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http://charliecrystle.com

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Your Life?s Work

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I just posted a comment over at Fred's blog; his post was about going out on top. The rest of this post is mostly from that comment. Retiring from software crosses my mind from time to time. I used to imagine doing something else, so I tried. It didn't work so well. I don't think

Becoming a CEO

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"If you don?t like choosing between horrible and cataclysmic, don?t become CEO" –Ben Horowitz http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/31/what%E2%80%99s-the-most-difficult-ceo -skill-managing-your-own-psychology/ Filed under: Startups

Google +1

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So yes, here they are. Google has all the search data–the web cached, your searches stored, and now it's added your recommended search results. Sounds a bit like Jawaya, except we don't have nearly the data they do. Or the market cap :) But all is not lost. As we get closer to launch, I'm

The Internet Never Sleeps (or Getting Things Done)

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Last year I worked feverishly on a product to help me and you focus more and cut out the things that distract us. I called it Focus. I never released it because I ran into a few tech glitches in C++ and decided to take a break. That gave me time to work on Buckets,

Google Search Isn?t Broken

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Results are polluted with SEO-targeted sites, yes. Content farms create mediocre content that gets significant play on Google, yes. Google has been creating "personalized" versions of results that end up sending us to Page 2 more than ever before, yes. But it's not broken. It does what it intends to do. Some things it does

A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever

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I was able to speed up the load time of the Jawaya plugin by a whopping gagillion seconds–something dramatic. I was able to achieve this stunning bit of engineering mastery by simply changing a value in the manifest so it would load before the page load. Clever. When I realized later that there was something

Switching Back to Blogger

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I like WordPress and will continue using it for some blogs. But I like Disqus more, and it only works with self-hosted WordPress, which I'm not willing to do because of the maintenance and spam management. WordPress doesn't allow Javascript, and Blogger does. So it's very simple to add Disqus. I've developed a lot of

Court to Twitter: Developer Reparations

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Twitter's decision to change the goal posts for its APIs is, in effect, stealing. After building–to its own benefit–an ecosystem that helped to spread its use, make it relevant, make it ubiquitous, and make it money, Twitter has decided to pull an Apple and screw part of its developer community. Twitter's apparent arrogance is unfounded...

WordPress & Disqus: Only on Self-hosted Blogs

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I've already spent more time on this than I'd like. The bottom line? WordPress does not allow Disqus on its hosted blogs, and does not allow javascript. There might be some workaround, but short of moving to a self-hosted blog (I won't, but I might leave WP if there's another that integrates with disqus), I

Sunday Dread

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For as long as I can remember, I've had trouble sleeping on Sunday nights. I'll guess that my habitual procrastination left me with a pile of homework due on Monday, still untouched until after dinner on Sunday, and of course there was always something else more interesting. I hated homework. I typically finish the week

Saturday: Gear Day

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As usual I worked all week including most nights. I spent a lot of time refactoring some code, testing, etc, and a lot of research. At some point you need a break, and last night I had a nice break after serving my poor, sick wife some miso soup while I ate some really great

Automated is the Opposite of Social

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I just came across a blog post (won't attribute) that sparked a thought: so much of the web is automated now, yet the relevant web is not. It's produced by people for people. The means of publishing, distributing, and sharing might be automated, but the generation of quality content is, for the most part, owned

Bugs

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Internally tested. Well, we missed a few important tests. So I'm cranking on testing for the Chrome extension, which is not what I would call a test-friendly environment because you effectively have to add alerts around every relevant function. That's an issue, but not the problem. The problem is trying to make the software do

Starting Up Outside the Valley

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I'm in Lancaster–an hour by train from Philly, 2.5 hrs from NY, and a world away from the Silicon Valley. The online scuffle between?Vivek Wadhwa and some Bostonians about whether Boston has a vital scene is a bit boring and ridiculous to me. Why? There will likely never be another Silicon Valley. 95% of the

Speed of Dev

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Yesterday my new wifi-n router arrived, along with two adapters. Our old Netgear wireless-g kept getting hung up and needed about 3 resets a day. Worse than that, though, was the speed and throughput. When you're developing web apps, latency during testing equates to unnecessary time invested. If you sit for a second instead of

What Beta Means

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I typically define Beta as "code complete, internally tested". The Jawaya beta has a number of parts, and most are code complete, internally tested. A few parts are still moving toward beta, but the core functionality is not dependent on that. Beta is also the ugly duckling period. The user experience is rougher, the user

Jawaya: Shared Search?or Searching Made Social

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I've always bought into the argument that staying stealth is important for a startup with something groundbreaking, and that's the approach I've taken with Jawaya. But the reality is that very little new in tech is really new; sometimes it's the timing, execution, deals, or delivery that makes the difference between success and not. Today...

Search is Stacked in Google?s Favor

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Andrew Keen of TechCrunch ?posted this today about Google. ?Here's the salient point: Google?s bias isn?t just limited to finance and health. In a January 2011?paper, ?Measuring Bias in Organic Web Search,? written with Harvard Business School doctoral candidate Benjamin Lockwood, Edelman found that Google listed its own map service as the first re...

Getting Things Done

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Not the book, but in reality. I'm fortunate to have a friend as an executive coach; he knows me well and kicks my ass when I need it. Today we had a call and it helped just at the point where I need to shift gears. I find working alone less productive than when I

Getting to Alpha

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I want a smaller web. As I've been building Jawaya I've come to the realization that the ever-expanding web increases the daily noise that interferes with our lives. I'm not just talking about bots and content farms like Demand Media–it's the noise caused by irrelevant but decent quality information. The question is, relevant to whom?...

.Net Developers: Learn Rails

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I've expanded my dev search to great, dedicated developers regardless of skillset, but most interested in .Net devs with either C++ or Java experience who want to pick up a new skill: Ruby on Rails. The demand is incredibly high for Rails devs at the moment, so it will be a great marketable skill. But

Rails Developers in Central PA

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It's time to build the team for Jawaya–a rare opportunity in Central PA to work on a cutting edge web services team that will compete with the top companies on the web. This is classic seed stage startup–very little cash, but a great chance for early stock ownership, and potential to really change the way

Launch Timing

 Mark As Read    

Pre-launch startups have tons of decisions to make every week–some are big-picture, directional choices, most are detailed choices in code and design. One is a mix of both. Launching to alpha testers is tough enough; launching to beta testers is incredibly hard. Founders have a natural sense of perfection–we want people to see the whole...

Heading West

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This week I hit the Valley hard on a fundraising mission. I don't need a ton for this round, but I'd like to raise $750k to build a team and have a year and a half of running room. It's tough to organize a trip like this though while coding. My coding is slow, as

AVC.com + CNN = Lots of Traffic

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Thanks for all of the interest, folks, and special thanks to Fred Wilson, host of AVC.com. Fred asked me to post on the only M&A experience I've had, and somehow it took off. Over 10,000 visitors so far. This internet thing is going to be big! ;) Jaw?ya (ja|w?y|a, hard j) is in alpha stage,

Beta Signup

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I've been working for quite a while on a new search concept, though the further in I get, the closer the rest of the world gets to what we're doing. So today I'm inviting you to sign up for the rather modest beta, which will be ready soon if we can nail down a few

Why Social Matters

 Mark As Read    

I've been tracking the growth of social networks and social apps from the time online groups were the most social thing going. Facebook's explosion is of course notable; 25% of the web's traffic is generated from links shared on Facebook. The following image reflects the impact of social vs utility sites: Both Twitter and Facebook...

Facebook, Microsoft, and Employee Stock Options=Fraud?

 Mark As Read    

Like a lot of people, I've dismissed the Twins case against Zuckerberg and Facebook as sour grapes; yes, they had a bit of a claim, but the real work is in building a compelling app and getting people to use it. Not knowing the details, the settlement seemed fair; connecting people through a website was

Train Time, Plane Time

 Mark As Read    

It's amazing how you can get blown out of the water–the fun, amazing startup water–by external forces. I haven't coded much in the past five days because of ?a variety things, from family to the school district, and I'm feeling way behind schedule. This week I'm meeting with investors on the West Coast. Everyone asked...

WikiLeaks, Amazon, and My New Startup

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I've been working on some stuff I really dig over the past year or so. This summer I shifted to something else, tried some new ideas, and discovered some things that just excite the hell out of me. For the first time since ChiliSoft, I'm incredibly excited about a startup. (Mission Research was heart work,

Bad Demo Days

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Yesterday I gave a bad demo of pretty good software that has a few rough edges. I made a classic mistake, after working on it for months: assuming the audience is as forgiving as we are, and that they'll see what isn't there. We left out a number of subtle but absolutely key visual cues.

Speech of Startups

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The more excited I get about the new next big thing, the faster I talk. We're developing a lexicon–the semantics for describing what we're doing and trying to make it, well, understandable in simple terms. It's hard to do that with the brain running fast and the mouth just shy of that, but we're getting

Boards

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Boards have come up a lot recently; I'm expecting to rejoin the Mission Research board, the School Board is reorganizing in a week or so, I've advised a few startups on board management, and my wife just asked me about boards because of something she's involved in. Here's my take from my limited point of

MongoDB Impressions

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I've spent the past three days diving into MongoDB and jQuery. Mongo is a document database that makes it very simple to work with data–it's basically object oriented vs SQL's rigid table structure. Smarter people than I can tell you about its flexibility and built-in scalability.   I'm attracted to it because I have a...

Great Startup Blog

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If you run a startup or small company, please visit Steve Blank's blog. It's incredibly insightful. http://steveblank.com/   Filed under: Startups

Search

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I've never considered starting a search company. Somehow that's what I've ended up with. The process of discovery only happens in doing the work, and in the past two months, something's evolved that I'm excited to pursue, if only for the great pleasure of being crushed by Google, or a hundred stealth startups likely doing...

Try Buckets

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In the next day or so I expect to put out a pre-beta version of Buckets. Learn more and sign up here: ?http://www.charliesoft.com Filed under: Startups

Buckets

 Mark As Read    

So I'm starting to build my team and raise capital. ?More on that later. I've had a technical setback with Focus, and decided to take a break from that and whip out something else I've wanted to build for a long time. It should have taken a week, but I, being me, had to try

Reinventing the Wheel

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Fred posted about contrarian investing today, and it prompted a thought. When someone says "we don't have to reinvent the wheel", I say "why not". Reinvention of the wheel has brought incredible improvements to transportation. The electric motor is combining a wheel with electricity. Tiny wheels move parts along a production line. A giant wheel...

Starting Over

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Over the past 20 months I've been considering what to do next. For over 2 years I've been considering what my life's work is; that navel-gazing was triggered by an article on Chongo in the New York Times sports section. I finished the article and said out loud "man, that's his life's work". And I

Socially Responsible Term Sheets

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I posted on this over at the personal blog, though it really belongs here. But it's done so here ya go: http://charliecrystle.blogspot.com Filed under: Startups

Liquidation Preferences

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http://charliecrystle.blogspot.com/2010/07/bulls-bears-and-pigs.html I posted on my personal blog about why startups should be very concerned about liquidation preferences. Take a look and come back to comment. Filed under: Startups

Lancaster Community Bikes

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More about it here… Filed under: Startups

Online Forums Controversy

 Mark As Read    

I've posted extensively over at my personal blog here. I believe in open discussion, I believe in free speech. And I believe that free speech has limits, as does the Supreme Court. That said, I was disappointed yet elated to see LNP take the forums down. Disappointed because the forums could at times be very

No Title

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CSA means "community supported agriculture". Lancaster Farm Fresh CSA means fresh organic veggies delivered each week from Lancaster County's 65 top Amish organic farms! The quality and variety throughout the growing season is simply amazing. We're just now finishing some of what we froze over the summer last year–totally worth it. My wife ...

Beta 1, Update 1

 Mark As Read    

I really thought I could pop out more updates faster, but it took 4 weeks! All kinds of bug fixes, re-coding, designing, and it just really added up. Sign up here: http://www.charliesoft.com Next week I'm hoping to get another update out with more charts for analyzing time, tags, and tasks. And it would help to get the

Beta 1

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Well, it's been a relatively short road but it feels longer. Here's what I said on my personal blog–you can get to the beta from there. http://charliecrystle.blogspot.com/2010/03/beta-1-finally.html Filed under: 1

Deal Terms: Liquidation Preferences, Founder Options

 Mark As Read    

Liquidation preferences have always seemed to be a case of having your cake and eating it too for investors. I'm guessing the original intent was strictly for downside protection. But it's become a way for investors to guarantee a certain upside–risk mitigation at the expense of common. Put another way, it's terms like these that value...

The Importance of Call Volume for Execs

 Mark As Read    

First, let me say I always appreciate the courtesy of a phone call, even when it's disappointing news. I think people deserve the call back. When I don't want to buy something from someone who calls repeatedly, I call back or email back to let them know they should move on. Courtesy is easy and

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