

The worst things startups do - figured
http://scobleizer.com/2009/11/13/the-worst-things-startups-do/

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jacquesm
It would be a better article without the rackspace plugs.

Most of the rest of it is good though, especially the 'spend the money on the
wrong things' bit, that's one plenty of companies (start-ups or not) fall for.

And spending your money on rackspace would be a nice example of spending your
money on the right thing (hosting) but in the wrong way (wasteful).

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sutro
_"I can smell programmers."_

Scoble would be useful in tech interviews. Like a drug-sniffing dog you could
just sic him onto prospective programming candidates and have him bark twice
if he smelled the pungent musk of programming talent.

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diN0bot
> "3. If I look around and don’t see programmers. I can smell programmers. A
> good company is full of them. Posterous, for instance, has ONLY programmers.
> FriendFeed had something like 13 programmers and one other person. Great
> ratio."

i wonder about this. currently my startup is me and my co-founder, and he's
not a programmer (though he can handle version control, html, css and critical
thinking). as we grow, should we plan for more outreach/sales/customer service
type of folks with the same tech growth, or more programmers to explode on
technology platforms and innovation?

i know it depends on our company. i've heard many different pieces of advice.

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spencerfry
Having creative people that can think through good product and web design is
very important. If the experience and product is not designed well, it doesn't
matter how many programmers you have. Even the best programmers won't be able
to program a good experience out of it.

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bobbyi
> "I’ve been in more than one startup that had bad chairs and small screens
> for their engineers but they had an expensive coffee machine."

I'm more productive with good coffee and a small screen than I would be with
bad coffee and a large screen.

~~~
pwmanagerdied
Addict.

~~~
coconutrandom
We prefer, 'enthusiasts'.

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SlyShy
This article brought back haunting memories of Cuil. Pity, because I wouldn't
mind more competition in the search market, particularly since Google has
gotten less relevant for programming related queries.

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acgourley
It could be that startups which are mostly programmers, by necessity, are
composed of well-rounded programmers with design/product/business sense.

(of course the standard disclaimer that you can't run enterprise software
startups on programmers alone should be put out there)

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figured
the best part of the post for me, was the interview with Posterous. Amazing
how much they have done, with a four man team.

