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What to make of the StackOverflow.com VC funding push?

Much to-do has been raised over Joel Spolsky’s announcement that he was going to seek funding for StackOverflow.com.  The 37 Signals guys do a much better diessection of it than I can, so I will just add my conculusion, to wit:   StackOverflow.com has become the default go-to site for any technical problem for coders all over the world – the more I think about it I think the VC push is just an attempt at attention, and the real purpose is to sell it in small pieces to the programming community.  Who wouldn’t want to own a share or ten of the site you visit three times a week, even if the revenue model is shakey.   Atwood and Spolsky would remain in control, but they woudl have enough funds not to worry about day to day expenses.

My two cents anyway.

 

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

Biz— No comments
16
Feb 10

Written By Steve French

 

How to write an effective email

envelopeAfter listening to Jeff Atwood rant about email on the most recent Stack Overflow Podcast I thought I would write a quick guide to creating an effective business email.  I am defining “business email” as email designed to garner information needed to perform some larger, work related task.  Business emails tend to be a constant stream of communication between two parties over an extended period of time.  This quick guide should eliminate 90% of problems related to those emails.  We now resume our regular “How To Fix” formatting:

The Problem: People send email  to occupy time and simulate forward motion, and in some cases convey information, but they seldom use email to elicit information from co-workers.  Attempts to elicit information are likely to transmit anxiety from sender to receiver rather than triggering a useful response from receiver back to sender. Continue reading →

Biz / How To Fix / Productivity— No comments
15
Feb 10

Written By Steve French

 

Follow up post to my Start Up Atlanta post

I wrote up my experiences at StartUp Atlanta, and the good people at Core Motives were kind enough to send me a few corrections to wit (they wrote these in the comments) –

1) Actionable:

a) Sales: detecting the interaction of a prospect who is in a stalled sales opportunity, and pinging the salesperson’s Blackberry, in real time, that they need to call the prospect

b) Marketing: real-time revenue reporting from Google AdWord campaign clicks

* Corporate Purchasing: Pricing starts at $99/m; below the radar of corporate purchasing

* Pricing: simple consumption model with 3 tiers
* Remarkability: “Enables your business to detect, track and target potential customers”

Continue reading →

Biz— No comments
08
Feb 10

Written By Steve French

 

A Successful Evening at StartUp Atlanta

war of the rosesLast night I attended the StartUp Atlanta January event (on the web at StartUpAtlanta.org, @StartupAtlanta on Twitter) where about 60 or so members of the Startup community mixed, mingled, and listened to 5 presentations by new Startups in Atlanta.

The community was quite nice, and the venue, Ignition Alley was cool too.  Ignition Alley is a co-working facility about four miles away from Stronico HQ which is on my short list of places to go when I need an office.   I had a great time meeting everyone and the event was quite well run.

And now, the contestants!  We listened to the presentations, and voted via twitter for our favorites, here were mine, recorded here for posterity.  I judge startups by the following criteria, on a scale of 1-10 (higher is better).  I thought I would share it here for the first time.

  1. Problem Solving – It can be a cool product, but does it make anyone’s life easier?
  2. Actual Customers – I am defining the customer as someone with both problems and money.
  3. Simplicity of Pricing – can the fees be described to anyone, do you need more information about the prospect before you can offer a quote?
  4. Chicken and Egg Problem – does the product require a lot of Customer A before Customer B becomes interested,  and vice versa?  This applies a good bit to middleman/broker type companies like E-Bay.
  5. Remarkability – that is to say, can someone who heard a quick presentation about it describe it to someone the next day, and have it be understood?

Note, I do not judge the passion of the founders, quality of marketing, execution etc.  That’s too hard to judge based off of a short presentation. Continue reading →

Biz / Marketing— 4 comments
04
Feb 10

Written By Steve French

 

What is the best jQuery modal popup method?

I do not know that much about jQuery, or any of it’s offshoots (jQueryUI, etc) but I do have a need for modal popups.  As I am building the website in ASP.net MVC, instead of ASP.net webforms I  have decided to use the jQuery platform instead of the standard Ajax Toolkit.

I have looked over many, many modal popup schemes and decided to use the Queness modal popup method.  It is  the most usable of the methods I’ve seen.   Look for it on the main Stronico site when it launches!

 

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

ASP.net MVC / Biz / Stronico— No comments
01
Feb 10

Written By Steve French

 

Non-Disclosure Agreements are the Kiss of Death


nda
Creative Commons License photo credit: mil8

“Before I tell you about it you have to sign this!” is what they all say.  The idea will be written out over five pages, usually in the passive voice, with as many adjectives and adverbs as possible.  By the time you finish reading the document the concept will be fuzzier than when you started reading the document.

As a solo web/software I’ve signed 15 or so non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) over my past eight years in business for new products and companies.  I don’t recall any of the products being successful in the long term.  In fact, I can’t recall any of the products being around after six months.  Most of the products never reached any sort of development at all.  To a man the people pitching the NDAs had great enthusiasm, and  they all insisted on a great many meetings.  Why is this? Continue reading →

Biz / Sentiment / Software Development— No comments
29
Jan 10

Written By Steve French

 

Flying Car Syndrome

This is will most likely be included in some form in my upcoming e-book.

Flying Car Syndrome

Imagine the following exchange one week after a car sale:

Salesman: So, how do you like the new Prius?

Prius Buyer: It’s a piece of crap, I’m never buying a hybrid again.  You lied to me!

Salesman: What do you mean?  Aren’t you getting great mileage?

Prius Buyer: Mileage?  Who cares about mileage, it doesn’t fly!

Salesman: WTF?  Who told you cars could fly?

Prius Buyer: Of course hybrid cars can fly, why else would they be called hybrids?  And I saw a flying car in a movie once.

Now imagine talking to a client after a site has launched.  He came to you ignorant of the technology but specific in his requirements.  He wanted a site that mirrors the designer’s Photoshop files, standards compliant CSS and XHTML,  written in ASP.net MVC, optimized for 1280 by 920 screen resolutions and complete by the end of the month.  You do all those things, and wow, the site looks awesome – just like the Photoshop files, standards compliant,  and delivered on time.  If you’re dealing with Flying Car Syndrome, the call sounds something like this: Continue reading →

Biz / CustomerService / Flying Car Syndrome - The Book— No comments
07
Jan 10

Written By Steve French

 

What should I title my new book?

Last night I  decided to package up some of my insights I’ve gathered in my seven and and a half years as an introverted small business person into a convenient e-book.  Being a self-diagnosed Aspie, I’ve categorized most of my feelings into Jungian Archetypes with descriptive names and stories behind the names.  Over the years I’ve developed many gut instincts about what to look for and what to avoid (when you’re not perceptive to people that helps tremendously).  I intend to write a 20 page (approx) book, consisting largely of material that has (or will) appear here or on my other blogs.    I will release it as an e-book on Amazon, and probably as a free download on the Stronico website.

Now what should I call it?  At the moment I’m thinking of the following 6 choices. Continue reading →

Biz— No comments
06
Jan 10

Written By Steve French

 

The Web Startup Success Guide by Bob Walsh

I recently read the Web Startup Success Guide by Bob Walsh and liked it. It was chock full of useful information and helpful tips about how to go from a programmer to an actual Owner. In the words of Michael Gerber, it helps you work on your business, and not in it.

Brief Thoughts

  • The Venture capital chapter was quite informative, and reinforced my thought of “Are you sure you need this” regarding VC funding.
  • The Social Media marketing chapter was excellent, and I have sent the link to the book to many of my friends in the advertising and marketing biz to help them get a handle on how to handle FaceBook, Twitter, and the rest
  • For the most part the interviews were useful and informative, particularly Joel Spolsky’s interview. For my purposes, a couple of them could have been removed with no damage doen to the book, but I imagine they applied to someone.
  • The interview with David Allen was informative as well. Conversations about the GTD methodology tend to resemble Ayn Rand discussions on philosophy too much, but this interview worked for it’s purposes

I recommend this book to everyone starting an ISV (like me!), or thinking about starting one. My only quibble is that there was no central guide to the links mentioned in the book, either as an appendix to the book or online. There were numerous mentions of useful websites, but it is easy to lose them as they are spread out all over the book. This is a minor quibble though. If you’re reading this, and this applies to you, go ahead and buy it. You’ll be glad you did.

Cross posted at the Digital Tool Factory blog.

 

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

Biz— No comments
10
Sep 09

Written By Steve French

 

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