Hailin's Weblog

LinkedIn 是硅谷少数有专业心理学家作职场辅导的公司。今天和两位著名心理学家交流如何在个人成长中调整心态的话题，白发苍苍的吉姆博士提到有个叫作 Foundational Weakness （根本弱点）的特征，似乎是有生据来的弱点，心理辅导也不会有功效。他拿自己举例 － 他自己找不到归属感，从小时长大的波兰天主教社区，到纽约大都会，到现在到硅谷。他在LinkedIn 美丽到园区行走，会常常觉得自己不属于这儿。

其实我们每个人都有根本弱点。有人一辈子生活在无穷无尽的忧虑之中，有人脾气暴躁，有人天生骄傲自大，有人天生自卑自弃，有人在成功也找不到成就感。我和上八年纪孩子谈论这个话题时，他自告奋勇地承认他也有个根本弱点，就是他吃糖果必定要按颜色分成红黄绿紫，然后先吃绿的。

造物主创造宇宙万物，甚是美好，最后按自己形象造人的时候，深知拥有智慧的人将来的骄傲，叛逆和堕落，于是给每个人以不完全的个性，以免有人将来因自己的完美在神面前夸口。

始祖亚当夏娃犯罪之时，罪就进入人类，在人肉体心灵的体现就是不完美。人再也没有神的完美和荣光。于是有限的人在追求无限中消亡。在追求良善中落入罪孽, 在追求真理中落入迷茫，在追求生命中落入死亡。

我们人只有依靠神才能对付自己的根本弱点。哥林多后书 12:9 说：
他对我说：「我的恩典够你用的，因为我的能力是在人的软弱上显得完全。」所以，我更喜欢夸自己的软弱，好叫基督的能力覆庇我。腓立比书4:12 说：我靠着那加给我力量的，凡事都能做。然而，你们和我同受患难原是美事。

原来造物主的奇妙竟然也体现在我们的弱点中。

陋室空堂，当年笏满床；衰草枯杨，曾为歌舞场。
蛛丝儿结满雕梁，绿纱今又糊在蓬窗上。

凡事都有定期，天下万务都有定时。生有时，死有时；栽种有时，拔出所栽种的也有时；杀戮有时，医治有时；拆毁有时，建造有时；哭有时，笑有时；哀恸有时，跳舞有时；抛掷石头有时，堆聚石头有时；怀抱有时，不怀抱有时；寻找有时，失落有时；保守有时，舍弃有时；撕裂有时，缝补有时；静默有时，言语有时；喜爱有时，恨恶有时；争战有时，和好有时。

说什么脂正浓，粉正香，如何两鬓又成霜？

你趁着年幼、衰败的日子尚未来到，就是你所说，我毫无喜乐的那些年日未曾临近之先，当记念造你的主。不要等到日头、光明、月亮、星宿变为黑暗，雨后云彩反回。

 昨日黄土陇头送白骨，今宵红灯帐底卧鸳鸯。

 凡你手所当做的事要尽力去做；因为在你所必去的阴间没有工作，没有谋算，没有知识，也没有智慧。

 金满箱，银满箱，展眼乞丐人皆谤。

他怎样从母胎赤身而来，也必照样赤身而去；他所劳碌得来的，手中分毫不能带去。

 正叹他人命不长，那知自己归来丧！

 不要行义过分，也不要过于自逞智慧，何必自取败亡呢？不要行恶过分，也不要为人愚昧，何必不到期而死呢？
无人有权力掌管生命，将生命留住；也无人有权力掌管死期；这场争战，无人能免；邪恶也不能救那好行邪恶的人。

 活着的人知道必死；死了的人毫无所知，也不再得赏赐；他们的名无人记念。他们的爱，他们的恨，他们的嫉妒，早都消灭了。在日光之下所行的一切事上，他们永不再有分了。

训有方，保不定日后作强梁。
择膏粱，谁承望流落在烟花巷！
因嫌纱帽小，致使锁枷杠，

原来人也不知道自己的定期。鱼被恶网圈住，鸟被网罗捉住，祸患忽然临到的时候，世人陷在其中也是如此。

昨怜破袄寒，今嫌紫蟒长：

 见日光之下，快跑的未必能赢；力战的未必得胜；智慧的未必得粮食；明哲的未必得资财；灵巧的未必得喜悦。所临到众人的是在乎当时的机会。

乱烘烘你方唱罢我登场，反认他乡是故乡。

已过的世代，无人记念；将来的世代，后来的人也不记念。

甚荒唐，到头来都是为他人作嫁衣裳！

人一生虚度的日子，就如影儿经过，谁知道什么与他有益呢？谁能告诉他身后在日光之下有什么事呢？因为世人遭遇的，兽也遭遇，所遭遇的都是一样：这个怎样死，那个也怎样死，气息都是一样。人不能强于兽，都是虚空。都归一处，都是出于尘土，也都归于尘土。

We were taken by surprise when Draw Something became #1 mobile game, and subsequently the company that made it was snapped by Zynga for over $200 million. Despite all the management issues during its short history, Airy Labs had a all-star engineering team that produced the best pictionary game prior to Draw Something’s overnight success.

In a cool summer night in late June 2011, Calvin Low and I were walking outside the AOL building in Palo Alto, and we were brainstorming all sorts of game ideas. Calvin said “we should do a pictionary game, it’s fun”. This is a guy who created two separate million+ DAU facebook games, so I’ve always trusted his opinion.

Our small team quickly created Mini Painters and released it in the first week of September. It was the best in the category – with best UI, art and synchronous game play. The engineering work was marvelous – the game runs on both iOS and Android seamlessly. Users gave 5 star ratings and we knew the game will be evergreen because it’s a magical platform that elevates users imagination to draw things.

Then why did we miss the chance to turn the budding success into a hit game?

The single biggest reason is that we intentionally left out facebook integration. Airy Labs mission was to create education games for kids, and kids are not on facebook.  This self-imposed limit essentially eliminated the viral nature of the game, and prevents users from playing with their facebook friends directly.

The second reason is that we missed the window to enhance the game further. Between September 2011 and December, Airy Labs did not do any promotion of this (or any) game. With a small promotional effort in mid December 2011, we quickly saw the huge popularity of this game.  Users loved it, there were over 500,000 downloads and the average play session was over 30 minutes! The number of concurrent users  once reached close to a thousand, crashing our backend servers. I wrote an email to the team “I think we may have a hit in our hands now!”

When OMGPOP saw similar trends, they quickly focused the whole company on their hit.  We didn’t. We were driven to work extremely hard on a much more complex game, writing another 40,000 lines of code between December 2011 and early Feb 2012, until the whole company collapsed under poor management.

On the other hand, the OMGPOP team struggled for years until they find this hit swiftly, so they definitely deserve this success.

“We missed the lottery ticket by one digit”, we joked when we meet with each other nowadays.

2010 was a great year and I spent it with a great company named Playdom, which was started by three young entrepreneurs about three years ago and became one of the biggest success stories in silicon valley.

On Jan 11 2010, I joined Playdom’s “special force” team led by cofounder Ling Xiao.  The mission of the team was to create popular Facebook games extremely fast.  The team consisted of four best engineers and two artists.  Within four weeks, we released Tiki Resort,  a fun virtual island building game that amassed 18 million users and reached 1.5 million daily active users! (English version reached 1.2 million DAU, Chinese version reached 400K DAU).  This demonstrates how much a small but highly capable team can achieve in this fast growing space.

Playdom experience changed how I perceive technology.  While in graduate school, I used to think it’s best to create most profound technology and to write the most complex algorithms. In fact, that is what I did right after graduation – I did three years of heavy weight lifting in FreeBSD kernel.  Then in 2007, I realized that it’s not really how hard the technology is that matters, it’s how relevant it is.  At that time, I thought WordPress, which was emerging as a popular open source blogging solution, is really relevant to many people, so I joined Automattic.  Sadly, at the same time, I bypassed a chance to join Twitter.  Playdom experience taught me that a technology is most useful if it’s both relevant and fun, and when it can generate a lot of revenue at the same time!

Playdom is an amazing company filled with smart and driven people. The concentration of talents is staggering – I used to walk down the hallway, and ask random engineers “did you graduate from Berkeley?”, and was sure that in more than 50% cases, the answer will be “yes, how did you know that?”.  Playdom founders are elite school graduates and PhDs, so they have pretty accurate instinct to pick the right talents.  In fact, that is essentially the key reason for its early success: when it only had about 30 people, it generated over $30 million revenue in the first year!

It’s not an easy decision to leave Playdom and start my own venture.  Under my perfect calm appearance, I know I’m always a risk taker.  In 1996, when I first came to U.S. after college, I carried two boxes, one filled with clothe the other with books, and I could barely speak any English. In 2004, I received the very first PhD in computer science in  University of Denver’s 147-year history. (DU offered PhD in computer science and mathematics prior to 2004).  During the past few years, I’ve had the privilege to work with some of the best entrepreneurs in silicon valley, such as Matt and Ling, and are always inspired to see how a tiny seed can grow into a giant tree.

Looks like it’s going to be a fun journey.

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