Babs' It !

My trip to Boston (2) The 7 tips from Y Combinator

2008-07-15T20:35:00.008+02:00

During my stay in Boston in June, I've had the great opportunity to meet Jessica Livingston and Paul Graham from Y Combinator.

A fantastic meeting during which they both gave us great comments and tips on how to succeed with your start-up:

Start as early as you can.

Perseverance is the common point to successful entrepreneurs.

A succesful company is a company that just doesn't die. You'll get rich if you just manage not to die (and if you're OK with eating ramen noodles a few months or years if you have to).

Just don't die! Most startups die of suicide.

Don't pay too much attention to competitors and all the legal stuff. Just develop your product.

The VCs from the Silicon Valley don't care that much about how you'll make money, so focus on the product.

Guess what? Just focus on the product.

Scope of Actionscript 3.0 Variables

2008-07-14T20:47:00.009+02:00

Did you know that in Actionscript 3.0, there is no block scope for a variable? The minimal scope is the function, meaning that the declaration of a variable in an "if" statement for instance, can be reused in the "else" statement. Incredible for an old C++ developer like me!!! A small example to illustrate my thoughts:


public function helloWorld() : void
{
   var a:int = 0;
   if ( a )
   {
      var u:int = 5;
   }
   else
   {
      u = 6;
   }
   trace( "u -> " + u );
}

Guess what? No compilation error, and u = 6! Careful though if you declare an Object! The variable exists, but if it's initialized in the "if" statement, it will equal "null" if you pass in the "else" block!

An interesting link on differences between Java 5 and Actionscript 3.0.

My trip to Boston (1) Meeting Jerry

2008-07-05T14:10:00.008+02:00

On June 10th, I've travelled to the great city of Boston with my 19 venture leaders fellows!
We've spent 10 days there learning everything there is to know on entrepreneurship, how to move to the U.S with a swiss company, what is paramount to make it work, and most importantly, we've met with greatly experienced people who have given us important feedbacks on our projects and next milestones.
On our first morning there, June 11th 2008, we've met Jerry Schaufeld, an Angel full of expertise in entrepreneurship and management. His talk was very interesting. The slides of his presentation are available hereunder.

| View | Upload your own

Just a few of my notes taken on the fly while Jerry was presenting:

The commercialization cycle (see slide 7)

Basically, there was a time (before the internet bubble) when Business Angels (BAs) used to invest when the risks were very high, right after Family, Friends and Fools' (FFF's) funds had been used.

At that time, Venture Capitalists (VCs) used to invest at the bottom of the curve.

Now, they come after the first customers. They basically take much less risk, they want to see sales, IP, etc, before investing. In summary, they want to see all the things you need money to get!!!
In consequence, BAs started to invest later in the process too.

People investing on the left side of the curve have 2 characteristics: they believe in your vision, and they usually invest their own money.

People on the right side of the curve are professional investors.

The implications of this cycle is that everything changes. You have to anticipate these changes. For instance, in finance, you have to anticipate how many people you’ll have to hire, the expenses, etc in order to have correct accounting. Otherwise you are fooling yourself and the investor.

You need to find the resources that will help you anticipate these changes.

Questions (slide 11)

1. Should you grow slowly and avoid VC funding or go for VC in order to grow fast?
A lifestyle company is a very nice alternative, but more difficult to liquidate.
If you don’t expect big promises with outside capital as compared to a lifestyle alternative, don’t do it. Otherwise, it’s worth thinking about. It’s a math question. What does it bring to you and is it worth losing majority? Calculate your “Return On Equity” (what you get in exchange of this tough deal).

2. How do you create a board of directors/advisors?
A board of advisors is composed of known scientists and they are useful to comfort the investors, but the decision making is up to you in the end. They add value with their names and that’s about it. If it’s advice you’re looking for, you can get the same input with consulting and avoid creating a board of advisors.
A board of directors is responsible for the shareholders’ interests. In the USA, it’s a very formal process and it takes years to make it work.
You can create ideal profiles of who you’d like in your board in order to choose the board: what sources you will lack in the future that you can’t get with consulting? Anticipate your needs and choose the board accordingly. People of experience. Only bring people that have knowledge and experience in the domain you lack.

Camera and Transform Matrices in Papervision3D

2008-05-13T13:54:00.004+02:00

I've had some troubles to fully understand the matrices system in Papervision3D: between the view matrix, the transform, the camera eye, etc, etc...
But I think I've got it now. All you need to know in order to make transformations between world and camera coordinate systems is this formula:

o.view = camera.eye * o.transform

In other words, any DisplayObject3D o has a transform matrix that represents its transformation in the world coordinate system. It also has a view matrix that represents its transformation in the camera coordinate system. The camera's eye matrix allows to pass from the world to the camera coordinate system. In papervision3D:

o.view.calculateMultiply(camera.eye, o.transform);

will compute your object's updated view matrix. In the other direction:

o.transform.calculateMultiply( invEye, o.view);

will update the object's transform according to its view matrix. Note that invEye is the inverse of camera.eye.

One last piece of advice: I've noticed that modifying a view matrix alone doesn't change anything. If you modify the view, you need to update the transform according to the second formula.

How to display text in papervision

2008-04-16T22:02:00.006+02:00

I've been looking for a tutorial to display a simple text field within papervision without much success. I finally tumbled on this blog post where it was quite well explained. The example however might be a little long to demonstrate my sole purpose: how to display text in papervision.

So I've decided to put here an even simpler example to make things crystal clear:



// create your text field and set its content.
var t:TextField = new TextField();
t.text = "Hello world!";
// create a BitmapData of your wished width and height
var bitmap:BitmapData = new BitmapData(100,100);
// Fill bmp with the content of your TextField. 
//It's as if you took a picture of t.
bitmap.draw(t);
// Create a material with the resulting BitmapData and you can use it on any DisplayObject3D!
var material:BitmapMaterial = new BitmapMaterial(bitmap);
material.smooth = true;
material.doubleSided = true;
var p:Plane = new Plane(material,100,100);
scene.addChild(p);

First observation is that it seems impossible to directly embed a UIComponent within papervision *sigh*. Whatever the UIComponent (Button, TextField, etc), it has to be put somehow in a texture and applied on a DisplayObject3D such as a Plane.

Or at least, I have no knowledge of another way to do it. Does anybody know better? My worry is that it may slow down the frame rate to display text in a texture rather than directly as what it really is: good old plain text.

Underground parking lot + empty bottles = Mario theme song

2008-04-15T14:06:00.001+02:00

I just discovered this video which I confess, made me laugh a lot. That's crazy how some people have nothing better to do than aligning empty bottles, but the result is so funny that you can't really blame them, can you?

http://view.break.com/487616 - Watch more free videos