The Pursuit of Happiness

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This is a great list of startup commandments by Paul Graham

1. Pick good cofounders
2. Launch fast
3. Let your idea evolve
4. Understand your users
5. Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent
6. Offer surprisingly good customer service
7. You make what you measure
8. Spend little
9. Get ramen profitable
10. Avoid distractions
11. Don’t get demoralized
12. Don’t give up
13. Deals fall through

Paul elaborates on his points on his blog

Number 9 is my favourite!

“Ramen profitable” means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders’ living expenses. It’s not rapid prototyping for business models (though it can be), but more a way of hacking the investment process. Once you cross over into ramen profitable, it completely changes your relationship with investors. It’s also great for morale.

There’s no doubt augmented reality has a big future in one form of another. Lately I’ve been toying with some ideas and code for both desktop and phones and while doing my research I came across GE’s existing application. Awesome!

Tomáš Čupr from Michal Berg on Vimeo.

With Android becoming a force Apple can’t afford to ignore developers any more – and it seems they realised that too. Since New Year the AppStore approval process is much much faster. Earlier this month I had an update approved in two days but I attributed that to low volume of app submissions after Christmas however it seems Apple is keeping the momentum – today I had an update approved in less than a day with another (new) application moving to “In review” status after just 4 hours. Let’s hope it lasts!

Here’s my contribution to TechHub’s pitch to UK government and competition.

TechHub is a new and exciting project to create a physical space for tech startups in London reaching out to entrepreneurs across the UK, Europe, the US and beyond.

Apple’s AppStore flaws are well documented – long review times, inconsistency and lack of transparency leading the pack. But I can’t help thinking that the hysteria that developed around hating developing for Apple is somewhat unfounded. Like influential developer Joe Hewitt “quitting” Apple over its tyranny. The whole tech blogosphere was appalled and disgusted! Let’s just gloss over the fact that it must be really easy to quit Apple when someone else is paying your bills (Facebook). The AppStore is the best platform to make money from at the moment and if that’s what you care about (or have to because you have to, you know, eat and pay bills yourself) there isn’t anywhere else to go. Android is growing but developing for it and making money there is still pain. Sure the AppStore and its review process have flaws and especially long review times are inexcusable for company of Apple’s stature but calls for opening the store to everyone are frankly ridiculous – Apple’s close control of its products is single most important factor in great  user experience they deliver.

Why do I say all this? I quite recently decided to ignore the critics and develop my first app. Review process took 7 working days which is long and needless to say I was very anxious as to whether it’ll get approved or not. But once it was I was sorted. I have marketing plan but I didn’t need to use it yet (saving it for version 2 that should be approved soon). Within two weeks it was in TOP 10 paid apps in Reference category and doing well. Now show me a platform where I could launch a product, not tell anyone about it and still be making thousands of dollars every month.

So I thank you Apple. Thank you for amazing phone and platform that is fun to develop for and profitable too!

Happy New Year everyone!

On Wednesday we discovered that anyone earning over £150,000 per year will be taxed whooping 50 per cent! This is obviously just another incentive to live abroad and does very little to encourage individuals that are driving this economy to do better for themselves. I found very nice analogy here and here. Nobody seems to be claiming responsibility for writing it but it very nicely describes how taxes work and where could taxing high earners lead us.

“Let’s put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to £100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

• the first four men, the poorest, would pay nothing;
  
• the fifth would pay £1;
  
• the sixth would pay £3;
  
• the seventh would pay £7;
  
• the eighth pays £12;
  
• the ninth would pay £18;
  
• and the tenth man, the richest, would pay £59

“That’s what they decided to do. The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement — until one day, the owner threw them a curve (in tax language, a tax cut).

“‘Since you are all such good customers,’ he said, ‘I am going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by £20. So now dinner for the ten only cost £80.00.

“The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But what about the other six–the paying customers? How could they divvy up the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’

“The six men realized that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, Then the fifth man and the sixth man would end up being PAID to eat their meal. So the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay:

• as before, the first four men paid nothing;
• now the fifth man also paid nothing;
  
• the sixth man now paid £2;
  
• the seventh paid £5;
  
• the eighth man paid £9;
  
• the ninth man paid £12;
  
• leaving the tenth man with a bill of £52 instead of his earlier £59

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free.

“But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. ‘I only got a pound out of the £20 reduction,’ declared the sixth man, but he, pointing to the tenth. ‘But he got £7!’. ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ exclaimed the fifth man, ‘I only saved a pound too; it’s unfair that he got seven times more than me!’

‘”That’s true,’ shouted the seventh man, ‘why should he get £7 back when I got only £2? The wealthy get all the breaks!. ‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison, ‘We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!’

“The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night he didn’t show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered, a little late what was very important. They were now £52 short of paying the bill.

And that, boys and girls, journalists, and college instructors, is how the tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore.”

I was very recently told off for my oppinion that the best indication of e-commerce(!!) design quality is its conversion rate. For me there is nothing else I could possibly base my judgment on.

What do you think? Is this too materialistic view? What other factor should I consider?

Please use comments to answer. Thank you in advance!

This is amazing video… and totally true!