Breaking Free
How to Quit Your Job and Start Your Own Business
Quote: Joel Spolsky on taking outside investment
In: Business Ideas By: Brian Armstrong
13 Jun 2010This is from the excellent book, Founders At Work, that I’m reading right now.
I find new reasons every day why I’m thankful that we never took any kind of outside investment. Let me give you a small example… Jared had a friend that had an idea of some way that we could modify FogBugz to be really useful to the investment community as something – I don’t remember what, but something that the investment community could really use that’s 5 percent different than FogBugz. And I kept thinking, “This is a huge distraction, and there’s not a big enough market. I just want to stick to our core competency, and I’m not interested in doing software for the financial markets.” He kept saying, “No, no. You’ve got to talk to this guy. You could make a lot of money off this. It would be great.”
I kept thinking, “You know what, if it was a real board of directors and the VC’s were bringing you these great ideas, you wouldn’t really have any choice but to say yes. And you’d keep getting distracted to do their pet projects that they dreamed up in the shower one night and they think might be a good idea, and you just don’t think it’s a good idea.” You really don’t have the ability to say no when you take those outside investments. It’s hard to tell your investors, “Let me just go in my own direction.”
I can identify with this thought process. There is a big difference between thinking up a cool idea, and actually having to go implement it. But I found it interesting because he may have changed his mind (at least in part) since he wrote this a few years back. He went on to take VC money for his new project, StackOverflow.com.
Insight: the path of least resistance in user-interface design is…
In: User Interface Design By: Brian Armstrong
4 Jun 2010…displaying data exactly how it’s represented in the database, instead of how humans think of it.
This person might just want a “new” Honda Accord and doesn’t care if it’s a 2010 or 2011.
It’s harder to build technology based on how humans think, but it tends to be better when you do. Google does a great job of “understanding” what you meant with fuzzy matching, for example.
The example above really isn’t even that bad (some people want to choose a year). What other examples of “database driven user-interfaces” have you come across?
Related: What should I pay for a car?
QUOTE: If it’s not a 10x improvement, is it really worth doing?
In: Advice By: Brian Armstrong
2 Jun 2010Mark Andreessen talks about the 3 criteria to judge a new business idea, including the idea that it has to be a major improvement over existing solutions.
If it’s not a 10x improvement, is it really worth doing?
I tend to agree.
Insights After Touring Zappos.com Headquarters
24 May 2010This past week I made it over to Henderson, Nevada and took a tour of Zappos Headquarters. I went with all the folks in the startup I’m working for, just because we thought it would be fun and we liked their approach to business.
I also ended up reading the new book by Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness which I’d highly recommend. The story of how Zappos came to be a billion dollar company is filled with many twists and turns, and near death experiences.
I just wanted to jot down a few ideas that stuck with me from the tour and the book:
- Customer service = good marketing
Zappos today is known for having great customer service. But that wasn’t always the case. When they were nearly bankrupt and had no money for marketing, they decided to reach out to their existing customers in the hopes they’d become repeat customers. It worked. Taking a $39 loss on a free pair of shoes might appear to be bad business on the surface. But when that person told 5 of their friends, it ended up being more cost effective than $39 worth of advertising.This is a powerful idea that your customer service can actually be your best marketing. Read the rest of this entry »
I Just Saw The Future Of Education, And It’s Online
In: Business Ideas|Education By: Brian Armstrong
17 May 2010I just came across some really exciting material this weekend. Apparently the biggest “school” in the world right now is run and taught by one person. I put school in quotes because it’s not a school in the traditional sense – it is just one guy who started making tutoring videos for his cousins on YouTube.
1,400 videos later it is now the largest open courseware project in the world with more views than MIT, Stanford, Berkeley or any other school – and 200,000 monthly users.
Here is a video of Sal Khan’s talk where he discusses what the “Khan Academy” has turned into.
It’s easy to dismiss this as just a web phenomenon that isn’t comparable to regular education. After all, there is no interaction in a YouTube video so you can’t ask the teacher a question. There are no discussions amongst students, no written papers, and no grades.
How To Sell Your Company
4 May 2010John Warrillow sent me a copy of his book recently (one of the perks of having a business blog) and it was surprisingly good.
The book is titled “Built To Sell” – which actually turned me off a bit at first. It reminded me of “Built To Last”, the famous business book by Jim Collins, except quick flips have a negative connotation to me.
So I started it with a bit of skepticism. But this quickly disappeared as I got into the story. Built To Sell is told in a parable format (somewhat like Rich Dad, Poor Dad or The E-Myth Revealed) which made it really easy to read and very engaging. I finished it within 24 hours.
The book goes through the story of Alex, a small business owner who decides he wants to sell his company one day and realizes he can’t because he has built a service business that is dependent on him.
Luckily he has a mentor named Ted, who takes him through the process of converting his company to one that can be sold. This is based on mentors the author has had in real life, and it was clear from reading it that he has walked the walk.
It covers a bit of accounting, negotiation, business brokers, cash flow, etc. I guess I left with the feeling that this kind of information could only have come from long meetings with lots of real mentors. These are the kind of mistakes I wouldn’t want to have to learn the hard way.
Check it out if you get a chance. After reading it, I mailed it to a friend of mine in Houston who runs a service business. It was the kind of information I wanted to share.
How To Get Your Customers To Refer Their Friends
In: Marketing By: Brian Armstrong
25 Apr 2010I was reading this presentation by the Dropbox.com Founder, Drew Houston, the other day and the most interesting part about it was that most of their marketing with Adwords and conventional approaches completely failed.
Yet Dropbox has over 4 million users. So how did they do it?
Apparently it was almost entirely word of mouth – but they did it in a smart way.
You can click above to see the full set of slides (they are worth reading). But one important point that stood out to me was the 2-sided incentive for referrals that he mentioned above.
I logged in to Dropbox to see what it looked like and here it is: Read the rest of this entry »
TurboTax Alternatives
In: Productivity|Wealth By: Brian Armstrong
13 Apr 2010Update: Yes, I’m aware that ads for TurboTax are showing up on this article occasionally, and I think it’s awesome :)
Tax time is definitely a pain.
The U.S. tax code is a lengthy document (over 50,000 pages at last count) that few people can really understand (including our current Secretary Of The Treasury which is somewhat frightening).
It’s riddled with puzzling (and at times hilarious) questions such as these gems which I encountered over the weekend:
Did you rent a farm and receive part of the crop instead of cash for the rent?
Why yes I did! I’m sure glad someone at the IRS thought to include this question otherwise I might have missed it. And this one:
Enter the amount of any gambling losses, but only to the extent of gambling winnings. It is important to keep an accurate diary or similar record of your gambling winnings and losses.
Umm….ok, nice to see the government giving gambling advice.
But I guess I can’t get too upset at the government acting very…well, government like. They don’t know any better.
But a private company…well that’s another story. And this is what I always found especially infuriating about Intuit’s TurboTax product. It’s not just that it’s a bad piece of software – it’s that it’s bad yet so darn successful!
Business Dashboard Roundup – Plus How You Can Make Your Own (Soon)
In: Business Ideas By: Brian Armstrong
5 Apr 2010I recently posted some screenshots of some internal dashboards I built a while back at UniversityTutor.com. These are fun and addictive to check each day, but they can also serve an important purpose in your business of keeping you motivated and helping you spot trends.
Here are some cool dashboards I’ve spotted around the web lately:
1. The Panic.com Dashbaord
Gorgeous design. Tracks daily signups across their various products, plus support queues, daily revenue, local bus schedules, upcoming events, and twitter mentions.
They also mounted it on their wall with a flat panel display which make it great as a rallying point around the office. More info on their blog.
Read the rest of this entry »
FeedmailPro.com Sent Over Half A Million Messages In The Last 6 Months
In: Business Ideas|Updates By: Brian Armstrong
16 Mar 2010This is pretty cool. Was looking at the stats recently for FeedmailPro.com and about 600,000 messages (blog posts going to email subscribers) have gone out since it started just six months ago.
- 306 blogs with 132,844 total subscribers are now using the service
- 9 paying customers so far which is a 3% conversion rate on a freemium product
The main untested theory behind the site, which is that you can let users import subscriber lists without another opt-in by testing the list first seem to be working quite well. You can weed out spammers without punishing the good guys.
It has also saved people a lot of money who have switched from Aweber.com. I was previously paying $70 per month to manage the email list for this blog and one other with Aweber, so in the past 6 months FeedmailPro.com has saved me $360 just by switching.
Maybe it can do the same for your blog? If you’re looking for a more versatile email newsletter for your RSS feed (at a fraction of the cost) check out the site.
There is also an affiliate program.
About this blog
Breaking Free is a blog for people who'd like to quit their 9-to-5, start their own business, and achieve financial freedom. It's written by web-entrepreneur Brian Armstrong. You can read more here »
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