I'm building something on top of Hangouts, and I had an exchange that this reminded me of.
I was finally connected with a developer evangelist, and I sent an email saying something like "would love to know more about Google's strategic goals with Hangouts".
Her response was "I'm sure you're aware that Google doesn't discuss its strategies outside the company".
What a striking cultural difference from startups, where we're constantly discussing our strategies together.
If you're just at the "idea stage", then no one is going to steal your idea.
If you've progressed further and have some traction, some lessons learned in customer acquisition channels, etc., then you should be cautious about what you share because your information has real value.
I think the negative comments here are missing the fine points of the article.
* Stage of growth is important. In the beginning, success is more about individual effort. When you get bigger, it's more about overall team culture.
* It's not just "being a jerk" that's the problem. It's being a naysayer, working against the culture.
At a certain size, the negative effects of someone's behavior on the culture can outweigh the positives of their brilliance. And when that happens, you have to let them go.
As someone who has run a company for a decade, there are several meaningful inflection points:
* Becoming cash flow positive (aka Lift) is wonderful and stress relieving.
* Becoming profitable enough to start hiring lots of people and building a team culture marks a sea change in how you must think about your company and how you spend your time.
* Switching from growing to shrinking (albeit still profitable) changes the company culture, as everyone now feels like they're rats on a sinking ship. It's amazing how much people react to directional changes over absolute amounts (i.e., a company with $100K in annual revenue that doubled from last year is more positive than one with $20M that shrank by 20%).
I don't think you have to overcome the lobbying of IP holders, as they're also hurt by too many patents.
The tech industry just needs to agree that we'd all be better off with a truce, and lobby to change the laws. Personally, I'd like to see no patents for software and business methods.
Being married is one thing; having kids is another.
As an entrepreneur with two young children, I know it's hard to keep a balance.
The hard part isn't necessarily the limited number of hours. It's possible to build a successful startup while working 40 hours a week, provided you're really focused and not goofing around during those hours.
What's hard is many startups have a youth culture that glorifies in working all the time, though much of that time is drinking beer and playing foosball. That's great when you're 23. But I (and many others with kids) would much prefer a professional culture of focused, intense work from 10 AM to 6 PM.
I'm torn by the prospect of a technological solution to aging.
On one hand, I certainly don't want to get old and die -- at least, not on nature's time table.
On the other hand, if no one else got old and dies, we'll quickly become an over populated, stagnant society. From a more "objective" perspective, there's something beautiful about life because it's so temporary.
What's annoying is this isn't the real issue. Of course Samsung felt threatened by the iPhone, and set out to copy the aspects of it they liked. That's how capitalism works.
The real issue is what degree of protection should our legal system provide original innovators against those who want to copy their innovations.
I think the guiding principle should be the least legal protection that would still leave enough incentive for the original innovation to be created. In the case of software, where there is little fixed investment cost and a competitive advantage to being "first to market", I have a hard time seeing the need for any legal protection.
For example, could anyone seriously argue that Apple wouldn't, say, implement a "slide to unlock" mechanism on the iPhone if they couldn't patent that behavior?
We really need an act of congress to rectify this situation.
I recently had an experience that dovetails with this article.
This summer, I moved my family over to London for two months. I intended to work while there, but I was having RSI issues. So instead, I spent two months full time with my kids, the oldest one being a girl of almost 4.
This transition from work to family time was reluctant, but in retrospect was the best thing that happened to me this year. My relationship with my oldest daughter developed and deepened... we are now so much closer than before, she's matured so much since I've been able to focus on her development.
And I was never aware that this deeper relationship was a possibility, and that I was neglecting it in favor of work.
What this post describes is a 2-of-3 multisig, which adds further encumbrances in constructing a valid transaction.
But any transaction, once broadcast, is irreversible.