DISQUS

I used to work in a startup where a substantial amount of money went into laminated motivational posters, a phone system, plants (including maintenance) and a matching office desk and wall unit with a built-in wine refrigerator and closet.

That being said, I thought Calacanis' post was actually quite sensible. It's unfortunate that people jumped on what could've been a few unfortunate hyperboles. For realz.

One should bear in mind that these were money saving tips and not management tips.

From what I learned from my long experience with a local B2B networks farm, I'm convinced that Web 2.0 can work extremely well for B2B within vertical markets.

However, the only useful Web 2.0 feature would be geared towards towards strengthening business relationships and building/maintaining reputations to weed out the industry's bad apples. So we're looking at features along the lines of social networking and crowdsourcing; everything else could be superfluous.

Beetlejuice, I'm not sure if a company like Apple qualifies for a "bureaucracy". If Jobs' dislike for teachers' unions is any indication of what he thinks of red tape, I would expect Apple to run a pretty tight ship.

In retrospect, I can understand Montreal's answer to Apple. Why throw money a their request when there are other things to worry about?

Then again, this doesn't prevent the city from throwing money at silly things like renaming streets.

Certainly, the removal of those parking meters could've been good PR for everybody. Despite Apple's increasingly somewhat questionable tactics (think media distribution "monopoly"), I wouldn't mind seeing a few of Steve Jobs' ideas come to fruition. For instance, the ability tofire bad teachers.

This is like the cooler version of the Bugzooka :P.
http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000896.php

Pretty practical advice. Another tip is to take advantage of lists. Unline questions lost in a paragraph, lists of questions are very scanable.

Furthermore, because they're pretty structured, you can expect your response to be equally structured. An ordered list of 10 questions should yield 10 answers.

No revenues (yet), no real office (yet), no full staff (yet), but a "bring your kid to work" day? No problem :P.

Kidding aside, Sam looks adorable! And speaking of child labour, I came across an interesting site that may come in handy later on:

http://www.payjr.com/

In short, helps parents and kids track chores and allowances online.

Ben -- Short of blogging it (which I hope to do today), I told my friends, my dragonboat team, and my co-workers.

It was my fiancée who recommended this place. She talked about the experience and I scoffed at the idea and ridiculed her a bit -- "Do they also serve sandwiches while they rotated your tires?"

I'll never doubt her again :P.

I don't understand how seemingly reputable businesses could behave like they're running a yard sale.

Speaking of shoe shopping, I recently had a great purple cow experience purchasing a pair of runners on St-Denis' Boutique Endurance, a store that specializes in running, walking, and cross training equipment, attire and accessories:

http://www.boutiqueendurance.ca/

The experience was like going to a very good doctor. I told the clerk what I was looking for: A good pair of shoes for some regular -- but light -- running.

He then proceed to get my foot measurements. For both feet. Twice. He then brought out 4 pairs of runners based on my feet dimensions and had me try them all. Each time I tried a pair, he'd have me run a little in the store's mini indoor track. He'd watch my ankles to make sure it's getting adequate support and to get my feedback.

I came out of the store with a pair of runners I'm still extremely happy with. Needless to say, I worked up a sweat trying out shoes, but the overall experience was impressive, worth coming back to, and worth sharing.

Guy, how does a user flag an entry as "crap" though?

I see a "mark as spam/junk" button à la YouTube in Truemors' near future :P.

Good post Ben. You can't approach business (or almost anything else for that matter) with a "build it an they will come" attitude. I've personally witnessed that approach on a particularly promising business only to watch it not crash and burn, but fizzle into a vegetative state.

I'm equally on the fence about Guy's project. The product looks solid, but the content seems rather willy-nilly to me. Let's see what Truemors will do net.

Speaking of Guy though, I thoroughly enjoyed his post regarding the figures. Posts like these are always as insightful as they are encouraging. Reminds me of the Figures Behind the Top Web Apps panel at SXSW:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sxsw_the_f...

As someone who has made a career out of working with tech startups and young tech companies and this myth has never really bugged me until about two years ago.

My friends and I were looking to fund our first startup and much to our dismay, we couldn't get our hands on any seed money from business organizations such as the BDC because either they were n00bs or they simply thought that the Internet was much too volatile. Needless to say, I wouldn't be surprised that the myth is still alive and well within those organizations.

Thankfully, things have changed since then. I'm a little more connected and there are local investors like Garage who specialize in seed financing.

My worst experience involved a startup with no project manager, let alone a business plan. It was a horrible and maddening experience, but you live and learn.

Definitely, startups go bad for the same reasons as established businesses do. So you gotta pick'em right. Is it a viable business and do they have the skill sets?

Once the risks have been assessed, I'm in total agreement -- joining a startup can be a thrilling, wonderful, and personally rewarding experience.

Ben, you're right. I wasn't thinking in "tech entrepreneur" mode. I can see how passion can be so important, especially for the type of industry we're in.

6-week interviews? Sounds very Google-esque :P. The process makes sense -- this type of company believes that everyone they hire is key personnel and they tend to hire for the long run.

As for dispassionate companies not being successful for long, I have to admit that I'm a little skeptical. Could be because I've got large corporate companies with soul-crushing working environments in mind. Perhaps in such cases, the top-level decision-makers are passionate about their wheeling-and-dealing :P?

I'll second what whitney said -- throughout school, I thought studying consisted of taking dictation in class and re-reading those notes over and over again.

And as Sarakastic indicated, with all these good programs being cut, just what are we actually spending our school money on these days? I'm curious to know... and perhaps see a nice pie chart :P.

Ben,

"I’ve never hired in that type of situation, but I think the cultural fit still makes a huge difference."

Actually, I think you hit the nail on the head right there -- cultural symmetry is key to a good hiring, possibly even more important that passion.

Perhaps a passionate company would do well to hire a passionate employee whereas a dispassionate company would do well to hire a dispassionate employee. Does that make sense?

Ooooh, the blogger code of conduct! I gotta behave now or they'll put me under "blogger arrest" and throw me into "blogger jail"!

Indeed, this document is as silly as it is pretentious, much like some of the long mission statements that can be found on corporate sites. Seriously, All we really need to know we learned in kindergarten.

My Free Hugs alternative is CuteOverload.com. You have to be a psychopath to not be tickled by that site :P.