My first client is dead
Editor's Note: James Altuher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He invested in 25 startups and wrote 10 books. The last books were “I was blind, but now I saw the light” and “40 alternatives to college.”
I was lonely and wanted money. I lived in a single room in Astoria, Queens District of New York in 1995, and did not know anyone in the area. I wrote my phone number on $ 2 bills, which I left as waiters for tea, but none of them called me. Only the Greeks lived in Astoria, and they preferred their party. No one spoke to me. I was able to roll miles on Astoria in the hope of finding an interlocutor.
The weekend was the worst. I missed my friends at work. The Museum of Cinematography was very close, and I went there to watch all kinds of indie films. I remember two things: Hal Hartley's retrospective was gorgeous, and the collection of Bill Cosby's jerseys that he wore on his 80s shows was exhibited in a prominent place. The woman ticket collector didn’t like me, as I always went to HBO free of charge.
')
I had 20 bucks on the bank account. I lived from paycheck to paycheck. I wandered around Manhattan and thought to myself: who are all these millions of people who can afford to live here, but I can't.
Adrian called: “I need to make a website for diamonds, can you help?” We went to Shlomo on 47th Street (known in New York as the “Diamond District”; the 47th was full of tourists and religious Jews). Shlomo told me that all diamonds are smuggled into the 47th in order not to pay taxes.
I asked him: “How is it smuggled?”. He answered with an anecdote: Two Jews are returning from Russia. One does not stop fidget all flight. The second Jew does not stand up and asks the first one: “Moshe, why are you always fidgeting?”. Moyshe replies: “I am taking inventory”.
Shlomo laughed. Adrian laughed. I thought to myself that I would never buy diamonds.
Shlomo wanted to put his diamond business online to all 47th Street dealers online, and also sell directly to customers. “I do not want my name to be associated with it. If someone on the 47th finds out that I am doing this, they will kill me. ” Apparently, this was the very first website selling diamonds on the Internet. To Blue Nile, to Tiffany's, to everyone else.
He gave us one file - his full base in CSV format. Each diamond was described in one line of a file with diamond parameters: shape, cut, purity, weight, color and GIA certificate number (since certification is a universal scam, even diamonds need certification by some fictitious office). Shlomo just wanted this base online, with a simple design. Customers choose a diamond on the site, send him a mail, he calls back, it's simple.
In my room in Astoria there was one foam mattress, cockroaches in the toilet, a telephone and a black and white TV about three inches diagonally. The TV didn’t work: I didn’t know that in New York you needed a cable to watch TV. I did not have chairs, sheets, plates and glasses, there was no food, closet and shelves for dishes. I kept all my clothes in the garbage bag. Even if the waitress spoke to me, what could I do? I felt worthless, I needed money.
The next day, Chet called me and asked how was it. I told him about the diamond project. “In what language will you write?”. I replied that it is possible in C ++, although I am not sure. I assumed it would take about a month in C ++.
“No, no, no, James,” he said, “Listen to me. Go to the bookstore. In-in-ozzy O'Reilly book about Perl. Believe! ”. Chet stuttered slightly when he was excited. His thoughts were too fast for words to express.
“What is Perl?”
"Just believe. Buy a book. Then call me. ”
I bought the book, went to the office of Adrian, and installed a simple and accessible from a dozen sources Perl programming environment. Wrote the basic “Hello, world” program. Continued flipping through the book.
I called Chet later that day. “Did you buy a book?” He asked.
“I finished the whole project,” I replied. I even added an additional twirl: I found the Perl library for working with images and created GIA certificates on the fly in the form of pictures. At that time, Perl became my favorite programming language for all Internet projects.
My first site
Here are the lessons I learned from this experience:
We passed the project Shlomo. He could not believe that we did it so quickly. He could not believe that we still added GIA certificates in this way. He paid us $ 35,000 in cash, and I got $ 17,500. He gave us another job.
I went to Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street and said that I wanted to stay there. They were known for allowing artists and writers only. Arthur Clark wrote there “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Madonna wrote there “Sex”. Dylan Thomas died on the steps at the entrance. They slaughtered Nancy (from “Sid and Nancy” ). I was told to wait for Stanley Brad, the hotel owner. I waited 2 hours, and he invited me to his office. I paid $ 17,500 and asked if I could stay at the hotel for a year.
Sid and Nancy from The Sex Pistols in the Chelsea Hotel
He looked at the cash. The money was in a paper bag from the supermarket. “Who are you,” he asked, “a drug dealer?”. I must add that only artists, writers and drug dealers were allowed into the hotel. And high class prostitutes. And some - not higher. I did not want to say that I work on the Internet. Then it was not cool at all and meant that I was a “computer geek”. Not good.
I work for HBO, I said.
“Okay,” he said, and led me to the second floor to the right, to the room where Nancy had been stabbed (the room was then divided into two), “Live here.” Later, I moved several times to different parts of the building. Each floor in Chelsea had its own little subculture. Moving from floor to floor, I felt like an anthropologist studying the species inhabiting them. Art was hung everywhere, and it was all awe-inspiring.
A few years ago Adrian called me. He still worked on that diamond site. I think he still works there. “Shlomo died,” he said. I asked what happened.
“He flew a plane across Russia. I guess in search of diamonds. The plane crashed. ”
I thought about a joke about a squirting Jew returning from Russia. I thought that Shlomo never loved me. In 1999, I advised him to invest a million dollars in theknot.com for the exclusive right to sell diamonds on the site, but this almost did not add him sales. Since then, he has not spoken to me.
I thought of a girl with a huge scar on one side of the face working in his office. I thought how I loved her, I would like to lick her scar and be the only one who tells her how beautiful she is.
Shlomo is dead. I'm still alive.
Afterword translator . I really liked this story, on the one hand, a bit naive from a technical point of view (although it was such times that were at the dawn of the mass Internet), on the other - a real parable, absolutely not about technology. And I wanted to share it. May this wonderful essay contribute to a good start to your week.
I was lonely and wanted money. I lived in a single room in Astoria, Queens District of New York in 1995, and did not know anyone in the area. I wrote my phone number on $ 2 bills, which I left as waiters for tea, but none of them called me. Only the Greeks lived in Astoria, and they preferred their party. No one spoke to me. I was able to roll miles on Astoria in the hope of finding an interlocutor.
The weekend was the worst. I missed my friends at work. The Museum of Cinematography was very close, and I went there to watch all kinds of indie films. I remember two things: Hal Hartley's retrospective was gorgeous, and the collection of Bill Cosby's jerseys that he wore on his 80s shows was exhibited in a prominent place. The woman ticket collector didn’t like me, as I always went to HBO free of charge.
')
I had 20 bucks on the bank account. I lived from paycheck to paycheck. I wandered around Manhattan and thought to myself: who are all these millions of people who can afford to live here, but I can't.
Adrian called: “I need to make a website for diamonds, can you help?” We went to Shlomo on 47th Street (known in New York as the “Diamond District”; the 47th was full of tourists and religious Jews). Shlomo told me that all diamonds are smuggled into the 47th in order not to pay taxes.
I asked him: “How is it smuggled?”. He answered with an anecdote: Two Jews are returning from Russia. One does not stop fidget all flight. The second Jew does not stand up and asks the first one: “Moshe, why are you always fidgeting?”. Moyshe replies: “I am taking inventory”.
Shlomo laughed. Adrian laughed. I thought to myself that I would never buy diamonds.
Shlomo wanted to put his diamond business online to all 47th Street dealers online, and also sell directly to customers. “I do not want my name to be associated with it. If someone on the 47th finds out that I am doing this, they will kill me. ” Apparently, this was the very first website selling diamonds on the Internet. To Blue Nile, to Tiffany's, to everyone else.
He gave us one file - his full base in CSV format. Each diamond was described in one line of a file with diamond parameters: shape, cut, purity, weight, color and GIA certificate number (since certification is a universal scam, even diamonds need certification by some fictitious office). Shlomo just wanted this base online, with a simple design. Customers choose a diamond on the site, send him a mail, he calls back, it's simple.
In my room in Astoria there was one foam mattress, cockroaches in the toilet, a telephone and a black and white TV about three inches diagonally. The TV didn’t work: I didn’t know that in New York you needed a cable to watch TV. I did not have chairs, sheets, plates and glasses, there was no food, closet and shelves for dishes. I kept all my clothes in the garbage bag. Even if the waitress spoke to me, what could I do? I felt worthless, I needed money.
The next day, Chet called me and asked how was it. I told him about the diamond project. “In what language will you write?”. I replied that it is possible in C ++, although I am not sure. I assumed it would take about a month in C ++.
“No, no, no, James,” he said, “Listen to me. Go to the bookstore. In-in-ozzy O'Reilly book about Perl. Believe! ”. Chet stuttered slightly when he was excited. His thoughts were too fast for words to express.
“What is Perl?”
"Just believe. Buy a book. Then call me. ”
I bought the book, went to the office of Adrian, and installed a simple and accessible from a dozen sources Perl programming environment. Wrote the basic “Hello, world” program. Continued flipping through the book.
I called Chet later that day. “Did you buy a book?” He asked.
“I finished the whole project,” I replied. I even added an additional twirl: I found the Perl library for working with images and created GIA certificates on the fly in the form of pictures. At that time, Perl became my favorite programming language for all Internet projects.
My first site
Here are the lessons I learned from this experience:
- Quickly learn a programming language by modifying an existing code. I found the code to search the database and used it, only slightly changing. When you know the basic principles: conditional operators, cycles, recursions, language syntax, functions, etc., you can learn any language using a book about its basic syntax and modifications of someone else's code.
- Always add extra curls . IS ALWAYS. No matter what. This was my first client. Of the five subsequent three, I was offered a permanent job with a salary 2 or 3 times my HBO salary. And all because I always put something on top. And it's not “to promise less, but to deliver more”, but in a creative approach in order to make the life of the client better. And yet - in the element of surprise. They knew you were going to the room, and magic would happen. Pigeons will fly. I was a magician.
- Always talk to someone smarter than yourself and advise how to do the work.
We passed the project Shlomo. He could not believe that we did it so quickly. He could not believe that we still added GIA certificates in this way. He paid us $ 35,000 in cash, and I got $ 17,500. He gave us another job.
I went to Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street and said that I wanted to stay there. They were known for allowing artists and writers only. Arthur Clark wrote there “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Madonna wrote there “Sex”. Dylan Thomas died on the steps at the entrance. They slaughtered Nancy (from “Sid and Nancy” ). I was told to wait for Stanley Brad, the hotel owner. I waited 2 hours, and he invited me to his office. I paid $ 17,500 and asked if I could stay at the hotel for a year.
Sid and Nancy from The Sex Pistols in the Chelsea Hotel
He looked at the cash. The money was in a paper bag from the supermarket. “Who are you,” he asked, “a drug dealer?”. I must add that only artists, writers and drug dealers were allowed into the hotel. And high class prostitutes. And some - not higher. I did not want to say that I work on the Internet. Then it was not cool at all and meant that I was a “computer geek”. Not good.
I work for HBO, I said.
“Okay,” he said, and led me to the second floor to the right, to the room where Nancy had been stabbed (the room was then divided into two), “Live here.” Later, I moved several times to different parts of the building. Each floor in Chelsea had its own little subculture. Moving from floor to floor, I felt like an anthropologist studying the species inhabiting them. Art was hung everywhere, and it was all awe-inspiring.
A few years ago Adrian called me. He still worked on that diamond site. I think he still works there. “Shlomo died,” he said. I asked what happened.
“He flew a plane across Russia. I guess in search of diamonds. The plane crashed. ”
I thought about a joke about a squirting Jew returning from Russia. I thought that Shlomo never loved me. In 1999, I advised him to invest a million dollars in theknot.com for the exclusive right to sell diamonds on the site, but this almost did not add him sales. Since then, he has not spoken to me.
I thought of a girl with a huge scar on one side of the face working in his office. I thought how I loved her, I would like to lick her scar and be the only one who tells her how beautiful she is.
Shlomo is dead. I'm still alive.
Afterword translator . I really liked this story, on the one hand, a bit naive from a technical point of view (although it was such times that were at the dawn of the mass Internet), on the other - a real parable, absolutely not about technology. And I wanted to share it. May this wonderful essay contribute to a good start to your week.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/161047/
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