Topics in ‘Ideology’

Why not the best ?

(adorable! but not my actual house) It’s that time of year again! As in, the time of year is nearly gone. Tradition dictates that it’s time for folks like me to start sending out year-end reviews, top lists, resolutions, goals, blah blah blahhhhhhh blah. Don’t get me wrong, I like reading other people’s, but me?… Read more »

2015 Year in Review – Seven Figures, World Domination, Chaos, Time for a Mojito

It’s been a crazy fucking year. A mixture of horrible things, wonderful things; a mixture of things that happened to me, and things I made happen. It wasn’t boring for a single second. (“May you live in interesting times” – a curse indeed.) My year really kicked off, in October 2014 — yes, yes, I… Read more »

How Your “Fuck This!” Moment Changes Everything

“I’m going to write a book.” “I’m going to build a SaaS app.” “I’m going to quit my job and travel the world.” Sound familiar? How often are these statements followed by action — real action? We all know That Guy. We all know people who spend all their time talking about what they want,… Read more »

The #1 reason user feedback can ruin your app

The user is using your app. The user requests a feature. You think: OK, they know what they want and they want this, so I’ll do it. But it’s not that simple. Replace “user” with “player.” The player is playing your game. The player requests a rule change. Well, here we have a conflict, and… Read more »

Help! My SaaS isn’t growing! +60% revenue, 1 year later…

Just about a year ago, I wrote that Freckle had hit the Plateau of Doom. We were dead in the water at $28,000 a month. We’d grow a little… then shrink a little, grow a little, shrink a little… for months at a time. Why? y=mx+b. Growth (new accounts) is pretty much linear, a reliable… Read more »

Second-Hand Tales from the Startup Trenches: The Bitter Truth

There was a time when I was at the cutting edge of our industry. I got in on Ruby on Rails, and the Javascript revival, at nearly the ground floor, and worked with some of the biggest people in the PHP community before that. Because I wrote and taught and talked, I was moderately famous […]

The Problem with the Startup Craze… by Steve Jobs

Below is a quote from an essay by Steve Jobs When I got started I was 20 or 21, and my role models were the semiconductor guys like Robert Noyce and Andy Grove of Intel, and of course Bill Hewlett and David Packard. They were out not so much to make money as to change […]

Related posts:

  1. Dear Startup World: Chill the Fuck Out
  2. Don’t bite the shit sandwich
  3. Business Book Bonanza: Growing My Biz

21 Lessons Learned from 16 Years of Hustling

Today I turned 27. For whatever reason, this feels like an important birthday. And it has been one helluva year, with huge changes (good and bad) that I’m still only now coming to terms with. While reflecting (and all that touchy-feely jazz), I realized something: Just how long I’ve been at this, the project of […]

Related posts:

  1. “Let’s cofound a baby!” and other phrases you should never speak
  2. Don’t Follow Your Passion
  3. 7 Hardass Rules for Business and Life

Dear Startup World: Chill the Fuck Out

Coming here from The Drama? This post is a reply to the drama, not the beginning of it. Justin’s post came first, after his podcast panel with me and Patrick McKenzie. Then the nasty comment quoted below, in re: Justin’s post. Then this blog post. Yup, how boring and lame is that? DRAMA LLAMA DING […]

Related posts:

  1. Don’t bite the shit sandwich
  2. When Your Job Is Killing You Slowly
  3. When Selling Turns You Evil

Don’t bite the shit sandwich

The “startup” world is bursting with bullshit (or, if you prefer, ‘unicorn dust’). There are bullshit peddlers on every blog-corner. They don’t want merely to get you to read. They don’t want merely to sell you their products now and again. They want to sell you on their religion. There are two reasons to sell […]

Hey, why not get a shiny
Freckle Time Tracking
account?