(34) The Ultimate Cheat Sheet For Starting And Runni... No joke. This is going be a bullet FAQ on starting a business. If you're a lawyer, feel free to disagree with me so you can charge someone your BS fees to give the same advice. If you can think of anything to add, please do so. I might be missing things. If you want to argue with me, feel free. There are many types of business. The rules are: I'm going to give no explanations. 1) C Corp or S Corp or LLC?
2) What state should you incorporate in? 3) Should founders vest? 4) Should you go for venture capital money? 5) Should you patent your idea? 6) Should you require venture capitalists to sign NDAs? 7) How much equity should you give a partner? 8) Should you have a technical co-founder if you are not technical? 9) Should you barter equity for services? 10) How do you market your app? 11) Should you build a product? 12) How much dilution is too much dilution? 13) Do you listen to venture capitalist? 14) What if nobody seems to be buying your product? 17) In a B2C business: release fast. The Exact Match Domain Playbook: A Guide and Best Practices for EMDs. Exact match domains have always been the source of a lot of contention among SEOs. For quite some time, EMD’s have offered a competitive advantage for SEO’s who understood how to use them. In the early days of search when relevance algorithms were rather weak, many folks used “double dashed” domains because they were cheap to buy, and easy to rank. $6 to rank for a 3 word phrase.
Sold. However, when you see best-online-seo-company.biz in your search result, you start to question the weighting of relevance factors. This is, in large part, how EMD’s got a bad rep to start with. Despite the debate and obvious abuse, EMD’s represent what SEO’s do best – Seize Every Opportunity! I’ve always been a pretty big fan of EMD’s, and I agree with Elliot Silver that EMD domains can be brands. Matt Cutts (esteemed Google engineer) has made this comment in the past (about 2 years ago): Types of EMD’s I think it’s important firstly to qualify the different types of EMD. Let’s start with dashed domains. Programs vs. markup. The words "program" and "programming" are often used confusingly. This document tries to characterize what computer programs and programming languages are and how they differ from markup, both presentational and logical markup.
This hopefully helps in understanding, for example, the different roles of HTML and programming languages like JavaScript and Perl in HTML authoring. The difference has some legal impact, too. The simple (?) It is not uncommon to see people call HTML a programming language, or call HTML authoring programming. It's hard to tell what is behind this, but calling HTML a programming language might reflect the use of the word "programming" to mean just writing something that will be processed by computers rather than people; after all, we might (reasonably) say that writing HTML is coding. Contains, as the value of the onclick attribute, a function invocation in a programming language. What HTML specifications say about the language descriptive procedural interpreter.
Designing for the Non-Designer – Part I The Basics | The Website Owner's Manual. This post is for those who get thrown into graphic design without any formal knowledge of what makes a good design, or, what causes unforgettable disasters. Once able to recognize the basics of designing principles you will be more in control of your work and marketing materials. This can range from printed articles to website design. This three-part series will help you understand basic design principles, tips and tricks, typography, and how each can help you. proximity shows how the text is related to the rest of the layout, contrast is the difference in text weights used, alignment is how all the text is left aligned at the same margin, and repetition is how the color is used throughout the layout.
The Four Basic Principles As taken from Robin Williams’ The Non-Designer’s Design Book, there is an awkward yet memorable acronym to recall the basic design principles. Contrast The point of contrast is to avoid putting multiple elements together that are considered similar. Repetition.
Loyal Customers vs. Groupon Customers | InnovatoBase. A loyal customer is the best customer a business can hope for. The more loyal customers your business has, the more likely it is to succeed. To build customer loyalty takes skill, time and patience. Many books have been written about customer loyalty and ways to build it, so I will not talk about that (see reference to two excellent books below). Instead, I will describe the worst customer for a business. And I will do that by quoting from Frederick F. So, who are the worst customers? If your business decides to … scour the marketplace for the worst imaginable customers with the lowest possible coefficient of loyalty – you could hardly do better than choose price discounts or mass distributions of coupons. When I first read this, the name Groupon immediately popped up into my head. And why is this customer so bad for a business you might ask?
And here is more: If you are trying to grow your business, you should not rely on companies like Groupon to help you build loyal customers. The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups. October 2006 In the Q & A period after a recent talk, someone asked what made startups fail. After standing there gaping for a few seconds I realized this was kind of a trick question.
It's equivalent to asking how to make a startup succeed—if you avoid every cause of failure, you succeed—and that's too big a question to answer on the fly. Afterwards I realized it could be helpful to look at the problem from this direction. In a sense there's just one mistake that kills startups: not making something users want. 1. Have you ever noticed how few successful startups were founded by just one person? What's wrong with having one founder? But even if the founder's friends were all wrong and the company is a good bet, he's still at a disadvantage. The last one might be the most important. 2. Startups prosper in some places and not others. Why is the falloff so sharp? 3. If you watch little kids playing sports, you notice that below a certain age they're afraid of the ball. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Why 2013 Is the Year of Responsive Web Design. You may have noticed that Mashable got a new look recently. The design seems wider than usual, and when you shrink your browser, the content resizes to fit. The aim here isn't merely prettiness or technical trickery, however: Media companies like ours are seeing a major shift in the consumption habits of their audiences. Those organizations that don't act may find themselves behind the curve. Here's why. The Post-PC Era 2012 has been a very unusual year in the PC market. So which devices are consumers buying? Tablet sales are expected to exceed 100 million this year.
Tablet sales are expected to exceed 100 million this year. Meanwhile, the shift to mobile is happening at an extraordinary speed. Web or Apps? For those of us who create websites and services, all this leads to a singular conclusion: A million screens have bloomed, and we need to build for all of them. Building apps may seem like the obvious solution. Responsive Web Design 2013: A Responsive Year. Media Queries. 2013 Internet Trends. Mobile Is Eating The World. 33 Startups That Died Reveal Why They Failed. TheFunded.com: The Resource for Entrepreneurs. Is.muni.cz/th/60778/fi_m/thesis. The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!) By Joel Spolsky Wednesday, October 08, 2003 Ever wonder about that mysterious Content-Type tag?
You know, the one you're supposed to put in HTML and you never quite know what it should be? Did you ever get an email from your friends in Bulgaria with the subject line "???? ?????? ??? ???? "? I've been dismayed to discover just how many software developers aren't really completely up to speed on the mysterious world of character sets, encodings, Unicode, all that stuff. But it won't. So I have an announcement to make: if you are a programmer working in 2003 and you don't know the basics of characters, character sets, encodings, and Unicode, and I catch you, I'm going to punish you by making you peel onions for 6 months in a submarine. And one more thing: In this article I'll fill you in on exactly what every working programmer should know. A Historical Perspective The easiest way to understand this stuff is to go chronologically. And all was good, assuming you were an English speaker. Unicode. OSI model. The Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI) is a conceptual model that characterizes and standardizes the internal functions of a communication system by partitioning it into abstraction layers.
The model is a product of the Open Systems Interconnection project at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), maintained by the identification ISO/IEC 7498-1. The model groups communication functions into seven logical layers. A layer serves the layer above it and is served by the layer below it. For example, a layer that provides error-free communications across a network provides the path needed by applications above it, while it calls the next lower layer to send and receive packets that make up the contents of that path. Two instances at one layer are connected by a horizontal connection on that layer. Communication in the OSI-Model (example with layers 3 to 5) History[edit] Description of OSI layers[edit] Layer 1: physical layer[edit] Layer 2: data link layer[edit]
Peter Thiel’s Unorthodox Management Philosophy of Extreme Focus. Peter Thiel’s Unorthodox Management Philosophy of Extreme Focus “What are your top five priorities for this week?” “What are the top three objectives and key results you’re using to measure how you’re doing for the quarter?” These are questions that get thrown around by managers at work to help their teams prioritize and focus on achieving the most important accomplishments. In Peter Thiel’s view, this doesn’t go far enough. As the founder of PayPal, Thiel developed an unorthodox, extreme philosophy on focus and prioritization. Instead of focusing on five things, or three things, the magic number is one. You only focus on one singular thing. As PayPal executive Keith Rabois recalls, Thiel “would refuse to discuss virtually anything else with you except what was currently assigned as your #1 initiative.”
Extreme focus worked, because Thiel gave it teeth. As Rabois explains: Walter Chen is co-founder of iDoneThis, an ex-lawyer, and an amateur Starcraft player. What do LimeWire, Napster, Kazaa, and Isohunt all have in common? LimeWire now joins the ignoble club of sites and services around the workd that have been found liable for inducing, contributing to, or authorizing massive online copyright infringement. Other well known sites and services found liable on these and other secondary liability or criminal theories include Napster, Aimster, Grokster, Kazaa, Pirate Bay, Mininova, Usenet.com, Newzbin, and Isohunt. Courts around the world have not tolerated or been willing to countenance online businesses whose core business model involves profiting from facilitating online copyright infringement.
The most recent example is LimeWire. The recording industry just won a major copyright piracy lawsuit in the US against LimeWire, one of the most popular remaining p2p music file sharing services in the US. The court held there was “overwhelming evidence that LimeWire engaged in purposeful conduct that fostered infringement” to support liability based on inducement. The case is significant for a number of reasons. The First Thing That Matters: Product/Market Fit. The Discovery of Insulin. Before the discovery of insulin, diabetes was a feared disease that most certainly led to death. Doctors knew that sugar worsened the condition of diabetic patients and that the most effective treatment was to put the patients on very strict diets where sugar intake was kept to a minimum. At best, this treatment could buy patients a few extra years, but it never saved them.
In some cases, the harsh diets even caused patients to die of starvation. During the nineteenth century, observations of patients who died of diabetes often showed that the pancreas was damaged. In 1869, a German medical student, Paul Langerhans, found that within the pancreatic tissue that produces digestive juices there were clusters of cells whose function was unknown. Some of these cells were eventually shown to be the insulin-producing beta cells. Later, in honor of the person who discovered them, the cell clusters were named the islets of Langerhans. This hypothetical internal secretion was the key. Applelinechart.jpg (555×389) Internal rate of return. Definition[edit] The internal rate of return on an investment or project is the "annualized effective compounded return rate" or "rate of return" that makes the net present value (NPV as NET*1/(1+IRR)^year) of all cash flows (both positive and negative) from a particular investment equal to zero.
It can also be defined as the discount rate at which the present value of all future cash flow is equal to the initial investment or in other words the rate at which an investment breaks even. In more specific terms, the IRR of an investment is the discount rate at which the net present value of costs (negative cash flows) of the investment equals the net present value of the benefits (positive cash flows) of the investment. IRR calculations are commonly used to evaluate the desirability of investments or projects. The higher a project's IRR, the more desirable it is to undertake the project. Uses of IRR[edit] Calculation[edit] Given the (period, cash flow) pairs ( ) where , and the net present value.
The First Thing That Matters: Product/Market Fit. Jealous of PRISM? Use "Amazon 1 Button" Chrome extension to sniff all HTTPS websites! Tldr: Insecure browser addons may leak all your encrypted SSL traffic, exploits included So, Snowden let the cat out of the bag. They're listening - the news are so big, that feds are no longer welcome at DEFCON. But let's all be honest - who doesn't like to snoop into other person's secrets? We all know how to set up rogue AP and use ettercap. The real deal though is in the encrypted traffic. Hacking the CAsocial engineering (install the certificate) relying on click-through syndrome for SSL warnings Too hard. The extension info Version: 3.2013.627.0 Updated: June 28, 2013 1,791,011 users (scary, becase the extension needs the following permissions): Amazon cares for your privacy...not First, a little info about how it abuses your privacy, in case you use it already (tldr; uninstall NOW!).
It reports to Amazon every URL you visit, even HTTPS URLs. Unfortunately, this request goes over HTTPS, so only Amazon can know your URLs. It's against what they claim in their Privacy Policy: Exploitation. Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. The Leahy–Smith America Invents Act (AIA) is a United States federal statute that was passed by Congress and was signed into law by President Barack Obama on September 16, 2011. The law represents the most significant change to the U.S. patent system since 1952, and closely resembles previously proposed legislation in the Senate in its previous session (Patent Reform Act of 2009).[1] Provisions[edit] First to file and grace period[edit] U.S. patent Proceedings at the U.S.
Patent Office for resolving priority contests among near-simultaneous inventors who both file applications for the same invention ("interference proceedings") were eliminated, because priority under the Act is determined based on filing date. The AIA refers to the new regime as "First-Inventor-to-File (FITF)". Opposition procedures[edit] The Act revised and expanded post-grant opposition procedures. Additional changes[edit] The America Invents Act included the following changes:[10] USPTO practice changes[edit] Filings & Forms. AdWords - Online Advertising by Google. (3) About Advertising on Facebook. Introduction: Shut Up And Shell. The Chef, the Puppet, and the Sexy IT Admin | Wired Enterprise. Fresh Stats Comparing Traditional IT and DevOps Oriented Productivity | DevOps.com. Responsive Web Design Resources · bradfrost/this-is-responsive Wiki.
Notes Essays—Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup—Stanford, Spring 2012. (32) What are the numbers that every computer engineer should know, according to Jeff Dean. The death of CPU scaling: From one core to many — and why we’re still stuck. Illegal prime. Taco Bell Programming. The Command Line In 2004. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. The case of the 500-mile email. The ‘Facebook Class’ Built Apps, and Fortunes. Introduction - TechEmpower Framework Benchmarks. Gaming the system. Lockitron. Genetic testing as the first step to a healthy pregnancy | Counsyl.
Announcements | Startup Engineering. Forums | Startup Engineering. The Truly Staggering Cost Of Inventing New Drugs. The Principle of Least Power. Lawrence Lessig on the increasing regulation of cyberspace | Harvard Magazine Jan-Feb 2000. (32) 1995-2000 Dot-Com Bubble: What factors led to the bursting of the Internet bubble of the late 1990s. Innovation Isn’t a Matter of Left or Right. Facebook Philosophy: Move Fast and Break Things. Blog.pmarca.com: The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 1: Why not to do a startup.
There's no speed limit. (The lessons that changed my life.) [Updated] The rise and fall of personal computing. 2013 Internet Trends. Startup = Growth.