A reader took the time to shoot me an email with a few questions about design and startups… His questions were interesting enough that I thought they might be worth blogging about. So here goes: Question #1 – What is the priority balance between programming and design/UI? In my opinion,…
Startups: Launch Early, but Launch Small?
One of the recent YCombinator dinners that we attended featured Joe Kraus (who founded Excite and then later JotSpot, which sold to Google). Like all YC guests, Joe had piles of startup wisdom… One of the things that stuck out to me (which I’d never heard much) was when he…
Arrived in Silicon Valley
Joe, Brian and I have arrived in Silicon Valley unscathed, despite the monsterous storm blanketing the region. The trip was rainy, but thankfully the snow was fairly painless except for about a 10 mile stretch at the Oregon border. We’ve settled into our furnished apartment and have shuffled it around…
Evaluating New Product Ideas (focus on Tractability)
Evan Williams (founder of Twitter, fellow corn-fed midwesterner-turned-dotcommer, and someone I get to meet via YCombinator!) has a fabulous post on how to evaluate new product ideas. To sum up his excellent post, here is the matrix he came up with: Tractability Question: How difficult will it be to launch…
Bootstrap Design for Geek-Powered Startups
One of my brethren at YCombinator sent out a request to the 2008 Winter Founders list a request for information about design services for his startup. He and his co-founder, like many YC founders, are hackers. In my career I’ve been a web designer (although I’m only moderately good at…
