Interview with Zack Fisch of SpeakMe
Zack Fisch is a former-law-student-turned-entrepreneur who founded a social video startup called SpeakMe with his brother Adam. He's a current student of The Odin Project and I chatted with him about the role of web development in his life and the life of his startup.
It's inspiring that he's taking the plunge into learning development himself in the midst of running a startup which, I can attest, is an insane pursuit on its own. If he can find the time to do it, you definitely can too!
Erik: What exactly is SpeakMe?
Zack: SpeakMe is an entirely video commenting platform. When a person posts a thread, another person can view that video and then they can respond with another video of their own. Eventually, you'll have a more thoughtful, engaging online conversation that develops. And the responses play sequentially so it feels more like you're out to dinner with people and having a conversation rather than reading the comments section on a blog.
Erik: How did you first get started with SpeakMe?
Zack: My brother and I one day were sitting at the dinner table and were like, "Wouldn't it be cool if people could have face-to-face video conversations online? And wouldn't it be cool if those conversations were organized like they are on Reddit?"
So I deferred law school and I've been working on that ever since.
Erik: So you're non-technical (yet), how is Speakme getting built?
Zack: We have a team of developers building it with us in Struts2 and the back end is completely in Java.
Erik: What's tough about being a non-technical founder of a tech business?
Zack: No matter how many times you tell someone [technical] you're a nontechnical person, they will still try to speak to you as an equal. I'm trying to get ahold of what the devs are talking about all the time... It's definitely an uphill climb as a non-technical founder.
Erik: Why are you taking the leap to learning web development yourself?
Zack: You just have a different feeling for something when you can build it with your own hands or keystrokes. I really want to be able to build interactive websites. Anybody can build a static webpage... I think there's a chasm between that and being able to build something you can show your mom and say "hey, this is cool." That's where I'd like to be.
Erik: Did you have any previous experience with development?
Zack: I've played around with some of the back end languages -- Java, C, and Python. I've also built my own personal website before but that pretty much sums up the entirety of my technical knowledge.
Erik: What's your schedule like when you're learning?
Zack: I usually wake up around 6-7am. The first thing I do is start coding. That takes up a majority of the day because it's pretty important for me right now. It's probably 4-5 hours, and the rest of my time is just trying to learn and keeping up with the development team and other things that make the business run.
Erik: What are the best resources you've found so far?
Zack: Google is my best friend, Wikipedia is a close second. Zed Shaw's stuff online are some really great resources, as well as various CSS blogs. I am a former Treehouse student, and I think it's great but it plateaus rather quickly.
Erik: Do you have any last advice for someone who wants to learn web development?
Zack: Start as early as possible. There's not a day that goes by where I don't look in the mirror and say "if only I'd focused on mathematics in school". But, seriously, everyone can get to where they want if they just practice.