Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
As John Gall wrote in [Gall03], “A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.”
Nat Pryce • Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck))
I've always been a hobbyist, and it's one of the reasons I kind of seamlessly go between software, hardware, networking, and material science. I don't care—it's whatever it takes to make the damn thing work. I don't have much formal education in these things, but you learn. You build enough stuff; after a while, you see it. And if you reverse-engin
... See moreJessica Livingston • Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
Apple didn’t invent direct manipulation—a computer scientist named Ben Shneiderman
Ken Kocienda • Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs
Brush up on the prior art: “We were intellectually excited about going down that path of this general space of software creation. So we spent a lot of time doing research. It was almost like being on a sabbatical, reading all this prior art of old computing pioneers, like Douglas Engelbart and Bill Atkinson , and even conte
... See moreFirst Round Capital • Airtable's Path to Product-Market Fit
Kahle: Yes. One thing I learned from Marvin Minsky (one of the founders of AI) was, "Pick a big enough project, something that's really hard, something that over the years you can work on." I've found that that has been a great guiding piece of wisdom. If you just set out to go and make a lot of money, then the problem is, what happens wh
... See moreJessica Livingston • Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
However, the ultimate role of product management is making or suggesting trade-offs between the pristine, platonic ideal of beauty that the design team wants, the technical pizzazz engineering desires, the “just give me some shit I can sell” of sales, and the “this may be risky” of legal (these examples are all purposefully exaggerated).
Elad Gil • High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People
Most of my mistakes came after we launched the product, not before—after we started shipping in January of '83. I had no significant experience in building an organization or building a management team. And I intuitively did well when I was leading the whole team, but once we got past 25 people, you can't do that. And so I made a series of classic
... See moreJessica Livingston • Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
Livingston: Did you have regrets? van Hoff: When it's your first startup, there are a lot of people involved. You take advice from a lot of people, and that advice is not always the best advice. Very often, your intuition tells you to do something different, but then you go with the advice from the experienced guys anyway. And there were a few occa
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