General
I've worked in startups for almost my entire career - sometimes my own, sometimes companies started by other people. I'm good at what I do, and I love it: I get to create tools that empower people to do things they previously couldn't, or
Software development
Ryan Holiday laments the loss of Google Reader and RSS in general in Our Regressive Web, arguing that if someone came up with them today, we'd think they were brilliant ideas: We’re just regressing. [...] RSS is impervious to blogging’s worst, but most profitable traits. [...] No wonder
General
The Spectator explains why 2012 was the best year in the history of the world: It may not feel like it, but 2012 has been the greatest year in the history of the world. That sounds like an extravagant claim, but it is borne out by evidence. Never has there
General
Paul Graham's essay, How to Get Startup Ideas, is long but very much worth reading. Normally I'd pull a quote, but it's a valuable piece from start to finish, and it's hard to know what to choose. Go read it, then come
Web
Y Combinator founder Paul Graham's essays are invaluable if you want to be a part of the startup ecosystem. His latest, Startup = Growth, is required reading, and defines, once and for all, the difference between a "startup" and a "new business": [...] Starting a startup
Consultancy
1. The user isn't the product being sold. The user is the customer. 2. Startups become big by empowering their customers with great products and services that allow them to do things that were previously difficult or impossible. 3. A company is a group of people with a
General
In the comments to this 37signals blog post (which is excellent), dhh and commenter Dave Christiansen collaboratively coined a term for startup companies that aim to go into the black as soon as possible and grow under their own steam: bootstraps. I'm in love with this. Bootstraps give
General
I wrote a piece over on Google+ about Spire Magazine, my first real Internet project: [...] One piece we ran several times was called "What do you do on the Internet?" Nowadays the answer would be "everything", but back then usage was still emerging. So people like
General
Teambox's post about why you should build an open source startup is doing the rounds right now. It's a great piece, but I thought I'd reply with a few reasons why you might want to think long and hard about it: * Free (as in
General
I really like this quote from 37 signals: Basecamp was done almost entirely without risk. It was completely self-funded. We treated it as a side-product and a side-project until it could pay the bills. And only then did we make it the main focus of the company. I absolutely hate
General
This article is long, but worth reading to the end: He came home and lay on the couch for a week, confused and a little lost. With the long overdue luxury of time and hindsight (and bed rest dictated by a bad case of bronchitis), he analyzed the past year&
General
I wrote a piece for 24 Ways To Start, the entrepreneur’s advent calendar: The web isn’t just a platform; nor is it a market. It’s a movement. Think of the success stories of the past five years: Twitter, Facebook, Google, GroupOn. Twitter and Facebook changed the way