one of the apps I built is an app that you give it a website, it scrapes it, then places the google ads.
Over time it tries to improve the ads.
Right now it is showing a 5% click through rate over a few weeks. I have no idea if that is good or not, but it saved me the hassle of having to worry about google ads for another app
If the marketing platform works, then it would drive traffic to itself.
when agile was fairly new I worked with remote developers that had 3 locations.
My specialty is software requirements and my team was brought in to do the product management. The developers had read somewhere if you were using a database to do requirements then you were doing agile wrong.
They wanted me to write post it notes in triplicate, then fedex them to all their offices.
1 pedal braking means evs often dont need new brake pads for 150K miles
One problem they are experiencing is rust and glazing on the pads from disuse.
They are heavier than the equivalent sized ICE so have more tire wear, but dont have to be that large in an absolute sense. Most are large luxury cars.
I have this anxiety for sure. I cant even picture her face.
Touching objects for me doesnt help, though looking at pictures does. Ive tried to get her to make scrapbooks for every year we have been together with explanations and stories, but no luck so far.
She remembers what we both were wearing the day we met.
Like the author i rely on mental models (I wrote a book called visual models for software requirements), Im good at getting to the heart of things and am constantly organizing information so I can remember the principle.
I do get anxiety about not remembering people once they pass away. I might only remember a few things about them. But when I look at pictures I can often times remember all kinds of details. I think some of the information is there, it just isnt retrievable.
Im bad at networking, when I go to events lots of people know me, but I have no idea who they are. Im waiting for glasses with cameras that will identify people for me and go over their background.
Aphantasia is supposed to be rare, but I think many engineers have it. At least at my company it seems more prevalent than it is supposed to be in the general population.
In some ways it is a gift. I barely remember traumatic events, but unfortunately I dont really remember amazing events either.
it is incomprehensible to me that people can be "anti capitalists" when capitalism has reduced poverty and suffering to the lowest level in human history.
Socialist countries routinely nationalize food production and immediately create shortages. This happens over and over.
Capitalism isnt just the innovation of the kernel of a product, it is marketing, selling, manufacturing, distributing, and supporting a product.
That takes capital and it requires risk. Capital is constantly being squandered on ideas that go nowhere, but some are successful and the overall system is more productive.
The key point is that no one can predict in advance which ideas and teams will be successful. Capital backs them all and the market determines which ones succeed.
It is human nature to try to acquire more, when that is rewarded, people respond (by working harder, more efficiently, or with innovation).
Labor usually thinks management is useless or dumb. And most managers are bad. But you can look at world class leaders and see that they do matter and can make or break an organization. Look at the bulls under phil jackson, then when he left for the lakers. And then when he left the lakers.
there is no doubt that government employees can innovate. Anyone can innovate. Provided with the correct competitive structure (large market rewards, big prizes, etc).
And yet, the F150 was built by capitalists, the sprayers are built with capitalists. The chemicals were built by capitalists.
so yes some problems are best solved by government, but innovation isnt one of them.
A system that can arbitrarily take away all assets over 1 billion, will arbitrarily take assets of less than a billion. When the government has that much power, someone will come along and abuse it.
Also no matter how much money the government is given, it will never have enough.
that data uses "congestion" which is the ratio of the worst traffic time to the best traffic time. If you look at average commute times austin is way down on the list.
homesteads are capped at 10% increase in valuation.
City budgets are capped at 3.5% without a vote.
The largest share of property taxes is actually school districts which run roughly 50% of the property tax in austin. The city is 25% and the other 25% is the county, health district, and community college.
Tax rates float. If the valuations double, but the taxing entity budgets stay the same, then the tax rate will drop in half.
Rising valuations dont have much to do with the increase in taxes over time.
I have asked my HR and team not to use the family analogy. We are team and support each other as team mates. We do help people when they are sick etc. Ultimately we are trying to achieve a shared goal and I want to company to help people to achieve their personal goals at the same time.
I manage using the book first break all the rules and 5 dysfunctions of a team.
First break all the rules uses these 12 employee sat questions
I know what is expected of me at work.
I have the materials and equipment to do my work right.
At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
There is someone at work who encourages my development.
At work, my opinions seem to count.
The mission/purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
My associates (fellow employees) are committed to doing quality work.
I have a best friend at work.
In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
In the last year, I have had opportunities to learn and grow.
You can claim a lot of business expenses as deductions that you wouldnt be able to as an employee
The IRS now has a 20% deduction for passthrough entities up to 450K or so
You can put approximately 40K or 25% of income (whichever is less) into a solo 401K. Much more than a typical company 401K
There are ways to pay no FICA, by distributing through a limited partnership. You can save 15K up to the cap on those taxes, but then you will hurt your social security which requires 40 quarters of W2 wages to max out.
Healthcare will potentially cost more, but once you have around 6 employees you can join a PEO and get grouped in with other small business and get a typical cost for a business.
There are products (such as insurance ) that can shield a much larger portion of your income. For example, you buy income insurance that pays out any year you take a loss. You "pay" for it with your profit for that year. That counts as a business expense so you pay no tax on it. They keep track of your account balance+growth and you can borrow from your own account with no tax consequences. You can essentially withdraw the money at favorable tax rates if you ever take a loss.
I took the "easy" way and started a services company. My plan was to do that for a few years make a few million and then start a product company. 19 years later and Im still running a services company, though we finally are at around 9 million and I am working on a product based startup.
During that time Ive had many friends/acquaintances start and sell product companies for 10+ million. The "easy" service company was about as hard as the product companies, but with a lot less value in the end.
On the plus side there were many years I only worked 5 hours a week while making 300k+/year take home with 300K+ left in the company. The downside is during the 2001 and 2008 recessions we almost lost everything.
Your sales and your services will never be in balance. You will either be making customers mad because you dont have enough people, or paying for people that have no work to do. This will cause your delivery managers and sales managers to regularly be mad at each other.
Your main job will become keeping your managers happy which means mediating conflicts between them.
I started constant recruiting from day one, we always have people ready in the pipeline to hire. I also outsourced bookkeeping/payroll as soon as possible.
A friend of mine had his wife embezzle all his money and run off with one of his customer's. You should be the only person able to touch the money. Even today I sign every check and approve every wire transfer.
Get the largest line of credit you can before you need it. When you need it, there is no way you are going to get one. It will take two years of operation before a bank will give you a line. Your line will be 80% of receivables, with a max of 25% from any one customer. You can generally get under 100K as an unsecured personal line with good credit.
There is a really challenging point when you are about 4-8 people. When you were a single person you made all the money. As you add more people and continue billing, you are flush with cash. Around 4 people you need to manage them and then find new business. At that time you start making much less money but with a lot more headaches. This happens up until about 8 people. Lots of small consultancies never break past this point
I have always been torn with putting employees first vs putting clients first. This is a very challenging dilemma.
You might think having broad services would get you the most potential customers, but the opposite is true. The smaller you are, the smaller your niche needs to be.
Collect your receivables, if you arent the type of person who can keep at it, make sure your bookkeeper will do it. We had a customer owe us 500K going into the 2008 recession and if we hadnt collected most of our money before they went into bankruptcy we would not have made it. For public companies we look at the 10K to make sure we understand their cash position.
Never be a 50/50 partner. Every single one I've seen has eventually gone bad. One person needs to be able to call the shots.
Sales is actually pretty easy for me, marketing is really hard. Once you crack the marketing, the really hard part will be having enough senior people to take on completely new clients.
The people who grew their service businesses the fastest aligned with a technology that took off. The downside was that if their technology provider lost then their business took a big hit. They also tended not to develop their marketing muscle because all their leads were generated by their technology parter.
If you are not a detail oriented executer you must have one as a partner or a senior employee.
In the entire history of the company we only won maybe one RFP. Enterprise sales are done with relationships and the RFPs are usually just people jumping through hoops to satisfy procurement. Generally speaking the buyers already know who they want and they will craft the RFP so their desired vendor will win. If you are not that company, then you will lose. Generally we will never do an RFP.
Some of my favorite actionable books are:
Managing the professional services firm
First break all the rules
Five dysfunctions of a team
Spin selling
Sandler sales technique (there is a book called you cant learn to ride a bike at a seminar, but it doesnt fully represent the full sandler sales process, which is an anti sales process)
The software wont be sexy, but will help the non profits and the people they serve