Interacting with academia is an important part of what I do as CTO of Cigital. Though I have been known to lecture at Stanford, CMU, Cornell, Harvard, NC State, Purdue and a bunch of other places, I have a special place in my heart for the University of Virginia (where I studied Philosophy as an undergraduate) and Indiana University (where I earned a dual Ph.D. in computer science and cognitive science).
Alf Weaver, a CS professor at UVa recently asked me to lecture to his Electronic Commerce Technologies course. I was happy to oblige. When I asked what I should lecture about, I got back a one word answer—startups.
Not quite sure of what to do, I decided to draw on my own experience at Cigital. In 1995 when I joined Cigital, it was known as Reliable Software Technologies (or RST) and had a grand total of seven employees. I’m proud to say that today Cigital has over 120 employees and offices in Virginia, NY, Boston, Silicon Valley, India, and Amsterdam.
Helping Cigital evolve has been both hard work and a joy. Here is a list of seven lessons I’ve learned through my own startup years, each boiled down to four words or less:
- Think and write.
- Build a network.
- Follow the Categorical Imperative.
- Achieve the Buddha calm.
- Develop a rhythm.
- Follow your passion.
- Build great stuff.
The original powerpoint from the CSCS 4753 “Electronic Commerce Technologies” lecture can be found here.
An article version of the talk can be found here.