See the e27.co article where Squawknet first heard of it, here .

Why Am I here in the first place? Wait, why are you here?

Maybe you’re a lurker (reddit slang for people who don’t participate actively in forums, communities and instead passively observe the community while keeping a real low profile).

My previous post about the Juan Great Leap community is, for me, just to introduce to the passive people that there’s this great community out there which meets up every month at a coffeeshop. You can just observe what they do – heck, I’ve never been forced to introduce myself when I do join their Open Coffee.

There are also amazing people you can meet our local Startup Weekend.

There’s an awesome souped-up startup video podcasts over at The Bobbery.

Natural Unbounded Communities

Why am I pointing you guys over there when I can start over here? The reason is I believe that all communities belong to the greater community of visionaries, technopreneurs. The idea that certain communities are just for this, and that simply makes the world a sucky place to live in.

If you’ve been to the first and second Open Coffees, before it was all mostly traditional business talk. People had haciendas (hectares of land in the provinces usually acquired through ancestral ownership) and they were wondering what to do with them. There was one who was wondering how to start simple clinic with a niche market and if it was viable business. Lately though, there have been more tech and experimental business models proposed. Before its mostly the old aristocratic class attending and the technology folk are a minority – and the good sign is that more and more tech guys are attending.

I also attended a meetup on a certain platform for managing web content, they exclusively talk about that platform like a religion. We cannot talk openly about another technology similar to the platform but is much simpler to use. I think there really should be collaboration amongst the Open Source Communities. It’s not like one version of software is better than the other, but maybe we can learn from each other, uh-huh yeah

Never Piggy Back

What do I mean by piggybacking? Its when you sign up for something half-heartedly, and you envision a future financial reward for yourself. In short, piggybacking is kind of a selfish thing to do, and I simply do not want to do that and ruin my character.

Lately, Ive been invited to join groups. However, I knew in my mind that I don’t want to piggyback on people who have a greater belief in their idea than I do. It may seem like a good idea to stick around and see what happens, but in the long term, someday I will one day not be able to sleep because my conscience is killing me.

When the going gets tough, when there’s no money coming in,you will leave them behind because your passion is not there. Money really is the root of all evil. Err. I mean – Money never equates to passion.

I believe

I believe in Equality. I don’t believe in putting fences around communities. A simple person who doesn’t seem to have a clue on how to empower communities shouldn’t be excluded and called delusional.

I believe in Lux in Domino. Let your light shine. Even if you are in the darkness of the valley, when all hope seems lost, let your light shine.

No matter how small it is. The light will guide you.

Peter’s about post quickly sums up what his mission is – to help the common Juan take the leap from nothing to starting their own dreams in business.

Today, JGL has grown to include monthly Open Coffee meetups and has now started the Startup School where people from the startup industry share their knowledge on various topics related to startups. Startup School now has one upcoming class – PitchCraft – a seminar on how to market and pitch your idea to investors.

These classes are just awesome and taught by experienced startup people, and though these courses can be self-taught through reading things online, they help the average Juan become acquainted with what’s out there.

They are low-priced and pack a punch – I’m very sure that going through one of the courses would give anyone a big advantage over someone who just reads things.

The other topics in the line up range from non-techie to techie and I really hope they could add things like Project Management, Hiring Best Practices, and something along the lines of Corporate Finance (like how to deal with investors and startup funding).

Please check that site out and I’d love to hear your thoughts on how to take that leap below. I recommend bootstrapping – where you work on your startup while doing fulltime work on your own pocket – it is a lot of work but it is possible. Peter’s post on how toJust Start is a good primer on how to do just that.

Squawknet was never envisioned to be something like all the blogs mentioned above. It was meant to be a little hip indie kind of thing, which some call  independent journalism. Squawknet doesn’t make any money – there are no ads.

I always love to analyze and find out about new ideas, and if you need someone to throw ideas at, let me know by contacting me at my email – jose.palala@gmail.com

Ideas are ideas and until the day they are acted upon, nothing will happen.

One of the things my education has taught me is to analyze and reflect on what you read. Not everything you read may be applicable to your business Not everything you hear will help your business thrive.

Simply put, you can never improve things without measuring them. So keeping a journal where you write your thoughts out from the stuff you read is really helpful, I cannot stress enough how important it is. Writing it down helps your mind remember it, and when you see it again and again, it keeps you focused.

For further reading on being productive, you should read up on sebastianmarshall.com articles on productivity. I also used to read up on Derek Siver’s blog, and his articles are inspirational.

For the past years, I realized Squawknet has always been about the stories that people don’t tell. And I’d like to keep it that way. If you feel like writing about the story that the media will never talk about, feel free to guest post. Send me an email at jose.palala@gmail.com.

Anyway, here’s my own take . Being somewhat mediocre student back in my college days myself, If I were in his shoes I wouldn’t like keep saying I’m so good and all, I’d acknowledge all the help I got from others.

Your network is more important than getting famous. Take it from someone who has lost countless friends over simple matters – like miscommunication and not having a plan and overall just living a happy-go-lucky existence.

As far as I’m concerned, Gian likes to do things the easy way:

In my years of experince, I have come to the conclusion that – there are two types of developers -

1. The one who likes to do it the hard way

1. The other who likes to do it the easy way.

(I think I’m a hybrid – I don’t mind learning things the hard way if it will make things easier in the long run)

The easy way seems to be the best option if you want to focus on the time-to-market of your startup. You want to get out there before competition takes your throne.

The hard way is the best option if you want to be there for the long term. After all, it will be your code poetry that will catapult you to fame.

I think the real developer is the one who does things the hard way – learning things inside out, experimenting with code until what comes out is pretty poetry. They take their time to understand the inner workings of OAuth rather than just try copy pasting things together til they work.

And here is where Rich Dad, Poor Dad – the book by Robert Kiyosaki comes in. In that book – the rich dad makes money by thinking beyond what the Poor Dad (the smarter , more technically and educated) can ever think beyond. Rich Dad teaches us that it’s not savings that make you rich – it’s what you do with it (sounds familiar? hehehe (private joke)).

So this guy Gian Javelona – he is the Rich Dad type. He may not be the smartest kid on the block, by linking together various resources and putting it together in an Android app, he wins by getting his name out there real quick.

I wouldn’t hire him as a developer – but perhaps I’d hire him as the idea person – a co-founder if you will – who will help me find the best people in my startup.

Such a position exists as the “product manager” if you call it, or by simply being the boss of your own company as Gian has done – getting up with his Orange Apps thing.

So that’s what I can street-smart education versus academic education. Street-smart means knowing the shortcuts you can take to get to where you need faster. Academic is more like theories of this and that.

I am a people connector, I realized. I like writing because it lets me explore, with everyone who is reading this, what if scenarios.

I imagine instead of dying with envy with the success of Gian, let us imagine more Gians to work with. They help us envision the future. Although some people may exclaim – “Life is so Unfair ! – people shouldn’t get ahead of others because its not right,!”;  I think they should  not worry – you will have your own claim to fame, not now, but when your hard work has paid off. I believe our worst customer/enemy, can be learned from, and just charge it to experience.

I’m not really a Microsoft fan, I regularly use Linux, but with the latest Productivity Future videos, I really love how they focus on the User Interface rather than the technology running behind it. People like to Touch things, they like things to move smoothly.

As a web developer, startups should embrace the User Interface changes that are sweeping every new user who buys into Windows 8. Things that look like accordions, flippable menus, it is truly amazing that we’ve finally reached a point where things are becoming much more easier to use.

I suddenly am thinking about those interfaces, and wondering what language will drive that? HTML + Javascript? COME ON.

More likely than not, someone or something (a big company, or a small opensource genius coder) will recreate the way we program into something really much more easier to do. Something like action script and drag-drop like Flash.  Something that you just write a bit of code “use flow style” then write the various parts which will run according to the flow style, and Poof! you have something that behaves as it should on a touch device, and automatically on a desktop with a mouse it will still be the same behavior.

In the future, every web developer who still codes the old way will have to learn quick on how to make the UI even better.

There’s only one thing that they could possibly help – by building API-centric websites. That way from the ground up, if they decide on a new language to make things show up in a Windows 8 app, you can just migrate it to the new code for the view. It isn’t just MVC, it’s more than just MVC, it’s more like a structured MVC where models and their API are King.

I think over the course of the next few years, I’ll go more into those kinds of projects which aren’t boring. It’s going to be tough, and the move from just plan old PHP programmer to more UI-centric development and API-centric development will be a challenge, but I believe that’s the way to go.

And API’s don’t just allow you to have flexible UI. They also allow you to connect your data to another website that wants to use that data. And that’s the future of the Web. Imagine being able to tell your Arduino or Raspberry Pi device that if the boss is about to leave for work, to set the Alarm earlier.. Think of a driver-less car informing you where it is and actually telling you the traffic situation even prior to taking a drive. Imagine if students didn’t have to wake up and find out that the school will most likely cancel classes.

Honestly I think the future is not spent staring at a computer screen eight to five. It’s more collaborative and more social. Startups should take advantage of the trend even before the future comes, so they can come out the leader when that time comes. They should focus on not only what devices are available today, but envision a future where the delivery of timely and practical information help people from the lowest rank to the management level help them create more meaningful companies rather than silo’d departments and meaningless grudge-work.

Stop focusing too much on time tracking tools. Stop focusing on the tracking of story points. I’m still rethinking agile in my head, but when I do get a job –  a more management level job, or maybe for my own pet projects, I’m thinking of things like efficiency ratios – is the employee not in a good mood to finish his part because of some problem? are my team-mates okay with a programming change I introduced. 15 minute Standup meetings are just standups, what’s better is probably pair coding – where better coders improve the process of coding by actively participating in each and everyone’s code.

The ability to nurture that kind of environment, a harmonious environment, is the key goal of any Agile Scrum master or Project Manager. It’s more of an open and honest approach to development. Rather than the current stress-inducing and highly based on scores and maybe even petty politics over who is more vocal and who seems easy to prey on. Seriously, I’m considering leaving this country eventually because of the highly charged emotional nature of programmers here.

I recently attended the Drupal Camp held last weekend at Microsoft 6750 Ayala. The topics were all about drupal. but I found it interesting that they would tackle e-commerce. I thought camps were all about programming, and I found also they had other topics more on the business side of things rather than just plain boring programming.

Anyway, back to our main topic – how to run a successful ecommerce setup.

This is a real world story though, and it’s kind of going to be unabashed and no-holds-barred facts and opinion. So if you have any comments suggestions or violent reactions, feel free to comment in the same way. I also believe I would make some misjudgements about websites, though i have been developing for the web for the past 5 years or so, I still find something new to learn every single day.

Galleon.ph

Let’s start with my brief summary of galleon.ph @ galleon.ph.
This is a store actually built by the good guys at openovate labs.

At first glance, there may be some price difference between buying from galleon or buying from someone on ayosdito or sulit. This is expected, since the items on galleon are sure to be delivered, and since it is a store, you don’t have to bother with checking the rating of a person on sulit or tipidpc. You just buy from them, pay them, get the gadget thing you need sent within 10-15 days, and done. No messy negotiations about the price, what you see is what you get.

In sulit or ayosdito, you’d have to text back and forth, how much was it, how’s the condition. Then you’d have to get the item either hand-delivered (meeting up) or having the person send via LBC.
So I think galleon is better in that sense.

Just a side note, I think they’d enjoy more success if they’d open it to sellers who want to sell their own unique gadgets. An army of many is b etter than an army of one.

Here’s how I think other people can set up their own ecommerce store and benefit from the long tail end of the market.

Find a niche.

In galleon, I believe there aren’t really a lot of geeks or alpha geeks who want to get their hands on the latest stuff, but if Galleon could get a better deal for stuff from Google, and with more people attending tech conferences and hackathons, they should highlight the more “popular” in terms of use instead of trivial things like Baby-ware and luxury items. It depends on the market really, but if you are going to be a catch all for everything, you will end up a niche of nothing which is what most ecommerce stores fail to catch – the way to differentiate is not by having everything, but by having a single focused lineup, from which consumer interests would peak from.

Keep the wheel and don’t reinvent it

In essence, don’t oversimplify.. I like galleon but I really still have to type what I want into search? Say there is a market for droid nexus phones, there should be a highlight on that.

Contrast galleon with a bigger store, Lazada, and you’ll find the huge difference. Lazada, an amazon clone, is effective to search thorugh because they’ve categorized everything into special links at the top, which is actually a really deep menulink summarizing things into neat little categories. Though the interface may be really really just a clone of amazon, I think it’s an interface that just works.

In conclusion,

For me, I think people should focus more on finding a niche and bank heavily on that,and keep sites clean but easy to fiddle around – i.e. the menus, the categorization of stuff.

I think the pinterest style is just a fad, it’s really hard to look for something you want, as a guy. If you’re marketing to women, then pinterest style is okay since women are into liking pretty things. Guys tend to look for the special item that they want, and don’t usually look around for other things to buy.

Cherish Leow discusses what startups are about, and interviewed entrepreneurs in Singapore. She meets with top entrepreneurs in SG including TradeGecko (JFDI 2012), Flocatations(JFDI 2012), along with people like Keith Ng, Mohan Belani (e27/Echelon), as well as people from funding ventures like Golden Gate Ventures and JFDI (Joyful Frog Digital Incubator).

Theres a trend right now that companies don’t hire workers who work on the spot, but through using virtual / remote working.
One company I once joined (Microsourcing) had automated the project lifecycle and hiring and firing process. I think they’d be better off hiring people through that way, so that the total cost of sending someone to Vietnam to handle the team would be minimized. Reality is that Filipinos won’t bother leaving their country unless you pay a higher pay.

BPO’s are really the way to go, and it is a trend that is growing, and will continue to grow, over the next 5 to 10 years.