Entries Tagged 'Professional' ↓

Yesterday I registered for WordCamp 2007, a conference dedicated to the software that runs this blog. It sounds pretty interesting: the first day is going to feature presentations about blogging with WordPress, and the second day focuses on WordPress development. It’s coming up next weekend here in San Francisco. If you see me there, say hi!

Joe Grossberg published an article yesterday called How Not to Impress With Your Code Sample. He’s got some great points about things not to do (i.e., leaving database passwords in the code). But I’ve been a developer for about six years now, and I’m still confused as to what should go in a code sample.

Continue reading →

I’ve been reading Guy Kawasaki’s book The Art of the Start for the last two weeks, and I’m quite impressed. Kawasaki’s book is billed as a tutorial for “anyone starting anything” — but really, it’s a guide for entrepreneurs starting businesses, specifically geared toward high-tech businesses looking for venture capital funding. Kawasaki, previously a product evangelist for Apple Computer, is now the CEO of Garage Technology Ventures. As a result, Kawasaki knows all about what’s needed to bring a product to market and obtaining financing (and customers). A lot of the tips in the book are phrased as “if only the companies pitching to me knew how to do it better…”, so it feels like you’re really getting inside information that most startups are unaware of.

For example, I read the chapter on partnerships today. (Joint ventures, not legal entities.) It was all about how to evaluate and negotiate a partnership opportunity so that you don’t get stuck with losers. These were ideas I never had even considered. If I was running a startup and Sun wanted to partner with me, I would have jumped at it because they’re a big company, no matter the strategic relevance. Kawasaki teaches you how to evaluate these kinds of opportunities to ensure they’re worth the time (and money). Plus it’s a fun read, which helps.

Just like Startup School, The Art of the Start is a very candid and a great resource from an accomplished insider. I highly recommend this to anyone looking to succeed in a technology startup.

Noted author Joel Spolsky (”Joel on Software“) mentioned this in his blog entry from October 16th:

Visiting Cambridge (Massachusetts [USA]) for a party at Y-combinator made me jealous about how much more vibrant the hacker/startup scene is in the Boston area than it is in the New York area. [...] Is New York just lame compared to Boston? [... M]aybe it’s because investment banks, hedge funds, advertising agencies, and media companies suck up all the oxygen? One bright young Harvard grad I met at the party has a job as the full-time, personal system administrator maintaining the PC of a famous hedge fund manager …

I just realized, I was part of that conversation. They were talking about this hedge fund dude, and I didn’t know who he was, and didn’t care, so I left the conversation and went to another. (I got to meet Joel Spolsky but he was talking about hedge funds?!)

More to come about Startup School, I promise!

I’m driving up at 6:00 tomorrow morning. I’ll post a message when I get back and let y’all know about the trip and the conference. Or if you’re lucky, I’ll post an update while I’m in Boston!

David Heinemeier Hansson, a well-known software developer, claims that when faced with the trade off between “done right” and “done right now,” you should always choose to do it right. I find this interesting and actually disagree with his viewpoint.

Realize that “don’t have time right now” is a self-fulling prophesy. You will never have time right now if you don’t take it today. The business is not going to slow down to allow you to clean all these things up one wonderful day.

I admire that thinking and would love to be that committed to the “perfect” design. But in the real world, it doesn’t always work like that. There are a lot of places where the business will slow down and let you complete the unfinished work. Many companies’ business is seasonal and driven by external factors. An online retailer needs to be ready for a rush of Christmas customers, but can be confident that sales will let up a bit in January and February.

My current project is an online service that’s also very seasonal, used heavily in the summer. We had to rush to get a few things completed before we went live in May. Of course there was a trade-off between “done right” and “done right now.” But when we negotiated that trade-off, we made it clear that we couldn’t eliminate the work, we could just postpone it in order to launch on time. Now that things have slowed down, we’re taking the time to clean up some of the inelegant hacks we had initially made. Maybe I’m unusually lucky to have such enlightened customers, but for us, this has worked reasonably well.

I’m sure this won’t work well for everyone. If you’re a very small shop or an independent software vendor, I wouldn’t rely on this. But with the right negotiation and the right commitment level, this strategy can succeed.

Everyone’s been talking today about Startup School , Paul Graham’s one-day event for software “hackers” with an entrepreneurial spirit. Acceptance emails were sent out last night, and I got in! So I’ll be trekking up to Harvard University on Saturday, October 15.

I bought my airline ticket last night. The only cost-effective option was to fly up and back all on the 15th. (Cambridge hotels are starting at $269 that weekend! And the rest of Boston isn’t much better.) Fortunately I got a pretty decent airfare, so it looks like it’ll work out OK. I just hope the event is over by 7:30 PM or so — I’ll miss whatever’s after that.

Keith Casey, another DC-area resident (and Joel on Software fanatic) was also accepted. Keith has put up a page for people to coordinate travel plans. I suspect Keith’s page will be usurped by the official Startup School Wiki.