

Be On Fire - kennyma
http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2011/10/be-on-fire.html

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mechanical_fish
My _god_ I dislike onswipe. Slow on the iPad 1.0, brutally ugly short columns
in landscape mode, ugly rerendering when flipping to portrait, and did it
break the flow of the images or was that something else?

Cannot wait for web designers to come up with something better. Please.

~~~
fredwilson
^2

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hugh3
That's great, but I take all my all-caps vague overly-general motivational
advice from courage wolf.

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OpenTrader
Posted this over in feld.com, but I'll put it in here too cuz I actually saw
the article here on Hacker News. Thanks for Posting. Absolutely love it!...

People have often criticized me for my fire. When I was young it was: "You're
too competitive, can't you just take it easy?". When I set out to chase my
dream of becoming a world-class independent stock trader it was: "Your
ambition will end up costing you big". When I started my first and current
tech company it was: "Aren't you being rash suddenly going into something with
the goal of changing the world?"

All I can say is that I kicked their butts in sports and school when I was
young, ended up making huge returns and a living trading professionally for
years, and now... I'm about to change the world.

And it's because of fire.

So criticize away.

FIRE GET LAST LAUGH.

~~~
OpenTrader
Someone on feld.com thought that my comment was arrogant. Of course fire is
often confused with arrogance too :) But I thought I'd clarify anyways since I
wasn't so clear at first:

Making a bunch of money trading was not at all what it was about for me. That
was only a validating result. In truth I was deeply passionate about trading,
lived and breathed it, and did it for its own sake. I quit my job and moved
half way across the world to chase my dream of becoming a trader. I left my
family and friends and lived 2 years without income to do it. All that fueled
me was the fire of my passion for the activity. The same fire that an athlete
or musician feels for their art. Those guys may not change the world, but the
fire is nonetheless the same fire.

Did my trading change the world? no. But it did change ME through a journey of
self-discovery where I had to reach to the depth of my soul to survive and
succeed in an endeavor where 95% fail. But I also did have a yearning to
change the world in some way. And that's why I ultimately gave up trading and
started a new tech company who's goal is to bring transparency to the retail
trading and investing industry and thereby improve it as a whole.

It's the same fire that fuels this new desire as the one that fueled the
seemingly less noble desire of making money trading. But ultimately, if it
hadn't been for that previous pursuit and all the self-growth I experienced
through it, I wouldn't be trying to change the world now.

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hammock
My favorite part:

WIN IS SMOKE [image of a man on fire running forward, behind him a trail of
smoke]. ON FIRE NOT CARE ABOUT WIN. NOT CARE ABOUT MONEY, FAME. WIN HAPPEN
WHEN BUSY DO THINGS THAT MATTER. THINGS ON FIRE.

~~~
hammock
Reminds me of Jack Welch (GE CEO) who said "Strictly speaking, shareholder
value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a
strategy."

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__alexs
Rule 0. Do not be on fire.

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ChuckMcM
I think Nike's "Just Do It" campaign was a bit more effective. There is a huge
difference between being 'on fire' (does that make you the Burninator?) and
'out of touch.'

Fakegrimlock here implies that you run really hard at your ideas, and you hit
the wall (fail) on the stupid ones really fast, so that you can get to the
good one (win) more quickly. If you're someone whose fire is "I want to change
the world" but you don't actually have a particular change in mind, this
strategy will literally kill you.

Steve Bourne (yes _that_ Steve Bourne) once advised me that I needed to have
'an agenda' which was code for that thing that one cared deeply enough about
that they would be willing to commit their time/energy/soul to making it come
to pass.

You can tell when a passionate person has an agenda because all of their
activities are either contributing to, or attacking blockers of, that agenda.
In this regard Steve was absolutely correct. Just like you can't walk a
straight line for long distances without picking a point on the horizon, you
can't get anything major done without having a direction picked out ahead of
time.

~~~
pabloPXL
The problem of having 1 master plan is that you don't know whether you will
ultimately succeed or not. Burning out quick ideas on the other side will
improve your ability to decide correctly on your next ones. To be clear I
agree with your interpretation of our fellow dinosaur's idea, but not with
having an agenda that can be a single point of failure.

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DanielRibeiro
TL; DR World is broken. fix it.

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seliopou
Somebody has been listening to Trash Talk:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxylo30vt5A>

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zargath
\--- Bruce Lee quote -- Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be
assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through
it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose
themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a
cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the
bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or
it can crash. Be water my friend.

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fedd
> PERSON ON FIRE ... NOT CARE ABOUT MONEY

the best for them to invest in and make money on.

signed: BURNT OUT

~~~
nanijoe
..Then Person on fire must not have wife and kids, or rent or need to eat, or
need to take subway etc. Everyone has to care about money on some
level...whether or not they are on fire.

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seanMeverett
I've sort of been meh about fakegrimlock, just seems like a fad that will
fade. That is, until I read this and finally heard him talking to me. I'm damn
near combustible I'm flaming so much right now. Wait. That came out wrong.

~~~
jetsnoc
Hello, flamebait!

