Random Musings

these last few weeks have been some of the most exciting of my life. finally having a team working together to rebuild soompi has been great. but i have been reflecting about the advice that i would give to clients when i have my lawyer hat on and the actions i would take for my own company when i have my ceo hat on.  here are some of the things i have learned:

1. determining compensation is very difficult for the first people joining the team. as a lawyer, it is very easy to look at the market and say “senior engineer with X years of experience typically receive this range in stock grants”.  however, when its person #1 or person #2 joining the team AND you are smack in the middle of an economy that is going through an identity crisis, it is much harder to determine what is “market”.  there is also the unquantifiable contribution of what early team members give to a company outside of pure work product – morale boost, different personalities create new chemistry which in turn leads to new innovation branches to follow.
2. personality is huge for picking the right team members.  the importance of an individual’s character and related contribution to a team is something i “understood” but did not fully appreciate as a lawyer.  this is something that anyone who has ever worked a day in their life understands. but it manifests itself in different ways depending on the project or industry. when we hire at law firms, we often use the “4 am test” which is asking “can i stand working with this person until 4 am?”.  fair enough – works well for law firms.  of course, with most lawyers having innately toxic personalities and the fact that it is never fun working till 4 am anyway, no one is happy with their job. if the wrong lawyer is assigned to your team, you get through it like you get through every other bad day and you live to see the next case or project. at small start-ups, you never do the same thing over and over. it is almost impossible to segregate things into small projects. and since your very existence as a company is not on rock solid basis, the wrong team member can be fatal to your company. on the same note, many lawyers are lawyers because they feel like they “have to be” – who wants to walk away from the $230K salary? 99% of people in startups are there because they WANT to be. picking the wrong person can kill that.
3. getting documents signed on time is a huge pain.  ok, i confess, i was the lawyer that always said “get the docs signed before anyone starts anything.”  and as a lawyer, i think that is the right advice and it is important to keep companies clean for future due diligence. but it is a pain and sometimes you want to move faster with work than with reading docs.  lucky for me, i can draft my own docs:) but i still have to send them out, wait for comments or questions from whomever is signing and so on.

so now i find myself wondering – am i a better lawyer now that i have been running my own company? or am i a better entrepreneur because i am a lawyer? either way, i think i am finally starting to see the value of having gone to law school.

angry asian man – an amazing witty blog that i love to read – is calling for nomination for “The 30 Most Influential Asian Americans Under 30.”

mr. angry writes:

“Looking ahead to the month of May, I’m putting together a feature called The 30 Most Influential Asian Americans Under 30. Over thirty days, I’ll be profiling thirty young individuals who are making an impact in their respective fields, in their communities, and the world at large. “….read the rest here.

so if you know someone who has done something amazing, feel free to nominate. is kal penn under 30? he is on top of the list for me!

its been a while since i’ve posted here. i think my twitter feed is taking over the bulk of my communication with the outside world.  so if you come here looking for an update and see nothing – make sure to look to the right hand side for any updates to my twitter feed.   more likely than not, that will be the most up to date content here.

reason #2 why i am missing in action.  we are busting it out on soompi.com! we have a real, human, breathing team of people working on it now! and it feels good.  we have been heads down for the past month making immense progress on the site – estimated relaunch is summer 2009.

what are we working on? single sign on (we have two separate user databases – yes, confusing. but its a long story), better profiles, better groups.  the big thing about the site is that it is like an iceberg – there is a HUGE amount of activity on the site, but you only see the tiniest bit if you click around a bit.  to really get a sense of the community, you need to spend some time exploring the forums. but we hope to improve all of that soon!

i will be in hiding until relaunch most likely but thank you for checking in on me:)  and here is a small laptop pic so you can check out my bat cave! (that blue thing in the lower right corner – yes, that is my snuggie)