57 Things I've Learned Founding Three Tech Companies
The best start-up article I’ve read in a long time, Jason Goldberg shares 57 lessons he’s learned in being a serial web-entrepreneur. A couple of my favorites:
“Build something you are personally passionate about. You are your best focus group.”
“You’re doing really well if 50% of what you originally planned on doing turns out to actually work. Follow your users as much as possible.”
“Smile. Laugh. Wear funny socks. I wear funny socks to remind myself to not settle for boring and to be creative.”
“The only thing that matters is how good your product is. All the rest is noise.”
“Have fun every single day. If it’s not fun, stop doing it. No one is making you.”
iPhone HDR
Since I’m such a huge believer in always having a camera in tow, I’ve been thrilled with the photography improvements from my two-year old iPhone 3g to the new iPhone 4. And now, with iOS 4.1, Apple has introduced in-camera HDR capabilities.
What’s HDR? The quick answer is that it combines multiple exposures to create an image more like what your eyeballs see, so instead of typical photos where you might have super dark shadows, or a sky that is white instead of blue, you get a more dynamic, colorful image.
So how does the iPhone do? I’d say the results are pretty good! Here are some photos I took at Rose Park in Georgetown.
Exposing for the bright blue sky:
Exposing for the grass and trees:
The iPhone HDR result:
I’m thrilled to say I recently accepted an offer to join PICnet, a wonderful B-corporation whose goal is to “empower the missions of non-profits through technology.”
Beyond doing great work, the office environment is fantastic. I knew it was the right place for me when I realized that I probably shared more laughs in my interview there than I did in all of my other job interviews combined. Need evidence? The office is filled with 3-foot tall inflatable penguins, and when I asked if one could sit in for the interview, they happily obliged. I’m excited to contribute!
TBD.com and the Hyperlocal Future of Journalism
I spend a lot of time thinking about how digital technologies are changing the shape of media today (in fact I wrote a thesis about its political implications — if you have the energy and lack-of-foresight to want to read it, check out Facebook, Twitter and Barack Obama: New media and the 2008 Presidential Election). One of the best sources discussing this today is Leo Laporte’s This Week in Google Podcast featuring Gina Trapani and Jeff Jarvis. Jarvis is an especially prescient voice in the future of media, so I was excited when he mentioned TBD.com as a site that shows a possible future for journalism.
Stemming from the new-media axiom focus on what you do best, and link to the rest, TBD is enrolling local bloggers from the DC area to help provide well-rounded coverage of the nation’s capital. Affiliated with the people behind Politico, they do have full-time writers on staff, but they’ve also partnered with over 100 local blogs — with foci ranging from food to politics to crime — to help paint a more complete picture.
This leads to a media strategy that focuses on the “hyperlocal” while still covering a broad area of topics. This, in and of itself is nice, but not completely revolutionary — it’s the relationship with bloggers is where TBD stands out. Rather than hosting an entire post on TBD (and thus monetizing other’s work) as is Huffington Post’s MO, TBD provides a headline and then a link to the blog of origin. This means that rather than trying to usurp any interesting content, TBD becomes a launching-pad for discovering local news and providing a hub-and-spoke model for directing readers directly to the writers.
I’ve just joined the TBD blog network, and I’m thrilled to be a part of this experiment in fusing new media and economic comparative advantage in forging a new model for journalism. Will it succeed? I think so, but for now it remains TBD.
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Budak's Tumblr: From SF, but living in DC. Social Entrepreneur and Travel Writer. I like adventures, roadtrips, photography, California and empanadas.
