The Birth of Google (cross posted)

Original post on my personal blog.

Passion and Ideas, Let's Free Them!

The following is the quote of Christina Fake, founder of Flickr (recently acquired by Yahoo), when asked for Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs:

Things don't end up the way you think they are going to be. We didn't have a business plan written up for how Flickr was going to work. We didn't have a spec for the software. Passion and ideas, if you can free them, and follow the direction the product or service is going, you can find its path.

You know what, I like the idea of not having to have a business plan :). As Joel says, which I agree wholeheartedly:

best working Condition -> best programmers -> best software -> profit

I hope we get rolling soon.

A Place Where I Want to Work

The more I read Joel on Software (Hitting the High Notes) and Paul Graham (Hiring is Obsolete), the more I understand why my current company just doesn't satisfy me and know what kind of company I want to see us build: a place where I (and everyone) want to work.

Disruptive Innovation

As we are ready to build our product, I want to make sure we aim high. See my recent experience with AutoStitch. This is the kind of usability I want to see in our products: dead simple. This week's BusinessWeek top story is also on innovation.

Create, Innovate, Aim High!

Free Software Business Model

Just read Jonathan Schwartz's post on software pricing. One thing that dawned on me is this quote:

It's far easier to convince a customer to pay for a product they're already using, than one they haven't even tried.

To me this is a new angle to the free software business model. One can offer their software as unlimited trial (free). When customers are ready to pay (most likely large enterprise customers), they can charge. Yes, it's far easier to convince a customer to pay for a product they're already using, than one they haven't even tried. This is happening now at Cisco for Confluence and JIRA. This is far better than just doing support and service. Limited trials don't work well.

Email and Tagging

One more use case for email by Jon Udell.