On the 23rd of May 2010, Lei reached the summit of Everest and became the first Chinese woman, as well as the first Asian-American woman to climb the highest mountain on every continent and to ski to both the North and South Poles. She successfully completed her “7+2″ conquest.

Known as the “Seven Plus Two” challenge, this grueling mission consists of reaching nine of the most extreme points in the world: the highest peak on each continent - called the Seven Summits - and crossing the last degrees of the icy, snowy North and South poles on cross-country skis.

Before her, there were only 9 people in the world that have finished “7+2″. Now Lei becomes the 10th.

Lei is an average woman. A Boston resident, 36-year old, 5′2”, you wouldn’t associate her with such athleticism and madness if you just meet her. Before this, her life story was very similar to a lot of people (In particular, in my own life and the high tech world). Born in China, immigrated to US, she went to good schools (Tsinghua University in Beijing and Wharton for MBA) and had good jobs in high tech and financing. Her life story would have been just like the rest of us…

Except that she had a dream and she wouldn’t let her dream die. In 2004, she decided to pursue her dream. It was not an easy process. As she wrote, when she was in her 20s, the longest distance she ran was just about 1000 meters. Now in mid 30s, she can easily keep her training at half marathon to full marathon intensity. Being short and small, she used to easily allow herself to fall behind others; now she takes pride in competing in running and climbing, and ignoring the physical advantages of her competitors. On a mountaineering trip, everyone has to carry about the same load of gear and food. A 60 lb pack may be only 1/3 of a normal man’s body weight, but it is more than 50% of her weight. So she just has to be stronger!

I have heard about Lei many times. Over the last few months when she set out for Mount Everest, my friends in Boston couldn’t stop but cheering for her and wishing her success. Every time when I think about her story, it gives me so much power to push for my own limit and pursue my own dreams. Average people can achieve amazing things. The dream lives on, as famously stated by Ted Kennedy.

Congratulations to Lei on her amazing accomplishment!

• Support Lei’s 2010 Everest climb - Donate on Paypal;


• Lei and Mount Everest on Facebook;


• More about Lei: http://www.LeisVentures.com

Lei, thank you for being such an inspiration to the rest of us.

With hundreds of thousands of servers, Yottaa has a highly distributed cloud infrastructure spanning across many data centers in many geographic locations globally. Yottaa is looking for a Director of Operations to help set up and run such an infrastructure.

Besides the technical responsibilities, this role also requires managing vendor relationships, optimizing infrastructure costs and leading a team of system engineers to validate, test, and deploy Yottaa’s software onto its massive cloud infrastructure.

Responsibilities:

• Select and negotiate with network providers, hosting providers and infrastructure providers;
• Maintain relationship with the above providers;
• Monitor and optimize infrastructure costs;
• Lead a team of system engineers to:
  • Validate and test Yottaa’s software.
  • Set up and manage policies, procedures and tools related to reliability, availability and security
  • Roll out new services to production environment
  • Operate, monitor and manage large scale web systems that may contain thousands of servers distributed at many global locations

Requirements:

• Familiarity with network providers and hosting providers
• Hands on experience in network operations and administration
• Hands on experience testing and deploying large scale server software
• Hands on experience in managing large scale web infrastructure
• Expert knowledge of unit testing, load testing and automated testing

This position is Boston based.

If you are passionate about running one of the largest computing infrastructures on earth, please contact coach at yottaa.com. Yottaa is a Boston and Beijing based company building some amazingly cool and fun stuff related to cloud computing. We look forward to hearing from you.

Here are the patterns that I identified and use:

1. Strong will power: Someone who is persistent in his/her pursuit and won’t give up easily, whatever the pursuit might be. It is not entirely accidental that a lot of entrepreneurs are avid long distance runners because long distance running like marathon is more about having a strong mind than anything else.


2. Relentlessly resourceful: Someone who is able to figure out how to make things happen against all the odds. Someone who would try from many different angles and perspectives in order to achieve a goal and take failed attempts as input for finding better ways.


3. Passion. Starting a new business is hard, and you’d better love it for what it is. Having the passion for solving a particular problem and being compelled by the vision of how better the world would be if the business succeeds are the key reasons that one would get up every morning and fight against all the odds to make it happen.


4. Intelligence. Someone who is highly intelligent. Intelligence is the basic foundation upon which everything else is built. Passion without intelligence is called romance. And it is a good idea to stay away from those with strong will power but without the smarts.

Interesting that post from Vivek Wadhwa on TechCrunch about “Can Entrepreneurs Be Made”. I would disagree with Vivek. No, you cannot teach someone to have passion for something. You can not teach strong will power, intelligence or being relentlessly resourceful. I hear about “pattern recognition” from VCs and other people a lot as well. I have never seem anyone use “gene” as part of the pattern recognition. Nobody judges an entrepreneur by whether his father or mother started a business before or not. On this regard, Vivek’s study is flawed as his article is based on survey results related to family genes as evidence to dispute against pattern recognition.

On the other side, is there value to teach entrepreneurship and is there value for programs like Kauffman Labs as Vivek mentioned in his article? Yes, absolutely. There are millions of people who do have the intelligence, are resourceful, have strong minds and have passion for a certain things, but just haven’t made the jump yet. Surrounding them with other entrepreneurs, mentors and a startup atmosphere is the best way to light up their inner fire. For many reasons (not the least that Wall Street and Google hire tons of smart people to golden hand cuffs), only a tiny percentage of “qualified people” (those who have the ingredients to be entrepreneurs) would become an entrepreneur. So there is a large pool of people (in the order of millions) that entrepreneurship programs, ranging from MIT Sloan Entrepreneurship Center to Kauffman Foundation to TechStars, can make a big difference for.

Fred Wilson has a post on this subject as well: Nature vs Nurture and Entrepreneurship. He listed five attributes for entrepreneurs:

1. A stubborn belief in one’s self


2. A confidence bordering on arrogance


3. A desire to accept risk and ambiguity, and the ability to live with them


4. An ability to construct a vision and sell it to many others


5. A magnet for talent

These attributes are very much along the similar lines as mine, though I would disagree with the “stubborn” and “arrogance” thing. Vivek rightfully pointed out “Silicon Valley investors often have a picture in their heads of the type of person who is worthy of funding: young, brash, stubborn, and arrogant”. No. There are plenty of successful entrepreneurs who are very humble and very flexible. It is not about being stubborn. It is about having the strong will power to make something happen. In doing so, many entrepreneurs are perfectly happy for being the opposite of “stubborn” about a lot of other things. It is not about being “arrogant”. Arrogant people are those who haven’t seem enough yet. Good entrepreneurs are confident but also have keen ears and eyes to learn from other people.

Responsibilities

Skills / Requirements

Location: Beijing or Boston

Close-by, San Francisco’s Open Table IPO’d in May.

Otherwise, it was all Massachusetts, Chicago, Seattle, and Texas. Massachusetts tops the list in 2009.

2010 should look different as we wouldn’t be surprised to see Silicon Valley-based startups Yelp, Zynga, Playdom, Tesla, Facebook and LiveOps IPO.

However, east coast does have a list of really good firms up and coming, not necessarily achieving stardom in 2010, but maybe in the next 2-5 years? Here is a short list of Boston based firms to watch for in the next few years in my humble opinion:

1. BrightCove: Internet video platform. Jeremy and co have done really well and BrightCove is on the way to stardom (Thanks Dharmesh for the suggestion)


2. Hubspot: marketing automation


3. VisibleMeasures: Internet video measurement. Brian Shin and the team have achieved a lot over the last few years. I’m sure 2010 will be another stellar year for them.

The following companies are fairly new. Some of them are still in stealth mode:

1. Akiba: Database virtualization. I expect nothing less than flawless exceution from my Nexaweb colleague David McFarlane


2. Sonian: email and other messaging archiving. After closing Series A financing in 2009, 2010 is going to be a great year for Greg and the folks at Sonian.


3. Performable: Stealth mode company led by my friend David Cancel. I know David well enough to know that this is going to be a great company.


4. Yottaa: “stealth mode” cloud computing company that I’m personally involved with. I’ve not been excited like this for a long time. There are so many amazing things at Yottaa. For example, this is the place that I have the smallest brain among all team members (but thank god, I found ways to enjoy being the dumb person. A couple of days ago I asked Tony for “business justification” on something he proposed - couldn’t believe how much I sound like the manager asking for TPS report cover sheet in the movie “Office”). I have a hard time catching up with them. Ok, time to really learn some Ruby:-)

What other firms in Boston area are interesting? My list above is fairly biased towards “software as a service” related companies. Please leave suggestions in the comment area. Thanks!

Disclaimer: Part of this post is not my writing, but rather re-posted from http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-no-longer-the-home-of-startup-ipos-2009-12.

The World According to Americans

(Credit: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/world-accordign-to-USA.jpg)

The next cartoon is also quite funny:

(Credit: http://kelsocartography.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/the-world-according-to-ronald-reagan.jpg)

Unfortunately I couldn’t find a good cartoon for Chinese. So here is one that I sorta assembled (I can think of tons of funny cartoon ideas. I wish i know how to draw them!):

The World According to Chinese

I am going through these things myself at Yottaa. This is my 2nd time in going through these things. My first time was around 2000 to 2001 when I started Nexaweb. Nobody was doing blogging at the time. Frankly, I wish I blogged about what I learned at the time. Because when I need this knowledge again, I remember absolutely nothing about these things. —We are genetically programmed to suck at such stuff and our memory got erased quickly even if we force ourselves through a learning process.

Anyway, through Yottaa, I think that I’ve become a semi-expert in these things now. I’m determined to write down what I learned so that they might be useful for my fellow entrepreneurs. This post focuses on banking.

What is the first thing you should do when you close financing? Well, even before the unbelievable party that you are going to throw:-), you’d better have a bank account that you can deposit the money. How are you going to do that? The followings outline the considerations you should think about from a banking point of view.

1. Account types: banks offer many types of accounts, ranging from checking accounts, simple saving account, and money market account to more sophisticated investment accounts. It is helpful to know the differences between these account types.
   
   
   At minimum you need a checking account which permits unlimited transactions in and out. But checking accounts do not bear Interest. Interest bearing accounts include saving accounts, money market accounts and so on, but they only permit a limited number of transactions per month. For example, saving accounts only permit 6 transactions per month by legal regulations.
   


2. Liquidity vs. investment: The money you raised will be consumed over a period of time. During the period, you want to make sure that cash is available when you need it. On the other side, it also makes sense to consider some form of “investment” for the portion of your cash not needed initially.
   
   
   There are many forms of investments banks offer, ranging from simple saving accounts, money market account, CD account, to even more sophisticated ones. Different type of investment service has different risk/reward profiles. For example, simple saving accounts are the safest (insured by FDIC), liquid, and yield interest but the current interest rate is very low (0.25% for example). Money market accounts are not FDIC insured but they are safe as long as the bank itself is safe. Monday market accounts provide liquidity and offer better interest rate than simple saving accounts. CD accounts may offer even higher return but typically require you to commit to a certain period of time (6 months minimum, typically 12 months), during which there is no liquidity.
   
   
   The common choices for startups I have seen are to stay with simple saving accounts or money market accounts.
   


3. Banking fees: banking services normally charge fees. Such fees are part of the banking cost that you should take into consideration. Most banks may waive such fees if you maintain a certain level of account balance.
   
   
   Some banks give you “earning credit” for your checking account balance. “Earning credit” is different from “interest” that does not generate additional cash, but can be used to offset some of the banking fees. If your balance reaches a certain level, you could have enough earning credit to offset all your banking fees.
   


4. Online banking service: Most banks provide online banking service that you access and manage your accounts from a web browser. Nevertheless, it is still a good idea to check it out to make sure such service is available.
   


5. Do you need equipment financing or loan from the bank? Most banks do not offer equipment financing or loans to startups (they typically require a long credit history, revenue, etc in order to be considered for loans). The only exception is Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). Even SVB is nearly impossible to get a loan for young startups, but they at least offer you a glimpse of hope.
   
6. Do you need international banking? This one is tricky as it highly depends on local regulations. You would most likely choose another set of banks in the other country. In Yottaa’s case, we need banking in China because we have a team in Beijing. Fortunately, Bank of America provides banking operations in Beijing so my life is slightly simpler (Still work in progress. After a few weeks, I have not been able to move capital yet. So I’m very much homeless in Beijing:-) Any tips would be appreciated!).

Which bank should you choose? It depends on what you need. In my case (for Yottaa), I evaluated a few banks and eventually picked Bank of America. There is no way that Yottaa can get a loan from them, but it is ok because Yottaa does not plan to get a loan. The other attributes of Bank of America make them look like a better choice for Yottaa(lower fees, better service and engagements, international presence, I love their account service team, etc).

1. IPO market start to open up for venture backed startups: A123 System, LogMeIn, SolarWind, etc.


2. Notable M&A exits: Cisco/Tanderberg ($3B), Cisco/Starent ($2.9B), Cisco/ScanSafe ($160M), Cisco/DVN($40M), Compuware/Gomez($296M),HP/3Com($6B), Google/Admob($750M), EA/Playfish($300M+)…


3. Good activities from VCs: Though the VC industry is still showing signs of struggling in general, quite a few VCs are quietly doing lots of things including raising new fund (notably Andreessen & Horowitz) and doing deals. Another notable example that I love is Founder Collective launched by folks like Chris Dixon. I myself saw quite a few good Series A deals done over the last 4 months.


4. China’s growth rate is going to be 8%+, despite its target of “only” 7% early in the year.

Coincidentally, my friends at RTMAsia reported that “Since September, RTM Asia has seen a strong uptick in US technology vendors looking to expand, with many putting Asia-Pacific expansion in their 2010 plans”. They included am impressive list of activities that they are involved with (I’m not sure whether I can disclose their list or not).

If the tide is turning, it would be great for everyone. On the other side, we shouldn’t read too much into it . At my new company, Yottaa, in some sense, we don’t really care whether the tide is turning or not. Startups like us do what we need to do no matter what.

Do you see the tide turning?

1. Stay virtual for as long as you could

When I started Nexaweb in 2000, I rented an office almost immediately - 849 Mass Avenue in Central Square, two rooms, right above Starbucks! It was a fantastic startup office! Starbucks was our conference room and we had so much coffee! The rent was about $2000/month, which really hurt when we had no funding.

In contrast, we deliberately decided to be virtual when we started Yottaa in early 2009. For a long time, Yottaa conference room #1 was my dinning room. Cambridge Center Starbucks served very well as Yottaa conference #2, and BeanTown coffee house in One Kendall Square is conference room #3. I loved these places and am very sure many more conferences yet to be had at these places going forward.

Being virtual is a great experience that I recommend highly for the initial phase of any startup. Zero rent obviously helps. It is cool and fun to be working in coffee shops. More importantly, it helps build the culture by forcing the team to be diligent and creative about team work and collaboration, molding the “lean mentality” into the core DNA (caution: Starbucks coffee cost adds up quickly!). Further, the big deal in my opinion is that it indirectly influences an entrepreneur to be social. Asking someone for a cup of coffee to talk about your idea is natural if you are spending 60% of your time in coffee shops anyway. I’m very grateful that so many people had coffee with me over the last 6 months. These conversations helped transform the idea of Yottaa from my initial “huh?” to something truly exciting.

When does the “virtual phase” apply? You and your co-founders know each other well and know how to work together. If not, “virtual workplace” may not be a good fit. In any case, make sure that you have Skype chat and face-to-face sessions on a weekly basis.

2. Move into a “shared workplace”?

At a certain point of time, “being virtual” loses its appeal, especially if you have new team members or the “virtual phase” has been too long. At this point, you could consider a “shared workplace”. “Shared workplace” fits best for teams whose size is under 3 people. At above 3 people, you should consider option #5 “get a room” or option #4 “get a few desks”.

Here is a good list of shared workplace in Boston area:

1. Beta House (in Central Square): occupies two stores in a house with a balcony and sun roof. Interesting folks to socialize with;


2. Dogpatch Labs: I’ve not been there yet (though it is very close to Yottaa Cambridge office). But I know some very cool people there and would look forward to checking it out;


3. Cambridge Innovation Center’s (Cambridge Co-work Center, C3) - it is more expensive than most other places, but the environment is a notch above most others.

3. Get a few desks from another company (”sublet”)

An alternative to shared workplace is to get a few desks from another company who has some extra space. This is not a bad option and has its own appeal: you have your own desk and you know who comes in and out in the office (which shared workplace does not guarantee so).

This option applies to small teams as well as bigger team. If you are interested in this option and are looking for space for 4 to 10 people, I know a few great choices in Boston and Cambridge. Ping me if you need an intro.

4. Get a room!

There is a list of fully furnished office choices in Boston area that fit very well for lean startups. You can start with one room and grow to a few rooms. The office space is fully furnished and managed - all what you need to bring is your laptop.

The top three options in Cambridge area are:

1. Cambridge Innovation Center: CIC is at Kendall Square area in Cambridge.


2. Interact Business Suites: InteractSuites is located at Cambridge Galleria area, close to Lechmere T station and very accessible.


3. Regus: Regus has an office in Central Square as well as in Charlestown.

Among the three, I highly recommend InteractSuites. It is an obvious choice if this category fits what you are looking for.

Social Expeditions is a company behind blockbusters on Facebook and MySpace. Millions use our products. We are profitable.

This is no coincidence because we are obsessed with our customers. While many features start with intuitions and mechanics we have seen work, everything is put to customer development testing. We rely on our own multivariate experimentation system and carry out extremely rapid testing and iteration (sometimes on the order of 30-60 minutes). Our goal is to continue producing great social games and applications that excite, entertain and inspire millions.

We’re an engineering-led organization You will be joining a still-very-lean global crew (with foci in San Francisco and Tel Aviv) that convenes for 2-3 week hackathons every several months at awesome locations (recent stop: Croatia, next stop: Tokyo).

On our team everybody is part of the product development process and you will be too. It is critical that we all understand the product thoroughly and help inspire each other to innovate it. You will be expected to care about the product.

Tools we use: Python, Google AppEngine, Javascript, JQuery, Git, Fogbugz, Yammer, Skype/Tokbox, Usertesting.com, some LAMP, some Subversion

Your Role:

• You will architect, oversee, and manage our technological architecture and strategy, working with our engineering team and the two (technical) founders to make sure we are on the cutting edge of customer development systems - a mix of analytics/tracking, statistics and a development process that creates maximum iterative speed. Your technical leadership will underpin our company’s success.
  


• You will come up with new and better ways of scaling, modularizing, and using different technologies for our games, social applications and customer development systems. Quite often, you will be the first to release a rough prototype of a new system you envisioned.
  

We expect you to demonstrate a strong track record with web and serverside technologies, including some sys admin experience, at least some Javascript and preferably a lot of Python. You will have had a 3-5 years experience in managing developers.

Everybody prefers particular tools and types of problems. However, with that in mind you’re the type of engineer who has dabbled in enough things to be able to build a complete system from scratch (systems, backend and frontend), relishing bits and pieces that are new or challenging to you.

You appreciate that a minimal viable product can have bugs and that, as an agile company, all our products are a work in progress.

You must be available for a full time commitment.

You are the type of person who:

• writes clean, understandable, quality code


• has strong communication and interpersonal skills


• loves a fast-paced, informal environment where constant change is the norm and the bar for quality is set high


• finds and helps implementing a solution, no matter what


• has strong opinions on whatever matters to you, but knows to listen and like being challenged


• is excited about social applications and games

We offer a competitive compensation package including equity and performance bonuses.

If you are interested, email socialxhiring at gmail.com.

• RedSox - what can you say? Swept. Soul crushed. Ortiz, Bay and Youk combined with 2-3 hits over three games. and Papelbon fell from the cliff.
• Patriots - Ok. This one is not a big deal. For some reason, Brady lost his capability to throw the ball after the first quarter? Pats will bounce back.
• Obama Won Nobel Peace Prize - This is a big one. My respect for the Nobel Peace Prize committee dropped to the same level that RedSox would get a hit facing a playoff pitcher. These cartoons are better than any words that I can assemble together on this subject. My favorite one is below:
  
  
  Obama Won Nobel Peace Prize

• Google Waves - This looks like a classic example of a technology searching for a problem to solve, which happens and it is not a big deal. What is a big deal in my opinion is that the Google Waves team doesn’t seem to understand what is the core value of the technology and certainly failed to identify a proper use case for their technology. The use case that GoogleWave is currently targeting at, collaborative discussions (whatever you call it), just does not shine. GoogleWaves technology adds only very limited value to collaborative discussions beyond the existing solutions (such as IM, discussion forums and email). I’d recommend @forjared as a solution to their problem except that @forjared is taken by some other “don’t be evil” company already.

We are looking for a head of engineering that can build and lead a team of 10-50 engineers.  The team is made up of different disciplines (Web development, Networking, Yottaa-scale Distributed Computing, System and Application Design, Ruby, Java, C/C++, Open Source).

The ability to go from zero engineers to 10 with an extremely high talent concentration is critical.  If you have a big brain, that’s great and we’d love to know that.  More importantly, we are looking for someone who attracts even bigger brains.

Though you don’t have to be an expert in all technical areas, you need to have an understanding as well as an appreciation of the technology.  We are not looking for a translator that can use Microsoft Project.

We are looking for a leader that can build and maintain a development culture that is highly productive as well as enjoyable to be a part of.  The head of engineering needs to be able to help create a culture of people working for intrinsic goals rather than extrinsic ones.

We want someone that can implement an agile development process in an organization.

Communication within the team as well as throughout the rest of the cross culture organization is a key component of the job.

The ability to speak Chinese is important as is the understanding of US and Chinese cultures and how to work productively in both.

We offer a competitive compensation package, which includes salary, equity, paid vacation, medical/dental plan, and 401K. –Oh, did we mention that lots and lots of free airline mileage are included too?

We prefer you are either located in Boston or Silicon Valley, CA. Yottaa has offices in both locations.

Contact coach at yottaa.com if you are interested. No agencies please.

Described by participants as a course with “big, rolling hills”, the course wasn’t friendly to folks like me who train on flat trails along the Charles River. The first 5 miles was the most difficult for me, given the heavy rain and the winding slopes. It eventually became a pleasant run after gaining some self composure and warming up to the rain. The white knees finished the race happy (2:15 for me and 1:55 for Ying).

Course Map

View Larger Map

Ok, so we have to think really hard about how to go to market. What is the framework that one should follow? Here is a list of things that I have been thinking about  as a guiding framework - really look forward to comments and appreciate feedback (I admit that I’m an idiot and are still learning the basic grammars):

1. Market Visibility - you want your firm to be heard and to be known in its target marketplace.  Traditional marketing would aim for visibility as well, though the means to get there may be different. So what are the means that you are going to take to make your SaaS service visible?
2. Positive Branding - you want your firm to be associated with a positive reputation, thought leadership, and credibility. If someday customers start to “verbalize” your company’s name, and if it is done in a positive way, you are doing a great job here.

   Again, traditional marketing would aim for the same as well,  though the means to get there may be different.

3. Lead Generation - of course, you want to generate leads. Further, you would want to develop “some auto filtering mechanism” that would hopefully produce qualified leads. A key indicator of a well designed sales and marketing machine for a SaaS company is the capability to (continuously) lower  customer acquisition cost.


4. Close New Business - Yes, you want to close business. Hopefully you can do so without sending an army of sales people and using up 50% of Boston lawyers.


5. Retain customers - monitor customer renewal rate closely and make sure the company understand and invest resources to compel your existing customers that they always come back and want more.


6. Virality - This may not be relevant to all SaaS offerings, but it is something totally worth thinking about. If your offering is viral, leverage the hell out of it. If your offering is not viral, think of viral ways that can help you do all the above.

It covers some basic stuff for web performance, scalability and availability, such as:

1. Common architecture pattern for horizontal scalability;
2. How to do load balancing;
3. Cost effective load balancing options;
4. Cloud computing does not solve scalability issue;
5. how to optimize web performance;

A list of free tools available are also mentioned, such as YSlow, RockStar Web Profiler and RockStar Optimizer.