If you’ve spent any length of time in the technology industry you know one of our biggest quirks is the use of technical jargon. If you see our mouths moving it’s a safe bet that we’re spouting off the following…
We couldn’t be more pumped about the monster update we’ve released today. Among other things it includes the ability to change tastes whenever you want, a more intuitive back-end interface, and the addition of free and premium pricing plans.
Every great company is founded on a few guiding principles or ideals. If you’re lucky those will lead you to some level of success in your industry. One day large amounts of money will be offered to you that will require you to go back on those ideals. It will seem like an innocent thing. “Who will notice?” you’ll mumble to yourself. Here’s one piece of advice: don’t do it. At that moment you’re not in your right mind. What you’re not taking stock of is that those ideals contain the soul of your company. They’re what set you apart and compel people to do business with you.
I recently logged on to twitter to find a strange @reply message. It simply said, “@bretttilford check this out http://jzyky9.com” I didn’t recognize the name so I clicked on the profile. It was another dreaded spam account. Argh.
Organizational charts, contracts, HR policy manuals, and sales projections don’t normally strike us as something to get excited about. These tend to be labeled the boring and messy details of business. The non-creative part that is less important than the stuff the client interacts with. No one would ever describe them as beautiful. Let’s take a forward thinking industrial design firm as an example.
You’ve probably heard the saying hindsight is 20/20. Everything seems to get crystal clear as you look back on your life and see all of the mistakes you made. Why did you sell when you should have bought? Why did you go left when it’s so clear you should have gone right. How could you have been such an idiot? Those were such glaring mistakes. Or were they?
America is a nation of self made people who are taught from a young age that we can become anything we want. We’re a “pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps” type of place. We fancy ourselves the masters of our own fate. For a long time I thought this was a good thing.
A few weeks back I watched the opening episode of Shark Tank. It’s a show where aspiring entrepreneurs get to pitch their business concepts to VC’s like FUBU founder and CEO Daymond John and real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran There were some really solid presentations but one moment in particular stood out to me.
I had the most stressful vacation ever last week because I had to go car shopping each day. I’m not a huge fan of haggling with used car salesmen so one might think that this promptly ruined my vacation but strangely enough just the the opposite happened.
Should you create a product that you love or one you believe other people will love?