For a number of years I have been invited to give a series of talks at Florida International University’s School of Computing and Information Sciences and at the University of Miami’s College of Engineering. Both schools asked me to elaborate on my experiences as a software engineer at a Fortune 500 company and about what it’s like to start a company in Silicon Valley.
This past Tuesday, (November 2nd) I was invited to FIU to chat about what I thought was going to be about the challenges of going mobile and how Ansca — with its Corona SDK — solved the problem of platform fragmentation with iOS and Android devices. With FIU being far removed from Silicon Valley, I figured the students would benefit not only from listening to my “pitch” about Corona, (salesman hat on!) but also about the mobile landscape, in general.
To my surprise, FIU, announced the event under “Entrepreneurship” and the title of the session was Entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. Usually, the sessions last about an hour: a 30-minute talk and 30-minute Q&A. Curiously enough, the session on Tuesday went on for almost three hours! We started at 6:30pm, and I answered the last Q&A question around 9:40, as the maintanence workers were about to lock up.
Unfortunately, nobody had an SD card big enough to record the entire 3-hour session. But luckily, I had done a presentation on entrepreneurship before where I shared my experiences as an entrepreneur — from having an idea to closing $1.5 million in Series A funding from Merus Capital.
Carlos
Your work on corona is remarkble. Keep the good work!
Very best regards
Joao Martinho Moura
Hi Carlos! I just watched the presentation and #3 (brutally honest) I was wondering about: does it always have to be about shouting and yelling at each other?
I think what you’re trying to say is that the conversation may get loud and emotional but you still have to be able to respect each other afterwards. I think this is more about respect than honesty.
Because most lies are told calmly, even between the lines, and they can do much more harm because the other person will suspect that something’s not right, without actually knowing, creating a culture of caution if not distrust.
I’ve seen and I’ve been into business meetings to prepare for actually telling lies. What do we say if they ask the critical questions? Answer: we lie, cheat and deceive, we bend reality, or we simply don’t know. It happened so often that I considered it normal behavior in business but deep inside I always wished we could just tell the truth, and focus on what’s good and already working well rather than avoiding the topics that currently aren’t doing so well.
Great thoughts on entrepreneurship. I wish I was on the west coast so we could have a chat over lunch and beers 🙂
Ansca is doing great job from my perspective. You certainly open up the mobile market to less technical, but highly creative people.
Congratulations!
@Carlos Just would like to thank you for doing that very sincere video.
Gracias por vos ser este empresario “diferente”! Usted no tienes idea como eso es algo muy especial. 🙂
Saludos hermano,
Rodrigo.