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Did Steve Jobs say that, or a copy writer at Apple? I don't know, but I like it."Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do." [ Articles | 9 Dec 2007 @ 23:24 | | PermaLink ] More >
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Wow, it's been a while since I paid attention to my own blog here.
That is of course somewhat on topic, seeing that the subject here is how to reach escape velocity, how to be successful and financially independent in one's own businesses. Meaning, I haven't quite exactly reached escape velocity, but the point here is in part to tell the story of how one might get there, and which things work or don't work along the way. And sometimes one gets a little lost along the way, gets busy with other things, and forgets where one was going.
Anyway, I'm not doing badly. Ironically, the first thing that got me a little away from the topic was that I sold my Opentopia website. It was otherwise making me around $1000 per month from Google Ads, and kept me looking for ways of increasing it. Unexpectedly, at a time when I was particularly low on funds, somebody offered to buy it. I hadn't considered that at all, and I didn't have in mind to sell it. At first I said no, but then he gave me a better offer, and I felt I couldn't really say no. The offer represented more than 3 years of income, and at the time the ad income was on its way down and the site had been blocked from Google's index. So I'd say it was a fine deal. The site has done fine for the new owner, so nothing to be ashamed of either.
I have also started a company with a couple of partners. I mean, a "real" company that is a corporation, that has offices, financing, etc. It delivers business statistics for French companies, consultants and accountants. It wasn't my idea, but I'm the guy who develops the software and the website. It hasn't really taken off yet, but it is a new company so that's perfectly normal, and we have many good contacts and good press, etc. It pays me a minimal wage, and I can't quite survive from that, but it provides a certain stability. I go to work there in the afternoon. And, well, if and when it takes off, I have not just a salary, but a 25% stake in the company.
At the same time I do contract work for a couple of US companies. For one I set up a system that does "domain tasting". That is, essentially, that one registers large numbers of domains and looks for the ones that have traffic and make money. Which clearly is a business that works. Say 1% return of the investment per day. I might of course have done that myself if I had had the capital to play with, which I didn't. And I might well have hesitated, pondering whether that's an acceptable thing to do. Anyway, technically speaking it is an interesting project.
But it doesn't escape me that I'm still working for a living, which is what I'd like to go beyond. Meaning, I make money roughly based on the number of hours I work, and I don't make money when I don't work. I spend my money every month. I don't have any debt, but I don't save up anything either, and I don't invest anything. I'm working harder, not smarter.
OK, selling a website and being part owner of a promising startup, that ain't too bad. But I think it is time I get myself into a more proactive entrepreneurial mindset. [ Articles | 8 Dec 2007 @ 12:56 | | PermaLink ] More >
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Yesterday this blog was the victim of a spam attack. Strangely, somebody spammed thousands of blogs with nothing but the address to my blog here. It might have been a mistake, intending to promote some spammy site, or it might be an attempt to bother me personally, I don't know.
I noticed when the server suddenly had a huge load. It took me a while to figure out that it was because the blog front page here was getting 20-30 new accesses per second. And, as it needs to do database lookups and stuff, that's really too much.
What was going on was that somebody, from a distributed network of many machines on different ISPs, sent trackback notices to thousands of blogs. You know, trackback is meant as an automated way for one blog to notify another that it linked to it. But, since there's an enormous amount of spam sent out that way, many blog programs will then go back and verify if there really is a link to them at the blog mentioned, before they maybe will show it with the comments. So, essentially what I was getting was the mostly automated checkbacks from those anti-spam programs.
What was attempted to be posted on those sites was my URL, given as:
Site : http://Blog.metastreams.com/
and then the content:
Blog
Blog
.. which I suppose maybe was meant to contain some actual links to sites the spammers wanted to promote, but they forgot to include them.
Anyway, this is to let anybody know, who comes here checking in person, that I sure didn't do it, and I hope those guys won't do it again. [ Articles | 29 Apr 2007 @ 16:05 | | PermaLink ] More >
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Young Entrepreneur:If you put a mouse in a maze without cheese, it'll wander and then become lazy. However, if you put cheese in the maze where it can smell it, then it'll look tirelessly for it. In fact, it will look for it, even if it has never had cheese before.
On some level, I feel like like life is similar. I can't definitively tell you whether or not there is cheese, but I can tell you that I can smell it. And once you've smelled cheese, you can't tell yourself you haven't or accept laziness. That is why my purpose is to make manifest this feeling of something more, of this potential inside of me - This is the core behind everything I do and have known.
I don't know if I'll get to the cheese in my life-time, but I do believe that it is only a matter of time before we as a civilization or we as life itself will taste this cheese. Just like a maze, evolution is not a straight line, but it does lead somewhere.
It is not a question of if, it is a question of when. I smell the cheese. [ Articles | 10 Dec 2006 @ 22:32 | | PermaLink ] More >
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Posing rocks, set of three, $175. Sounds a little on the expensive side. And I'm not sure what I'd use posing rocks for, other than for posing. But maybe I've missed a big business idea. [ Articles | 9 Dec 2006 @ 23:35 | | PermaLink ] More >
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Amazon Mechanical Turk is an interesting concept. The idea is that there are small tasks that might be needed for web projects, but which can't be done by a computer. "Human Intelligence Tasks", Amazon calls them. And what they've created is a market for such tasks. Which they use themselves, for example, to fine-tune keywords for books in their catalog. So, one can sign up, and one can do small tasks, for small amounts of money. Like that task there of answering a question like "Is 'gardening' a proper keyword for this book?" will go for 1 cent. That isn't much. But then again, if you move fast, you can make minimum wage that way.
But the interesting part is of course also seen from the buyer's angle. You can engage large numbers of people in adding value to some kind of data you have, or in collecting the data for you. That certainly opens up ideas for new kinds of businesses. [ Articles | 9 Dec 2006 @ 23:33 | | PermaLink ] More >
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From here. The idea is that the more you can say yes to, the more likely it is that people will read to what you write. Not that there's an exact formula for it, but most of these are good.- My post title includes a pun
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- My post title includes more than 10 words
- I start off by explaining the post’s core idea
- My post contains more than 3 paragraphs of my own writing
- I spell-checked my post
- The post’s idea was “sleeping” inside my head for several weeks before I wrote it down
- I was the first to report on this (as far as I know)
- This post might have profound implications for a company, celebrity, or politican
- This post might have profound implications for my readers
- This post is in-tune with the overall topic of my blog
- I illustrated my post with screenshots, drawings, or cliparts
- I end the post with a “bang”
- I use the Creative Commons license to share my content
- I emailed friends to let them know about my article
- I validated my blog’s HTML after posting
- I use a standard blog template
- I read my own post for clarity at least twice
- I use links, bold/ italics, or lists
- I’m blogging daily
- My blog is read by many people
- My post is English
- I’m reporting on first-hand experiences
- The subject I’m writing about is close to my heart
- My post includes a video, audio file or ZIP download
- Readers can comment on my post
- I submitted the post to Digg
- I submitted the post to Metafilter
- I submitted the post to Boing Boing
- I sent the post to a mainstream news source
- My post is above 250 KB (including images)
- I checked my blog’s appearance in at least 2 browsers
- I include a large ad on top of the main content
- My ad colors resemble my main content
- I decrease the font-size quite a bit to make the layout look better
- I’m citing my sources and delivering proof for what I say
- I’m using affiliate links inside my post’s content
- My post might be considered controversial by many
- Some parts of my post make people laugh
- My server is fast to deliver pages, even under heavy traffic
- My full name is included at the beginning or end of the post
- My “About” page is linked in the navigation
- My “About” page includes my bio and photo
- I’m using several JavaScript widgets (like counters) in my blog
- I’m checking my blog statistics every few days
- I consider myself an expert on this post’s topic
- My page includes animated ads
- My page includes an ad that pops up or is overlaid on the content
Some of them are a bit strange, though. More than 10 words in the the title? Why? Putting a large ad at the top? No, that doesn't exactly help you get linked by anybody. Ads don't attract visitors. Maybe they help you monitize the site, if they don't scare people away. No, a pop-up overlaid ad is about the most idiotic thing you can do if you want somebody to link to your blog without being paid for it. Everybody hates them, except for the spammers who think them up. What's the guy thinking? [ Articles | 17 May 2006 @ 18:10 | | PermaLink ] More >
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A Chinese man walks into a bank in New York City and asks for the loan officer. He tells the loan officer that he is going to Taiwan on business for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000.
The bank officer tells him that the bank will need some form of security for the loan, so the Chinese man hands over the keys to a new Ferrari parked on the street in front of the bank. He produces the title and everything checks out.
The loan officer agrees to accept the car as collateral for the loan. The bank’s president and officers all enjoy a good laugh at the Chinese man for using a $250,000 Ferrari as collateral against a $5,000 loan.
One of the bank’s employees then drives the Ferrari into the bank’s underground garage and parks it there.
Two weeks later, the Chinese man returns, repays the $5,000 and the interest, which comes to $15.41.
The loan officer says, “Sir, we are very happy to have had your business and this transaction worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multimillionaire. What puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow $5,000?”
The Chinese man replies, “Where else in New York City can I park my car for two weeks for only $15.41 and expect it to be there when I return?” [ Articles | 7 May 2006 @ 22:19 | | PermaLink ] More >
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So, here's David Heinemeier-Hanson saying why he thinks it is a great time to start a business.- You don't need VC diesel to get your motor running. Working nights or putting money aside to run full-time for three months is enough to get off the ground if you have a great idea and enough passion to make it matter.
- You can actually charge money for valuable services. People have never been more willing to part with their credit cards to pay for services that improve their business or their life. You don't need to spend aeons and cumbaja meetings pondering HOW TO MONITIZE?! when all you need is a service worth paying for.
- You don't need mainstream tech to make a dent. No wonder you have a hard time finding people if you're only looking at the mainstream tech circles. You're competing for talent with all the risk-averse insurance companies of the world. We picked Ruby early and used Rails to get access to the cream of the crop. People bustling with passion to develop using tools they love.
- You don't need to live in San Francisco to make it big. Or rather, if you want to make it big, don't live in San Francisco. You'll get sucked in to the myths (you need VC!) and drowned by the parties. Most of the worlds talent does not live in that tiny spot of land. I developed the Basecamp, Backpack, Tada List, and Writeboard from Copenhagen, Denmark. And we have one of the greatest developers I've ever met in Provo, Utah. While the rest of the company is in Chicago and New York. The Rails core team includes people from Germany, Canada, Austria, and all over the US.
- You don't need a swarm of worker bees to take off. Of course its hard to find 10 or 20 great people by tomorrow, but you don't have to. We're entering a golden age of small teams capable of doing big things. Just get a band of three together and you're good to go for v1. Using modern tools and simply doing less software means that having more people is likely to slow you down rather than speed you up.
To see what kind of businesses David particularly has in mind, look no further than 37signals, the company he's a partner in. Brilliant online software projects, brought to market very quickly, by a small team of young, smart people, charged for by the month. And, simultaneously, they developed the programming framework allowing others to do the same, Ruby on Rails, and it is free. [ Articles | 8 Apr 2006 @ 15:53 | | PermaLink ] More >
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Caterina Fake, who was one of the founders of Flickr, said that now is not a good time to start a business. A lot of people disagreed. David Heinemeier-Hanson, of 37Signals, who created Ruby on Rails, says it is always a good time to start a business, if you do it right. Dave Pollard of "How to Save the World" has some good commentary, and says, amongst other things, that it is always a good time to start a business if you can answer yes to these three questions:- I've identified a real need no one else is meeting effectively, and I know why no one else is meeting it effectively.
- I've identified a team of people who (a) collectively have the skills and knowledge needed, without a lot of overlap, to bring this product or service to fruition, (b) believe passionately in the project to bring this need to market, (c) really like each other, and (d) know what they're getting into and have reasonable expectations of the journey they're about to undertake.
- The whole team are competent and continuous innovators, improvisers, and learners.
He might just be right about that. He also outlines 10 steps of what he calls The Natural Enterprise:- Find and support the people you want to work with
- Establish your values, success measures and operating principles
- Find the unmet needs you want to fill
- Create and manage supportive networks and alliances
- Design and test possible solutions to the unmet needs
- Organically obtain and manage needed resources
- Market your offerings virally
- Track your performance against your success measures
- Innovate continuously
- Improvise continuously, avoiding the landmines
[ Articles | 8 Apr 2006 @ 15:29 | | PermaLink ] More >
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