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Why overpaying your developers is the cheapest thing to do

February 13, 2013 By 1 Comment
Mythical Man Month meets Dilbert

One of the crew posted up an article citing the Mythical Man Month today. This concept first came to me through an old co-founder who was a smart PhD type, he'd just read the book in the 1990s and I based all of my startup recruitment around this idea - it worked fab. Pay people who are brilliant "way too much" because it's the cheapest thing to do... I use a rough square law to extrapolate something more useful... simple project → 1 year, 1 coder complex project → 2 years, 1 coder → 1 year, 4 coders Or pu another way, if you can get a good engineer who is 2x as productive, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Engineering, Programming, Working Life Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Hundred Year Company

May 15, 2012 By 5 Comments
feat_100yrcompany

I'm a bit of a business geek. Ever since I threw in my Engineering job to try my hand starting my own web design business in the sexy dot.com age, and later a string of startups in the dot.bust and 2.0 era, I think one of my favourite things to do is to sit back and listen to audiobooks and podcasts on the glorious stories behind successful ventures. One thing that's been bubbling in my mind this month is an interesting mystery in the world of business... No company has survived beyond 100 years.(Okay, I'll qualify this with the exception of a few banks and family owned … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Companies, Opinion, Reflections Tagged With: ,

The Bucky Box Startup Story

March 4, 2011 By 3 Comments
The sign says, "Humans and Animals must keep out. Don't let your dog eat anything from the river bank or go in the river"

My big project last winter was kickstarting the "Ooooby Box" with Pete Russell and James Samuel (of Transition Town fame). What's an Ooooby Box I hear you ask? It's box of local veges, mainly organic, delivered to your door of course! Now that's all good and that, but what I didn't expect to see quite so clearly was the reason why we mostly have mega farms and chemical food on the table. Let me bring up Neil who I met along the way. He hated his job a dozen years ago. That's because his job was to say to farmers "Sorry we can't take your produce anymore, you're too small, the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Companies, Work_Life Tagged With: , , , ,

On Startups, 3 steps… Ready Fire Aim.

January 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I've been in and around the startups for a dozen years now. In the early days I did it right, quite by accident. Then got thinking too much and did it all wrong, and in doing so I hung out with people who did it all wrong, and now I'm full circle again. Here's what I've learnt in 3 simple words (I stole them from Saatchi & Saatchi)... Ready, Fire, Aim. Ready... And ready is a rhetorical question, who cares, just do it. Fire... Just do it (thanks Nike). Don't think too hard, just do it. Aim... Now's the time to think, while your feet are pounding the pavement. Oh, and that … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Companies, Reflections

Enspiral, you and me. Auckland anyone?

December 11, 2010 By 1 Comment

Joshua Vial always struck me as a person with a calm and approachable demure. And on that note we approached him for help for it is well known that crazy entrepreneurs and tinkerers like us need help sometimes. I knew he'd started something called Enspiral and it somehow had struck that magic chord... Imagine Joshua's calm smooth voice... "28 people so far in 10 months, it's been the easiest thing I've done". At the time I was cranking out Ooooby's vege box scheme with Pete, James and Karen. Ooooby to me is our audacious go at redesigning the food system. (shhh... that's a secret, don't … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Staff Stories, Work_Life