Displaying posts tagged with

“advice”

Jan
5
2010

Ask: I own a great domain name, how can I turn it into a business?

Question: I own a valuable dot-com domain, but I’m not a programmer. I think it could sell for a million dollars someday, with the proper traffic. What sould I do?

A: The basic idea here is to build a site to take advantage of the great domain name. By going on FairSoftware and listing your site, [...]

Dec
18
2009

Startup Advice Contradiction: “Iterate Quickly” or “Trust Your Guts”?

If you have been reading startup advice long enough, you surely noticed two trends repeated ad nauseum.
Iterate Quickly
Also known as “kill ideas fast”, this advice is saying that your idea is probably not worth the pixels it’s displayed on. Ideas are a dime a dozen, execution matters. You’d be better off with a dumb idea [...]

Dec
7
2009

Want Major TV Coverage? Successful Entrepreneurs Seize Opportunities

Recently, I was contacted by a major TV show, looking to do a segment on what it looks like to be an entrepreneur building a startup from scratch. I am talking major TV show, with an audience in the millions, not some local news channel.
So I e-mailed a few entrepreneurs I know to see who [...]

Oct
27
2009

Instant Idea Feedback for Entrepreneurs

When you just found a great idea for an app, the first step (after the initial excitement subsides) is to gather feedback from as many people as you can.
That’s what we just made really simple now on FairSoftware with our new feedback widget. Once you setup your idea and enter a description, the community can [...]

Oct
8
2009

Shark Eats Entrepreneur Alive

Below is a question from an entrepreneur, edited to protect the innocent (if you are a member of TheFunded.com, you can read the complete thread):
Q: An investor has been pressing me to invest and needs A DECISION IN THE NEXT DAY OR TWO, plus he is reminding me to stop publicizing my site and keep [...]

Oct
1
2009

Book Review: The Web Startup Success Guide

Advice on how to build a startup is plentiful online with countless blogs by seasoned entrepreneurs or consultants, successful or not. So it begs the question: why write a book in 2009 about starting your own web startup? “The Web Startup Success Guide” by Bob Walsh answers with a resounding yes!

Despite all the information at [...]

Aug
12
2009

The Cheapest MBA Program for CS Students Costs $99 and It’s Called the App Store

As a CS student, why do you write a program? To learn data structures, good coding practices and algorithms.
Great. Now try this: write an iPhone app and put it on the App Store. What will you learn? Marketing, customer support, economics, PR.
By the time you graduate with your CS degree, that little App Store adventure [...]

Aug
5
2009

Ask Fair: How Much Should I Offer A Writer to Work on my iPhone App?

At an iPhone developer Meetup a few nights ago, an iPhone developer asked me a key question: “how much equity in my project should I offer to the technical writer that I need to finish my app?”
His gut feeling was that as the main developer, he of course should keep most of the revenue.
There are [...]

Jul
9
2009

Good Programmers Don’t Need No Marketing

Good programmers don’t need marketing. Great applications sell themselves.
I used to think that way too.
When I was an R&D engineer, I wrote the code. I made the product. I thought that sales and marketing were basically overhead.
Then I switched sides, worked with sales people for a while, and witnessed how hard it is to sell [...]

May
13
2009

Being a New CS Grad in this Economy Sucks

I was representing our company at an event at the Berkeley campus last month and I got to interact with a lot of students about to graduate. In reality, the hot topic was finding jobs in this economy. I always happily give resume advice and generally try to help answer the many questions about finding [...]