MindValley Blog

Jules, the giant stuffed tiger is usually spotted on the couch, near the water supply, or doing customer support.

However, thanks to Facebook, I spotted pictured of him crowdsurfing at a private event at a swanky club called Heritage Mansion.

Trusted sources told me that he was crowdsurfing to a remix of a popular song by “The Killers”.

On Monday, when I asked him about it, he said..

“It wasn’t me.”

He told me to go away, as he was busy on an important new MindValley project.

In this picture it seems, a MindValley shirt is under the jacket. Hmm…

I told him it’s okay, MindValley people crowdsurf all the time. Besides, it’s a great time to celebrate, we just got awarded the World’s Most Democratic Workplace.

He still insists he was reading books on a Friday night… I guess I will just have to believe him.

If you have extra evidence to prove otherwise, please leave a comment.

MindValley was just recognized by WorldBlu as one of the Most Democratic Workplaces of 2008!

First of all, this award would not have been possible without any of you at MindValley and I wanted to thank all of you for having taken MindValley this far.  Special thanks go out to Jiangti, KhaiLee, Janne, Wu Han, and Kenneth, who have been a huge inspiration and have contributed a tremendous amount to take MindValley to the next level in terms of leadership, cooperation, and developing a culture that focuses on rapid innovation, constant learning, and of course for developing a far more democratic workplace.

So, what makes MindValley democratic?

Funny that you ask because we are actually working on a book on what makes MindValley tick.  I want to thank KhaiLee for helping us to crystallize our ideas and leading this initiative.  If I had to pick two words, I would say that what makes us tick is

Agile Entrepreneurship

Go grab your copy now and look inside the MindValley machine.

http://www.agileentrepreneurship.com

As MindValley grows in new people and new ventures - how can we maximize happiness and profit?

Let’s tap the brain of a guy who funded 80 startups with a total of about 200 founders, with a pretty good hit rate (conception to acquisition / profitability).

Yes, it’s Paul Graham. One of my favorite brains to tap.

Read his essay "You weren’t meant to have a boss" as he talks about

• Optimal group size for work
• The way humans naturally work in groups
• Struggles in designing a structure to avoid becoming a "big company"
• Lions hunting in the wild

In the article, he ponders the same problems we are trying to solve….

"A large organization could only avoid slowing down if they avoided tree structure. And since human nature limits the size of group that can work together, the only way I can imagine  for larger groups to avoid tree structure would be to have no structure: to have each group actually be independent, and to work together the way components of a market economy do.

That might be worth exploring. I suspect there are already some highly partitionable businesses that lean this way. But I don’t know any technology companies that have done it." ~ Paul Graham, from "You weren’t meant to have a boss"

Personally, I want to solve this problem. Not theoretically, but I want it to work in action. It’s a great problem to solve, as the solution (perhaps lessons other organizations and startups can use) will unlock a world of talent, innovation, and happiness at work.

Solving this might take some fancy experiments with organizational structure, radical thinking, consistent hard work, a bit of patience, and a group of people who dare… which is why I’m grateful to solve this with MindValley.

We’re doing some crazy stuff right now, but I’ll only talk about it when we have RESULTS. Till then, do share your workplace experiments and thoughts, if any.

I was digging through old photos when I chanced upon this unflattering picture of me.

That’s me in early 2006, a week or two after I joined MindValley.

Here are some things you NEED to know about that picture

• It was taken in a super old and moldy office we used to camp in, when MindValley first arrived in Malaysia, all those years ago.
• The old second hand couch in the picture was soon re-upholstered (is that the word?) with new funky cloth. It has since found a new home the "sexy area" of our current office.
• The photo does not accurately represent the actual width of my thighs.

When I think about it… two years is a LONG time (especially in internet time). To my surprise, I still feel "fresh" - so many new skills to master, so much room to grow, and new adventures ahead.

It seems MindValley speeds up with age.

In the past few weeks alone, we’ve picked up so much pace, I’m still trying to hang on for dear life. I’m not exaggerating. It’s still too early to talk about it, but let’s just say we’ve been awfully quiet on the blog recently for very good reasons…

I think Mike or Vishen will blog about it soon enough.

For now, it’s 1am and I’m dreaming about what the following months will be like. It’s as though all the different pieces I’ve been working over the past two years is coming together… and it feels like a brand new day…

I am currently studying “Get Altitude” and one of the key lessons that Eban emphasized was:

1) STOP Multi-tasking 

I could not agree more.  This is a disease!  For whatever reason people are obsessed with multi-tasking (think email, IM, Skype, Twitter, etc.) and accept constant interruption. Being a great multi-tasker is not something to be proud of! 

You must be able to get into FLOW at which point your productivity and also creativity and enjoyment of what you are doing reach a max.  Getting into FLOW while multi-tasking is impossible.  So, always try to chunk your time.  Spend 1-2 hours on a task, then take a break but whatever you do, try to stop multi-tasking. 

It’s always good to take a step back once in a while and be reminded of what is important.  Eban also stresses the importance of having intense experiences both at and outside of work.  If you don’t, then you just get tired and burn yourself out. 

Thanks Kamal for putting these up. And organizing these fabulous meetups! You’re a legend in the Kuala Lumpur web2.0 scene.

OK so here it is.

A video of Talat, our chief mathematician, presenting “The Impact of Higher Mathematics on The World Wide Web”.

Powerful nuggets in the above video (or at least for me)…

• Mathematics is a tool to see beyond intuition.
• People are hardwired to look for certainty, not probability.

And if you get to minute 12 onwards, it will get pretty hilarious. Talat takes us into the n th dimension. Or maybe it’s just my sense of humor, I don’t know. You can here me laughing in the background of the video.

And then there is me, telling the story… “How Ruby on Rails made my teenage WET dreams come true”.

Apart from Talat and myself, former MindValley uber geek Aslak spoke. As well as and ex-Googler turned investor Colin Wong.

From what supposed to be a Ruby on Rails meet up… it has sorta blossomed into a full on web2.0 and innovation gathering, sponsored by MDeC. How many people turned up? 50!

Yeah it’s not huge, but I’d like to think, it’s the beginning of a very exciting journey :)

Here we go again.

Working with a new partner. Launching the next milliondollar brand. Driving adoption of a new web app (like Bunch Out).

This happens very often in MindValley and I always find myself dancing around the same question… What can we do to make this spread like wildfire? (That’s me in the picture, in deep thought)

And this is the most fun part of my work. Memetics, marketing, and how to present your idea in very infectious way.

While I’m not the world renowned experts on this (yet), just wanted to share a quote, and few links you might find useful if you’re thinking about such questions too.

“Language is the dress of thought”
~18th century lexicographer Samuel Johnson

Links related to memetics, viral marketing etc.

• How does a bestseller happen? Case study in hitting #1 on the NY Times Bestseller.
• Essential reading! “For every viral meme or scheme, we should identify the emotional response. We can then ask ourselves, “Why does this cause me to feel this way?”
• Want to create change? Tell a story. “Successful marketers don’t talk about features or benefits, they just tell great stories.”
• What makes an idea viral? By Seth Godin
• More case studies. “In the online world, memes are the currency of word-of-mouth marketing.”

If you have related links or ideas, please share :)

Maybe it was one of these flash of genius, which come into your mind while sitting on the toilet or having a shower (we all have these moments, right?).

Eventually it all happened out of an adrenaline flush of excitement (that sometimes happens in the office for different reasons). Or one day Nika, our designated Video Editor, was sick of always putting other people into the right light.

Suddenly she decided to step out of the shadow… Watch

“I am an AIESECer” starring MindValley’s Nika (>> she is one of US <<)

Got the message? Now don’t panic if you did not understand everything - it is in Polish! Even we at MindValley needed an extra round of watching it - though we manage to get Nika’s message everyday:

This video is for all of you out there somewhere, who are willing to rock the world. This message goes to everybody interested in extraordinary experiences across borders. This video encourages you to take action.

Obviously this video’s intention spread pretty fast: just a few days after its launch it had been rated among YouTube’s top-watched videos.

I can appease you - so far Nika is still the lovely and unboastful girl next door :-) Despite her broadcast success no appearance of star allures…

Socialrank has launched! Hallo - everybody in the office:

has OFFICIALLY launched!!!

Of course, people working at MindValley are aware of this BIG THING called Socialrank. It has been secretly happening for quite a while now inside magnificent brains behind our locked office doors.

It is just that everybody at MindValley is sooo involved in one of the many big things happening everyday at MindValley that sometimes we need to wave with a fence post (as we call it in Germany) to make everyone aware of really REALLY outstanding things you want them to celebrate with you.

Here you go - our fence post:

October 1st was supposed to be a remarkable day in Socialrank history. At the end of an exhausting day I mobilized my last energy reserve and cheered at Caroline. She turned to me, looking exhausted and relaxed at the same time like I picture a mother holding her child after being in labor for quite a while (just still inspired by my last blog post - sorry Caroline…).

Since a selected group of bloggers, next to the (of course likewise selected) MindValley staff, have been invited two weeks ago for an early preview on 30 Socialrank Websites all of us already embosomed our favorite socialrank niche pages.

Me personally - I can’t remember what I did first thing in the morning when I woke up and simultaneously went online. Nowadays I check the hottest post on productivityzen.com that could help me making my day (with a 93,7% chance).

So from now on Jiangti will do less nightly excursions to the office, I hope. At three AM in the morning after Mike & Michelle’s wedding party I caught him on his way to the office solving freaking socialrank coding problems.

Wow… this is passion - people!!! It brings me back to the mother in labor picture, but let’s blank this out for a second.

I asked Jiangti recently about his sleeping habits: “Just like a baby.” he replied. (I guess I will save my comment on that :-o)

In an exclusive interview on LOS CREADOR, Vishen was probed for the real story behind the story.

Juicy questions include…. How did you and Mike meet? Is there any interesting anecdote involving you two?

What’s the next big thing we can expect from the Mindvalley stable?

You can read the interview here. Admittedly, no one was unclothed in the interview process.