Archive for the ‘Startups’ Category

Your high IQ will kill your startup

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Being intelligent is like having a knife. If you train every day in using the knife, you will be invincible. If you think that just having a knife will make you win any battle you fight, then you will fail. This [belief] in your own inherent ability is what will kill your startup. Success comes from the work and ability you put in becoming better than the others, and not from some brilliance you feel you may have within you.

I enjoyed the thoughtful story, and it reminds me that success comes from smarts and hard work, not just smarts on their own.

Posted in Startups, tech | Comments

David Heinemeier Hansson – Unlearn Your MBA

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Wow, this was good. My favorite highlight: discussing the lunacy of the 80 hour + workweek. I’m glad he went there, because I’ve seen people who believe in dedicating their every waking moment to a project or startup—and expect everyone else to as well.

I know you can’t always do it in 40 hours, but I really question the efficiency of someone who works 80 hours plus every week on a project.

Chalk one up to working smart, then work hard.

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Is Design More Important Than Engineering?

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Opinions will be formed, rightly or wrongly, within seconds of laying eyes on your site before they even have a chance to put your code to use. So before you go hiring a crack team of code monkeys, make sure to reserve some roster slots for design all-stars.

Or as I see it: no one will drive a car with tons of good features if they can’t figure out how to open the door. So I’d say that it carries a little more importance than engineering, maybe 60% to 40%.

Posted in Design, Startups | Comments