Morrie the Toupee Salesman

Following up on my previous massively popular piece on bootstrapping, I’d like to outline what I see as the next logical step. In general programmers should feel comfortable with business planning – since it’s mostly the same design process, albeit with different tools, goals, language… The overall approach is familiar – invest a little time [...]

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There’s lots of articles out there on strategy for entrepreneurs, but they seem heavily weighted towards those of us who have contacts in the venture capital industry, rather than the small, sometimes desperate bands of heroes that can be found out there in their home offices and coffee shops. With limited funds, time and other [...]

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A nice piece from Jeremy Liew this morning. I have long felt that the kind of testing described there (which I’m going to condense into the catchphrase “A/B Testing”) is a great alternative to the vast assortment of mechanisms favored by orthodox marketers. Focus groups, polling, and the rest of the panoply of how marketers [...]

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Love the Dave Winer comment here:
“…At a blogging conference, an open discussion, a young person asked me how much a guy my age could really understand about blogs.”
ex·pe·ri·ence
-noun
…
4. knowledge or practical wisdom gained from what one has observed, encountered, or undergone:a man of experience.
In my experience (and I have experienced similar comments) arrogance is a [...]

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I’ve been building something really dumb Simple-stupid, kind of fun, seductive but with a little hint of guilt to go with it. Sound familiar?
Anyway as part of it I’ve been looking at search APIs. And boy, do they suck. I’m gonna write a little more about that, but one initial impression – these [...]

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The other day, digg announced that they had joined the Dataportability project. There’s lots of skepticism out there about whether that organization will actually produce anything useful, with lots of smart people saying it’s unlikely. I disagree, and as a shareholder in a member organization, I applaud the possibility. Here’s why.
The latest round of Google-inspired [...]

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I’ve been watching some poker on tv lately – it’s probably fueled by my addiction to ujogo.com. What I find really interesting is how bad the “professional” poker players are. They constantly make rookie mistakes, pay to see the flop with really bad hands, chase straights that they have little hope of getting. Add to [...]

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This was on the top of news.ycombinator.com this morning. It’s an interesting article, and I’m impressed that YC news actually found me something interesting to read on a Sunday morning. Favorite quotes:
“Because I think that in the end the way that you make a ton of money is calling paradigm shifts”
“I’m sure today I would [...]

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It’s shining out from two sources:
An HBS article on narcissism and leadership, commented on by various people. Unfortunately the article is just an abstract and when I clicked on “Order the Full Article” I got an error.
and I can’t quite parse this phrase from the two people commenting on the original paper – “If self [...]

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is deadly … acccording to Paul Graham. Actually it’s “dignity and professionalism.”
some quotes:
‘I cannot count the times I heard the word “professionalism” used as justification for why we couldn’t do something.’
and this one from Hugh MacLeod:
“Do you honestly think I’d have a good working relationship with clients who are offended that I used the word [...]

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