Ameer Abbas Ali

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What are your top 5 pieces of advice for entrepreneurs?

#1. Stop sketching and start building. Pre-dodgeball I went thru 3-4 years thinking I was going to meet some magical engineer who would build all the stuff I was thinking about. But I never met that person, so I taught myself ASP and MS Access (yikes! eventually PHP an MySQL) out of a book and got to work just hacking stuff together. I’m still a really shitty programmer (ask Harry Heymann) but I know enough to hack a prototype together (which is what you need to get other people / investors on board).

#2. Don’t let people tell you your ideas won’t work. I also went through a few years of this before I realized I prob just saw the world differently that the people who said the stuff I was excited about wouldn’t work or that people wouldn’t want it / use it. If you’re passionate about an idea that’s stuck in your head, find a way to build it so you can prove to yourself that it doesn’t work.

#3. Build early and often. Alex and I lived by this in grad school and with dodgeball. We’d roll out half-baked features a few times every week and were more worried about getting stuff in the hands of users than making sure it was perfect or actually worked. We do the same kind of stuff with the foursquare prototype at SXSW 2009 (giving ourselves a deadline by which the thing HAD to be working – at which point we still though people would laugh as the idea of “life as a game”) and we still do it now – hacking on things internally to see how they “feel” long before they’re launched.

#4. Don’t let a lack of technology get in the way. This is the biggest lesson I learned from from days at Vindigo (Palm Pilot cityguide, people!) – if there’s something you want to build, but the tech isn’t there yet just find the closest possible way to make it happen. Vindigo was a mobile city guide before devices had GPS or network connections – they just compressed all the data like mad, combined it with slick UX and *asked the user to self report their location* (in a world without GPS – when everyone was talking about these services being mainstream “in 18 months” – the Vindigo co-founders build something amazing by simply asking the user to do some of the work). We borrowed a similar playbook w/ dodgeball – no GPS on phones? Who cares! Just ask the user to tell you where they are! Is it elegant? Not really. Does it get the point across? Yes. If you’re thinking of doing anything in an emerging space – RFID, near-field presence, iPods that trade files on the street, connecting strangers in a room – just find some way to hack it together. Even if it’s not ideal, your thinking will be advanced enough so that when the iPhone 5 with built-in near field RFID and 100 hours of battery life comes to market, you’ll have the foundation in place (both tech & your understanding of what works / what doesn’t) to make your ideas a reality. (and if you are thinking about this space, use our API – it’s pretty advanced in terms of “who’s with whom” and “personal history” – we build this stuff because we needed it, and built an API so that other people could use it too

#5. Hire the best people you can find. This was kind of easy in the early days of foursquare – we hired our friends who were really passionate about the stuff they were building (most had other location+mobile+social side projects or startups). We have a superstar team not just because their resumes are so strong, but because they’ve been passionate, thinking about and tinkering in this space forever. Those are the people you want to surround yourself with.

Bonus #6: Don’t get distracted. If your stuff ends up taking off, just put your head down and keep plugging away. Don’t get distracted by haters talking shit or the bigger guys copying you. We’ve got so many ideas of things we want to build and this is probably going to be our best shot at getting them out to millions of users. Focusing on what we’re doing is the best way to make that happen. Getting distracted by all the dust we’re kicking up is not.

Hope that helps.

Dennis Crowley is one of the founders of FourSquare. This was some recent advice shared on Quora which I thought cool and beneficial enough to post here.

This is the view from Kursi.

Here some really gorgeous places not too far from Amman. On the way to Salt there are some beautiful valleys.

Perhaps the most interesting place in Qatar is the new Islamic museum, which is situated in the heart of Doha and next to the Indian ocean.

I was pleasantly surprised to really enjoy the exhibits. There were also paintings from the Netherlands, by masters such as Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan van der Heyden, Adrian van de velde, Jan van Huysum amongst many other works, all loaned by the rijksmuseum. Unfortunately, I was unable to take photos of this art pieces as it was forbidden

However, check out the following super wonderful exhibits from the rest of the museum, which covers art from all around the islamic world, from Ottoman Turkey through to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

This was really cool. Once you enter the main Ottoman room, you come across this armored horse and ottoman warrior. It’s very imposing and standing in front of it, you have a very vulnerable feeling.

This is the sword of sultan the magnificent.

This next batch of items is from
India.. India has a long Islamic history with the moguls and the Muslim princes who came along later. Art and craftsmanship was very important to them as can be seen in the next few pieces, and the level of detail that went into them.

A typical Qatari road.

This is near suq al waqif. You will find that a lot of labourers lie outside on the grass havin lunch and chatting with their friends.

There is a market and a mosque nearby.

This is the newly built Islamic Museum. It overlooks the Indian ocean, and has amazing historic objects and art exhibits. I will make a separate post with those items.

Villagio is a new shopping mall which has been made to resemble Venice, complete with pogodas to take people down canals under a painted sky ceiling.. And along streams of busy shoppers and the usual global brands.

Some photos I took in Amman city.

Hi there, my name is Ameer and welcome to my lovely blog!

I had been meaning to update my website, I guess its a good place to keep my photos, videos and other things that I may wish to share with the world, as well as any information someone might find useful.

Gonna put some cool stuff here!