Tag: business

The Uncomfortable Truth About Why Your Side Project Isn't Taking Off

10 January 2026

You shipped it. It works. The code is clean. The architecture is solid. And nobody cares. You're refreshing your analytics. Posting on Hacker News. Wondering if you should add that one feature. Maybe the landing page needs work. Maybe you should try Product Hunt again. Here's what's actually happening: you've moved your biggest risk into […]

Do More With Less

7 August 2014

This is a post from my My 20-day Zappos + Buffer Values Challenge "Do More With Less" Well, I'm an

Listen First, Then Listen More

31 July 2014

This is a post from my My 20-day Zappos + Buffer Values Challenge "Listen First, Then Listen More" Everyday we hear things, TV, people talking to us, but how much do we listen? Sometimes, it's quite easy to talk – if someone tells you about their recent holiday, sometimes it's tempting to talk to them about your recent […]

Create Fun and A Little Weirdness

27 July 2014

This is a post from my My 20-day Zappos + Buffer Values Challenge "Create Fun and A Little Weirdness"? This is an unusual value, but I like it a lot. It kind of has the effect of celebrating diversity and, in an organisational context, highlights that it's an organisation of real people. One of the […]

My 20-day Zappos + Buffer Values Challenge

25 July 2014

Two companies whom I feel have very positive company cultures are Zappos and Buffer. Because these organisations go out of their way to embody a high purpose, I've a feel a great deal of respect and awe towards these them. The thing is, the values all seem relatively familiar, and I'm interested to see how […]

How not to cold call people! (Recording)

22 July 2014

Earlier today, I took an interesting call to my 0800 number from an Irish number: I should note, that I've never: Used New Relic Intentionally provided New Relic with my details Conversed with any of their reps before Hidden my 0800 number Clearly, what's gone on here is that: they've sifted through the internet they've […]

YCombinator? I'll do it

21 July 2014

One day last November, I was sitting in the student cafeteria, at Stanford University in California with Josh catching up with Paul, an old friend of mine who was studying there. We'd had just ordered a coffee from Starbucks, naively answering telling the barista, "yes, we would like cream", so now we were eyeing up […]

A Blue Ocean business plan for you: The Carrot Soup Company

7 July 2014

I've been reading Blue Ocean Strategy over the past week. I'll write up my thoughts on the book in due course – I've not quite finished it yet. Clara & I were throwing around the main premise of the book – about how to create Blue Ocean markets – and break away from the existing […]

Notes on a Book: Organizing Genius by Warren Bennis

18 May 2014

I recently finished reading Organizing Genius by Warren Bennis (professor in business administration) and Patricia Ward Biederman (journalist). Notably, the reason I picked it up is because in Tribal Leadership – David Logan mentions Warren as mentor, and his work in this book as a predecessor to the Tribal Leadership book. It's easy to see […]

Notes on a book: Remote: Office Not Required by 37signals

24 April 2014

I first heard about Remote: Office Not Required when my friend, John Leach, mentioned on social media he'd been interviewed for it. Interested enough to see what it was he was interviewed about, I ordered a copy, and finally finished reading it yesterday. In short, the book is a persuasive set of mini-essays about why […]

Notes on a book: Founders at Work

14 April 2014

Yesterday, I finally completed Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days. The book is a collection of interviews conducted by Jessica Livingston of YCombinator with cofounders and key people of a great deal of well known (and in some cases, less well known, but notable) companies. Because each chapter is a different interview with a different person, […]

Notes on a book: Pitch Anything

5 April 2014

I've recently read Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff. It's an interesting book, on the back someone's written "move over Neil Strauss – Pitch Anything is the new the Game". I think I can see why – they both inhabit an area of applied game theory or applied NLP, which when put into words, is likely […]