I was talking to a group of 5 final year project students with their project supervisor in CUHK's CSE Department on Wednesday. One of the persistent topics in the meeting was technology startups. So the word that kept being reiterated during that discussion was "passion" - beyond that, there was little information revealed to the students on what a startup is like. So I can imagine the students were leaving the room empty headed about it, probably thinking tech entrepreneurs like us are just a bunch of maniacs - "man, why don't you go work for an investment bank?".
It has been very difficult to convey to other people in Hong Kong what "startup" means. Most people here will give you a blank look if you tell them you're doing a "startup" - in the entirety of their lives dealing with English documents, they haven't heard of or seen this word once! If you explain to them you're a technology company founder, they'll immediately think you're an ultra-rich who has a fleet of Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, etc. If you explain to them that you're just a small company with a bunch of passionate people, people would usually praise you but the gap of understanding is still there.
Passion
"Passion" is an empty word by itself, to really convey the meaning behind this word, an example is needed.
When I was sitting for the university entrance interview 5 years ago, the Professors asked why we're looking to study computer related subjects. Somebody besides me said "Because of the commands! The commands are powerful!" To the Professors this would most likely be a poor answer, but it is an expression of passion nonetheless. The desire to have more control, or to be less helpless, is a kind of passion.
The true difference between people who would go on to found startups, and those people who would prefer to have a stable job, is that those who found startups desire to have more control over their lives. While many people would balk at the risks of actually running a business, and thus the violent changes that can come with it - startup founders see the experience and knowledge missed by those who're limited to their office cubicles as another form of risk. After all, the world has been and will be changing. When change happens, the rule of the day will become survival of the fittest. Anything requiring a greenhouse to survive in, will wither and die. Creative destruction.
Passion is also the ability to see new possibilities from existing circumstances. It is one thing to be able to implement difficult algorithms and get them to work; it is quite another thing to be able to sense the desires of the people (or as Sequoia Capital puts it, pain point), imagine new possibilities, and turn imagination into reality. If you don't have a sense of love towards something good and beautiful, you won't see the possibilities, or at most, you'll just come up with mundane ideas. If a software architect doesn't have a sense of love towards something good and beautiful, he'll just come up with one ugly complicated design after another, no matter how many years he worked in the industry.
Difficulty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
One of the minor things I remembered during the meeting in CUHK was something along the lines of "you guys are having fun because you still have time to play, but these guys actually have to watch out for their cash flow". That was the Professor speaking to his FYP students.
But we're actually having a lot of fun. I'm having so much fun running Think Bulbs Limited, that I resigned from FCKeditor, one of the top open source projects in the world, last month. FCKeditor brought me a lot of valuable experience, some money, and a top 0.7% ranking among open source developers worldwide in Ohloh. I have to thank Frederico for it, but I've decided to move on, because of the pursuit of happiness.
Running a startup, designing and implementing real-world projects, talking to customers and reporters... are much more difficult than simply doing a final year project. But the excitement you get from all the unique experiences; from the praises from real, actual customers and other people; from people who had discovered new hope because of your results... is unparalleled to any other thing you can do in this world. The difference between founding a startup and implementing a managed software project is like riding a bicycle with and without the training wheels. If you only ride a bicycle with the training wheels on, you won't fall, but you'll also never appreciate the true joy of riding a bicycle.
Once you've learned to ride a bicycle without the training wheels on, you discover a new form of happiness. Learning to use a computer; coding the first "Hello World"; designing and coding the first practical software application; learning about and improving other peoples' designs and thus, discovering new possibilities in software architectures; finding the first partner whom you share your views with and whom you can trust; finding the first employee who trusts you and your vision; having the first user; reading the first user comment; having the first thousands of users; beating the first competitor; getting the first media report; ... In every step of learning about computer science, and running a startup, there is happiness to be discovered.
Having difficulty isn't really that bad, as long as you're aware of the possibilities while/after overcoming it. Lots of people would re-play a finished computer game at a higher difficulty just to see what else is possible. Startup founders can be seen as those who try the same thing with the real world - my friends already told me what a cubicle life is like, what if I try something else?
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