Year: 2016

How to build a business that lasts 100 years

Evernote is a company that wants to persevere through the years.  Whether it will achieve this is unclear, and we probably won’t be around to verify the outcome. Yet, it is not the first company with such a goal and even beyond.

Martin Reeves has made a spectacular appearance in Paris not long ago. He like many others has looked into the ways nature solves problems and connected his findings to building long-lasting businesses. I can surely give you his answer but strongly recommend to watch the video first. Believe it or not if you are a business owner you will probably watch it again.

The answer is taken from the human immune system and its core features: Redundancy, Diversity, Modularity, Adaptation, Prudence, Embeddedness. Ironically this is far from efficient but if nature has designed it efficient, we may not have survived our last flu. Plenty of food for thought and little need to chew the video for you. 🙂

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Technology Series – The opening of Gigafactory 1 surfaced some impressive facts about this engineering wonder

So what is the Tesla Gigafactory besides clearly being a factory?

As its name implies, Gigafactory is an insanely big factory (actually is going to become a lot bigger), and it will produce batteries for the electric vehicles of Tesla Motors. That is not surprising considering the massive volume of around 500 000 vehicles per year that Tesla wants to produce towards end of the decade. This ambition is steered by Tesla’s mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy and to achieve that goal, Tesla wants to produce electric vehicles in sufficient volume to force change in the automobile industry. This apparently was not feasible to do using existing battery manufacturers so the true entrepreneur he is, Elon Musk decided to build his own factory. In his own words Elon said: “It has to be big, because the world is big”.

And while the plan was announced in 2014, last month the first part of the factory had its grand opening! The event emerged quickly in the press but then somehow got lost in all that sports events and probably holidays rolling out. For those of you who want to enjoy the video of the grand opening, here you go. Below I have put some interesting facts announced during the event.

  • The Gigafactory will be powered by renewable energy sources, with the goal of achieving net zero energy.
  • The factory current size is just 14% of its planned size. This article gives a good idea of construction progress with new sites starting already.
  • When complete, 93 Boeing 747 jets would fit inside, or in other terms 50 billion hamsters. 🙂
  • Design improvements allowed to increase initial battery production capacity per year from 50 GWh to 150 GWh.
  • When the factory is complete it will produce a higher amount of lithium-ion batteries than the world produced in 2014. And Tesla wants to build several of these factories.
  • In order to fit the maximum machinery in the factory and increase production speed, the engineering teams had to reinvent the battery production process.
  • The result: the factory strongly resembles a modular integrated circuit and claims a 5-10x increase in production capability. In Elon’s words: “… revitalising manufacturing”.
PUBLISHED ON Posted on in Categories Ecosystems, Events, News
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Technology Series – Is Ruby dying?

For those not into programming Ruby is a programming language. Ruby on Rails is a software library that extends Ruby and contributed hugely to its stellar adoption.

Many famous platforms are based on Ruby – Airbnb, Twitter, Basecamp, Kickstarter. Ruby programmers are probably the most tightly knit community of all programmers. But what is actually happening with Ruby.

There have been plenty discussions on the topic but they have intensified since 2015. If we discard the opinions of the hardcore proponents and opponents, it seems that there may be some sentiment in the direction, why would otherwise so many developers be asking this question.

Some arguments are based on counting the internet searches for each language, others on repository counters (repositories is where the programming code is kept), third on more or less established indexes.

Rankings
I actually looked at the popularity index TIOBE. Although it clearly shows that Ruby spiked in 2009, and then gradually faded away, it re-captured some positions in 2016.

Tiobe index ruby

A striking fact though is the adoption of Ruby is way under Python, PHP and Javascript, and ranks just above Delphi/Objective Pascal. If you do not believe me, check the ranking. That was quite a surprise for me.

Tiobe index of programming languages

No longer the new kid on the block
Besides, many of the comments I read point out Ruby is no longer the new kid on the block. So in a way it has lost some of its initial momentum, and that tendency is not being helped by the surge of interest for Python and Node.js software development.

Availability
May be the worst part is that good Ruby developers are hard to find and when you find them they are already working on an exciting project.

High cost
When you snatch a top notch guy, it usually comes with high price tag. Although many new business consider RoR as their first option, the cost combined with lack of available developers, makes them consider other options soon after.

Bottom line
I do not want to sound like I agree with such a strong statement but I see indications pointing to a decline. In my humble opinion, this is mostly thanks to the maturity of PHP and Javascript that bring a horde of skilled developers plus fast and feature rich frameworks. Still, many languages and frameworks have managed to recover and build on their community and the Ruby one is probably the best of all. Also no language dies out suddenly, especially with such a substantial codebase and famous companies using it.

If you happen to be into programming, what do you think?

PUBLISHED ON Posted on in Categories Ecosystems, Random Thoughts
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Entrepreneurship Series – Featuring Rustem and his Robo Wunderkind

I came upon something truly inspiring. As usual I check few interesting startups each week. Lately I do it mostly in the IoT, B2B SaaS and Ecommerce/marketplaces space. It is not easy, with all the rest going on, so is really a matter of discipline to stay relevant and follow the trends.

During one of these sessions I met Rustem. This guy told me his story and it blew my mind.

Rustem and his team built this (see picture below).

robo wunderkind

Simply said, Robo Wunderkind is a robotics kit that allows you to build your own robot, so that kids also pick up basic coding skills along the way.

It is essentially a set of blocks which you can use to build all kinds of functional robots. Connecting the cubes is as simple as putting building blocks together — there is no wire or magnet.

robo wunderkind bricks

Then comes the 2nd fun factor. Kids can learn how to code by playing with the app’s visual programming interface which is super intuitive: kids with no previous exposure to coding will easily figure out how to program in the app.

robo wunderkind app

Here are some things that Robo Wunderkind can do:

  • drive around while avoiding obstacles
  • play a recorded sound when somebody enters the room
  • react to claps and other noises
  • play music when somebody picks it up
  • record and play voice messages
  • …and much, much more!

The idea was born end of 2013.

first robo wunderkind prototype

After building his prototype and putting his star team together, Rustem and Anna did something unexpected.

In 2014 they moved to Shenzhen, China to pursue their dream. There they learned all around hardware manufacturing.

That took a year and it mid 2015 came their Kickstarter campaign. Which ended up raising more than 3x the amount initially planned.

In this month, July 2016, almost 3 years after the idea was born and a ton of awards and pitches later, Rustem and team will start delivering their product to their 1 169 backers.

In simple words entrepreneurship is about dedication, patience and believe in what you do, and Robo Wunderkind is a true example of what it takes.

Go Robo Wunderkind Team!

 

PUBLISHED ON Posted on in Categories Ecosystems, Fundraising, News
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Spicing up your LinkedIn profile – nifty icons and bullet points

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that people should care more about their profiles in business networks rather than anywhere else (including their resume).

So while refreshing my LinkedIn and Xing profiles came the obvious need: “How do I add bullets to my LinkedIn profile?”

Getting Bullets on Your LinkedIn Profile

Actually there is no such thing as “bullet points” within LinkedIn. And you can do no formating. This is all.

Just kidding!

The simplest way to add some new symbols is to copy and paste them from somewhere else. In this case my blog. 🙂

So, just select (highlight) the symbol you want to use, copy it and paste it in LinkedIn. You can copy it by clicking Ctrl-C or right mouse clicking on the highlighted symbol and choosing COPY from the right mouse menu. Paste it by clicking Ctrl-V or right mouse clicking and choosing PASTE from the right mouse menu.

Of course, when pasting in your LinkedIn, you should have clicked on your profile and switched to edit mode.

And here are the symbols:

Stars:
★ ✪ ✯ ✰

Arrows:

☛ ☚ ☜ ☝ ☞ ☟ ⇨ ► ◄ ► »

Traditional bullets:

■ ♦ ◆ ●

Ticks:

✔ ✘ ☐ ☑ ☒

Email:
✉ ✍ ✎ ✏ ✑ ⌨

Phone:

✆ ☎ ☏

More:

♬♪♫ Ѫ ☮ ✈ ♥ ☠ ☊ ☗ ♘ ♝ ☃ ☂ ☁ ☀ ☺

If you really like it Klicki bunti, you can use these to make lines:
☲☲☲☲☲☲☲☲☲☲☲
▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
▓▒░▓▒░▓▒░▓▒░▓▒░▓▒░

♬♪♫ Ѫ ☮ ✈ ♥ ☠ ☊ ☗ ♘ ♝ ☃ ☂ ☁ ☀ ☺

Hope you did not turn your profile into a Christmas tree. In fact, I used only two of these.

 

PUBLISHED ON Posted on in Categories Productivity
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