Notable Thoughts : Lessons For Entrepreneurs

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“A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all” - Anonymous. Few notable thoughts that are worth sharing and spreading.


Are you sure you want to be in San Francisco?
If San Francisco, the Bay area, and Sillicon Valley aren’t good places to start a web business of the 3P variety, where is? Well, I’d say just about any place but. Basecamp came from Chicago/Copenhagen, FogBugz from New York, Campaign Monitor from Australia, Shopify from Ottawa, Freshbooks from Toronto, Blinksale from Texas, and there are tons of other applications of the same ilk that come from all over the world.

The silent majority
It's easy for people to think that the interaction they witness on the web is a complete reflection of the world in general. Often it's quite the contrary.

Will eBay Hang Up on Skype?
The Financial Times thinks so. The British paper quotes eBay’s CEO John Donahoe as saying the online auction firm will test Skype for “synergies” this year and if those synergies aren’t strong, reassess the division. eBay purchased Skype in 2005 with a potential payout of $4.1 billion. However, last year eBay wrote down the value of the acquisition by $1.4 billion, essentially admitting it overpaid.

In the HuddleChat Debacle, a Lesson for Web 2.0 Startups
As open source takes hold — in the form of software, platforms and even the development environment itself — the ability to imitate will only increase. In such an environment, the only meaningful defense for Web 2.0 app developers and startups is their ability to build a community in large numbers. The data of a community is the only defense, and perhaps the only real value, in a Web 2.0 company. And unless they can achieve this quickly, many Web 2.0 apps/startups are going to meander into mediocrity, only to see their ideas inspire larger players to roll out their own versions of their apps.

Google App Engine for developers
On Monday Google launched Google App Engine, a hosted dynamic runtime environment for Python web applications inside Google's geo-distributed architecture. Google App Engine is the latest in a series of Google-hosted application environments and the first publicly-available dynamic runtime and storage environment based on large-scale propriety computing systems.

Why do we plan up front?
Uncertainty. It’s the same reason why so many people balk when we tell them to throw their functional spec out the window. I care so much about the design and feel and function of my condo-to-be that I can’t stand the uncertainty of not knowing how it will turn out. I want to know NOW so I can stop worrying about it. And of course, it’s impossible to really know what the best design will be without actually building the real thing step by step. But still, I don’t want to wait for such realities. And so I plan, and I plan, and I plan. Plans are a strategy against uncertainty. The problem is, they only make you certain of your imagination.

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