I’ve just completed a book, Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham.

I thought it was very articulate, it feels like he is giving a talk, so it was easy to follow and understand. It’s a relatively non-computer-science friendly, though some parts of the book were rather technical. The chapters didn’t necessarily follow one another, so each chapter felt like reading a separate essay. As a result, the book overall didn’t flow well. Individual chapters reads great, each with its introductions, arguments, and takeaways.

Several things in the book that caught my attention:
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Negotiation Strategies

A summary of three types of strategies.

Flight Nibbling

Ask for a little bit more at a time, and keep nibbling away – at small things. Obviously small things accumulate. Airline example:

Airlines usually overbook their seating when possible; on a plane that seats 120, they can sell 122 tickets and just about get away with it, because there is a roughly 3% chance that people don’t show up. (Exactly why they oversell I shall explain below.)

Anyways, consider that you’re on the plane and they are at capacity. The attendant announces that they need a seat for someone that actually showed up and began offering a seat on the next flight… with compensation of course. So the deal is that you get on the next plane, which leaves tomorrow, and plus a bonus of $100 for your troubles. If you want the offer, you can take it by raising your arm. Nobody took it. Then they increased to $200. And still, nobody budged.  Slowly, with $100 at a time, it got to $800. Only then, since you calculate the price to be about fair for your troubles, would you take it.

Should you stop here? No. You should nibble. How?
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This is a post while I was in a “Strategies for a Quantum Entrepreneur” workshop that was held at IQC RAC 1 2009, June 6, 2012. It was a “bonus classroom experience” to the QIC 870 and QIC 871 classes. I came into the workshop looking for ideas to develop, something feasible as a project and that is likely to succeed. My plan is to get ideas from physics and create a spin-off. Being here reminds me of QKD 2011, this is the exact same lecture room. The workshop takes a very formal approach to entrepreneurship, kind of like business school class and theoretical physics. For example, innovation = invention + commercialization. Facts like government policies, a slide titled “the national system of innovation”. This is not quite what I would like to hear about. I want to find out what are some practical things that I can build, as an undergraduate student. Hypothetical ideas are kind of ironic… in the sense that the workshop takes a theoretical approach to how an ideal startup should start off.

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