Letters Remain

Category: business

  • Peopleware and Private Offices

    A Field Guide to Developers is an article by Joel ‘on Software’ Spolsky. From reading this you can tell that Joel is a man who knows how to run a software house and how to keep staff happy. From it, I’ve also added another book to my reading list. Last year I went to a…

  • How to Write a Business Plan

    BBC Business’ How to Write a Business Plan has some sound advice for that basic business plan. However, being written by a multi-national corporation, I had an inkling that it wasn’t going to be very—I hate saying this—Web 2.0, so I went to the usual suspects. This Ask Y Combinator thread has some good advice…

  • 17 Startup Mistakes

    John Osher is the epitome of the “serial entrepreneur”. After selling his toy company – CAP Toys – to Hasbro in 1997 for more than $120 million this is what he did: “I decided I’d make a list of everything I’d done wrong and [had] seen other entrepreneurs do wrong, I wanted to make a…

  • Peak or Trough – You Are a Start-Up

    Are you on a peak or in a trough? Looking for a kick-start? Then you can do worse than reading, absorbing, and taking to heart Ryan Holiday‘s article, This is My Life: [Look at developing yourself] like a start up. You are a start up. Don’t worry about monetization. Or a safety net or health…

  • My Ideal Parenting Model

    When Mom and Dad Share It All is a New York Times cover story on gender and parenting. A great story with greater insights, this paragraph sums up how I hope my future would be: They would create their own model, one in which they were parenting partners. Equals and peers. They would work equal…

  • Don’t Follow Your Passion – Fix Your Lifestyle

    Fix the lifestyle you want. Then work backwards from there. A novel take on the typical inspirational graduation speech. It’s not about following your passion or not taking yourself too seriously. They’re important, but this is different. The idea is to not think of your ideal job, but to think of your ideal lifestyle. To…

  • Six Habits of Highly Effective Mentees (and My Start-Up Life Excerpts)

    Personally and professionally I always thrive to learn. Nine months ago I moved from programming into systems/business analysis: I knew what the job entailed and knew I could do it well. I still asked for a mentor. Specifically, I asked that my mentor be the person in our organisation who is always lauded as being…

  • Ask Y Combinator – The Archive

    I’ve written about Y Combinator before, and if you followed the link you’ll have realised by now that ‘Y Combinator‘ is analogous to ‘Grade A Columbian Nose Candy‘. Well get ready for another binge on the dandy candy, as the Startups Wiki has now produced the Ask YC Archive – a site highlighting the best…

  • Designing Your Résumé (CV)

    I’ve just written a post all about résumés – how to write them, design them, and how to figure out if you’re really after a new job or a career change: For those of us stuck in the formal, corporate world (for now), résumés (CVs) are a fact of life that we usually try to…

  • You’re Not a Blogger

    The simplest blog post I’ve seen in a long time. The best blog post I’ve seen in a long time. Do what you love… be an entrepreneur. Richard Branson on Copyblogger