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Tue, 02 Apr 2013 22:02:00 -0400

What’s the best career advice you’ve gotten? This...

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 18:02:00 -0400

What’s the best career advice you’ve gotten?

This was one of the best advice that was given to me and fits in 140 characters on twitter. Read more on best advice here.

Photo Credit: Skillcrush

The Changing Face of Startup Angel Investors

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:38:00 -0400

Austin, TX - Funding is a tough nut to crack for many first-time entrepreneurs, and even a tougher nut for those from atypical backgrounds, such as minorities, women, LGBT members. In a restaurant in south Austin, a group of powerful women from several corners of the country gathered to seriously discuss the problem. The women of the Pipeline Fellowship and Empower Lounge jointly hosted a talk by Natalia Oberti Noguera interviewing a serial entrepreneur and Dell Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Ingrid Vanderveldt, during the week of SXSWi.

Ms. Vanderveldt is an investor and an entrepreneur who has sat on both sides of the funding table, and could address the issues facing both sides. She currently heads a $100 million credit fund at Dell that seeks to make strides on the Dell’s innovation space, and outside of that, is mission-driven to serve as an example to other women, such as helping the victims of Haiti and helping other women to find their voices and become successful.

Yet like many others, her personal experience with fundraising for her companies is filled with uncomfortable moments, and tremendous ups and downs. When building her first company which she eventually sold with success, Vanderveldt had encountered significant difficulties in raising funding. An investor sat her down and told in confidence that the reason she couldn’t raise funding was that she didn’t fit into the mold. To overcome the fact, she cut her hair, wore no makeup and only black suits, which didn’t improve the situation. The problem is only too common as female entrepreneurs who raise funding become keenly aware that, as women they face a complex decision of whether owning the fact that they do not fit the stereotype, or trying to hide that fact behind clothes.

While the issues facing female entrepreneurs are complex, a key obstacle lies in that the gatekeepers to capital are predominantly and were historically men. What does our current environment look like? 12% of angels are women and 4% are minorities, according to Natalia Oberti Noguera, Founder and CEO of the Pipeline Fellowship. The problem is a lack of an efficient marketplace, as the funding side is under-developed. The solution to address the problem is to build a better and more efficient marketplace where willing capital can find attractive investment opportunities irrespective of the non-typical backgrounds of the entrepreneurs.

To that effect, programs such as Pipeline Fellowship, Golden Seeds, Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network, and others are filling a much needed void to train accredited female investors on how they can strategically, financially and legally invest in startups. However, the numbers of female and minority angel investors highlight a scarcity that reflects the difficulties female and minority entrepreneurs face as they fundraise. As more women become entrepreneurs and angel investors, there is a tremendous opportunity on both sides of the funding table.

This post was originally published on the Huffington Post.

Welcome to the Cambrian Explosion of Innovation

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:16:00 -0500

Welcome to the Cambrian Explosion of Innovation:

Charted used with the permission of Peder Olesen Larsen

Welcome to the Cambrian explosion of innovation that is happening before our very own eyes. The pace of the technological innovation has been accelerating. The Web — current humanity’s store of information — is growing at an exponential rate. More research papers are getting been published (see above). Industries are being disrupted.

Most important, the winner of this exciting change and uncertainty is the individual. The access to various forms of technology — Web, cloud computing, bio-hacking, 3D printing, hardware hacking, etc. — has been drastically lowered. The laws of economics will hold that the lower barrier costs, the greater numbers of participants.

What does it mean for the future of innovation? It means a 15-year-old boy, Jack Andraka, with limited training in science, could discover a both powerfully accurate and incredibly simple diagnostic methodology for lung, pancreatic, and ovarian cancer.

The bigger picture? Jack Andraka couldn’t have stumbled on this methodology without the context and the environment of our time. He is an harbinger of an incredible explosion of innovation from lone inventors — individuals in unlikely places with unexpected backgrounds, inventing using low-cost equipment, instead from well-funded university labs, research institutions, and R&D departments from Fortune 500 companies.

The tide is turning. Institutions that require heavy financial backing and have a legacy of methodologies to follow, by design, will focus on low-risk experiments that lead to incremental learning. In other words, these institutions are optimizing over the local optimum, not the global optimum. Outsiders untethered by a past, such as students and hobbyists, purely experiment for the sake of experimentation and on high-risk/high-return projects. Once these lone inventors meet some level of success, crowdsourced funding options are becoming robust and mainstream. Perhaps, in the long term, these higher-risk, smaller-seeded experimentation presents a better model for innovation.

Futurists call our time the moment approaching singularity. We had seen something in parallel to our time during the Industrial Revolution. This rapidly changing social dynamics will potentially disenfranchise people who do not necessarily have specialized skills, but present incredible opportunities for those who are playing with technology, experimenting and seeking answers.

Think about this and rejoice.

Follow Jane Wang on Twitter: www.twitter.com/janeylwang

This post is originally published on The Huffington Post.

Cool Women Hot Jobs - Mentorship in Astoria, NY

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 18:31:00 -0500

Recently, there have been talks about how to address the lack of women in STEM, so when I heard about an opportunity to mentor young women about career choices, I jumped at the opportunity. My goal was to pique young women’s interest in STEM early on before they start in college. I also wanted to make a pitch for building a strong foundation in math and science and thus having the flexibility to switch fields.

First to note, The Young Women’s Leadership School of Astoria, in the New York Public School system is designed for girls who are interested in succeeding academically and getting a head start in leadership. The classrooms that I was assigned to speak are for 11th graders, the age where American high schoolers take the SAT test and start in earnest with the college application process.

As mentors, in front the students, we talk about what we do in our jobs, how we spend a typical day at work, and what career path and decisions that had led us here, and what college and college majors have prepared us. The mentors’ field range from healthcare to finance to fashion to journalism to technology. I was very particular about what I wanted to do, which is to make a compelling argument about the importance of building a strong foundation of science and technology, and to pique young women’s interest in pursuing career opportunities in STEM.

During moments of self-introduction and Q&A’s, I’ve given away some non-traditional advice, including how to actively manage interview process, college application process, and networking opportunities, and some advice on risk-taking.

Unbeknownst to myself, my eyes were about to be wide opened. The moment, Lorena, another mentor in the room asked the students that how many are a first generation in their family to attend a college, and many hands went up, I felt my heart skipped a beat. Lorena also was a first generation in her family to attend university. I realized that the students here are very different from those students with whom I attended high school. I was touched that they found the initiative in themselves to attend such an excellent school, to apply to colleges, and to explore career opportunities.

After speaking with students in classrooms, the women scattered into the gym into career booths, where students could actively come over to ask questions. I sat at the booth labelled Science & Technology. There were young women who came over to ask questions, knowing specifically what is that they wanted to do and have well-defined goals. That brought us smiles. It was very encouraging to see young women who knew what they wanted, and are serious and prepared to take steps to reach those goals. Yet, we also note, the Science & Tech booth is not always as filled as some of the other booth. The question is why? That is a complicate question and probably deserves another post.

After the session is over, I found emails from the students that I spoke who said what I said made them feel more confident about college and career decisions, especially seeing that I changed my career over and over. I’m so honored to speak and to pique their interest in STEM. And I am deeply inspired and humbled by their own ability to change their life.

This post is also published on Skillcrush. Check out Skillcrush for tech resources and advice from women in tech.

The future of Brooklyn, NY.

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 18:35:14 -0500

The future of Brooklyn, NY.

What's Git?

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 16:14:00 -0500

Git is one of the most popular version control systems and is quickly gaining prominence. It is used on multiple cloud hosting services, including Amazon’s EC2 and Heroku, and has vibrant usage among top open source communities.

Which means that if you want to make use of Amazon or Heroku’s awesome server power or contribute your code to an open source project, you have to know how to participate by using git.

How Git works
Git is an open-source version control system (meaning, it’s free!) that allows developers to track changes made on their code files throughout the lifetime of a project. Git is designed such that it views your code files like a “tree” and allows you to do cool things like create a “branch” where you work on some of the files without affecting the “trunk” code base until you are sufficiently convinced that the changes you are making are good and won’t break the rest of the tree.

If you are alone working on a project git is a great way to track the changes you make and also safeguard yourself from making a silly mistake that breaks your web app or, worse yet, accidentally delete months of work.

Where Git really excels, however, is for projects where more than one developer is working on the code. The tree-like architecture we described above allows many developers (up to hundreds!) to work on a project at the same time without the code devolving into one big hairy mess.

Git was initially created by Linus Torvalds to be used on Linux kernel development with a large, distributed team of developers. Since the Linux kernel project is very large and the development was distributed among developers all over the world, Torvalds designed Git so that it would be fast and good at distributed version control. The beauty of Git is that it allows developers to easily merging changes into the master code base and encourages developers to be experimental, because Git allows you to make changes locally and not have to push to a centralized repository until you are ready.

How is Git different from other version control systems?
Git is a great version control tool because it’s lightweight and straightforward to use, and it provides incredible compression and speed.

Since Git is so popular, and the Git community is so robust, thanks in large part to the popularity of Github, learning Git is one of the best things you can do in your process of learning development.

Excited to start using Git? Look out for our newsletter on Wednesday that will help you gitup and running.

This article is first published on Skillcrush, an awesome platform to learn about technology.

About the author

Jane Wang is a software engineer at Etsy, and formerly a product manager at financial tech startup, an investment banker, and a hedge fund racketeer. She is a strong supporter of female hackers and entrepreneurs. In her free time, she blogs at Isometric Cube, writes for content platforms, including Forbes, Women2.0 and TechWomen, and makes things with brackets, numbers, and paint. Follow her on twitter at @janeylwang.

Photo Credit: Skillcrush

“Everyone else in the world is working on the next 10%. If...

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 00:15:00 -0500

“Everyone else in the world is working on the next 10%. If you can be the one that delivers at 10x improvement, you have a chance to really change things.” Believing in the impossible - all real creators / makers believe. Change your thinking. Change the world.

5 Ways To Be a Standout

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 22:32:00 -0500

We all know that women outperform men academically, but for whatever reasons our professional careers seem to be far less rewarding – both financially and personally. Well, work isn’t school, but it is the place where we spend the majority of our lives. So I ask what is that’s holding us women back from excelling? Part of it is an entrenched cultural and linguistic bias against women and part is because that same self-criticism that pushes us to excel in school is holding us back from being standing out professionally.

Over a long career, I believe that beyond a certain threshold of performance, it is creativity and smart risk-taking that separate the standouts from everyone else. Unfortunately, self-criticism inhibits creativity. Go ahead, react positively to fear. Whether it be picking up new skills, throwing away your fear of the unknown, or just betting on the right person or plan, here are a few tips to get your started.

1. Show up and put your best foot forward

Woody Allen once said that 80 percent of success is just showing up. Put yourself out there, because there is where serendipity happens. Show up even when you are not sure that you belong and open yourself up to the possibilities.

2. Speak up
In a room filled with few women, as in nearly all tech conferences, men always speak up more than women. Lately, there has been a petition to end conference panels filled with men, but I want to challenge you to speak up more! I know it’s scary to ask questions, sit on panels, present in front of an audience, and open yourself for judgement.

But only when you speak up and let yourself be heard, do you even have the possibility of influencing the stakeholders. If you are looking to build a team, or make a point at conferences, speaking up puts you on the map and will enable other to come to you with ideas. Do it! For yourself and for every other woman in that room (or not in that room).

3. Don’t apologizing when you are not in the wrong
Women tend to apologize even when they are right. Some people say that you should never apologize. If you are in the wrong, you should apologize, but never ever apologize when you are right. Apologizing and wavering can be the quickest way to lose your credibility. No wavering! You are awesome, own it.

4. Go stand in the limelight
Women when arriving to leadership roles face the sad choice of “being loved but passed over” or “being feared and disliked.” When you stand in the public eye, we are being judged, sometimes praised and sometimes vilified. But as all good leaders know that is a part of public life, so we have to roll with the punches.

Here I’d like to quote Teddy Roosevelt with some additions to correct for linguistic bias:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the woman/man who points out how the strong woman/man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the woman/man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends herself/himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if she/he fails, at least she/he fails while daring greatly, so that her/his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

5. Lastly, bet on yourself
Lastly and most importantly, if you could bet on anyone, bet on yourself. This is a personal decision that puts you on the path to take full responsibility for your actions. An important point about betting yourself is that it is also the first step of taking charge of your life and constantly making investments in yourself. We live in the age of information and the people who control the flow of information have an unfair advantage. So learning to code is up there on my list of most valuable skills to acquire. Right here at Skillcrush, there are great resources to get started and to acquire those skills and make yourself highly marketable and eventually indispensable.

This post is first published on Skillcrush. Please visit Skillcrush to learn form other women, and check out the Skillcrush classes currently being offered.

Photo Credit: Skillcrush

I just spend the last hours listening to Sophia Amaruso, the CEO...

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 02:35:00 -0500

I just spend the last hours listening to Sophia Amaruso, the CEO and creative director, of Nasty Gal speaking with Sarah Lacy of PandoDaily. It so very refreshing to see not one, but two lovely and successful women talking about business and decision making. This video surely passes the Bechdel test and, better, non-fictional.

I particularly loved when Sophia said, “What do you do when you’re living in a hut for $500 a month and subsisting on Boston Market and Subway? You just keep doing what you’re doing. ” She’s a trooper and has a great eye for finding business partners and identifying trends (key ingredients for her business’s incredible success).

When Startups Snub Their Old Faithfuls

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 02:39:00 -0500

Startup life is hard and draining. I know it, but that’s not enough to overlook when founders make bad decisions. As a someone who tries out new services and supports the ones that provide a real utility, when I start to use a service, it is disenchanting (heck, discouraging) when startups decide to suddenly cancel my account and move onto big clients. Let’s rewind for a bit: to get to a point where the startup can move past individual users to corporate clients, it has garnered the individual users’ social media power to help it to grow along the way. Yet, after signing a few corporate accounts, deciding to kick away their old faithfuls is a bit of an amateur move. I’m not saying that companies should not pivot business models or think about monetization. Those are real issues. But there is a clear line in the sand between keeping your current users who had used their social media power to get where you are and keeping them around on their accounts, and just shunning them for bigger fish.

In finance, we got a term for that and it isn’t pretty. I suggest that it is not only bad conscientious move, but, in the long run, a short-sighted business move. In startups, things can turn so quickly. How do you know your new (enterprise focused) model is going to scale and to what point will it plateau? Assuming that you do succeed in enterprise and remain independent, at the end of that road, do you go back to the consumer market to expand further? Why destroy amicable ties with your old faithful users when it is so often shown that good, conscientious businesses can outperform those without the same support and well-wishing from the community.

I think a song from J. Lo. says it all:

I’m still, I’m still Jenny from the block.
Use to have a little, now I have a lot.
No matter where I go, I know where I came from.

Try to keep your old faithfuls and hold them tight.

I am excited to announce that Icarus, a Node.js multiplayer...

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 13:56:00 -0500

I am excited to announce that Icarus, a Node.js multiplayer avoidance game that I wrote during the summer of 2012 at Hacker School is deployed and ready to be played on Nodejitsu. This game is built in Node.js with the use of websocket for event emits. You may peruse the code on github. Enjoy.

Special thanks to Mary Rose Cook for gaming advice and Andrew Pierce from Onswipe on fixing a version issue, and Hacker School and Etsy for making it all possible.

brycedotvc: via @lisatwight Do it today, because sometimes...

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 23:07:45 -0500

brycedotvc:

via @lisatwight

Do it today, because sometimes today is all you have.

"Right now, there are brilliant students from all over the world sitting in classrooms at our top..."

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 03:23:28 -0500

“Right now, there are brilliant students from all over the world sitting in classrooms at our top universities. They’re earning degrees in the fields of the future, like engineering and computer science. But once they finish school, once they earn that diploma, there’s a good chance they’ll have to leave our country. Think about that.

Intel was started with the help of an immigrant who studied here and then stayed here. Instagram was started with the help of an immigrant who studied here and then stayed here. Right now in one of those classrooms, there’s a student wrestling with how to turn their big idea—their Intel or Instagram—into a big business. We’re giving them all the skills they need to figure that out, but then we’re going to turn around and tell them to start that business and create those jobs in China or India or Mexico or someplace else? That’s not how you grow new industries in America. That’s how you give new industries to our competitors. That’s why we need comprehensive immigration reform.”

- President Obama in Nevada today, laying out a four-part plan for comprehensive immigration reform
(via barackobama)

On Memory, Intelligence and Creativity - here is the...

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 10:01:00 -0500

On Memory, Intelligence and Creativity - here is the full article. Steve Jobs mentioned above that “They just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.” What starts as a slow hunch, which with enough validation with like-minded people (while you are may not even be aware of their influence) becomes that moment of insight mathematicians and scientists so often talk about in their work. That is creativity.

Consumer of the Future: What You Really Want Is A Wearable Computer

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 16:16:00 -0500

Crunch. As I dropped my Nexus S, an handy 4.6 oz Google smartphone on the Manhattan sidewalk, I winced at that the cracked touch screen that paralleled with a crack of my digital loving heart. Immediately, I bought the Google Nexus 4 (currently sold out).

But when I started seeing people on the New York City subway carrying the iPad Mini, I wanted it badly. But having just purchased the Nexus 4 and owning multiple iPads, I cannot really justify the purchase of a smaller tablet. While this is unquestionably a first world problem, it underscores the consumer’s confusion on when making purchasing decisions in the mobile device space.

Being Mobile Is Not Enough

The 3.5-inch touch screen phone was the form factor that changed mobile, but typing on a 3.5 inch touchscreen requires squinting and is not easy for children or elderly, which is a serious usability issue.

A way to avoid that is by using voice commands and search. We have been accustomed to voice interaction from XBox control to various apps with such features. For example, Evernote has voice translation and Google has made search available by with a phone call for a long time now.

If voice search and commands are optimized, why do I need a screen except when I want to type and to write? Instead of pressing fat figures on little keys, what we really is a keyboard that is part of my body that I can type on…maybe that can be my forearm. The more important question is why is computer interaction still so divorced from the way we interact with the natural physical world? Touch interface has been a huge move in that direction, but we are not there yet. The devices still stop us in the middle of street, as a poignant reminder that the current interfaces stop our flow.

The crux of usability is flow. Users prefer touch, our natural way of interacting with the physical world. We want to multi-task and search and obtain information from our apps and devices without take our eyes off the road. We want this information instantaneously and seamlessly. If we want to take pictures, we’d like it to capture the moment. Putting my hand in my pocket to grab the phone, open it, then find the app – each of the action in this sequence holds me back from doing what I was doing and be in the moment, like laughing or eating.

Smartphone usage stops our flow and is not seamless. We want to see, record and respond using technology without breaking out of our flow. That’s crux of usability.

The Wearable Computer Is Here

Enter Google Glasses. They look a lot more normal than expected. Sergey Brin was spotted in the New York City subway with it looking ever nonchalant.

Google glass have the potential to optimize our experience and is one step closer to a seamless technology. This piece of technology can be incredibly user friendly and considered cutting edge and a mass market appeal if Google could take a page out of Steve Jobs’ playbook and make the glasses fashion forward as well. Sophisticated consumers and earlier adopters who are both digitally fluent and fashion conscious will find the glasses irresistible.

Google is not the only company pioneering this space. The fundraising of Pebble on Kickstarter, which is over 102 times over-funded, gives us pause. The Pebble watch has a great form factor and a modern design and it doesn’t stop our flow. With open APi, it has the potential do most things that your phone and apps can do while keeping your hands free.

We’ve see some of the early types of wearable technology. This type of technology is sticky, because as a phone is customized to be my own (with my apps, ring tones and info), wearable technology can conform and mold themselves to the user’s need and taste in a what is a previously unseen extent. And that will be the sticky point to make these products last.

The most important trend in consumer technology in recent year is not faster CPU, better GPU, better resolution, or other incremental improvement. The real trend that has defined consumer technology product is personalization and usability. In the same way that a piece of jewel defined us, iPhone, iPod and their accompanying accessories defined us. We use them as a piece of personal wear and make a statement about ourselves as much as we use them for productivity.

Are the smartphone’s days numbered?

Unfortunately, we have not seen much innovation in the smartphone market. Admittedly, CPU is faster, display is better, but Apple’s product announcement for 2013 shows that they are planning to price down to remain relevant with intense competition.

Wearable technology is where the action is. Apple is rumored to be making a watch too but this company is not usually the first-to-market in innovation.

3D Printing + Wearable Technology

3D printing has been in the works for a while now but the latest reception at CES 2013 seems to show that there is growing demand from consumers. Synergies exist between highly customizable wearable products and the increased ease with which consumers themselves could customized their products with 3D printing technology.

We could be seeing design and customization integrated with wearable technology in a previous unseen extent. This is great timing, because great leaps in innovation usually happens when several waves of complementary technology converge.

This post is originally published on Whiteboard: http://www.whiteboardmag.com/consumer-of-the-future-what-you-really-want-is-a-wearable-computer/

About the author

Photo source: Kickstarter, Pebble, Machina

Mobile E-Commerce Forecast for 2013 by eMarketer. On the top...

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 16:44:00 -0500

Mobile E-Commerce Forecast for 2013 by eMarketer. On the top level, is averages to $130 gross spending per user for 2013. Interestingly, tablet usage for 2012 is more evenly distributed across age groups, particularly for the children and elderly. This general adoption for tablet seems to suggest that tablets have more diverse type of use case for different needs across the population (i.e. children - education and gaming, elderly - reading, emails).

Furthermore, it is curious to note that Gen Z has lower mobile usage on average than Gen Y. I wonder if this is not accurately accounting for Gen Z’s currently weaker purchasing power. When they move up to the next age bracket, their adoption rate could likely be higher.

How I Learned to Code

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 16:17:00 -0500

Learning to code is one of the most empowering things that I’ve done and I’m thankful for learning it everyday.

My journey started in January of 2011 when I signed up for a beginner web development class at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. My motivation was mostly out of curiosity of being able to make beautiful things on the web, and partly because I’ve read about news articles of past employees from the hedge fund where I was working that had left to build tech startups in foreign countries. Thus when I received a catalog from NYU out of the blue, I opened it up and found myself planning out my computer science curriculum.

That was how my journey first began.

Attending Classes and Stumbling in the Dark
My New York University’s class was a great entry point. Learning HTML, CSS, and networking made me marvel at our current state of the web. My first webpage was my resume on a simple HTML page. With a background in art, I realized that there’s a lot of creative control over design and style.

Yet, it soon became much harder. Making HTML pages is far from building a web application. After the class is over, I started digging into the online tutorials like nettuts+, books, and papers - anything I could find for free from public libraries and online. Theory came easier to me first than practice. I enjoyed reading academic papers with the likes of Sergey and Larry’s paper on Google’s PageRanks, but coding itself was hard. It was often frustrating when the instructions didn’t make sense, or that I encountered a bug that only appeared in a newer version of a framework. Searching for the answer seems tough because a) I didn’t know what to search, and b) the answers have so many jargon that they read like an ancient Sumerian text. There were weeks that I was motivated and made progress, and there were weeks when I was stuck on an error and doubted what I was doing.

Self-learning is hard for the uninitiated. I realized that after reading how other people learned on their own, I needed to develop my own method. After all, learning by attending classes is limited, because classes can only take you so far.

Hackathon’s Wannabe Hacker
I had wished that I knew more developers. In finance, being in the center of bankers and hedge fund folks gives you a great flow of information, and keeps you current on new developments. In a different industry, I imagined that it would be the same. For this reason, I attended hackathons. If I couldn’t code well, at least I could pitch ideas and discuss business models. To my unwitting self, hackathons in New York City were filled with business folks and far fewer developers, so finding a developer to carry out an idea is not easy. Even though I liked the structure of building a product within a short period of time and validating a business idea, I often felt that I would better provide value if I could build the product. Moreover, learning how to code during hackathons works if you have met a minimal level of proficiency, and just needed someone to point you in the right direction.

Learning to Ask for Help
I’ve seen meetings where real hackers hang out and build things together on meetup.com. Unfortunately, it took me awhile to work up the courage to go to these gatherings. More often, I found myself going to Show N’ Tell events where the speakers would talk about their projects. Listening to other people’s projects is not equivalent of learning to build your own. When I finally worked up the courage to go to a meetup with hackers, they were gentle with me and there were other young developers.

The Moment When You Make a Real Commitment.. Accelerated Learning
I really started to learn how to code when I started building my own startup and was desperate to build the product. There was no other way that I could do it except to build a proof of concept. That was when I no longer had the luxury to think of coding as an hobby or as a self-improvement project. Rather it had became something that I desperately needed to know. It took a lot of grunt work, sleepless nights, leftovers, and takeouts, as the road to mastery of any craft it is not enough with brain and no heart. It was an incredibly humbling experience, but true commitment makes hard things less hard.

Hacker School - Getting on a Rocket Ship
Be it luck or coincidence, when my startup didn’t work out, I saw a note about Hacker School in my inbox, and I applied, figuring that I had nothing to lose and not knowing that it was a rocket ship. I didn’t know much about the movement of unschooling and self-directed learning or the idea that you should learn what interests you most. But I went, had a wonderful time, and you can read about my experience here. It requires a commitment of putting your life on hold. It was a right time for me, because I had achieved enough proficiency that I knew I could build. Being able to do well at Hacker School has validated for me that I have been initiated to this path of software engineering. I think the best experiences gained from Hacker School are from programmers who have met some level of proficiency, and can gain the most from the incredible residents and leaders of open source community that are there.

Advice I Wish I Knew
- I wish that it took me less time to work up the courage to attend weekly hacking sessions, because I have met a lot of really interesting and helpful people there. I saw very early beginners who were there being taught by more seasoned developers. I wished that I had asked for help earlier.

- I wish that I had spend more time building a product that I cared about instead of reading programming books. That is not to say that reading books isn’t the right way to learn, but it wasn’t the right way to learn for me. Each person needs to figure out her own style of learning.

- Find the language that works best for you. Some languages are more popular than others, but that doesn’t mean it is the right one for you. As your first language, instead of following the herd, figure out what language you like. Your first hurdle is getting to know the syntax, so pick something you like makes the hurdle lower.

- Stick with one language, instead of bouncing around. First, I tried Ruby, then Python, and then JavaScript. I would strongly caution against bouncing around, since the process may make you feel like you are making progress, but, on the whole, you are just scratching the surface of each without going for depth.

- When things are difficult and I bet they will be, be easy on yourself and do not expect that you will do it perfectly the first time. You will keep trying, redoing, and expecting the outcome to become better each time. If you have an expectation that you won’t learn something immediately and give you time to dwell and to figure things out, then you are less likely to become discouraged. When things do become more difficult, you can say that you now have the opportunity to figure things out, instead of becoming frustrated or thinking that you lack the ability.

- Don’t ever think that you lack ability. Make mental adjustments and stay positive. It is important for perseverance.

This article is published on Women 2.0.

Jane Wang is an hacker at Etsy, a graduate of Hacker School, the founder of Parkit Labs, and formerly a product manager at financial tech startup and an investment banker. She is a strong supporter of female hackers and entrepreneurs. In her free time, she blogs at Isometric Cube, writes for content platforms, including Forbes, Women2.0 and TechWomen, and makes things with brackets, numbers, and paint. Follow her on twitter at @janeylwang.

Photo Credit: POGO

Fred Wilson just wrote an in depth post on peer-to-peer...

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:09:00 -0500

Fred Wilson just wrote an in depth post on peer-to-peer marketplace, after his recent post on general types of online commerce. It’s worth every second of reading. And you should read and re-read to chew it down: here with the comments.

I haven’t had time to formulate my thoughts, and I haven’t seen the numbers for Fab but you bet that I will be getting those now. I’ll be dissecting these arguments in my upcoming post.

The Ingredients of Success

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 20:40:00 -0500

Studies shows that success is not about having better innate abilities but is really about the ability to set goals and being able to reach those goals. It means to focus on getting better than being good. When you allow yourself to make mistakes and not expect yourself to do everything perfectly, then you are more likely to do better without having the stress of being perfect.

Also I see a lot of people who focus only on the positives on reaching a goal. Nothing worth having is so easily gained. I believe taking a more leveled approach towards the end point, and think about each of the steps of the path towards the goal. This makes reaching the goal easier.

Photo: Porini Safari