This book was born from a string of failures with my first startup company, Blue Storm Engineering. Blue Storm is the sign on the Mayan calendar that represents the epic struggle between good and evil. It was part of George Lucas's inspiration to write Star Wars. The Blue Storm is the evil empire with the support of the Storm Troopers. The Blue Storm is followed by the Yellow Sun, which is the age of enlightenment, which is when the Dark Side has been defeated.
The story starts with my going to audio engineering school when I was 19 in 2001 and being a jazz trumpet player at Lane Community College (LCC) in Eugene Oregon, home of the Oregon Ducks football team. I got into producing music and computer programming in 2003. I messed around a bit with 3D graphics and then attempted to do a failed music career. From 2004 to 2005 I developed my own Widget Toolkit in Java only to have it whipped out in a hard-drive crash because I wasn't using revision control. Years worth of code got wiped out in an instant causing me to give up on the widget toolkit.
I invented the product that I would later start a startup company based on called the Symmetry Live in 2007. It began as a paper drawing of a MIDI Controller for controlling software synthesizers and drum machines with what I call an Isymmetric Human User Interface, which is a neat design that allows you to control and split up a symmetrical MIDI controller around a LCD monitor up to control 4 devices.
There are all kinds of reasons why the Symmetry Live is a classic Case Study in what can go right and wrong in a technology invention startup. I was in love with this product. Let me tell you, it did everything. I put in the kitchen sink and kept throwing every feature I could all in one monster that was sadly unmanageable by a single person who isn't superman. This book is about how I tackled the challenge by myself without any help and a warning to readers about exactly how miserable it was for my family and I. I'm writing this book to help you avoid the mistakes I made.
After I invented the Symmetry Live I tried to built it but realized that I didn't know what I was doing. I then shortly after had a child in 2008 while I was attempting a to be a down-tempo electronic musician. I needed a good job so I reenrolled in a transfer degree program at LCC to study electronics.
My baby's mother went down the toilet and I lost custody of my son to my son's maternal grandmother because I could not afford an attorney and she told a bunch of lies you would need to be an attorney to have caught and I didn't do my legal research. I had to be my own attorney, write countless hours of court papers, and loose in court multiple times.
I eventually transferred Portland State University (PSU) in 2010 for a BS in computer engineering, and shortly after stopped playing music and did engineering non-stop as a basement dweller in the PSU Engineering Building. I was fortunate enough to get a small grant from the Oregon Lottery IDA Program to get enough electronics making equipment where I had a nice lab to be a broke college student and invent in. I worked tirelessly all day for years.
Everything was going good until half way through my junior year. I used up too much financial aid at LCC, the school didn't tell me I was going to run out, and I had to drop out in 2013, which is when the work on this book began. I got into the Eugene Startup scene through startup events at the Fertilab Thinkubator, a business accelerator in Eugene and I worked on my technology and went to startup events for years.
During this time I invented Script and started the Kabuki Toolkit from my 3D graphics work. From the years of 2008 through 2018 I worked all by myself with no help and it was miserable. I was stuck at my mom's house, I could only see my son 1/3 of the time. I was so traumatizing that I developed PTSD from Legal Abuse Syndrome, which is where you're traumatized by being innocent and convicted guilty because you have to live in a prolonged state of trauma.
During this time I built sound cards, power supplies, light controllers, MIDI controllers, plant watering controllers, a genetic polygonal shape finder, invented a software-defined network protocol (i.e. internet that can morph over time), designed a professional C++ SDK, wrote two books, made lots of art, designed a self-assembling photonic neural net, and taught kids how to program video games in my free time through the CoderDojo (which is a super cool place to volunteer BTW).
It was a lot of work. I started without newb engineering skills, I got distracted by every shinny object, and I was not able to complete my first product, my baby the Symmetry Live, in a timely manner without the knowledge in this book. I eventually had a mid-life crisis. It was a crushing defeat I would not wish on my worse enemies because it would cause an innocent child to suffer. I had no money, no girlfriend, very few friends, and limited time with my beloved son.
I eventually made it back to PSU in 2016 because the tuition costs gave me some more financial aid, then discovered my son's maternal grandmother had committed fraud. School was hassling me over some failed classes and it caused the PTSD to return. It wasn't just a little bit bad, it was rock bottom; though a dope addict may have a much worse rock bottom story, it was my rock bottom. The only ray of hope in my life was Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Entrepreneurship, and Design (STEM-ED). So I suffered trough engineering school as a basement dweller locked up in a closet with the rest of the grad students and I hacked on code till I had a competitive product I could sell that I was proud.
Over this time I learned the techniques in this book in order to teach myself to stop getting distracted by shinny objects and actually get the work done. Much of this book is coming from the perspective of Chief Technology Officer who is a poor CEO and over explains fine details in a distracting confusing way. I had to learn to tone down the geek speech, be ultra productive, compete in today's rapidly changing technology landscape, and keep laser focus using the techniques described in this book.
Eventually, because of getting back into engineering school and studying some AI, I came across the notion of treating startups like a finite state machine, and applying artificial intelligence to maximize the chances of success using the Business Model Canvases State Machine, and this book's place in history was then set. This book is about training your Startup State Machine to get accurate and precise cost and weight calculations and Analytics and to minimize time to market and development costs and maximize flow state development time and product quality.
Copyright 2014-22 © Cale McCollough; most rights reserved, Third-party commercialization prohibited, mandatory improvement donations, licensed under the Kabuki Strong Source-available License that YOU MUST CONSENT TO at https://github.com/CookingWithCale/AStartupCookbook.