Spun

Paul’s rumination about launching a website rings so true.

Paul Graham: “Working on small things is also a good way to learn. The most important kinds of learning happen one project at a time. (’Next time, I won’t…’) The faster you cycle through projects, the faster you’ll evolve.”

Talk about the the paradox of choice: A list of over 100 RSS readers. Oy.

It’s not about having the idea, it’s about building it.

It’s the “Before you finish X, could you do Y?” that always gets me.

I spent a day up at the Microsoft campus in Redmond last week meeting with their search team along with several other bloggers discussing web search problems and solutions. It was a pretty amazing day for me. No matter how much MS’ approach to things irritates or enrages me, the fact is that it’s one of the greatest software companies on the planet which brought personal computing to the masses. This means I was starstruck and totally excited to visit campus, which is a huge, sprawling, beautiful place.

Since I signed an NDA 70 pages long which requires I give up my first born child if I reveal any company secrets for the next 100 years, I can’t say much except 1. the search team was having the same discussions we had back at Kinja two years ago (which hurt, deep, since Kinja still languishes) and 2. the search team is bigger than any team I’ve ever worked for, they are aware of their status as underdog, and they are willing to drop more than a few bucks to listen to random bloggers to sit around and demand what they want from search.

A weird and dizzying experience for someone who’s worked only for small companies which sometimes required I go out and buy more toilet paper for the women’s bathroom.

eWeek coverage of the event quotes me briefly and erroneously calls the meeting “camp,” when the name of it is Search Champs. Only jokingly, a few of us bloggers called it camp.

An interesting debate about small vs big companies is going on between SixApart’s Mena Trott and 37 Signals’ Jason Fried.
The Signals’ whole schtick is getting apps built with small teams. Mena responds, explaining why she and her husband expanded to a bigger, more traditional, funded company when given the choice to stay small or grow.
Personally I dig the 37S’ small teams should “embrace constraints” approach because it makes me feel like I can get together a couple of friends and make something happen. However, I can’t say for sure that I would have turned down the opportunities to expand that Mena and Ben were given with MT, either.

Serial entrepreneur Paul Graham and co are holding a free, one-day “Start up school” for hackers looking to get their company going. If Graham’s essay “How to start a startup” is any indication, Startup School will be good.

Developer, project manager and company founder Jason Fried says one to do item should be assigned to one person and one person only:

The more people you make responsible for something, the less chance there is for it to get done.

The more people responsible for something, the more finger pointing, the more blame deflection, the less direct responsibility. Making multiple people responsible for something simply diffuses the responsibility, and diffused responsibility generally leads in one of two directions — stagnation or mediocrity.