I don’t read a lot of marketing books but somehow I got interested in this one via recommendations on Friendfeed. But wait, this isn’t a marketing book. I would call it a book on strategy with marketing theme. It’s an old book, written in 1993, but it was very surprising to find most of the examples and brands relevant and still in existince. Somehow the world doesn’t change as rapidly as we think.
Reading mostly non-fiction, Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite authors. I feel as if he’s a writer of my generation since he published his books in 2000 (The Tipping Point) and 2005 (Blink). Both of them were best-sellers, and very good reads. This time, he’s arguing that “there is something profoundly wrong with the way we make sense of success.” in his new book Outliers. Gladwell makes several arguments that I found interesting:
This post is intended for people who will attend a Startup Weekend event for the first time.
Why attend a Startup Weekend?
What do I need to do before the event?
I spent this weekend participating in Atlanta Startup Weekend 2 If you’re not familiar with Startup Weekend idea, this is a good introduction.
Friday at 7 PM: Ninety random people with different backgrounds (software development, design, marketing, business etc.) gathered in a room to work on ideas that would lead to start-up companies.
Although some people were there to start businesses, my goal was to meet like-minded people, experience this unconventional event and have fun by working on a cool idea.
Atlanta may not be the heart of technology in the U.S. but there are many opportunities to meet like-minded people that are interested in technology here. For instance, Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs Meeting is one of the largest ones with 1000 members. It’s a monthly meeting, where a subject is chosen each month and a few speakers will present on that subject. The one I attended was on iPhone Development, people who developed iPhone applications shared their experiences and gave statistics regarding sales of their applications to an audience of 50-60 people in the room.
I wrote about Founders at Work recently. Here are some memorable quotes from this book:
On customers:
David Heinemeier Hansson, cofounder of 37signals
“First we built the audience and then we figured out a product”
Meno Trott, cofounder of Movable Type
“Having customers from day one was the thing that really forced us to be a company. If we had been just talking about a product and we had to build up a customer base and figure out how to market it, that would have been incredibly hard.”
“Founders at Work” consists of 32 interviews with founders of famous technology companies such as Paypal, Apple, Lotus, Yahoo, TiVo, del.icio.us, craigslist, Flickr, Adobe etc. It’s about stories of startups’ early days, and contains valuable advice not only for people starting companies, but for everyone in technology business.
It’s a great resource for learning about what the founders have been through, and how they transformed their ideas into successful companies.
Lately, I’ve been thinking that everything is about user experience. We buy brands that make us feel special, we use beautiful products that provide a good experience. We love people that treat us well. What matters is how you feel, it’s all about the experience…
I bought a new bag for two reasons: (i) It looks great, I’m pleased every time I see it (ii) It’s in line with “less is more” philosophy
Randy Pausch, a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, passed away from pancreatic cancer in July, 2008. One year ago, on September 18th, 2007, he was one of the speakers in a series of lectures called “Last Lecture”. The idea was, “If you had one lecture to give before you died, what would it be?”
Sadly, he knew this lecture was one of his last ones, so he gave an inspirational talk titled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”. This motivational talk is about life and living. He gives examples from his career about overcoming obstacles and shares the lessons he learned throughout this journey. It’s about an hour long, but definitely worth watching. I especially enjoyed the twist at the end :)
Getting Real is one of the books that helped me look at software development from a different perspective. The title of the book is “The easier, smarter and faster way to build a successful web application”, but it’s really the manifesto of 37signals, a web application and design company that’s been influential to the whole community with successful products like Basecamp and by creating the Ruby on Rails web framework.
