Wednesday the 26th of April, 2006 | Business | Must Read | SMB Guide |
I’m not sure I like the tone of this article, it sounds like a great way to piss off the IRS. However, what you should take out of this article is how to make the gradual transition from being a corporate cog to getting paid for doing what you love.
Monday the 3rd of April, 2006 | Business | Humor | Must Read | Posima |
Caterina Fake, the co-founder of the wildly popular photo sharing webapp Flickr says that it’s a terrible time to start a web company. Here are her reasons:
Everybody else is starting a company. It’s crazy. Every single person who leaves a tech company isn’t going to Microsoft or Google or Apple or whatever, they’re going to a startup. Trying to operate in this environment is crazy. I’m getting late-onset ADD from trying to keep track of them all, and it’s impossible to get attention for your product amidst all the buzz (er, noise).
Your competition just got funded too. You’ve got $5 million in the bank, and they do too. Their VCs want them to succeed every bit as much as your VCs want you to succeed. This gets you into a horse race, which no one wants: it’s exhausting and expensive.
Talent is scarce again. Hell, I want to find someone to write a little bit of PHP for Wench.com and I can’t find anyone (Hey if you are a PHP webapp builder and have some spare cycles, email me at caterina-at-gmail). Everyone’s gainfully employed, and fielding several offers.
You can’t operate in obscurity anymore. We started our company in 2002 when nothing was getting funded anywhere and everyone was still licking their wounds from the big bubble bang. Nobody cared about us except us. We were in Vancouver fer crissakes. But we were able to focus on finding and connecting with the people who mattered most: the customers, the users, the community. You get more done when no one’s looking over your shoulder.
Web 2.0 isn’t all that. Hello? I don’t think there’s a rising tide lifting all boats here. I don’t think Web 2.0 is the magic bullet some people seem to think it is either. It ain’t the features, it’s that AND the business. Tagging was a great feature, no doubt. But Flickr was at break even—about to tip into the black—when we were acquired.
There’s too much going on. Every night there’s a Mashup get together, or a TechCrunch party, or it’s Tag Tuesday, or SuperHappyDevHouse or SXSW or this conference or that conference. And this stuff is fun. It’s a real community. But all of these things are great by themselves, but terrible in combination. I see some entrepreneurs in photos from *every single event*. Who’s talking to the users, writing the code, tweaking and retweaking the UI? It ain’t the Chief Party Officer.
Damn, I guess I’d better close up shop then and write off the last 16 months of my life as a loss. I think what Caterina is forgetting is that if you provide a valuable product or service that people are willing to pay for, you’re already halfway to success. The only other part of the equation is running the business properly, i.e. produce more than you consume.
Friday the 24th of March, 2006 | Must Read | Personal |
This is a poem from the depression era. If you fall on hard times or run through some rough spots in life or business… this poem should make you feel a bit better.
The people yes
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can’t laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
“I earn my living.
I make enough to get by
and it takes all my time.
If I had more time
I could do more for myself
and maybe for others.
I could read and study
and talk things over
and find out about things.
It takes time.
I wish I had the time.”The people is a tragic and comic two-face: hero and hoodlum:
phantom and gorilla twisting to moan with a gargoyle mouth:
“They buy me and sell me...it’s a game...sometime I’ll
break loose...”Once having marched
Over the margins of animal necessity,
Over the grim line of sheer subsistence
Then man came
To the deeper rituals of his bones,
To the lights lighter than any bones,
To the time for thinking things over,
To the dance, the song, the story,
Or the hours given over to dreaming,
Once having so marched.Between the finite limitations of the five senses
and the endless yearnings of man for the beyond
the people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and food
while reaching out when it comes their way
for lights beyond the prison of the five senses,
for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death.
This reaching is alive.
The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it.
Yet this reaching is alive yet
for lights and keepsakes.The people know the salt of the sea
and the strength of the winds
lashing the corners of the earth.
The people take the earth
as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
Who else speaks for the Family of Man?
They are in tune and step
with constellations of universal law.
The people is a polychrome,
a spectrum and a prism
held in a moving monolith,
a console organ of changing themes,
a clavilux of color poems
wherein the sea offers fog
and the fog moves off in rain
and the labrador sunset shortens
to a nocturne of clear stars
serene over the shot spray
of northern lights.The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?"
Carl Sandburg, 1936
Monday the 13th of March, 2006 | Must Read |
I’m currently attending SXSW Interactive here in Austin. I went to an unbelievable presentation from Kathy Sierra about creating evangelists for your product, service or brand. She has a blog that discusses her views on the subject that I highly recommend everyone read.
Monday the 23rd of January, 2006 | Must Read | Tech |
I’ve just stumbled upon a story that debunks many myths about surge protectors. As most others, my surge protection knowledge comes from the usual channels such as the increasingly naive salesman at large electronics stores such as Best Buy. I highly suggest reading this article to make sure your hardware is protected from such attacks. Here are some interesting excerpts:
Myth #1. ANY SURGE PROTECTION IS BETTER THAN NO SURGE PROTECTION.
This is perhaps the most reasonable, yet the most misleading of all. With no surge protection at all, incoming surges will hit only the computer’s power supply (which is considerably more surge tolerant than the data line circuitry), and will not affect the system ground level at all.Myth #2. A UPS WILL PROVIDE DEPENDABLE SURGE PROTECTION
Because a UPS costs far more than a surge protector, it is often assumed to provide better surge protection. However, virtually all UPS units designed for microcomputers simply combine an inexpensive MOV surge suppressor with a battery backup power source.Myth #8. THE ONLY RISK FROM THE POWER LINE IS HARDWARE DAMAGE.
Computers are vulnerable to data alterations as bit streams pass through microprocessors. Stray power surges can alter data or programs, causing data errors or lock-ups which cannot be traced. The consequential cost of such soft damage can be very high, especially if errors are not found and data files are contaminated.Myth #9. SURGE PROTECTORS ARE PERMANENT DEVICES.
Most point-of-use surge protectors use metal oxide varistors as their primary protection component. Despite all its strengths, this inexp- ensive (15 cent) component wears out a little with each surge above a very modest threshold… a threshold that is exceeded mant times a day in most environments. Thus MOVs wear out and should be replaced periodically.Myth #11. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.
The assumption that higher priced surge protectors provide greater effect- iveness and reliability is often not valid. Almost all surge suppressors priced under $200 rely on the same fundamental MOV components.
Friday the 20th of January, 2006 | Business | Must Read | News |
I read an article in The Economist several months ago pushing the idea of a flat tax solely on sales. I’ve always liked the KISS method (Keep It Simple Stupid) and our complicated tax code is a perfect candidate for review. The fact is, the US spends an increasingly ungodly amount of money on infrastructure to keep our tax system running. If we cut the income tax out and only charged sales tax we would be running on a lean 35% or less of what we currently spend on infrastructure.
What sparked my interest in this topic was another article I read today where Thomas J. Frey, Senior Futurist at The DaVinci Institute discusses why income tax will self-destruct. Here are some interesting excerpts from the article.
The Exponential Nature of Complexity
It can be argued that every major civilization in history has fallen because of unsustainable levels of complexity. In major civilizations such as the Egyptian, Greek, or Roman empires, as well as in smaller civilizations like the Mayan Indians and Mesopotamia, each one reached a point where an ever increasing bureaucracy with an ever increasing number of rules simply overloaded the administrator’s ability to comply with them, and the systems collapsed.Modern technology has given us the ability to manage systems that are far more complex. And following a similar curve to Moore’s Law, our ability to automate has kept up with our ability to complicate. However, the breaking point will not be the automated systems. Rather, the breaking point will be the human interface and the exacting toll that the income tax system has placed on people to comply.
In our government we have failed to create a checks-and-balance system to mitigate complexity.
We are on an irreversible path, and as complexity of a system increases, the costs associated with it increase exponentially to the point where the costs approach infinity, and collapse is a certainty.
A History of Collapsing Income Tax Systems
While the concept of taxes has been around since ancient times, the idea of a formalized income tax has not. The first income tax in the United States was signed into law in 1862 by President Lincoln to help pay for Civil War expenses. But the amount was relatively small and during this time 90 percent of all revenues came from taxes on liquor, beer, wine and tobacco. Still, opposition arose and income tax laws were repealed in 1872.
In 1894 the Wilson Tariff Act revived the income tax and an income tax division within the Bureau of Internal Revenue was created. Again a firestorm of protest arose and the Supreme Court ruled the new income tax unconstitutional. The income tax division was disbanded.Today’s income tax has its roots in the 16th Amendment to the Constitution which was ratified in 1913. The amendment stated, “Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” Later, Congress adopted a 1 percent tax on net personal income of more than $3,000 with a surtax of 6 percent on incomes of more than $500,000. This is when the first 1040 Form was introduced.
Compliance Costs Reaching Unmanageable Levels
A recent article in Forbes magazine stated that director level compliance officers are now being paid over $1 million per year to deal with the increasing demands imposed by government.
Even the professionals who feed off of this overly complex system have grown to detest it. Some IRS audits have become undoable, slowing enforcement to an absolute crawl. Costs of both compliance and enforcement will escalate even further until the system reaches the breaking point.
Wednesday the 14th of December, 2005 | Must Read |
While browsing through Technorati today I found the website of Fraser Kelton’s blog called Disruptive Thoughts. His latest entry is titled, Less And More - The Entrepreneurs Toolbox. It makes suggestions as to what a trepp needs to be successful in the long run of startups. My personal favorites are:
More Niche. When starting up the entrepreneur needs to niche the company more than ever. Find a foothold. Secure yourself. Climb.
Less Hires. The World Is Flat. Someone out there can do that task better. For less. Outsource it.
More Innovation. The competition is. right. behind. you.
More Customer Service. Delight your customers and you will be rewarded
Thursday the 1st of December, 2005 | Must Read | Podcasts |
I’ve been listening to Michael Pollock’s Podcasts about Small Business Branding for a short while. He’s really hit the nail on the head with Episode #17 of his SavvySoloCast. The message behind this particular episode discusses the new and highly accurate marketing technique of having customers “opt in” rather than stalking strangers to buy your products or services.