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Startup life isn’t easy.

I’ve only done it for 3 months so I’m still pretty new at it. I never figured it would be easy, but every day is an uphill battle.

You gotta be prepared to scramble.

By that I mean, able to address some glaring task that suddenly needs your immediate attention. Ability to hit deadlines. Do some things you’ve never done before. Quickly switch between tasks and juggle a bunch of things going on at the same time. But always keep on moving forward. It’s like you gotta be the king of scrambles*.

I feel like my startup has momentum and that’s part of the reason I decided to do it full-time. There’s no way that we could have gotten this far by doing it part time. It requires a lot of effort to get an idea off the ground. Much more than I realised.

I also have a lot more respect now for people that who run their own business whether its big or small. Whether its company with 15 staff to the owner of the local fruit store. Its actually a lot of hard work.

In the last few days, I’ve been working on product, reviewing designs, testing, talking to a lawyer, fixing our content, experimenting with Facebook ads, and organising translations of our app store descriptions. We’re now on the Korean and German Android market in those respective languages, with more to come. I also dedicate some time to finance and capital raising.

We’ve done some important things and hit some milestones. We launched a lite version, exhibited at Techcrunch Disrupt Beijing in October and now at 600 users.

I just gotta keep scrambling =)

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*Brazilian jiu-jitsu grappler Marcelo Garcia is known as “king of the scrambles”. He’s a 4 time world champ and 3 time ADCC champion. Garcia often competed and won in the absolute division which is a pound for pound competition with no weight class limitations and could be giving up 20-30 kilos to larger competitors. He simply had an ability to win against larger opponents with superior technique and an advanced understanding of leverage. In startup life, you have to be prepared to move and dance against much larger opponents, be nimble and agile, take their back and execute ruthlessly =)

This is a cool upcoming doco about Air Force 1′s, probably the most famous sneaker out there, along with Chuck Taylors, Jordans, Nike Air Max and Tigers!

I must admit I have a pair of Cloverdale Park 25th Anniversary Edition Air Force 1′s. They are actually a bit tight, making them a bit uncomfortable and they are kinda heavy. But that’s more a sizing issue as they only had limited sizes when I bought them at the Nike Factory.

There’s a lot of documentaries about Nike Air Force 1. This particular documentary is part of WBF (World Basketball Festival) in New York which is sponsored by Nike. This looks like an awesome 4 days of celebrating the best sport in the world (MMA/UFC is second).

Nike also created this series of online docos called 1Love, which highlights the 5 boroughs in New York (Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Bronx, Manhattan). They also have a video for Harlem, but I don’t think Harlem is a borough, and there’s no video for Manhattan. But enjoy nonetheless!

If you want to check more video’s look here:

Air Force 1, Part 1
Air Force 1, part 2
Top 100 Air Force 1 (Prolly my most favourite video, especially part 2)

I will never understand why people do sports like this….it must the rush, the adrenalin, overcoming your fears and the risk involved. I cringed when I saw some of those injuries.

Anyhow, this is pure co-incidence – but at work we did a creative exercise where we created online display ads for a fictious energy drink, Fuqu. Then I came across the new Redbull website. I really like what Redbull is doing with its video content. They are positioning it with an adventure / extreme sport image. Redbull is associated with skateboarding, BMX riding, flying planes etc… It’s very cool.

I don’t really drink redbull these days (as they are bad for your health!). However, their videos are very slick and their marketing strategy is very good, particularly with social media. Check out their facebook page and integration with twitter. Redbull sponsored athletes provide Twitter updates and the feed is aggregated onto the facebook page.

I’m out like major wipeouts,

Matt

NRL has started and is now in round 2, and the AFL is about to kick off. What better way than to show case both season launch ads. Now I’m not an AFL fan, other than a Sydney Swans supporter by virtue of being from Sydney. However, I do  think that the AFL ad is better. C’mon NRL, step yo game up!

AFL Season Launch Ad 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oxpyRreruU]

NRL Season Launch Ad 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgxGWvaPz6w]

I’m out like the offseason, 

Matthew Ho