samirabid.com

This is a great article for those looking at a tech start-up. It is a little biased towards young people starting a tech start-up but generally the 18 mistakes that kill start-ups is a good read.

Two parts resonated particularly strongly with me, and other (non-programmers) might have found the same:

Tip 6: Hiring Bad Programmers – the issue here is how to find a good programmer if you are not a programmer yourself, because you don’t have the skills to recognise one (if you can even find one!)

Tip 17: Fights Between Founders – “Don’t start a company with someone you dislike because they have some skill you need and you worry you won’t find anyone else. The people are the most important ingredient in a startup, so don’t compromise there.” - something I totally agree with but (as a non-coder) rather related to the above point.

This though could be the reason its so difficult to find good people who want to help you because “no one really good wants a job implementing the vision of a business guy.” And so lies the problem! … Perhaps its a case of ‘can’t beat them join them’ who knows.

Comments, thoughts and suggestions welcome!

Peldi at Balsamiq is a funny Italian chap. He is a programmer who is passionate about UX – odd given I have been repeatedly been told was impossible (left brain / right brain etc etc). Prior to starting his business, named after the Italian vinegar, he has worked solely at large corporates – also odd because “real entrepreneurs” don’t do that apparently.

Peldi is a great working case study of Guy Kawasaki’s philosophy around creating a business around “making meaning” not about making money – the philosophy is that the money will follow and it seems so in Peldi’s case (20,000+ customers, 6 staff and $3m Turnover from zero in 2 years!)

I am a fan and I recommend, if you’re in any way entrepreneurial or looking to (or are) working for yourself, finding the time to watch his talk.

He references a open list of free advice for entrepreneurs that he has created – the link is here in case you miss it.

Now, if anyone reading this knows of an awesome programmer, with great UX skills and a passing interest in motorsports, I have a great project needing their help and I am stuck …

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is something that I have dabbled with a fair bit over the years. The first step in any SEO process is to identify your keywords, or, the words people put in Google that you feel represent what you have to offer.

Normally this starts with a bit of a brain storm. Typically people don’t take this further but if you do there is a lot of information and online resources around to help you add objectivity to your keyword selection.

The reason you’d want to do this is because it takes a lot of effort to get to the front pages of the search engines and you should want to make sure that people are at least thinking along the same lines as you when they are searching for your products or services – assuming they are searching online for what you have to offer, but that is a story for another day …

Assuming you do want to get a feeling for the best keywords to target then this starts a quite involved process to find information and then filter and present it so that you can make a choice of what to go for.

This is a link to a post from a guy who is really at the cutting edge of this field and it makes an interesting read – assuming, like me, that you are into this kind of stuff! Its also a bit of a lesson on how to use Excel …

Probably late to the party (again!) but was introduced to this rather good looking 3D modelling tool by Google. The community of shared models is really great too.

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/

Here is a link to a great chart on where people are planning to spend on their marketing tactics in 2011: