Friends December 22, 2007
Posted by Conway in Uncategorized.add a comment
I write to you all in my humble seat aboard China Airline flight # 267. Having just recently finished my last final at Berkeley, I’ve struggled to understand how James, Jeff and I have managed to maintain a social life amongst the 17 hour+ work days we’ve been putting in for the past several weeks. After several consecutive days of running back and forth between Berkeley and Spheer Headquarters in the midst of the final exam season, I am ecstatic to say that I will be visiting some relatives in Hong Kong and Taiwan for the next week or so. Don’t get me wrong…I love Spheer, and I definitely plan on continuing to work on Spheer during my time abroad, but it’s always nice to get some time away to hang out with loved ones. I do think it’s really important for entrepreneurs to get some time away from the work, regardless of how devoted they are. Whether that means spending a few hours with friends at the local pub, pumping some iron at the gym with them, or making a 6000 mile trip to Asia to see your grandparents, everybody needs to hang loose from time to time. At the end of the day, what’s the point of working so hard if you don’t have anybody to share the experiences with?
Bootstrapping December 17, 2007
Posted by James in Anecdotes, Lifestyle.add a comment
Bootstrapping is a term derived from the analogy of “pulling oneself up using his/her own bootstraps”. I have always found this term ironic because bootstrapping, in the original analogy, is a physically impossible task: the force vectors cancel out. Work it out with a few equations if you don’t believe me.
But in the startup world, bootstrapping is quite common and we’re trying to do exactly that at Spheer.com. Jeff and I dug deep into our meager savings, not because we’re against taking investments, but because we want to prove to ourselves that we have something really worthwhile. This total commitment of our time, energy, and money is very cathartic, much like jumping out of an airplane. A side benefit is that it gives us a hard deadline. We absolutely must have something to show when our money runs out. A little pressure is always a good thing.
We do try to keep our expenditures low. All three of us work out of our apartment in San Francisco. Our fixed cost are pretty reasonable, just rent and food mostly. We don’t cook because we have no time. Even though our apartment is pretty big, it gets a bit crowded when we’re all there. Conway, when he’s over, sleeps in the “red room”, our dining room turned guest bedroom/lounge and works in the entry way where he has his desk by one of the bathrooms. We don’t have enough room for him, so when we need printouts, he is forced to hold the printer in his lap (see photo).
I hope this gives you some ideas of how we bootstrap our startup. We are quite glad that bootstrapping a startup is much easier than bootstrapping in real life.
Beautiful San Francisco December 16, 2007
Posted by Jeff in Fun, Lifestyle.add a comment
On friday, I woke up intending to go to the local Crunch to do a set of chest and tris…but I didn’t make it to the gym. In fact, after I walked outside (about noon), I was captivated by what a beautiful day it was. I decided that it would be a good day for a jog.
Now this is an interesting excursion. Since we work so much in our apartment and coffee shops, I rarely get to make it out to the beautiful marina greens during daytime. After this experience, I’m going to try to go whenever it’s a nice day out because it was simply amazing. To get to the greens, you simply had to run down to the Safeway on Bay and head toward the Golden Gate Bridge.
After I got there, the view was absolutely stunning. There were no clouds in the sky and the Golden Gate was simply gorgeous and there were a great many people walking their dogs on the dirt path. Equally as beautiful is the view on the way back with the Bay on the left and the Palace of Fine Arts on the right. I took some pictures to share with all of you.
If you are in San Francisco or are thinking of coming up, I’d highly recommend this run. It’s well worth it.
