Antti Akonniemi

I’ve drank too much coffee for most of my adult life. Few weeks ago ago I decided to quit coffee for a while. In the past I’ve tried to control the amount of coffee I consume, but I always regressed back to over-consumption. My latest attempt was that I could have coffee only before 10AM. Problem was that I could have 3 double espressos before 10AM and also for some reason 10AM is a too flexible concept for me. This helped me to acknowledge that I’m actually addicted to coffee and that I really need to get the “habit” under control.

Benefits

Today I’ve been without coffee for almost two weeks (well I can confess that I’ve had two cups of coffee during this period). First few days were hell, but I can already see positive results. As long as I can remember I’ve always hated meetings. I’ve always been anxious in meetings, but now this has changed. No matter if the meeting is boring or not, I feel that I can enjoy the moment and learn from everyone. It almost feels that I’ve achieved mindfulness by getting rid of coffee.

Future

When I feel that I have the habit under control, I’ll definitely enjoy coffee every now and then. I still miss espresso, although I’m starting to like tea (= not hating it anymore ;D)

Simple, but effective way to get out of the rat race:

1. Learn in school/at work
2. Gain experience at work
3. Pay off your loans by working/consulting
4. Save some money by working/consulting
5. Get experience by consulting
6. Start your own company

I quit my school after 1 month in. Reason was that I was shocked how theoretical everything was. I learned so much more and faster by working. If I would have known that I want to be an entrepreneur later on, I would have probably been even more motivated to learn. I had to work for almost ten years until I understood that it wasn’t for me and I needed more.

Point #3 is important if you want to live a bit less stressful life. This I didn’t do. Switching from consulting to “real” entrepreneur would have been lot easier if I wouldn’t have had the loans. For the adrenaline junkies there’s a secret option: scrap #3 and #4 and take a loan to finance your switch.

Also experience might be overrated so don’t get stuck to that. For me it probably was more about getting confident.

2008 I saw Gary talk at LeWeb and last year he actually sent us a video mentioning Kisko Labs. Both events are something that I’ll remember forever, but I just saw his talk at LeWeb 2010 in Youtube and was blown away. Please, take some time to watch it:

Boy do I wish we had Khan Academy back in the day when I was trying to study. I’ve spotted about Khan Academy many times before in discussions at Hacker News, but after listening to This Week in Startups episode with the founder Salman Khan I was SOLD. And even more so after watching few of his videos. What an excellent way to teach and learn. Simple, yet effective.

Good and pretty much universal examples how it works:
Renting vs. Buying a Home
Renting vs Buying a Home Part 2

About a year ago I wrote about Taking e-Banking to the Next Level. Now TIEKE Finnish Information Society Development Centre has started a project where the goal is to spec out an API for personal finance management so that banks and credit card companies can transfer account/investment data to 3rd party software (such as Mint.com and Balancion).

This is great news for us users since we own the data and now banks are giving us a change to do something with it. Services like Mint and Balancion are great examples on what 3rd parties can do with the data, but I’m sure that this is just a tip of the iceberg.

Let’s hope that TIEKE does a good job and this thing actually moves on and we’ll have a chance to see what really hit Titanic!

I think we’ve all been there. Client wants fast, good and cheap service.

Few weeks ago I found this blog post by Hoss Gifford. I think it’s a very good summary of the whole deal.

I have the courage to say that we’ve done few of these kinds of projects. They have all been financially and mentally very taxing. Stupid decisions, but I hope we’ve learned from them. As an entrepreneur it’s easy to correct these projects by working over the weekend etc, but that it’s not the correct way to handle it and it doesn’t really work with employees.

Here are few quotes from the blog post, but be sure to read the whole thing:

“The first thing to understand is that it is impossible to create work that is fast, good and cheap”

“Let me be clear about this, these people are evil and their work is poison.”

“This kind of work is easy to find, but it will emotionally and financially destroy you.”

Just say no.

We organized Rails Girls event at Kisko Labs this weekend. The idea behind the event is to teach Ruby on Rails to girls. You can read more from the site and from the press kit.

Event was a great success and I haven’t had so much fun in other Rails events! I’m sure we’re going to do this again soon :)

Here’s my presentation from the event:

Remember to also check the photos here and here.

Few weeks ago I noticed that Sonos would soon have Spotify support. I had tested Spotify Premium earlier, but I discontinued the subscription since I didn’t see enough benefit. Now I had a reason to continue that subscription since we have a Sonos S5 unit at home. With Spotify integration that thing would be awesome!

So I subscribed to Spotify Premium again and updated the Sonos apps on all the iOS devices in our household.

The thing is awesome! Especially the new iPad client is so fricking cool!

Usage is simple: you just link your Sonos system to your Spotify account. No other steps are needed. You will have access to all your playlist and Spotify search.

During my testing Spotify experienced some “Performance issues” that caused some of the songs on my playlists not to play. I’m guessing these problems will be fixed soon.

You learn stuff by doing stuff

Books and courses might help, but they won’t help you enough. You actually need to start selling and you get better the more you do it.

You need to do it all the time

Don’t make a mistake we did to stop selling when you are busy. You need to be selling all the fricking time. A lead might take forever to convert to a sale.

Don’t just sell, help

Selling something is hard/impossible. I always thought selling is a bit unnatural, but that was just because I thought that telemarketing was selling. It’s selling, but it’s crappy selling. You need to care and you need to help your clients. Often selling means helping for free (like guiding to correct partner, who might be a competitor of yours). Help your potential client, whatever that means.

Networking pays off

1. Find people 2. Friend them up (if match) 3. Help them

Don’t waste people’s time. Create value for them.

Don’t meet if you are not sure you can help them. You don’t want your time to be wasted by some shitty telemarketer so why would you waste one’s time?

Presentation Deck

Problem
- Define the problem and background

Solution
- Define your solution

Benefits
- What is the client getting? Why your solution matters?

Investment
- What’s the investment? Give few options and remember also to add other than your project costs such as clients resources etc.
- Where is this money coming from?

That’s what I’ve learned so far :)

Photo by Cane Rosso

Video chain Blockbuster Inc filed for bankruptcy protection

Old Media needs to become New Media and fast. It might already be late.

I’m just hoping we would have iTunes for movies and tv-shows (or Netflix) available in Finland soon, but I know it’s a false hope. Our digital generation is bound to use alternative methods for getting their daily media fix.