Juraj Masár

Secrets at Apple’s Core

Sat, 26 May 2012 03:06:14 +0200

Secrets at Apple’s Core

8 to be great

Mon, 21 May 2012 14:21:33 +0200

8 to be great

Steve Jobs and the First Macintosh. Jobs talks about making...

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:06:24 +0200

Steve Jobs and the First Macintosh. Jobs talks about making actual innovation, motivating employees and letting smart people managing others.

It’s perhaps the most inspiring interview with Jobs I’ve ever seen.

What is the value of your day?

Sat, 12 May 2012 23:05:05 +0200

What is the value of your day?

The Most Important Step Every Successful Person Made

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:51:06 +0200

…was to start doing.

There are many people who have all it takes to achieve everything they can dream of. That sounds a little bit too cheesy, but… it’s quite true.

They are, however, captured in rationalizing why they can’t start doing what they dream of. Whether it is their financial account, absence of free time or lack of experience, they always find a reason why this isn’t the right the to start doing their thing.

Although they know that they won’t be any younger tomorrow, they won’t have more energy and they’ll hardly have more spare time then they have today.

The problem is perhaps the fear of unknown - they don’t have a clear picture of what they want to accomplish. However, that’s one of the ‘truths’ I’ve found out in the past couple of months - successful people aren’t sure of everything they’re doing. They just have the courage to start doing their stuff with limited resources they have; not tomorrow, but today.

This is one of the well-known ‘truths of success’ and I’m sure that many people got rich because of writing books on this topic. I don’t want to write another full-of-bullshit article - I just realized that this advice is quite true.

It was about a year ago when Kubo Konecny wrote me an email asking whether I’d be interested in starting a business with him.

Today, Vocablr is online and even though we haven’t earned a single euro to this point, we both agree that it was a priceless decision that we’ve decided to found it.

We’ve learned a lot about developing a large scale project. I’ve personally gained many new skills in web development practises, web UI design, user experience (that’s one of the most obvious pains Vocablr is suffering from at this point), learning languages, communicating with users, meeting new people, etc.

We’ve met very interesting people. I don’t know how exactly it happened but suddenly, we got into Mozgohouse and met a ton of interesting people doing similar stuff to ours. …and we’ve received a lot of honest feedback on our product.

“Well, that’s not much, ” you say, “considering it was a year long experience.” Well, I see your point. Consider, however, that we were both studying full-time and we’ve done it solely in our spare time with our spare energy. If we’d decided to use that time to watch the last series of the Bing-bang Theory, we wouldn’t have experienced any of that.

…but ok. Honestly, Vocablr is not that good story, when it comes to “start doing your stuff today”. We’ve had some experience with developing web apps, so we kind of knew what we were going into. I’ve worked for a web agency, developing web apps, since I was 14 and Kubo is a really, really smart guy so he managed to pick up new knowledge quickly. Consider a different example, however:

A friend of mine with his fellow student, both studying physics at matfyz, said to themselves something like “we’re clever but it’s not easy to earn money using physics. Let’s do… hm, websites!” and they founded a small webdev agency.

They started with no experience at all. Literally. Zero experience.

Since the market for cheap websites is overloaded with demand, they got their first deals. They had to pick up everything along the way. They lacked experience so much that their first own website looked so bad I regret not creating a screenshot of it. It went kind of viral among the matfyz people because they used Comics Sans and the first texture of paper you find when you google “paper”.

I’m not saying they’re experts on web development now, but they’ve done a great progress; their new website and stuff they created for their clients is pretty decent.

The point is that they started. They started, got feedback and got better.

You can’t achieve anything if you’re afraid of doing it (man, I really need to cut that bullshit out…).

…so start doing what you love, today. Will you? Please…?

This is what I call “a brilliant viral video”.

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 23:00:33 +0200

This is what I call “a brilliant viral video”.

Why You Will Fail to Have a Great Career

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 22:40:19 +0200

Why You Will Fail to Have a Great Career

Can’t stop singing: Here Comes Another Bubble!

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 00:31:55 +0200

Can’t stop singing: Here Comes Another Bubble!

You Are Missing a Great Opportunity If You're Not Sharing The Whole Story

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:31:18 +0200

It’s been a couple of months since I got together with Jakub Konecny and started working on Vocablr.com.

For those of you who don’t know, Vocablr is a web application that helps you learn new vocabulary; it aims to make the learning process as easy, quick and entertaining as possible. But more on that later.

I’ve just realized that I’ve been missing on a great opportunity lately. An opportunity to document everything that happens around Vocablr, from the absolute beginning.

The thing is that it’s very difficult to guess whether Vocablr eventually will or won’t become a successful start up. Consequently, it would be a great mistake to look at it only as a way of becoming rich as hell, since those millions of dollars every startup founder dreams of are very, very, very, very far away. On the other hand, it seems to be a good idea to focus on the process of building the stuff itself. It’s hard to truly understand everything I’ve learned and found out about doing business since we started, because all progress has happened gradually over time.

If I do this, if I perceive everything I do on Vocablr only as a way of gaining new skills, there is no reason why I couldn’t share everything that happens. …and when I say everything, I really do mean everything.

I was writing an active blog in the past and I understand the importance of blogging. Perhaps, if I really spend some time writing this blog, the relationships I might gain through the blog can be far more important than the Vocablr itself.

If you find something interesting, please, do leave a commentary.

I hope, you’ll enjoy this attempt to build a successful start up together with me and we all will learn a lot from this amazing experience.

P.S: A great article about getting the attention of the press has been recently released at onstartups.com. Enjoy!

Live your dream [inspirational video]

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 22:59:39 +0100

Live your dream [inspirational video]

Humanity in 2012 / Care / Make things happen.

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 00:47:56 +0100

Humanity in 2012 / Care / Make things happen.

6 Rules for Success by Arnold Schwarzenegger

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:33:07 +0100

Inspirational and catchy video mashup created from Schwarzenegger’s speech. Enjoy.

No arms, no legs, no worries.

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 01:29:42 +0100

I’ve seen this video a long time ago, so when I came across it today I’ve already knew it was worth watching.

Invest a couple of minutes into watching these videos and they might inspire you, indeed.

Ryanair's CEO on Innovation

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:42:38 +0100

If you’ve had a tough day this is the video you need to see.

Ryanair’s CEO Michael O’Leary had been invited to speak about innovation at conference held in Brussels. Hell, what a great speaker he is…

Are we in control of our own decisions?

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 21:36:00 +0100

You think you’re an autonomous human being, right? Well, there’s a must-see TED video for you, then.

Photo

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:22:27 +0100

The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 01:13:32 +0100

95% is good enough

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 13:00:09 +0100

Finding the balance between “good enough” and “perfect” is always difficult. I’ve realised that I often strive for perfectionism, even when it makes no sense.

Two days ago I was assembling a new web server for a website of a mathematical competition. A friend of mine came along asking if he could help. Suddenly, we put the machine together in ~45 minutes. It’d take me hours, if I were doing it all by myself.

I doubt that the friend had more experience with assembling computers than I had, he just didn’t feel the need for doing everything super-carefully.

This is my point. If it’s possible to achieve 95% of the perfect result in just a fraction of the time required for perfectness, I think it’s worth it.

Of course, this cannot be applied in every case - finding the balance is always difficult. 95%, however, seem to be “good enough” in most cases.

On Passion and Perseverance

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:03:40 +0100

I’ve just watched the Pirates of the Silicon Valley, again.

I remember watching the movie a few years ago. The main thing which resonated in my mind back then was the ‘black’ background of the whole industry - the practice of stealing ideas.

However, apart from pointing out that a business might be an ugly fight sometimes, there is another idea hidden there.

The motivation. If the passion of Gates and Jobs building the industry was in reality half of its representation in the movie, it was enormous. The same applies to the Zuckerberg’s cinematic alter ego. Indeed, their passion, their belief that they were changing the world might be only an unhealthy influence of Hollywood production. But I don’t think so.

I think that being ‘manic’ matters. You’ve got to believe that your time is well-spent. You’ve got to feel that your work has its purpose.

You’ve got to trust yourself. If you don’t, nobody else will.

"JavaScript should be illegal as the other kinds of black magic are."

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 21:50:00 +0200

“JavaScript should be illegal as the other kinds of black magic are.”

- Me after spending ages debugging malfunctioning JavaScript code.