Week 4 of TEC: Executable Poetry (From the True Ventures TEC Program Blog)

This week I’ve learned fundamental lessons about the parallels between building a business and computer science.

Computer science is looking at a problem and tackling it. Your approach may change over time; you may run into unexpected problems; you never know all the problems you will encounter. However in anything you want to succeed, you have to learn to overcome those challenges to create your executable poetry. You may have to learn a new language, you may have to spend days debugging, or you may have to rebuild it from scratch. But, if you truly believe you can do it, you will do it.

Business, in my opinion, is looking for a market opportunity that you believe in and tackling it. You may have an idea how that market works or how your venture will play out but that may change. You have no guarantee that it will actually be successful or be as rewarding as you want, but if you even want to find out you have to try. You have to put yourself out there and go pitch to VCs; you have to hire new people; you have to fire old people; you have to a million things. But at the end of the day, if you want to have a business that is successful in rewarding, you have to be willing to do everything you can and believe is right to bring it to success.

The two processes I described above are exact mirrors of themselves. Computer science is a lot about looking at a problem and finding a solution regardless of what you currently know at the time. I believe business is the same. Both are growing opportunities and to be successful at either you have to seize those opportunities.

VodPod offers me the ability to explore all of these opportunities. Maybe I should try to look into that new piece of Ruby code we pushed out today; maybe I should be learning how the API works; maybe I should understand how and when we push out features; maybe I should understand how the design of a login screen effects sign-up conversion. I’ve stepped into all these areas over the last week; some of them were more comfortable areas than others but all rewarding. I’ve learned about countless knew things taking this approach: try everything.

The VodPod iPhone application is done. It should be submitted on Tuesday and then it’s all up to Apple to review and (hopefully) accept. I’ll leave you with a teaser screenshot.

This week at TEC played into theme of the week, it’s seizing opportunities to learn if you haven’t caught on yet, with Phil Black teaching us about term sheets. To be honest, before the talk I doubt I understood anything that was meaningful on the sheet, but after I felt like I could at least get the basic concept and if I was getting screwed in a deal. The other two speakers were also awesome. Tim Young of SocialCast had a great speech about his path towards entrepreneurship and SocialCast’s growth. I appreciated his advice on life and the fun, interesting idea of reading books based on height. Jared Kim of WeGame was also extremely interesting and relevant; he is a young entrepreneur that I felt I could relate with and also learn an immense from. The talks just seem to be holding up their quality, and I continue to enjoy them.

As you might of heard, I am Ali Shah and I go to a university in New York named New York University. I enjoy things like Belle & Sebastian, Discovery, uncharted islands, charted islands, Gmail, Jerry Seinfeld and the small things.

I’d also like to note that TEC has forced me to get a haircut somewhere different than my normal barbershop for the first time in ten years. I haven’t decided if that’s a good thing, but I would like to take this time to apologize to my barber. I’m sorry, Pablo.

Note: This was originally written by Summer TEC Intern Ali Shah on the True Ventures TEC Program Blog.  It was reprinted here with his permission.