#3: Pivoting all over the place

March 31, 2013

Download this episode, in which Ian and Andrey talk about not being able to remember anything that happened before today, Ian’s rules for the practical entrepreneur, having so many products that you can’t list them all, entering a fragmented market, preferring B2B, The Pivot, Andrey not having any kind of strategy for choosing which products to make, damned phones, when selling to a business is not really selling to a business, clear and simple revenue model, bridging the internet world with the real world, not using your own products, doing support, how recent the 90’s were, dealing with criticism, competitors who are clearly doing it wrong, Steve Jobs being brilliant at what he does, customers not caring about which technology you use, being the perfect developer for your own company, bootstrapping a company when you have kids, the sense of being continuously rushed, BioIsChanged.com, DAS Keyboard, and customer-hosted vs. SaaS.

Links:

Ian’s 4 Rules for the Practical Entrepreneur
$10,000 – Ian’s sale numbers from the early days of selling Helpspot.
A partial list of Andrey’s products – including the early ones like Printer Friendly, Chinchilla, and Asteroid Jane.
Uberdeck – Andrey’s upcoming product.
Pixelmator, and Acorn – Photoshop competitors on the Mac.
Pivoting, as a company strategy.
Authorize.NET, Stripe, and Square – payment processing.
Hubspot – marketing
Seamless Web – online food ordering.
Patrick McKenzie’s Appointment Reminder
Let’s Take This Offline – Joel Spolsky quits blogging.
Dave Winer – interviews here and here.
Steve Jobs Insult Response
Ian choosing a development stack for Helpspot.
John Carmack
Eric Barnes, and his talk.
Ethan – Andrey’s son.
Tyler – Ian’s first child.
37signals on interruptions
Jim Gaffigan (comedian)
BioIsChanged.com
DAS Keyboard
OpenSourceHelpdeskList.com
Amy Hoy’s TwiStory
Fogcreek’s FogBugz
Snappy – Ian’s latest product.
GitHub’s enterprise version