The Well in the Field
When I was a child, I lived with my parents in the woods. We had an old-fashioned hand-dug well, the kind from storybooks that looks like a big hole in…
Eric & Avdi Talk About the Developer Education Business
Eric Normand (of LispCast and PurelyFunctional.tv) and I have been trading notes about the developer education business for years. The other day we caught up and talked about business models,…
On being the employee who “needs improvement”
Reading Coraline’s post on a year at Github inspires a lot of feelings: feelings on behalf of a friend; feelings about culture; feelings about how organization structure always wins out over…
The daunting economics of cheap services
Reader Rob asks: One thing stuck out to me reading this, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to elaborate on it further: “The trouble is, the economics of…
Software Entrepreneurs: Stop looking for itches to scratch
On probably half a dozen different occasions some aspiring entrepreneur has asked me: Would you be interested in a hosted solution for selling screencasts? In most cases, the promised solution…
A random selection of marketing, business, and personal development resources
As I’ve mentioned before, my current study focus is marketing. Marketing naturally drags along with it a penumbra of related topics, including business models and work on personal focus and…
Side-hustle mindset versus product-business mindset
If you occupy the same technocratic sphere I do, you know what a “side hustle” is. In fact, there’s a good chance you either have one, or feel like you…
Advice to myself 8 years ago
A correspondent asked: If you don’t mind me asking, what advice would you give to a 28 year-old Avdi? My response, for what it’s worth: I think about this kind…
Landing pages are written, not designed
As I’ve been reading up on marketing and copywriting, I realized something: as a programmer, ignorant of marketing and surrounded by countless slick pitches for programmer-oriented products, I had come…