Tag archives: best

Tag archives: best

  • “Jamie: ‘Human nature is odd. We crave new things, but simultaneously dislike change.’

    “Phil: ‘Not that odd; we like to choose and hate to have things forced on us. We usually embrace the changes that we have chosen for ourselves.’”

    -- Signal vs. Noise, the blog of 37Signals

    Posted on Feb 4, 2012 in , , ,

  • A.G. Lafley vs. Steve Jobs

    Should you listen to customers or tell them what they want?  This post discusses how both strategies can be effective, depending on what kind of market you’re addressing (mature or nascent).

    Posted on Jan 26, 2012 in ,

  • The Practical 8-Step Survival Guide For Startups

    This is a good list.  I particularly like “temper theory with reality”, which advocates working in the industry that you plan on entering with your startup before you take the plunge.  Zwilling says:

    There is no substitute for domain experience. No matter how well-educated you are, and how certain you are that you understand all the nuances of a business area, it is a good idea to work in a similar business for a few months to get a feel for the market and observe the unwritten rules before taking the plunge. This is especially true for students tackling their first venture.

    Or just first time entrepreneurs in general.  With TenthRow, I got into two things that I didn’t understand as well as I thought I did:

    1. Working in the music industry in general – working with bands, labels, and publishers (I was actually least prepared to work with bands, who tend to be less much less Type A than I am).
    2. Producing concert videos – there are a million things that can go wrong that are beyond your control (the band has a bad night, the crowd isn’t great, technical problems with the band’s instruments or the venue’s PA system, problems with your own recording gear, etc.).

    Had I worked in the music industry and/or produced concert videos before starting TenthRow, I would have much better understood these things and adjusted the business model accordingly.  The other approach, which probably would have been better in my case, would have been to bring on a concert video producer as a co-founder very early in the process.  If you haven’t worked in the industry yourself, make sure that someone on the founding team has.

    Anyway, I also really liked “find and use top-notch advisors” (this is one thing I did pretty well) and “manage your time” (this is one thing I didn’t – I was doing way too much…should have delegated more).

    The whole list is definitely worth checking out.

    Posted on Aug 1, 2010 in ,

  • The Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity

    Finally got around to reading this, and it is AWESOME.

    This is probably my favorite one (I used to do it all the time when I used to work in an office):

    Hide in an iPod.

    One of the best and easiest ways to avoid distractions in the workplace is to be wearing those cute little IPod earbud headphones (or any other headphones of your choice).

    People, for some reason, feel much worse interrupting you if you are wearing headphones than if you’re not.

    It’s great — a lot of the time, people will walk up to you, start to say something, notice the headphones, apologize (using exaggerated mouth motions), and walk away.

    This is great — half the time they didn’t actually need to talk to you, and the other half of the time they can send an email that you can process at the end of the day during the second of your two daily email sweeps.

    Here’s the best part: you don’t actually have to be listening to anything.

    Hell, you don’t even have to have the headphones plugged into anything.

    The whole thing is well worth the read.  I do a lot of these things already, but I still check my email too much…need to get better at that…

    Posted on Jul 18, 2010 in ,

  • Competition Is Overrated

    Great post by Chris Dixon about NOT being discouraged if others are already trying your idea. More than anything, it’s market validation. You should be worried if others AREN’T trying to compete with you.

    I would add to this that you shouldn’t give your competitors too much credit before they launch their product, no matter how good of a job they do marketing /  promoting it. The product you imagine they’ll be launching is often a lot better than the product they actually launch.

    Obviously this doesn’t hold in all cases, but the point is that all you can do is focus on the quality of your product – the thing that you can control – and not waste too much time worrying about your competitors or responding / reacting to them. You’re much better off focusing on your customer, as Chris Dixon emphasizes in his post above.

    Posted on Jun 27, 2010 in , ,

  • Bad call, great apology

    Great perspective from 37Signals on the botched Galarraga call and how the umpire handled it (by admitting his mistake profusely and being a man about it), which is hugely admirable.

    There’s a lesson here about how to handle your mistakes. Nobody’s perfect so you’re going to mess up from time to time, but how you handle those situations makes all the difference in the world.

    Posted on Jun 7, 2010 in , ,

  • How A Web Design Goes Straight To Hell

    Hilarious and all too true. Timeless advice for any non-technical founder or any business person in general who needs to build a website for their business.

    Unfortunately, I was very much the client during my first experience with building a website.  Not quite that bad, but I could have been a lot better.  Lesson learned. (The hard way, unfortunately.)  Wish I would have read this comic before I started…

    Posted on Apr 30, 2010 in , , , ,