| Fletcher | Too many people to name. All you guys, of course. |
| Fried | I’m inspired by dentists and contractors who build things |
| Fried | they have a ton of different tools for the job |
| Fried | their success depends on great tools that do a few things well. Sometimes even just one thing well. |
| Fried | Instead of a swiss army knife |
| Fried | I’m also currently inspired by Ricardo Semler and James Dyson |
| Fletcher | Jason: Dyson the vaccuum cleaner guy? |
| Fried | MF, yeah |
| Fried | |
| Fried | HIGHLY recommended book |
| Hedlund | I do think that the #1 thing that has helped me most is having and keeping friends who are talented |
| Hedlund | not b/c they are talented but it seems to work out that way :) |
| Fletcher | That guy’s cool. I have one of those vaccuums. Works really well. |
| Hedlund | JF, you recommended that a while ago, I need to read it |
| Fried | absolutely fascinating book about business, ideas, design, patents, stealing, lawyers, and, most of all, incredible persistence. |
| Fried | Such a fascinating journey. It’s amazing he didn’t give up. |
| Fletcher | Jason: thanks, ordering now. |
| Hedlund | "incredible persistence"—that matters a huge amount |
| Linderman | I think there’s a big misnomer with the whole "overnight success" thing—the press (or whomever) never seems to factor in the years of not succeeding. |
| Hedlund | ML: agree. I also think people believe that entrepreneurial ideas come to you in a flash. I don’t—I like what Paul Hawken says, "Work on the idea that won’t leave you alone." |
| Linderman | related: we still get labelled as a "startup" all the time even though we’ve been around since 1999. |
| Fletcher | So here’s a question: Which startup (not your own) from the past couple of years, do you wish you had started? |
| Hedlund | MF: Hmm. I don’t know if I can answer that |
| Hedlund | I love particular products, but I don’t think I want to do them myself |
| Hedlund | I absolutely love Flickr and I’m absolutely the wrong person to build it |
| Fletcher | I’ll start: Feedburner. I think those guys are doing a really good job and filling a need. |
| Fried | |
| Hedlund | I think what you do should be an expression of you and your interests, and the way you work. The one I wanted to start was Wesabe, and I hope there’s none other just like it |
| Hedlund | that said I agree on Feedburner. Great business. :) |
| Hedlund | I have a big ole crush on Etsy— I love a lot of their ideas and the way they make their business |
| Fletcher | I’ve never used Etsy, but anything that eats into eBay’s business is good. |
| Fried | Etsy is really well done |
| Hedlund | I’m not a big fan of flash, but their flash ninja is unbelievable |
| Fried | IMHO, the best business out there today is Threadless |
| Fried | Their execution is STELLAR |
| Fried | They’re set to do over $20MM in revenues this year |
| Fried | they sell t-shirts that other people design |
| Fried | they sell t-shirts that other people have voted as the best designs. that helps reduce their risk. |
| Fletcher | Wow. I love all the services that enable people to create physical things from their designs. |
| Fried | And Threadless understands community better than anyone on the web. |
| Hedlund | I’m a big fan of a business that hasn’t launched yet: daylife. My friend Upendra started it and I think he, and the business, are amazing |
| Hedlund | I hope that they make it very big—upendra would be a great person to really change the way people learn about news |
| Hedlund | Upe was one of the people who started Firefly |
| Fried | |
| Hedlund | JF: heh. Well, like I say, I think the way people do things depends on them |
| Fried | 5 people isn’t too many eventually |
| Fried | I think it’s too many at launch |
| Fried | just my opinion |
| Hedlund | I wouldn’t tell you to change 37signals, and I wish more people did what you do, but I also think that the process should suit the people, not the other way around |
| Fried | but if it’s a web app, you don’t need 5+ people to build it |
| Fried | especially for v1 |
| Fried | and you don’t need a "QA/Release Engineer" |
| Fried | “Core Engineer / Research You will be a key member of our software development team, and will design and implement new data analysis components critical to our product, and optimize efficiency and effectiveness of existing algorithms. You will work primarily in Python, using both MySQL and PostgreSQL.” |
| Fried | Seems like overkill for a v1 too |
| Fried | but who knows |
| Hedlund | what I care about is what works for them and the result |
| Fried | everyone does things differently, of course. |
| Hedlund | if the result is good, great |
| Fletcher | Web crawling, machine learning, nlp. hmmm |
| Hedlund | so what are the businesses that don’t exist but should? |
| Hedlund | |
| Fletcher | I’d like to see hosting services get better. Move more into database management, stuff like that. So small startups could outsource even more. |
| Hedlund | MF: what do you think about S3/EC2? |
| Fletcher | Marc: I’ve been scratching my head over those, actually. The main thing is, why is Amazon doing those? |
| Hedlund | I suggested that they preload the Alexa web crawl data on the EC2 machines to make the base install more useful |
| Fried | MF… |
| Fried | Amazon is doing it because they are sharing their technology |
| Fried | it’s a great move |
| Fried | they’ve built it, they have a lot of excess capacity |
| Fried | This is tech they’ve been developing for 10 yeawrs |
| Fried | for themselves |
| Fried | and they know it can help other businesses too |
| Fried | so they’re making it available. I think this is the sign of a very progressive business. |
| Fried | And I think you’re going to see more great companies doing this, |
| Hedlund | I agree in general that having more into hosting would be great. |
| Hedlund | it’s amazing how well some of the hosting services work now |
| Hedlund | having a DB host or other services would be fantastic for some apps |
| Fried | Amazon is basically saving: Infrastructure should be open |
| Fletcher | I do think that EC2 is a move in the right direction. Being able to easily scale up quickly would be fantastic. The devil’s in the details, tho. |
| Fried | Their data storage stuff isn’t a competitive advantage |
| Hedlund | A lot of people are trying to build "The great <foo> in the sky" |
| Linderman | Last question: If you could give you-but-10-years-ago one piece of advice (business/personal/whatever), what would it be? |
| Hedlund | trust your gut more. when you read everyone in the newspaper saying one thing and your gut says something else, burn the newspaper. |
| Fletcher | Matt: I’d tell myself to believe more strongly in my ideas and take a few more risks. |
| Fried | My advice: Do what you are passionate about. |
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home