March 2011
4 posts
Data-Driven Startups →
Love this presentation from David Cancel. Even for pre-product startups, the message is great.
Moving ...
I’m moving my long-form blogging over to here:
http://www.johnwedgwood.com
And plan to start using tumblr for what it was intended for - a tumblog. Expect to see more short posts here, and long posts over on the blog.
Writing an Instagram Web Client
This post is about why I created the Instagram web client Hiverly.
I Follow Tony Conrad on Twitter
It all starts with Tony Conrad (waves at Tony). You can read all about him on his About.me page.
Blame France
There is a sequence of events that has played out every week or so in my office. Twitter tells me that Tony has posted a new Instagram picture. It is frequently a picture of France, one of...
The Search for Meaning
I’ve been struggling to write down some version of my philosophy and observations on leadership and management. I’ve given up. I’m just going to write short posts on related topics and see if I can roll it up into something coherent later. This is part one.
The Search for Meaning
If you want to be an effective leader at any level of an organization, you absolutely must respect...
February 2011
1 post
Measure Retention
I was re-reading some notes I took around the time that 1000 Markets was sold to Bonanza and came across this one.
“Making something people really care about is hard, but without that, you really don’t have any chance at all.”
A startup is all about building something people care about, and then scaling that up. Scaling is hard, and building is hard, but nothing is as hard as...
January 2011
5 posts
My Identity Problem
I’m working on a side project, and part of that project includes one really basic social features - Follow. For one user to follow another, they not only need some discovery mechanism, but they also need some concept of the identity of the people they might choose to follow.
It’s not hard to code. It’s just a simple profile: user name, real name, picture, and a short bio. I bet...
Standing at Work
A tweet from @busterbenson linked to this post Why and How I Switched to a Standing Desk. It reminded me that I had started the standing desk experiment, but never really followed up. After about 8 months, I think it’s an unqualified success for me.
The Motivation
I was pretty motivated. In the past I had experienced numbness in my legs from sitting too long, and back pain as well. It...
Jumpstarting the OODA Loop with Hypothesis Driven...
@swombat has a blog post up called How to evaluate and implement startup ideas using Hypothesis Driven Development. It’s a great post. You should read it.
We applied a quick and dirty version of this strategy during a period late in the life of 1000 Markets, and we learned a ton from it. If you aren’t doing this for your business, I highly recommend it. The tl;dr version is this:
Meet...
Marketplace Revenue Models
For most startups, a complex business model is a waste of time. It is too hard to create, and it doesn’t help you learn or take action. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a business model. You need to document and validate your assumptions about revenue and costs, track progress, and know where you should push.
A marketplace website is by nature a complex business. There are a nearly...
App Store Predictions
There is a question on Quora asking How will the Mac App Store change the technology scene? that made me want to put my predictions down in print.
This is how apps will be bought in the future
The app store solves a real problem for consumers of desktop applications. The old method of discovering apps (go hunting, or wait for someone to tell you about an app) stinks. This is much much better. I...
