1. intro
my vib. my vib. you go out and you have a good time.
It’s a common phrase and it doesn’t need to be said very often, but if we want people to use Slack, we need to make sure that people can go out and have a good time too.
One way of doing this is by creating a fun app for us to use who can also still do the thing we want them to do: having fun on the web, just like we do.
2. i am a teacher
What’s the value of a teacher? In part, it is the value of an instructor. It is the value of someone who can impart knowledge to others in a way that they can understand. But there are other reasons too.
In fact, the very act of doing business can be seen as a form of teaching: if you want to go into business, you need to learn about what you do, about how people operate in it and about their needs and wants. A good teacher will find a way to make all this information available to his students.
It is not enough for students to just take notes during class. They need to absorb what was taught and learn how to apply it. In business, being able to communicate effectively means knowing yourself and your company well enough that you know your own strengths & weaknesses and are able to communicate them effectively within your organization (and without).
We may not be teachers but we do have the ability and duty to transmit knowledge in any form we can – through writing, speaking or simply by living with our products (the latter two are far more effective than the former).
3. i like to write
(No, it is not a new idea. What is new is that I am writing and publishing again in an effort to show my support for the campaign for Open Carry permits in Texas.)
I’ve been a long-time supporter of the “I Like to Write” campaign. Since I was a kid, I always liked to write — and I guess since kids are supposed to like writing, any action taken on my part was inherently self-congratulatory.
So when I started graduate school at Columbia University and found myself surrounded by people who wrote, the idea of getting my own word out there became part of my plan for graduate school. But as soon as I started teaching (which takes up 70% of your time), that plan had to be scaled down again.
Since then, all of my published work has been with an emphasis on teaching and teaching others:
Podcasts: A Conversation with Scott Plapp (which began as a series of audio interviews in which we talked about the future)
Podcasts: A Conversation With Steve Yegge (which began as a series of audio interviews in which we talked about software development)
Podcasts: A Conversation with Kauvar (which began as a series of audio interviews in which we talked about software development)
Podcasts: A Conversation With Brian Doherty (which began as a series of audio interviews in which we talked about software development)
Podcasts: A Conversation With Mihai Alisie (which began as a series of audio interviews in which we talked about software development)
Podcasts: A Conversation With Joel Spolsky (which began as a series of audio interviews in which we talked about software development)
To say that all this work has been hard would be an understatement; but what it has done is set me apart from other people involved in this industry. And that’s been good because most people who write don’t think too much about their audiences or what they need from them. The only way they can do this kind of work is if they are quite unique — or else they have no audience at all. That makes them expensive anomalies rather than valuable contributors to society. As such, many writers look at their audiences like somebody else’s customer base; so if you can get them to buy one product or service from you then you get by just fine — but if you can make them buy more than
4. my dog is really nice
“Dogs are nice” is a phrase we hear all the time around here. But it’s true. I have a really nice dog. The problem is that I am not using this to my advantage. I have a dog, and my dog is really nice.
So, if you have a dog, you should use it to your advantage because dogs are nice. If you don’t have a dog, then you should stop relying on it to be nice so much — if your dog isn’t really nice, who cares?
5. i like to play piano
When we first launched our product, we did not have a design style or a color palette. We just started creating a site and thought: “I like to play piano.” There are no words to describe the feeling of suddenly having a site that is both beautiful and functional.
It is true that once you’ve done something like this, it’s impossible to go back to the way you used to do things in your previous life and start from scratch. If you want to do it again, you have to relearn everything you already know about how things work. And since I am an old software guy, I can attest that most of what you learn about software has been in one way or another learned by trial and error (or maybe by reading books).
So before we go any further here, let me try to put some context on this notion of learning by trial and error:
We are not here today because initially (and perhaps even at first) we didn’t understand how our product worked. We were trying to learn how to build websites — with little understanding of what that actually means or how hard it would be. One day, when we had a strong enough idea of what we wanted out of our site (to create an online community for people who liked playing piano), we started building it more systematically; but then realized that the best thing is if we made the experiences more enjoyable for users — not so much more efficient or accurate than the current experience — but more enjoyable for users in general. After some time, when users started getting confused about what was going on (in part because they were interacting with unfamiliar features), we started looking for ways of solving problems. We found out that people would be better served if they could save their progress as they went through each song (so they can take notes when needed), but it was also important for us as developers that people could figure out faster than us which songs were coming next. Finally after many months and thousands of lines spent on finding ways around common problems with our codebase, our research showed us how to solve those problems without breaking anything else; without sacrificing any functionality; without reinventing the wheel again; without doing extra work instead of just saving all your work in one place; and finally, with ease! Our learning curve was so low from all these tiny improvements over time that now there are no learning curves at all anymore! At first everything felt like magic because there was nothing
6. i am learning guitar
A guitar is a musical instrument. It has strings and a body and a neck with fingerboard and frets. The most important thing about the guitar is that it sounds good. The more you play, the better your guitar will sound. When you first start to play, your fingers should naturally be on the frets.
The ultimate goal of learning how to play is simple: it’s to have fun. This is one of the reasons so many people start playing after they have finished college: they are looking for an excuse to do something that they enjoy, which often involves listening to music (although there are also opportunities to take lessons).
The real challenge comes when you want to record yourself playing music, because there are lots of different ways of doing it:
• Guitar apps for smartphones
• Microphones for iPhones/iPads/Android phones; not very good quality on them but great on smartphones (but expensive)
• Instruments (real or virtual) which you plug into your computer or headphones
If you do some research before buying an instrument, you will probably find the best way of learning is by trying a few different ones in different settings — it can be very useful to try out different instruments in a live environment before buying one which isn’t as environmentally friendly as others may be. You should also bear in mind that many instruments are made by professional musicians who understand these issues and will probably provide better service than any app-based service. They may even have tips and tricks which could make your playing even better!
If all else fails (and now I really hope this doesn’t), there is always YouTube . There are thousands of YouTube channels dedicated entirely to teaching people how to play various instruments — including guitar — and many other things besides! Often these videos are sponsored by companies who make nice-sounding guitars (I once bought a Strat for £60 at Guitar Center) — but if you can find one that sounds like your dream guitar, buy it and learn from it! Or buy an iPad guitar app from an app store such as App Store or Google Play etc., depending on what kind of instrument/app(s) you want to learn/play! Yes, that Apple App Store gets booked out fast in my experience — but this can lead me right back into my old stomp box habits when I need something new! (But seriously: don’t buy anything from Amazon until
7. conclusion
I’ve got huge respect for the company that I co-founded, my vib, which is an email newsletter for developers. They have a good quality product and I think their efforts in marketing and sales will prove valuable.
Not long ago I was looking at a list of startup companies that have had the most success in raising capital from VC funding (see here) and one of the entries stood out: Coda. They raised a whopping $10 million (NB: if you don’t know how much this counts as it is based on total equity raised, not total amount raised). It was only then that I realized they were not just another bootstrapped startup but rather a VC-backed one.
It took me some time to realize this – at first I thought they were just another tech startup and I am sure it was hard for them to convince venture capitalists that they were different from all their competitors. If anything, it was harder to convince them than any other startups in the same space. But soon enough, more VC rounds followed and now Coda is on its third round of funding and growing rapidly every few months.
So what explains this phenomenon? There are a few relevant factors:
• First, Coda is a company that has already been successful in building up its identity over time; hence it has built up its brand more strongly than many startups. However, brand building can only go so far; there are things you have to do to make your brand stand out from all the others (like acquiring customers). And it does take some time for your brand to stand out; hence we cannot expect everyone else to start immediately doing what we do overnight – or even next month or next year! This is why many startups fail (and why we need careful planning and focus) while others succeed because they seem so different from almost everything else out there (and if they aren’t as different as initially thought they might be later on!).
• Second, Coda has invested heavily into marketing itself – including sending mass emails with messages like “Your newsletter should support you instead of distract you” – which helps establish its identity across users (which may be quite different than those of its competitors), bringing them back into the fold after being away for ages – something which doesn’t appear to happen very often with startups! So much about branding is about getting your name across (or at least trying) before starting any new venture/