Design Matters, a lot
A year ago I wrote a post titled "The Truth about Web Design" where I briefly argued that "design doesn't matter a whole lot."
My argument was: "yo
...continue to full essay.Competition and Specialization
Competition and specialization are generally positive economics forces. What's interesting is that they are contradictory.
Competition. Company 1 a
...continue to full essay.Simple, but not easy
Doing a startup is surprisingly simple. You have to start by creating a product that people must have, then you scale it from there.
What percent o
...continue to full essay.Flip Flopping
Every Sunday night in college my fraternity would gather in the commons room for a "brother meeting". (Yes, I was in a fraternity, and yes I do regret
...continue to full essay.The Churn Rate of Data
I think it's interesting to ponder the value of information over it's lifetime.
Different types of data become outdated at different rates. A stree
...continue to full essay.Culture and Complexity
Have you heard of the Emperor Penguins? It's a species of penguins that journeys 30-75 miles across the frigid Antarctic to breed. Each year these pen
...continue to full essay.The Invention of Free Will
Or..We Think we have Free Will because we only Observe One Path.
"Dad, I finished my homework. Why?"
The father thinks for a moment. He realizes
...continue to full essay.Why is it best to do one thing really, really well?
Google has a list of 10 principles that guide its actions. Number 2 on this list is:
It's best to do one thing really, really well.
This advic
...continue to full essay.The Hidden Benefits of Automation
If you automate a process which you repeat Y times, that takes X minutes, what would your payoff be?
Payoff = XY minutes saved, right?
Surprisin
...continue to full essay.Metrics for Programmers
I wrote a simple php program called phpcodestat that computes some simple statistics for any given directory.
I think brevity in source code is alm
...continue to full essay.HackerNews Data: Visits as a Function of Karma
If a post on HackerNews gets more points, it gets more visits.
But how much more? That's what Murkin wanted to know.
I've submitted over 10 arti
...continue to full essay.Don't talk about what you will do, talk about what you have done
All the time I overhear people saying things like "I will start excercising everyday" or "We will ship this software by the end of the month" or "I wi
...continue to full essay.Why it's worth it to buy the book
If a book is worth reading, it's worth buying too.
If you're reading a book primarily to gain value from it(as opposed to reading it for pleasure)
...continue to full essay.The Least You Can Do
My room was always messy. Usually because clothes were strewn everywhere On the floor, on the couch, anywhere there was a surface there was a pile of
...continue to full essay.Four Tips to Improve Communication
Good communication is overcommunication. Very few people overcommmunicate. Undercommunication is much more common. Undercommunication is also the caus
...continue to full essay.Network Effects
Network effects are to entrepreneurs what compounding effects are to investors: a key to getting rich.
Sometimes a product becomes more valuable si
...continue to full essay.If you can explain something logically, you can explain it simply
- Is there any subject which cannot be explained simply?
No.
- What about quantum mechanics, organic chemistry, or rocket science? Surely these ca
With Computers: Don't Repeat Yourself. With People: DO Repeat Yourself
In computer programming, one of the most oft-repeated mottos is DRY: "Don't Repeat Yourself."
The downside of DRY's popularity is that programmers
...continue to full essay.When forced to wait, wait!
When a problem you are working on forces you to wait, do you wait or switch tasks?
For example, if you are uploading a bunch of new web pages and i
...continue to full essay.How to Buy Low, Sell High
Whether you're an entrepreneur, a venture capitalist, a casual investor or just a shopper looking for a deal, you should know how to buy low and sell
...continue to full essay.Flee the Bubble
Possibly the biggest mistake a web startup can make is to develop in a bubble. This is based on my own experience launching 13 different websites over
...continue to full essay.Checklist for New Products
At our startup, we've practiced a diversification strategy.
We've basically run an idea lab, where we've built around 7 different products. Now we're
...continue to full essay.Diversification in Startups
Over the past 6 months, our startup has taken two approaches to diversification. We initially tried no diversification and then we tried heavy diversi
...continue to full essay.Thoughts on Setting Goals
It is better to set small, meaningful goals than to set wild, audacious goals.
Here's one way to set goals:
Make them good. Make them small.
Make t
...continue to full essay.Problems Worth Solving
Programming, ultimately, is about solving problems. Often I make the mistake of judging a programmer's work by the elegance of the code. Although the
...continue to full essay.Make Something 40% of Your Customers Must Have
If you combine Paul Graham's "make something people want" advice with Sean Ellis' product-market fit advice (you have product-market fit when you surv
...continue to full essay.SEO Made Easy: LUMPS
The best Search Engine Optimization(SEO) system I've come across comes from Dennis Goedegebuure, SEO manager at eBay. Dennis' system is called LUMPS.
...continue to full essay.Don't Flip the Bozo Bit
Do you "flip the bozo bit" on people?
If you don't know what that means, you probably do it unknowingly!
What it means
When you "flip the bo
...continue to full essay.(un)features
Jason Fried from 37signals gave a great talk at startup school last month. At one point he said "software has no edges." He took a normal, everyday bo
...continue to full essay.Get Stuff Done By Setting Arbitrary Constraints
Employees and students receive deadlines, due dates, goals, guidelines, instructions and milestones from their bosses and teachers. I call these "arbi
...continue to full essay.Why You Shouldn't Save Blogging for Old Age
A lot of people have the idea that maybe one day they'll become rich and famous and then write a book about it. That's probably because it seems like
...continue to full essay.6 Specific Ways to Find Programming Mentors
Finding experienced mentors and peers might be the most important thing you can do if you want to become a great programmer. They will tell you what b
...continue to full essay.Orders of Magnitude
Do you think in Orders of Magnitude? You should.
If you think in orders of magnitude you can quickly visualize how big a number is and how much eff
...continue to full essay.The Many Worlds Law
Imagine you are eating dinner with 9 friends and you all agree to play Credit Card Roulette. Credit Card Roulette is a game where everyone puts their
...continue to full essay.Twelve Tips to Master Programming Faster
Do you want to become a great coder? Do you have a passion for computers but not a thorough understanding of them? If so, this post is for you.
Sa
...continue to full essay.What's Linear Algebra?
What would happen if instead of writing about subjects you understood, you wrote about subjects you didn't understand? Let's find out!
Today's topic
...continue to full essay.Fiction or Nonfiction?
What books have changed your life? Seriously, pause for a few minutes and think about the question. I'll share my list in a moment, but first come up
...continue to full essay.Experience is What You Get
...when you don't get what you want.
How many times have you struggled towards a goal only to come up short? How many times have bad things happened
...continue to full essay.I'm Back
Decided to blog again. I missed it. Writing publicly, even when you only get 3 readers, two of which are bots and the other is your relative, is to th
...continue to full essay.