Jeff Smith @ Smule

This quarter I have taken this class called 'Law for Computer Scientists' (CS202). It's taught by David Hansen, who is a partner and intellectual property specialist at the Palo Alto and New York based law firm. Like every other lawyer, the guy is a glib and his classes resemble entertainment shows more than traditional CS classes :D

More on Hansen's heroics later, this post is about guest lecture we had yesterday. It was by Jeff Smith of 'Smule' (Google it if you've never heard of them). Old guy so to say, finished his undergrad in 1989 from Stanford and then returned to Stanford in 2005 for his PhD! Started Smule with his adviser Dr. Wang in 2008! Little bit of arrogance in the tone that probably seeps in every successful entrepreneur.

He had structured his presentation based on Arthur Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey" naming it "2011: A Smulian Odyssey". Continuing the analogy, he went ahead to say, Clarke's three laws are precisely applicable in the world of entrepreneurship:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

He says, the best decisions in life are taken when you are on the edge of the cliff while the most incorrect decisions are taken when you are trying to hedge. He shared an anecdote about how he went back home one day and asked his wife whether her health insurance covered him because he had just dumped his job and was planning to start a new firm while they had no significant savings!

Never start a company looking at the exit strategy, he added. Analyzing product and customers are far more important than worrying about how much money will I get if I sell this firm two years down the line. That approach never succeeds.

He says, keeping aside the visionaries like Steve Jobs, who are in fact no more, we are a bunch of naive people. Only way to discover the feasibility of something is to get your hands dirty. He shared another anecdote about how he and his adviser worked all day long on getting their algorithm work on i-phone with a reasonable latency and when they succeeded they were so happy that they stayed up all night to make a demo video. In another two days, Smule was launched!

He showed us a bunch of cool videos to give us an idea about Smule's products. The funniest one was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITT6bYYGVfM. And the best part was, he gave out free Smule T-shirts at the end of the talk! :D