¶ the more job interviews you go through, the more you think you know about how companies should be run · 30 March 2006 tech
- Essentially all decisions are at least partly wrong. The act of making a decision, arguably, is primarily the emotional acceptance of the inevitability of error. The difference between good decisions and bad decisions is not that the good decisions have fewer flaws, but that their flaws are more inspiring. Thus the art of deciding lies in erring creatively. And thus the primary component of leadership is creativity.
- If you are demoing a prototype to VCs (or me, pretending to be a VC), try not to accidentally show them porn unless that's actually part of your business plan.
- The fact that so many businesses have means without ends does not make it any more sensible to run a company with an end but no means. Or, to put this another way, if you have more Senior Vice Presidents than either months until your first product launches, or programmers, you are not really a software company.
- It's usually easier to talk one person out of a million dollars than it is to talk a million people out of a dollar each, but it's probably easier to talk a million people out of a dollar a hundred times each than to talk a hundred people out of a million dollars, or ten out of ten million. (And even easier to not need a million dollars.)
- Business development is about figuring out where money is. Marketing is about convincing the people with the money to give it to you. These are money activities, and thus the proper occupation of money companies. A software company develops software, which is hard to do well, and thus should only be attempted where you believe there's a genuine chance to improve something in the world. A commercially successful software company does something valuable for somebody, and then finds a way to allow them to express their appreciation.
- You can buy programmers pizza and they will appreciate it. Actually, you can buy most people pizza and they will appreciate it. And pizza is cheap. Thus there's no reason to lose more money than pizza costs, in pursuit of anything people are going to appreciate less.
- Process and specialization are attempts to minimize individual variation. But most new businesses fail, so individual variation is actually your only hope.
- Do not tell a job candidate that you have a great working environment and then keep them in a 60-degree room from 10am to 3pm without food. For extra credit, do not brag about the quality of your hiring process while reading their resumé for the first time right in front of them. And if the job requires that a candidate arrive with any kind of pre-existing expertise or experience, it's minimal courtesy to Google them ahead of time to find out if they have any.
- If you think every other company in your field is run by idiots, you're probably almost right.
- If you are demoing a prototype to VCs (or me, pretending to be a VC), try not to accidentally show them porn unless that's actually part of your business plan.
- The fact that so many businesses have means without ends does not make it any more sensible to run a company with an end but no means. Or, to put this another way, if you have more Senior Vice Presidents than either months until your first product launches, or programmers, you are not really a software company.
- It's usually easier to talk one person out of a million dollars than it is to talk a million people out of a dollar each, but it's probably easier to talk a million people out of a dollar a hundred times each than to talk a hundred people out of a million dollars, or ten out of ten million. (And even easier to not need a million dollars.)
- Business development is about figuring out where money is. Marketing is about convincing the people with the money to give it to you. These are money activities, and thus the proper occupation of money companies. A software company develops software, which is hard to do well, and thus should only be attempted where you believe there's a genuine chance to improve something in the world. A commercially successful software company does something valuable for somebody, and then finds a way to allow them to express their appreciation.
- You can buy programmers pizza and they will appreciate it. Actually, you can buy most people pizza and they will appreciate it. And pizza is cheap. Thus there's no reason to lose more money than pizza costs, in pursuit of anything people are going to appreciate less.
- Process and specialization are attempts to minimize individual variation. But most new businesses fail, so individual variation is actually your only hope.
- Do not tell a job candidate that you have a great working environment and then keep them in a 60-degree room from 10am to 3pm without food. For extra credit, do not brag about the quality of your hiring process while reading their resumé for the first time right in front of them. And if the job requires that a candidate arrive with any kind of pre-existing expertise or experience, it's minimal courtesy to Google them ahead of time to find out if they have any.
- If you think every other company in your field is run by idiots, you're probably almost right.