October 2011
3 posts
“Be yourself and work as hard as you can to bring wonderful things into the...”
– John Lilly on Steve Jobs
3 tags
2 tags
Our Sophomore Year As Entrepreneurs
September 30th was Select Start’s second full year as a business. Speaking for myself, Josh, and Tariq, it has been the most stressful but rewarding thing we’ve ever experienced.
In October of 2010, we had just convinced (duped?) our fifth employee to join the family. Revenues were modest and runway was always an issue. We occasionally got very creative with distributing founder...
September 2011
2 posts
Simplicity Is The Ultimate Sophistication
You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now...
Rogers Bank: Terms and Conditions
Rogers is trying to start a bank. Based on their current practices, here’s what I expect:
No Monthly Rollover
The money that was in your account last month is gone. Deal with it.
Subscriptions
You want a bank account? Please choose between the 24 month and 36 month options. With our 36 month option, your debit card is FREE.
Cancellation Fees
You’ve decided that Rogers Bank...
August 2011
1 post
2 tags
July 2011
1 post
June 2011
7 posts
2 tags
Buying A Condo - Calculating Affordability: Rent...
Read the first post in my series Buying A Condo - Fun Facts About Ottawa Real Estate.
Calculating what you can afford is a tough exercise. On one hand, you want the best deal, and on the other, your eyes are bigger than your stomach.
One of the best visualization tools I’ve ever run across is the New York Times’ Rent vs Buy Calculator. I strongly encourage your to try your own...
3 tags
Buying A Condo - Fun Facts About Ottawa Real...
I’m looking to buy a condo in Ottawa. I haven’t purchased one yet, so this is an “as it happens” series of posts.
As a practicing geek, computer scientist, business person, and anal retentive, I have a process:
Learn as much as I can real estate, real estate history,
Talk to people who have been through the process before
Model the decision making process in Excel
...
"Real" Netflix in Canada
It’s not hard. Call your credit card company and have them add a US address to your account. For example:
Hi. I travel quite a bit to the US. My phone carrier requires me to have a US credit card to set up an account. Can you add a second address to my VISA? The primary/mailing address will remain my Canadian address. Thank you!
Then, just sign up on the Netflix US site*.
11...
1 tag
April 2011
2 posts
How to Get Hired By a Hot Startup - Value
Applying to a startup is completely different than applying to a large company. You’ve probably keyword-stuffed your resume to get through the HR screening. At a startup, everything is about value.
1. Understand Your Value Proposition
At it’s most basic, a value proposition is the benefit (or value) someone gets from something they pay for. Like a company trying to sell you a new product,...
2 tags
Enterprise Software: To Price Or Not To Price
On the web, “Contact Us For A Quote” offends my sensibilities. An all-to-common occurrence is to land on a website and say “Oh. This looks great! How much?”. You end up spending the next 30 minutes searching for a price but finding countless “Talk to a Sales Representative” links.
SaaS to the rescue. Most SaaS companies freely publish pricing on their...
March 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Your Brain On Recruiting
A friend received a letter from a company recruiting for Amazon. It’s a thing of beauty, really. Let’s look at “your brain on recruiting”.
My name is [REDACTED]; I am a Partner with [REDACTED], a new firm that partners with early stage startups and leading companies that are at the forefront of disruptive technologies. We’ve helped build amazing technical teams...
2 tags
Starting Up in San Francisco
I’ve been spending the week in San Francisco with @aSadhankar and @Gahzi, immersing myself in everything the Bay Area startup scene has to offer. A critical part of running a startup is finding out how others do it.
So why is this place such a startup launch pad? Three things became incredibly clear at the street level:
Startup “Spots”
Founders know where to find other...
February 2011
4 posts
1 tag
1 tag
Founder Food
Once a year I leave a coffee meeting thinking to myself “Holy shit I’m doing it wrong.” Today was one of those days.
For those of you who don’t know Rob Woodbridge, he’s a serial entrepreneur, advisor and tech executive here in Ottawa. Rob emailed me offering his advice about our company, team and our success. Having been in our situation numerous times before, I...
1 tag
May 2010
2 posts
1 tag
“Fake it until you make it.”
– A startup mantra. Sell the product before it’s even finished.
1 tag
“Niche first, world later.”
– @drewhouston and @asmith, Founders of Dropbox
April 2010
1 post
4 tags
iPad App Prices Are Sane
I had the displeasure of reading this TechCrunch editorial entitled “iPad prices are out of control and will kill us all.”
Paul Miller criticizes iPad application price increases as unreasonable. He makes several valid points:
It would be nice if developers built Universal Apps,
The AppStore needs a “trial” system, and the obvious
It’s nice to pay less for...
November 2009
4 posts
1 tag
“Hustle is the most important word…..EVER.”
– Gary Vaynerchuk
1 tag
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
– Mike Tyson
1 tag
“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to...”
– Antoine De Saint Exupry
1 tag
“Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.”
– C.W. Ceram
October 2009
5 posts
1 tag
“Without a clear goal, you get death by a thousand compromises. You say...”
– Mark Pincus, Founder and CEO of Zynga, at Startup School 2009
1 tag
“Move fast, break stuff.”
– Facebook Engineering Team motto
1 tag
“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”
– Ayn Rand
1 tag
“The best revenge is massive success”
– Frank Sinatra
3 tags
Webapps By The Numbers
I’ve been pouring over the results of the 2009 Webapp Survey from TechCrunch and Carsonified. This really shattered a few perceptions I had about the webapp industry.
Survey Says:
50% of webapps have less than 1000 active users.
People can’t get traction. This goes right into the second point.
50% of webapps get less than 1000 uniques per month.
You can’t create users if you...
September 2009
4 posts
3 tags
“I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.”
– Steve Jobs
1 tag
“The adventure you’re ready for is the one you get.”
– The dude from Survivor quoting a dead guy
1 tag
“He had discovered a great law of human action: to make a man covet a thing, it...”
– Mark Twain
1 tag
“I’d rather beg forgiveness than ask permission.”
– Robert Downey Jr.