Two of the startups acquired by Yahoo in their big Web 2.0-ification wave were 'half-assed' ventures. Upcoming.org was based out of some weekend and late-night hacks, and the founders never quit their day jobs before being acquired.

del.icio.us was a one-man band for years, and even when the site started getting major attention, the founder, Joshua Schachter, was working full time on Wall Street. He says that he found ways to be productive when he had just 15 minutes free. (I recently asked him about that and he said that one of the techniques that helped was shorter methods, nothing longer than a page. That's an interesting real-world metric for how readability = value.)

Huh, is that true? I've found that if I can't sit and devote at least one hour uninterrupted, I'm totally useless at coding. Perhaps that's a restriction of the language I'm using (Java) and the overall suckiness of the apps I'm working on tho.

The bulk of my site was built on 35-minute train rides. I use Scheme. A functional language does make it easier to pick up where you left off and see where you were headed with incomplete code.

I'm about the same way. Rather than blame the language or circumstances though, perhaps we should both look to see what habits we can develop to improve. Even a little improvement will mean an extra hour or so per week.

Another "how to eat pizza" post. 1. Find a partner to eat pizza. 2. Order pizza. 3. Open the box with pizza. 4. Start chewing pizza. 5. DON'T watch Sponge Bob while eating pizza! 6. Leave nothing to your enemies!

disagree - some real valuable points here from someone that has apparently done it before - worthwhile to say the least

some people don't know how to eat pizza

I recently found out I have this problem. I went to Pizza Hut for the first time and was pretty embarrassed.

Those people would hardly ever get it right then.

Unless they keep learning and reading.

Personally, I like the post. Sometimes would-be entrepreneurs just need to know if they are going about it the same way others have gone about it to become successful.