The Secret Life of an Entrepreneur

Life is hard enough for an entrepreneur, let alone a Internet Start-up Founder. I am incredibly fortunate in that I am surrounded by a loving wife, very passionate and focused (and supportive) partner(s) and surrounded by developers who are far more gifted programmers then even I could ever hope to be. Sometimes, these people are the only reason I can go on.

The Touchstone Team has a huge level of faith and determination and a growing level of enthusiasm from the community (even some of our very own "fanbois and girls") which only catalyses our efforts. All-in-all, Touchstone (even right from the beginning) seemes to be slightly blessed.

It is however, not all rosy. It strikes me today as I sit here programming and blogging between episodes of Mythbusters and Grey's Anatomy on my wedding anniversary pondering how I am going to push a few lines out tonight between courses at my step-father's 50th birthday party.

Families (esp extended ones), girlfriends, in-laws and the Tax Department for some reason just dont seem to be very supportive when I whip out my tablet shouting "Eureka! I just solved how to factor views over time over importance!". They also don't seem to appreciate how satisfying it can be solving memory leaks, or understand why slowly transforming into an albino Hunchback of Notre Dame with sever allergy to sunlight and fresh (non recycled) air is an acceptable means to an end!

I guess they just don't understand the 'space', which is weird considering they all happily use MySpace! Im not sure what it is that can make these people so counter-supportive. Maybe they think they're helping or that they are trying to help us see reason, and it's their attempt to protect us from failure.

but it doesnt work that way. As an Internet Start-up Entrepreneur, our brains seem wired differently to other people. Success is not permanent and failure is not fatal, we all understand that. Small sucesses are like a drug, and miss-steps only drive us to go harder still.

Through sheer determination and willpower we will topple mountains! And so it continues....

Google vs The World

There is a post on Read/WriteWeb about 'The race to beat google'.

Alex and Richard compare the Google Competitors based on their points of differentiation and come to the fairly obvious conclusion that:

So overall, even though there is a lot of activity in the space, it seems like Google will remain the search king for the foreseeable future. Various approaches will have different degrees of success in seizing bits of the market, but to make a serious dent will require time, flawless execution, big marketing dollars and, of course, a better technology. This is not a trivial combination of things.

Alex goes on to say:

...another promising contender (mentioned by Emre) is personalized search. With this technology, search results are going to be organized not by PageRank but by your personal interests. It is likely that a combination of a vertical search and personalized search is going to deliver fundamentally better results than Google, so that might have a chance. However, as we pointed out with the other technologies. Google is not going to sleep through this.

A commenter called Eric, however, hits the nail on the head:

The only way Google is going to be beaten is when the next great paradigm shift in computing comes along. IBM wasn't beaten by another hardware vendor, it was beaten by Microsoft's operating system. Microsoft wasn't beaten by a another
operating system, it's being beaten by the web. It follows then that Google isn't going to be beaten by another search product, it will be beaten by something else.

It stands to reason that if any of these other things prove viable, Google will incorporate it into their own product. Just like Microsoft never plays the innovator with Windows - when you're the leader, you just have to be "good enough" and copy the best ideas from competitors.

The question we should be asking is: what's the next paradigm going to be?

So maybe this is not about beating Google at search, but rather going beyond 'search' and towards a new paradigm that is more useful.

Im surprised that both Alex and Richard did not mention Touchstone or APML in the article when referring to Personalization of results by comparing them against your interests.

I think, however, the next frontier for search specifically is not finding better pages, but better structured data in the form of microformats or other forms of structured data from inside pages (like Blue Organizer, Edgeio, Vast). Again, surprised that Alex didn't mention Blue Organizer or the other - considering he owns it. Maybe he did not want to show bias.

Also, going beyond multiple results at all to return the actual answer. Very much like AskX - now THAT's innovation.

From One Founder to Another...

Over the Christmas break, the Touchstone development team has taken some personal time out to remind their families that they are still alive. Since this naturally has slowed the pace of development, it has taken some of the pressures away from me as a director and founder to take 5 minutes to reflect on the past year and realise the massive steps we’ve taken both professionally and personally.

After this reflection, I have realised how lucky I am to have a partner and friend like Chris. I know there are many other ‘dual founders’ out there, but I’m sure none of them have quite the same relationship as Chris and I. We’re both burdened with an over-abundance of passion and opinion, and while this has on occasion raised some eyebrows in the office, we never let ego get in the way of decisions and we’re very careful to support each other when it’s needed.

Plus, there isn’t anything quite so depressing when you’ve fallen in love with an idea or aspect of the business, and your co-founder tells you that it can’t “be that way” – and you knowing in your heart that he’s right. But when he doesn’t hold this against you, you realise how lucky you really are.

Chris, you are an intelligent and co-operative friend and colleague and I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank you for your effort, tenacity, patience and inspiration which helps push me past what I previously thought impossible.

Thankyou buddy.