The secrets of a system integrator. My Journey of Startup, Product + Project Development
I came across a great article titled:
Opinion: The unspoken truth about managing geeks
on ComputerWorld. It’s not a site that I frequent very often but this opinion peiece hasd some excellent points.
1. My currency is respect.
Anyone who knows me how often these words come out of my mouth. Whether it pertains to family, friends, or clients, the secret to getting me and keeping me on your side, quite happily going out of my way to help you succeed is respect.
Jason Fried of 37 Signals wrote an article titled “The way I work” a few days ago about his work schedule, balance, and prioritization.
In it he covers his typical day and mindset. What’s interesting is his focus on basing all of his decisions around eliminating one thing, that I’ve been a huge fan of.
Interruption is the enemy of productivity.
Here’s the deal. When creating anything, be it creative, abstract, or analytical..
Part of any software startup is building an approachable, knowledgeable, living presence. We can do this through email newsletters, marketing through our website, twitter and blogs. Few are more powerful than a well setup, relevant and maintained blog. I will be covering blogging from the aspect of software businesses; what to do, what to look [...]
Anyone involved in the Startup world is well aware of the name Paul Graham. His essays offer deep insights on startups from his experiences and realizations.
This month he spoke at the 2009 Startup School as part of an all-star group of speakers. He posted a summary of his talk on his website titled “What [...]
I build a Web application when I don’t want to:
- be supporting a thousand environments each with their own quirks. Specifically, viruses, trojans, software interfering, and making it work the same everywhere.
- worry about applying upgrades and taking lots of calls
Crafting software is like.. building a house.
You can try building it without a blueprint or plans or an architect or qualified tradespeople and it will almost always cost you much more and you will have constant issues.
Second, just because you can..
Ideas are a dime a dozen. Building them is what actually creates success.
In real partnerships, if one of the partners is working as an employee, his time gets paid for at a fair wage. This is because the other partners are earning money elsewhere in that time that you would be earning nothing. Is months of your time is equal to a $1800 investment?
Someone asked what tools are usable for software development. Having juggled so many details for so many years, it’s interesting to take a look and see what tools we use and why.
There are many parts to a conceptual design. Depending on which part you focus on a variety of tools are out there.
As with most computer things, Capturing it is easy, filing it away so you can find it later is critical. You won’t use all of these tools 100% of the time, but they all need to flow to one central spot.
It’s simple. Building a product with less time developing the product, and more time building the business around the product (marketing, etc.,), the greater chance it will have of actually succeeding.
I recently read that a product is 80% marketing and 20% actual product. That probably would explain why garbage can succeed and great software can fail.
The truth is as developers, startup entrepreneurs, it’s critical to know how to sell and market. Without learning the ability to have the conversation to sell, there may not be much of a reason to start building anything.