The Appearance of Accomplishment

Twitter made the news today because of CEO Evan William’s disclosure to employees that the company is valued at $1 billion.

Humorously, I also came across this today from the Editor in Chief of Esquire, David Granger, in the Letter from the Editor section of the October 2009 issue:

“We live in a culture that has begun to prize the appearance of accomplishment over actual accomplishment–it continues to amaze me that private enterprise and venture capital spend so much time and energy (not to mention cash) on “innovations” like Twitter and other forms of social blathering rather than marshaling the energies and talents of our engineers to create new industries to replace the ones that enabled the American Century.”

I admire Twitter for building such a seemingly simple product that appeals to so many people, but I can’t help but agree with Mr Granger: is this the best we can do?

Update: Sara Lacy posted an article on TechCrunch with similar sentiments.

edw519 responded to her article with the following comment on HackerNews, which, like most of his stuff, is thoroughly thought-provoking:

Investor: What are you building?Entrepreneur: Artificially intelligent software that automatically builds sophisticated business applications based on the enterprise’s business rules.

Investor: Your competitors are too entrenched. What can you do that’s simpler?

Entrepreneur: Small business software that ties all a company’s applications together.

Investor: You’ll never compete with Microsoft. What else?

Entrepreneur: Tiny apps that all kinds of people can use to run their stuff.

Investor: 37signals will kill you. What else?

Entrepreneur: Social software that enables your sales people to understand what’s happening in the global marketplace.

Investor: It’ll never work. Can you do something more practical?

Entrepreneur: An intelligent e-commerce system that guarantees the consumer the best value.

Investor: You’ll never compete with Amazon or Ebay. Got any other ideas?

Entrepreneur: Recipe software.

Investor: OK, if that’s the best you can do, we’ll go with it. Geez, I just wish you guys would dream a little bigger.

Domain Pigeon on Smashing Magazine

Domain Pigeon was recently mentioned in a Smashing Magazine article titled 10 Tools For Finding, Registering And Managing Domain Names:

Domain Pigeon’s approach is different to the search tools mentioned before. It automatically generates lists of available domains as well as Twitter names. The names are displayed in different colors, depending on how many people have showed interest in a certain term. The darker the color the more popular the name. You can also order the lists by length, popularity and show only domains or Twitter usernames. Examples of generated domain names are ablebo.com, meliori.com, minecafe.com or shopshost.com.

Domain Pigeon is an ideal source of inspiration for domains and short available Twitter names.

Cool cool.

Quotes

“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much can be done if we are always doing.”

– Thomas Jefferson

“Only programmers, customer service reps, and accounting staff work at Craigslist. There is no business development, no human resources, no sales. As a result, there are no meetings.”

– Wired

“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

– Maslow

“By inverting this list, we can get a portrait of the “normal” world. It’s populated by people who talk a lot with one another as they work slowly but harmoniously on conservative, expensive projects whose destinations are decided in advance, and who carefully adjust their manner to reflect their position in the hierarchy.”

– Paul Graham

“So many of my friends see their jobs in terms of an “annual salary” or an “hourly wage.” The security they crave turns quickly to complacency, and they wind up dissatisfied with a job they’re afraid to leave. Why? Because they are not rewarded for their efforts, a productive day is no more lucrative than an unproductive day. They get paid the same, regardless.”

– Mike Rowe

“I think it’s in everyone’s DNA to want to be a builder.”

– Dan Phillips

“The real company values, as opposed to the nice-sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go.”

– Netflix

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

– Antoine De Saint-Exupery

“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”

– John Cage

– David Granger, Esquire Editor in Chief, October 2009 issue

Last updated 16 September 2009

Dinner with Raffi

This evening I was lucky enough to have dinner with Raphael Mudge, founder of the recently acquired proofreading startup After the Deadline.

This was a good week for him. On Tuesday Automattic announced they had acquired After the Deadline back and incorporated it into WordPress. The announcement was immediately followed by a flurry of press coverage and widespread admiration of his success. As someone eloquently put it on HN, “It takes cast-iron balls the size of cantaloupes to make a product that competes against companies with six orders of magnitude more funding… and succeed.“

Raffi, as he is known on HackerNews, is easily one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. His optimism is contagious and his passion for his work is second to none. Smart too: did you know that After the Deadline uses a neural networks to identify errors? Yeah, wow.

Well done sir. Congrats again.