It was a week of sorts. I realise that my body has grown accustomed to only 5 hours (and less) of sleep on weekdays. Haha.

I learned a new term in Berkeley:

“bombed”

Usage is as follows:

“I bombed my midterm yesterday.”

Meaning: You totally screwed up that midterm.

Usage in personal context in a sentence:

“I bombed my Comp Sci. 61A midterm last Wednesday. I prepared hard for it. But nevertheless I got stumped by some questions with a lot of marks. Damn.”

Anyways. I shall cease to whine about midterms. No point. That’s life at Berkeley.

—

One moment I was listening to my iPod. Moments later, I walked into a room with the iPod inventor in it.

Tony Fadell, the creator of the iPod, came to UC Berkeley last Wednesday to give a lecture or rather to conduct a Question and Answer session. He was pretty cool. Had a degree in Computer Engineering from U of Michigan, started a few businesses while he was a college student.

He revealed that he and his friend once gained a few hours of access to their school lab.  They looked at the laboratory key they had with them, and then they looked at each other.

Then they duplicated the lab key.

Thus they worked all-nighters in the lab creating their own chip during those times. Subsequently he told us of his story of start-ups and of trying to establish his own company. He was trying to revive his struggling company when one day Apple contacted him and asked him to consult on the project to build a portable music player. He took six weeks to prepare a paper for the Apple iPod. It sounded easy but it wasn’t. But now, we have our 17th generation of iPods thanks to Tony Fadell and his team. And the rest is history.

Another thing he said was that Apple built a business surrounded by high barriers to entry. China might duplicate tonnes of copy-cat iPods and iPhones, but nothing beats the environment of support and the beautiful integration of hardward and software that Apple provides. He repeated during the session that it is absolutely important for a business to build high barriers to entry for it to survive in the long run. Makes sense. If you do something that other people can easily do, your company would probably not survive for too long.

I was pretty quiet throughout the entire session. Americans really love to ask questions. Many of them were good ones. But somehow I managed to get the opportunity to ask the very last question:

“What is your advice to students who are looking to start their own companies?”

His response was something to the tune of, “This is the time! You are young, and you are able to take risks without major consequences. Worst comes to worst, when you fail badly, you can go home to your parents.  I am now married with two kids. If I were to do what I did then at my present situation, I would probably not do it. Last time I was accountable to no one but myself. But now my wife might say, “Who’s going to pay the bills if you fail?” And your parents might want to dictate what you want to do, but their are just giving advice and advice can or may not be followed.”

Nice words, but would I really act?

Really nice to hear someone from the industry come and talk. One of the benefits for being so near the Silicon Valley.

Alright folks. Later.