Sunday, October 4, 2015

Week Seven - A Breather

Our final project group took a sort of break for this week, to focus on mid-terms. Quite thankful for it; I had time to catch up to the two modules I had neglected for pretty much the whole semester (I literally caught up to the lectures half a day before their midterm papers).

The talk this week was by GrabTaxi, Arul the VP of engineering, and Hooi Ling, one of the co-founders. Both were interesting and insightful talks. From Arul we learnt about the problems they faced when scaling, while Hooi Ling talked about her startup experience, how they started and grew.

One particularly interesting thing Arul mentioned was their mentality that each component or micro service had to be small enough to be written or re-written within two to four weeks. I think this gives a good gauge of what to expect in startups - or at least what it takes to succeed in them. Two weeks sounds a little like CS3216...only that they don't have 4-5 other modules at the same time.

Hooi Ling's talk was enlightening in a few ways: their focus on testing and iteration, as well as their relentless approach/commitment to their idea were very inspirational. My key takeaway was actually her opener though: "pick something you care about". Although it did seem obvious, it somehow hit me like some ray of enlightenment -- your life will revolve around your startup. It will become a part of your identity, a big part of your life - or at least several years. I have had a few friends suggest startup ideas to me, and although I was willing to help, this made me think twice. Committing to any one project could mean dedicating a big part of my life to it. They might suggest it as a "side project", less-time-commitment kind of thing, but if so, can it really succeed?

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