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Taking on Goliath
One of the pieces of advice that I’ve heard doled out. Over the years is this. “Don’t build a product that goes head to head against a company like X.”, where X is usually Microsoft, Oracle, Google or some other large, public company with billions of dollars sitting on pallets in a dark bunker somewhere.…
Read MoreLasik Complications
Mike talks about some of the complications he encountered after his Lasik procedure.
Read MoreMy Lasik Eye Surgery Experience
This article outlines what happened when I went to get Lasik eye surgery.
Read MoreHow to Legally Steal From Your Customers
In early October, I had the pleasure of meeting Harry and Ted from Moraware Software at the Business of Software Conference in Boston. They’re apparently big fans of the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast that Rob Walling and I run. We had more than a couple of discussions at various points in the…
Read MoreTroubleshoot Your Problems by Going Back to Basics
Whenever I do consulting work for a customer who is having serious problems, I tend to look at the basics first. And I mean the extreme basics. Things like computer names, network routes, DNS resolution, Active Directory membership, etc. I’m going to stereotype a bit here and say that the people I work with who’ve…
Read MoreYou! Get out of my Industry!
I think that there comes a time in every halfway decent developers’ life when he realizes that he’s halfway decent and the world is full of people who couldn’t program their way out of a wet paper bag. I’m not referring to the noobs who troll forums asking for help and are truly trying to…
Read More5 Lessons You Could Learn From (Good) Professional Consultants To Advance Your Career
A colleague referred to me as Mariano Rivera this week. If you’re not a baseball buff, Mariano Rivera is the closer for the New York Yankees. Like most closers in baseball, Rivera usually comes into the game when it’s almost over and the Yankees are winning by only a couple of runs. It’s his job…
Read MorePodcast Launch: Startups for the Rest of Us
In 2006, I had been self-employed for less than a year. I knew a decent amount about business and a whole lot about technology, but wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do. I had been involved in a startup called “Pedestal Software” for the previous few years and it was sold to Altiris to…
Read MoreThe Single, Most Important Secret to Success
About 6 weeks ago, I had dinner at a pizza place near Boston with some fellow developers. We were generally discussing various aspects of business, things to do, things not to do, etc. One of the guys asked me a question that I feel like I get quite frequently: “What’s the most important thing you…
Read MoreThe Builder and the Salesman
I published a popular article named “The Single Founder Myth” a few years back. In this article, I contended that contrary to popular opinion, it was not impossible to go it alone with a software startup and be successful. To clarify up front, what I mean by “going it alone” is that you build up…
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