Topics in ‘startups’

Be Your Own Angel – a revenue model for slow startups

Yes, recurring revenue grows sloooooowly. How do you, founder of a baby bootstrapping biz, survive the lean year or two before it can pay all your bills? Well, I have a strategy. I call it Be Your Own Angel. Last week, I gave a talk about it — in greater detail than ever before! —… Read more »

My secret startup past

I’ve been designing & developing for hire since I was 14. But I almost never write about my past. It’s old hat to me. I’m an always-moving-forward kind of girl. This has led many to assume my strongly opinions on bootstrapping come ex nihilo — or possibly from bitchy sour grapes at being excluded from… Read more »

Startup Escape Plan: How to free up time, energy & money to build your future

When you stop working for the day, have you really gotten anywhere? Will the hours that you spent today still be paying off for you next week, next month, next year? If your answer is “No,” then you’re probably here because you’re somewhere on the left side of this spectrum: But you want to be… 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 […]

Shameless Self-Promotion, Beautiful Unique Snowflakes, & Extra Nose Syndrome

Popular opinion among smart, skilled, hard-working people seems to go something like this: Something is wrong with a society/world that values and rewards outgoing people, who talk up their strengths, over good or even great people who do not. Ah, self-promotion. Is there any other skill in the world of which smart, skilled, hard-working people […]

My 7 Principles of Shipping

So! Two days ago, Alex and I launched our Get Off Your Butt And Launch Your First Paying Product online course! If you were one of the 546 brilliant and thrify people on my Advance Discount List, you would have received a hefty ($100) discount by now, right to your inbox. If you didn’t, well, […]

Pimp your JS Workflow & more

Update! Forgot to add this one to the list below: Wanna kick some interface designing butt? Hit the stacks!, wherein yours truly gets overly excited about research papers. But in a useful way. Happy Friday, sports racers! I know I’ve been neglecting you, but no more. Look, I brought you flowers! cc lepiaf.geo Aren’t they […]

The Elephant Is Not Its Trunk — And other reasons to stop fooling yourself, and start marketing

An elephant is long, limber, and slightly tapered. Like a giant roll of cookie dough, but with fewer chocolate chips and a lot more muscles! And an insatiable appetite for peanuts! Imagine somebody came up to you on the street and announced this proudly to you.  What would you think of them? Let me take […]

Jump Start *Your* Year of Hustle – Weekend Workshop

I’ve been thinking a lot about my Year of Hustle (thus the posts, and the tweets). I’ve been making notes of stories, and thoughts, and lessons, and results to share for months. Last week I had the crazy idea to do a live, 3-hour workshop for those who want to make their own Year of […]

Reductio ad Absurdum

Owning an expensive camera does not a photographer make. Knowing how to annotate music does not a composer make. Having a fancy journal does not a writer make. Being good at CSS does not a designer make (nor does CSS make anything beautiful). Being able to write HTML does not a user interface expert make […]

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