some of the worlds problems. Whether we contribute directly to solving these problems through our companies or indirectly through wealth that we earn through our companies its good to know that even in these pre-successful days of our companies launching when its still kind of lonely, where we still burn the midnight oil and where we havn't really achieved anything significant, we still have similarities to superheros !!! - (how cool is that).

OK .. now stop reading this, put your cape on and start coding .....

BTW ... Just as a preview here are some of the posters i was talking about ...

Garage DC (The old blog)

I used to have a blog a while ago called garagedc [at] blogspot. I closed the blog after a while because the content didnt turn out the way i wanted. I think blogging is quite difficult and when your new to blogging it takes some experience and practice, expecially if you want to write something that can help others. I felt that because it didnt turn out as i had planned its better that i try to understand more about writing, read alittle more and understand how to convey the message across in a better way. I guess this is my second attempt so i hope its better.

When I closed my first blog i wasnt aware that i actually had a few readers that were actively following and when i shut the blog down i recieved a few emails, messages from youtube and also from facebook asking where my blog had disappeared to. This is a quick message just to say, sorry about that guys, next time i'll let you guys know :)

As a final way to close the old blog down (even though its been down for a while) i'll just give a rundown of what it was about.

During the course of building our product, my team built a large testing platform which consisted of 8 really old servers and 2 racks costing a total of just under 1000 AUD or there abouts. The reason we built this hardware was to allow us to do development, testing and also a test bed for learning different technologies which we felt we may need to use should we need to scale. Some of the things we were able to achieve with the hardware were the following:

• balancing load over multiple application server machines and test the results
  
• failover and ensuring that a failed server still allowed the application to function normally.
  
• the applications behaviour spanned over multiple machines (making sure sessions were not bound to single nodes etc)
  
• learn how to build and configure a proper mySQL clusters over multiple machines (as we may need to do that in future)
  
• learn how to use and configure LVS
  
• experiment and play with how to expand the application in different directions
  
• using CPU affinity and test whether we could push a few of the non important backend batch jobs to one CPU and minimize impact on the main application. We purchased our servers from serverbeach (peer1) here, so we wanted to make sure that with the one server we had could run everything even though the batch jobs may have run slower. Even though the servers were old they where multi core cpu's so it helped with the testing
  
• learn how to build a beowulf cluster and see how it load balances processes, not related to the project but just for fun

We could have bought a single powerful server and used VM's as some people had suggested but the reason why we went for this option is it was just cheaper.and easier for us to configure. Our servers were about $20-$50 AUD each and most of the cost was on the racks , petrol and getting some extra power into the garage to accomodate the rare times we would power it all up for a complete end to end test.

Also for us it was easy to configure the servers into whatever setting our tests needed. My day job is to work with infrastructure so i could do what i needed faster then with VM's.

It has been about 1 and a bit years since we started but when you have responsibilities and more then yourself to support its not easy to just quit your job so the best way for me and also my team to work around it is to trade time for money. Take abit longer but still finish and try to maintain income up to the final point. Its not easy doing both, it slows things down alittle but its reality, the only way to not be a victim of circumstance is to work harder, alittle smarter and to take some unorthodox channels to get things done.

I heard finishing the product was the easy part, then the hard stuff later. Well im new to the startup world and so is my co-founder but but we like what we do, the excitment is still there (same as it was from day 1), we are still full of energy and no matter what comes our way we'll try to face it ....

With that being said, goodbye to garagedc and welcome to the stressedfounder :) Here is a video from the setup that we put together so we could learn more about different configurations of databases, load balancing and application configuration, now we use it to do our testing -( yes, watching this take me up memory lane :D)