I remember the movie, "Social Network" where people were "wired in" to produce what is now something that changed the world in a way. Talking with my business partner, we decided to postpone our product launch date (actually projects completion date) about two weeks. This gave me some breathing room. Three weeks left to complete four of our current five projects. I went to a coffee place after dinner to get wired in. It works almost all the time. I don't know exactly why, but I can focus on the work easily. It's noisy and there are lots of people doing something. I guess because of these people and the environment, what I'm doing seems to be very natural. I don't have anyone to talk to. I have a cup of coffee. No one bothers me. I can't doze off either because too many people are sitting too close and I'm on my caffein.
Anyways, I figured out a lot about Hibernate object mapping. One-to-many many relationship with fetch type to be eager. Oh, I was so happy to see my logic to display color-size mapping chart dynamically based on the size matrix each style is bound to work. It was beautiful. I mean, wonderful. Yeah, I know, it sounds very geeky. Yep, I need to be geeky sometimes. Will continue the journey until it's finished.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
My first day!!!
I had an urge to write something up before I forget all about this years later. So it goes all the way back to November 10th, 2008. Albeit 3 years ago, my business got registered in the state of California. Prior to this, I had tried a couple more businesses without much success other than spending thousands of dollars in incorporating and dissolution.
Why did I start my own business? Well, there were two reasons. First, I faced a so-called, "glass ceiling". When I immigrated to this country in June 2008, I was already in the late twenties. I had spent almost 3 decades living in my mother's country knowing enough about how to survive and succeed. However, when I came to this country, I was like a new-born baby learning everything new. I had to find my way to survive here. I married an American citizen. I got a working permit in six months and got a job in a small technology company. I had stayed there about six months deaf and mute. Thankfully, I didn't lose my job. I met a lot of great guys and tried to absorb everything that I could. I was desperate. Afterwards, my careen life in America started blooming. I felt great. I felt like I could do everything. But it was until I hit the "glass ceiling" in about 6 years. I started understanding people and culture enough to know that I had a limitation as a foreign-born. Second, I didn't want to work for someone forever. Like most of the people dream about, I had the same dream. I wanted to have my own business.
So, what happened to my previous businesses? In retrospect, it was laughable. I took a class at UCLA trying to learn about business. I did some research about how to incorporate. And I had some ideas. So, I started. It didn't cost me that much back then. But, later I realized that had to sacrifice a lot in order to get what I wanted. Even though the realization came to me early enough, the magnitude of the difficulties and requirements for running my own business didn't hit me until later. So I started one business and I gave up in several months. I started another and dissolve.
What made me continue and brought me to my current company? I wanted to quit. I wanted to stop pursuing my business. But somehow, the wind started blowing the direction that I didn't expect. A friend of mine at my church talked about an opportunity of a business. I volunteered to help out and I ended up helping his friends with his business, getting involved as a founder and contributed to the success of the business. At the same time, I had an idea to run my own software company with my friend. After nine months of successful growth of my venture with two other business partners, I had to quit due to the conflict between the other two partners. Even after the break up, I started my own on-line retail shop with a few friends of mine. I invested ten thousand dollars. I bought some stuff, computer, desk, printer, etc. etc. Again, it didn't last long. After dealing with some difficult customers, I decided to close my business again. It wasn't worth pursuing. I was continually losing. And the people I hired didn't have the same mindset as mine. So, I ended up solely focusing on my current one.
How was it in the first three years? Nothing but frustrating and constant fighting against my urge to quit. My business partner and I started to dream about what we could build. We got a customer and started to build a B2B business website. We made some money. We asked someone outside to do the web design. But, it didn't go well. I had to switch to another web designer after struggling with the first one over six months. I wasted money and time. I almost lost my first customer. Since then, the business has been surviving with a few customers here and there developing different things for them. But it wasn't until last year around September 2010 when we found a technology with which we could start building something we had been dreaming about. It was running a very complicated computer application on the website. We decided to meet everyday at my house. And we did. We made significant progress through so much struggle.
How is it now? Yeah, I'm still struggling to get the development completed. Well, I should say, I did complete the development a few months ago. However, when I started thinking about integrating what we had built with the web site we originally built for a customer, we saw problems. In the meantime, we could get a few more customers. Currently, I'm working on 5 different projects for 4 customers.
How does it look in the future? Well, I'm learning to do my best each day. I need to do whatever I can do today in order to bring the bright future. No pain, no gain. Without sowing, no reaping. I mean it. The most difficult part of running this business, (I feel a little shame to call what I'm running a business. It's so tiny and do so little now) is the struggle within myself.
I know, my first day was long. From now on forward, I will write my experience and learning without a long prolog.
Why did I start my own business? Well, there were two reasons. First, I faced a so-called, "glass ceiling". When I immigrated to this country in June 2008, I was already in the late twenties. I had spent almost 3 decades living in my mother's country knowing enough about how to survive and succeed. However, when I came to this country, I was like a new-born baby learning everything new. I had to find my way to survive here. I married an American citizen. I got a working permit in six months and got a job in a small technology company. I had stayed there about six months deaf and mute. Thankfully, I didn't lose my job. I met a lot of great guys and tried to absorb everything that I could. I was desperate. Afterwards, my careen life in America started blooming. I felt great. I felt like I could do everything. But it was until I hit the "glass ceiling" in about 6 years. I started understanding people and culture enough to know that I had a limitation as a foreign-born. Second, I didn't want to work for someone forever. Like most of the people dream about, I had the same dream. I wanted to have my own business.
So, what happened to my previous businesses? In retrospect, it was laughable. I took a class at UCLA trying to learn about business. I did some research about how to incorporate. And I had some ideas. So, I started. It didn't cost me that much back then. But, later I realized that had to sacrifice a lot in order to get what I wanted. Even though the realization came to me early enough, the magnitude of the difficulties and requirements for running my own business didn't hit me until later. So I started one business and I gave up in several months. I started another and dissolve.
What made me continue and brought me to my current company? I wanted to quit. I wanted to stop pursuing my business. But somehow, the wind started blowing the direction that I didn't expect. A friend of mine at my church talked about an opportunity of a business. I volunteered to help out and I ended up helping his friends with his business, getting involved as a founder and contributed to the success of the business. At the same time, I had an idea to run my own software company with my friend. After nine months of successful growth of my venture with two other business partners, I had to quit due to the conflict between the other two partners. Even after the break up, I started my own on-line retail shop with a few friends of mine. I invested ten thousand dollars. I bought some stuff, computer, desk, printer, etc. etc. Again, it didn't last long. After dealing with some difficult customers, I decided to close my business again. It wasn't worth pursuing. I was continually losing. And the people I hired didn't have the same mindset as mine. So, I ended up solely focusing on my current one.
How was it in the first three years? Nothing but frustrating and constant fighting against my urge to quit. My business partner and I started to dream about what we could build. We got a customer and started to build a B2B business website. We made some money. We asked someone outside to do the web design. But, it didn't go well. I had to switch to another web designer after struggling with the first one over six months. I wasted money and time. I almost lost my first customer. Since then, the business has been surviving with a few customers here and there developing different things for them. But it wasn't until last year around September 2010 when we found a technology with which we could start building something we had been dreaming about. It was running a very complicated computer application on the website. We decided to meet everyday at my house. And we did. We made significant progress through so much struggle.
How is it now? Yeah, I'm still struggling to get the development completed. Well, I should say, I did complete the development a few months ago. However, when I started thinking about integrating what we had built with the web site we originally built for a customer, we saw problems. In the meantime, we could get a few more customers. Currently, I'm working on 5 different projects for 4 customers.
How does it look in the future? Well, I'm learning to do my best each day. I need to do whatever I can do today in order to bring the bright future. No pain, no gain. Without sowing, no reaping. I mean it. The most difficult part of running this business, (I feel a little shame to call what I'm running a business. It's so tiny and do so little now) is the struggle within myself.
I know, my first day was long. From now on forward, I will write my experience and learning without a long prolog.
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