July 2011
7 posts
“Pain + Reflection = Progress.”
– Ray Dalio
WatchWas it worth it? What’s next?
WatchColliding company cultures
WatchGetting bought
WatchSlicehost the scrappy startup
Interview with DHH about Slicehost →
DHH from 37signals interviewed Jason and I about Slicehost.
May 2011
3 posts
Charles Barkley's Pain
What an honest, painful story from Charles Barkley about Michael Jordan. From Bill Simmons’ podcast interview with Barkley:
You know, I’d always thought that I was the best player, to be honest with you. I always thought, Michael Jordan when he started winning, he just had more help than me. So, when I finally came to Phoenix, I had told the late, great Cotton Fitzsimmons, ‘Hey...
Cloudplumbing Podcast: Talking DevStructure,...
I did an interview with Ryan Parsley of Cloudplumbing - talking about all sorts of stuff, including DevStructure and blueprint.
Talking about the Slicehost shutdown with The...
Had a brief chat with Paul Hontz of the Startup Foundry about the decision to shutdown Slicehost. It hurts like a breakup :)
March 2011
3 posts
Not new lessons
“They are not new lessons. Never owe any money you can’t pay tomorrow morning. Never let the markets dictate your actions. Always be in a position to play your own game. Never take on more risks than you can handle. But all of those were old lessons, unfortunately. Even though I didn’t see it coming, those lessons which are timeless allowed us to in effect profit from it rather than suffer...
The 7 Immutable Laws of Investing
I’m pretty sure this will be the most valuable article I read all year, investing or otherwise.
The Seven Immutable Laws of Investing.
They are as follows: 1. Always insist on a margin of safety 2. This time is never different 3. Be patient and wait for the fat pitch 4. Be contrarian 5. Risk is the permanent loss of capital, never a number 6. Be leery of leverage 7. Never invest in...
Talking goals and bootstrapping with Andrew Warner...
I officially met Andrew Warner last month at Superconf, where we were both judges for the startup blast competition. Unoffically, I feel as if I’ve ‘known’ him for much longer since I’ve watched dozens of his previous interviews. It was an honor to talk with him for an hour about Slicehost, DevStructure, setting goals and bootstrapping a company. Andrew interviews...
July 2010
1 post
The Conversation #22: The Secret Sauce
I joined Dan Benjamin on the Conversation yesterday for another chat about startups and business. I could talk with Dan for hours, it’s so much fun. Show notes and audio/video link below.
Dan Benjamin talks with Matt Tanase of Slicehost and DevStructure. They discuss creating demand for a product and your business, marketing on a budget, building an audience, getting your users to help...
May 2010
5 posts
Simplicity & Convention
“The only weapons we have are simplicity and convention. Tattoo that on your forehead in reverse so that you always see it reflected in the screen. What is truly decisive on the battlefield are attitudes: hard work, responsibility, and paying attention to reality instead of the voiceover in your head.”
Link
render :js in Rails 3
I just wasted a ton of time trying to get render :js working. I hope this saves a google visitor time or someone tells me what I was doing wrong.
According to guides.rubyonrails.org, render :js should work, but I kept getting an error about nil formats. Some people used render :text, but even after setting :content_type to “text/javascript”, it would just display the text. So I...
Engineering Perfection
“Here’s the thing about engineering, and this car is all about engineering: A machine is never finished, never fully optimized. Engineers subscribe not to Aquinas but Augustine. No machine is ever perfect except when it marches toward perfectibility.” - WSJ on the Perfect Porsche
The Conversation: Scratch the Itch
Dan Benjamin, one of my favorite podcasters and RoR man about town, invited me onto The Conversation today to discuss startups and acquisitions. It was awesome talking business and an honor to appear on the show. I have listened to every episode, along with The Pipeline and 5by5’s other shows. Dan has an awesome radio voice and is an amazing interviewer. It was also great catching up with...
Love what you do
“But this game is really, really important to me. It’s done a lot for me. It’s done a lot for my family. As much as I’ve been through, I don’t take any start for granted, ‘cause I never know when it’s going to end. And I love doing it. I really do. And I love everybody in this clubhouse and I don’t like anybody I play against when I’m...
April 2010
2 posts
Goals are good...
Getting Devise to accept a username or email at...
Devise has quickly become the de facto Rails authorization tool. I’m working with it for the first time and have been impressed with everything it can do. It’s very complete, a little too much for my taste, but it plays nicely with Rails 3. I had to dig around in order to accept either a username or email address at login, since by default it only accepts one. If you modify the...
December 2009
1 post
Use your cleaver
“What you will be is a guy who knows how to use a cleaver, and when you stop knowing how to use it, all those things you have acquired will be held up by nothing, and will collapse into the nothing you have become.” http://maxklein.posterous.com/im-not-an-enterpreneur-im-a-dirty-hack
September 2009
4 posts
Live or Stay-at-home?
Bill Simmons on why going to sporting events sucks. The leagues need to rethink the stadium experience, it’s similar to the problem with movie theaters - staying at home tromps going out. I’d rather attend 1 or 2 games a year, pay more and get *really* good seats or a super high end experience (luxury box). The NFL is especially vulnerable because it’s probably the worst live...
My Startup Exhibitionist Fetish
Just read When in Doubt, Make it Public, that linked to an old Jason Kottke piece. Both discuss the somewhat counterintuitive fact (at least for me) that making information public often turns out well for all of the parties involved. It stoked my open book startup fantasy. When I’m thinking about things, I like to imagine doing the exact opposite of my gut reaction or what most people would...
Shred your junk
Lots of changes for me recently, including a couple of physical moves. Thanks to a packing service and some planning, it went perfectly. Until this morning when my brother called frantically, claiming that an attorney at his wife’s office had found a bunch of my credit cards this weekend. I assured him that was impossible, because I don’t have any credit cards and my wallet was in the...
Cessna goes medieval
I got a kick out of this Cessna ad. Namely because I was trying to estimate the number of people who come across the ad, stop to read it and are actually in a position to purchase a business jet. Then I started thinking about how it’s identical to any number of chest pounding, adrenaline pumping Nike ads, except it’s for… CEOs. The corporate world is brutal, Cessna will help...
July 2009
5 posts
Kuruma Zushi = Heaven
— matt via iPhone
Allstar Vids
I have a long one of Obama throwing out the first pitch but it’ll take too long to upload. IMG_0212.MOV Watch on Posterous IMG_0213.MOV Watch on Posterous
Allstar Game Pics
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We'll See
I liked this story and wanted to archive it, from Derek Sivers.
—
A farmer had only one horse. One day, his horse ran away.
All the neighbors came by saying, “I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.” The man just said, “We’ll see.”
A few days later, his horse came back with twenty wild horses. The man and his son corraled all 21 horses.
All the neighbors came by...
Tattoo worthy?
“Losing money indefinitely isn’t just a financial failure. It represents a failure to truly understand how a service or product is creating value for a customer, how to communicate that value, and how to persuade the customer to pay above and beyond for that value.”
Link
April 2009
5 posts
Databases from the Edge (of sanity)
Jason and I are giving a talk tonight at our alma mater this evening and were reminiscing about some of our entrepreneurial highs and lows. The Kaleidoscope Database was a legend in the first Slicehost office and fueled waayyyy too many geeky one-liners. The ad below was torn from a Visual C magazine and hung over my desk for some time. My favorite part? IT WILL NOT COME CHEAP!A brand new concept...
Mom's famous Jello salad
It’s really beautiful, takes all day to make.
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The red stuff in the blue glass? Pop Rocks!!
Wake up running CNBC
“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”
No this isn’t going to be a lame...
Slicehosting Ballers
I’m in a fantasy baseball league with Om Malik and some other tech types. He posted his lineup today and I took my first serious look at my roster. Sheesh this could be a long year. I’ve never played in a league this big (16 teams). It will be fun to try and pick a few surprises and out maneuver a bunch of baseball ubergeeks.
Can the market be fixed?
“Time and simple corrective measures would have cleaned up the stock market. Instead, Obama and company think they can fix the economy and stock market at the same time with drastic measures. It is not working and will not work.”
- Howard Lindzon
March 2009
3 posts
Robert Scoble and Lew Moorman
Sent from my iPhone
Startup Lessons from The Snowball
I resisted Warren Buffet for a long time, namely because 2 friends worshiped the ground he walked on. ”He was an anomaly, lucky, blah blah blah…” I’d say dismissively as they quoted Buffet business nuggets.
But the story was too sexy for me to ignore. There was so much money, made out in the middle of nowhere and the consistency. My God the consistency. Temptation won, I...
A little piece of SF heaven
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