anguslong

At least one startup's doing just fine vs. Blackboard. Instructure Canvas just closed series B, is CEO'd by former Mozy founder and is LMS of choice for a growing number of schools (and soon to be @ Auburn if twitter's to be believed).

They avoid litigation (apparently) by open-sourcing their stack and charging for hosting/integration. Rails-based goodness.

[not affiliated - but was just identifying LMS options for a client]

tl;dr Contractor develops psyops backend for the cloud. Creates fake persona pool. Uses anonymizer/chameleon for IP obfuscation, vmware/virtualbox instances for each persona, enables deploying to vps around the world. Uses system to age personas via social/email accounts and salt with rss, social & checkin data.

RFP: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id...

Amazon is sending me a copy.

I hope it's as helpful as the classic "If You Want to Write" by Brenda Euland -- which was written in 1938, but has aged very-very well. Originally found this book via Guy Kawasaki on his list of great books for entrepreneurs & creative types.

Joe Ades -- passed away last year after many years selling on the streets of NYC. He was profiled a few times, but this article sheds more light on his life and business:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/magazine/27ades-t.html

One heckuva salesman.

Looking forward to following behind the scenes on this. Saw the initial tweets about WPEngine and mighty interested in the 'lessons learned' re: using social for first block of customers.

From the comments: SmartBear's measuring initial success as $360k ebitda ($30k a month). While arbitrary, seems a smart goal. Makes for a sustainable and salable business (with room for a bit of R&D and bonus structure).

Oh, and Austin FTW.

Mark Bittman, food writer at NYT strikes a balance between food hyperbole and science that appeals to me. (e.g. full appreciation of health, weight, environment, pleasure trade-offs)

His personal goal of "vegan until 6" is an example. Veggies & fruit during the day, then a balanced dinner with protein.

A bit more detail and links to his sources (books): http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/article967801.ece

Good post. Another way to put it?

"Hitched to Someone Else's Dream" http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080901/hitched-to-someone-else...

"I got sucked into his enterprise -- our livelihood now depended on it -- and though I had little input into its direction, I stood to lose everything if it failed."

Article echoes much of what my wife has dealt with in 15 years I've been building companies.

Ok, Colbert (and smart MSFT product-placers) - I'll bite. Today is officially "Bing for a Day" here. I just set my Chrome default engine to Bing for the first time. Should be fun -- wondering if I'll miss the Goog in the next 24 hours.

"gets engineers to prioritize stuff"

Yes. And jives with Kayak.com founder's Big Red Phone tactic:

"About a year ago, I bought a red telephone with a really loud ringer for the office. Whenever a customer calls the help number on our website, that phone rings. The engineers initially complained about it. They said, "That's so friggin' annoying!" And I'd say, "There's a really simple solution: Answer the friggin' phone and do whatever it takes to make that customer happy. Then hang up, unplug the phone, walk it down to the other end of the office, and plug it in down there."

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100201/the-way-i-work-paul-eng...

Another way of saying same. If employees are in your future, focus on revenue per employee (RPE).

Napkin math: sub-$100k RPE and your wee company is nominally profitable after salaries, fixed & variable costs. Greater than $100k per employee, profits scale nicely.

While nice to talk about the Goog's RPE ($1 mil '08), I prefer to "fish" for company ideas a little closer to Earth. For inspiration, Inc 5000 companies with 50 or fewer employees, sorted by revenue:

http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2009/search_results.html?showrank...

Room for profit is the key. Comments from local folks in-the-know seem to say this has been investigated here in the ATX, and there isn't room for profit.

Alas, your garage idea might be the next step. (maybe a mobile geek-hut in the garage, with solatubes for a bit of natural light?)... hmmm

Just celebrated my 1-year anniversary here in Austin, Texas. Took 8 years to convince wife to make the move. Been fantastic so far. Article is right-on in many regards:

Business/startup/tech climate is strong. (btw: norm is mucho less of the douche than SXSW crowd)

Housing: we moved from Seattle. Home prices roughly half (in 'burbs, near exceptional schools). Taxes are roughly double -- a big reason for low home prices, besides all the cheap land.

Lifestyle: Austin's very similar in people-climate to Seattle. Active, outdoor-loving, low-key, friendly folks.

Climate: summer unbelievably hot, rest of the year, pretty fantastic (for a Seattle boy).

While I've seen a bit of the Red-State stereotype, personal freedom and a live and let live attitude (personally, in government, and business) is much more the norm -- and perhaps much of the reason for riding the recession a bit smoother.

Wow -- kudos to the team. Per twitter, looks like Redis on the backend? Pubsub?

Also, that is one heck-of-a demo video. Any production notes and/or team that created the vid? Really gorgeous work.

Regarding #1 -- "educational capacity to train the people needed".

One of the additional benefits to source article's proposal: There's a large, highly trained base of Navy 'nukes' who are in the fleet now or out in the world. Many of the ex-nukes are building and operating non-nuke plants now. These are the folks who spent years (decades) training and operating the same scale of power plants in the proposal (on subs and surface ships).

While university nuke-e programs are light, there's no shortage of folks to build, manage and do the work.

Professor B. is on to something.

Here goes... Seattle is a fantastic town, water everywhere, gorgeous vistas and when the weather cooperates (August) there's no better place (I've found) in the entie-ree world.

That said, I just moved my teensy company from Seattle to Austin (after nearly, gulp, three decades in the SEA). Ms. Rich's article reads like the 'impressions' of one who's never, umm, started a company in Seattle.

5 reasons I left (and won't be headed back):

- traffic is abysmal. Not NYC/LA abysmal, but for a town of its size, truly awful.

- weather is grey/overcast and misty (most years) for 10 months.

- it's hard to attract/keep talent with families -- home prices near good schools, within short commute of downtown (or eastside) core are high. Wages are somewhat high, but get eaten up fast if you buy a home.

- business taxes, fees. State/county government is bloated and seems very willing to sacrifice job creation for revenue (read: more taxes on the way).

- did I mention the weather? Went back for thanksgiving - culture shock. Weather was overcast and I was struck by how dark it is. Light at 9am-ish and starts to get dark at 3:30.

There's a reason Seattle runs on caffeine.

(edit: thought I had this bulleted list thing down - alas, no)

Article says 5500 average per year fall into current estate tax. Estates taxed at 45% beyond the $3.5 million threshold (2009).

2010, tax is 15% of all assets without further action by Congress (or retroactive action).

In 2011, 55% tax beyond $1 million. Which impacts significantly more (cite?) than 5500 estates. $1 million includes property, fixtures, assets, cash.

Shame that tax code will (no doubt) impact decisions of quite a few terminal patients.

Article was interesting. Finding Readability... fantastic. Thanks, callahad.

Without hearing both sides of the story, an instructional video came to mind:

Chris Rock's: How not to get your a$$ kicked by police http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0mtxXEGE8

Hope this situation gets worked out amicably though.

Confirmed on my MyTouch (worst phone name evar - though very happy with the beast).

App works fantastic in practice in my tests, though choked on one case tonight. Had kids in car, drove by movie theater -- no showtimes/reader board visible outside (theater is in the mall).

Tried to get showtimes by 'reading' AMC theater logo on side of building ("daddy, why are you taking a picture of that building?"). No go. Google maps and gps to the rescue.

Longevity, yes:

'The Very Hungry Caterpillar,' a popular children's book has sold 29 million copies, and according to Newsweek, does $50 million in licensing deals a year. (yes, year)

http://www.newsweek.com/id/189230

Postful is one I've used in the past. Does have API:

http://www.postful.com/help/integration

And, PostalMethods is one I've been meaning to try -- again with API:

http://www.postalmethods.com/

I've had success with the approach of Jon Kabat-Zinn -- see his talk @ Google: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwwKbM_vJc

... his book, Full Catastrophe Living is a good read as well.

Here in Austin, TX -- anything is possible. Keen engineering, Waterloo Labs!

"...if your life revolves around Google Web applications, the Android OS is probably the best phone on the market."

This is true in my case -- MyTouch (awful name) is the bee's knees. Google Voice and Apps for Domains makes MyTouch an efficient business machine. I have cheap-minimal voice plan and no texting plan (do pay for data of course). Texts and most calls via G-Voice. I get one-click access to email on the go,all my office/cell/home lines forwarded to a single G-voice line, transcribed voicemails (how did I live/work without this?), and full calendar/tasks integration. Win-ish.

Don't love the T coverage, 3G is spotty, and no physical keyboard is a pain for large-thumbed folks like me.

Cons aside, best phone on the market for my Google-integrated needs.

+1 for Felix Dennis & How to Get Rich. Holds a permanent place of honor on my bed-stand. He shares his steps and missteps on his way to becoming a self-made bill-eee-on-air. Owes much of his success to negotiation. Fun read.

+1 on this comment -- I'm the market for this site (kids, 3 and 5 yrs) didn't understand how the site helped me on first view. That paragraph would've made a difference.

Mayhaps or not... via twitter @aetiology (epidemiologist) -- seasonal + H1N1 vaccine: good or bad? New study contradicts unpublished Canadian data: http://bit.ly/6FP2g (sounds like both are preliminary)...

Thanks mucho for this and taking the time to re-add. The "Offers" section gave me three ideas for an upcoming launch. Good stuff.