Tech, Startups, Capital, Ideas.

The big social networks are the new platform. More than 10 years ago, Windows became the platform of choice. It provided core functionality but allowed companies to build a huge variety of applications that extended the platform and cemented its dominance in the market. Today’s large social networks have the same opportunity. The question is, will they capitalize on it?

As I mentioned last August, widgets are the future. They are today’s new applications and they live on top of the existing social networks. They also run within lots of other environments — blogging platforms, open source community systems, and good old web sites. But their real impact is on the large, established social networks.

The great risk and the great opportunity for Windows was that it was a wide open sytem. This caused users (and CIO’s) a lot of angst because it meant users could run just about any application they wanted to — even applications that caused the system to crash or corrupted their data. But the risks far outweighed the benefits. Windows became the standard not because it was a great platform in and of itself but because of the applications it enabled — communications apps from email to browsers to IM, productivity applications, games, and the list goes on.

Today’s social networks aren’t sure what their policy is on being open. So far they seem to be taking a wait and see approach — kind of like the big wireless carriers.

Where’s the line? As one entrepreneur described it to me, the line is drawn when other sites try to get revenue (in the form of advertisements) directly within an existing social network. It’s ok to let users put a widget on their page that causes the user to click on the widget and go to another site (you know the ones), where ads are displayed or money is collected.

But the social networks do not like it when these same companies show ads or try to collect money within their widgets directly on the social network’s site, without the permission of the social network. That’s where the line is.

What the social networks should really do is open up their sites. As another entrepreneur said, the site with the broadest support for widgets and third-party supplied functionality will ultimately win.

The social networks should also implement a well-defined and supported revenue sharing mechanism. They should try out Microsoft’s old mantra: “embrace and extend.” Rather than challenging the ecosystem, they should support and encourage it — not just by allowing widgets and the like — but by enabling the ecosystem participants to make money (alongside the social networks).

The big social networks are today’s new platform. May the most open one win.

For the first time in a long time I traveled out of town without a laptop. I figured it would be rough, but it wasn’t. Here’s why.

Instead of taking a bag with me I took just a book and my treo. The book was Founders at Work. I had it with me when I went to meet a startup company and it has clearly become a bible for entrepreneurs.

Traveling without a bag is nothing short of amazing. I was able to skip ahead in line. Going from meeting to meeting there’s nothing to forget. And my Treo worked great.

Composing blog entries like this one was straightforward. I was able to stay on top of email, and best of all, I processed it a lot faster. Just like having limited capital and resources is the best forcing function for a startup, having a limited screen size and keyboard was a great constraint on me.

No laptop, will travel. Try it. You’ll be happy you did.

It’s become easy to A/B test web pages to see what works and what doesn’t. But the great entrepreneur applies A/B testing to his or her entire business. Here’s how.

Rather than making decisions based on what might or could work, great entrepreneurs try a lot of different approaches — from product features to marketing programs to hiring. They don’t base decisions on what “should” or “shouldn’t” work according to the common wisdom — they simply run a lot of little experiments to see what works and what doesn’t.

Will the animated click to buy button result in more conversions over the static one? The great entrepreneur tries out both and evaluates the data to see which one performs better. It turns out that animated click to buy buttons do result in more conversions, in some cases producing as much as a seven-fold increase.

In marketing programs, great entrepreneurs try a lot of things in small quantities to see what might work. Consumers are fickle — it’s hard to know how they’ll respond to a paid ad, an organic search result, an email newsletter, a presentation at a conference, or a renewal notice that encourages them to buy more rather than just renew. (As any marketing expert will tell you, a meaningful subset of customers who are offered the opportunity to purchase more when already making a purchase will do so.)

Successful entrepreneurs try it all, and then, even when they’ve found something that works really well, they keep on trying more stuff. The drive to keep on trying more new things even when something that works is already in-hand is what keeps them ahead of the competition.

Great entrepreneurs also apply fast iterations to hiring, whether at the individual employee level or at the board level. This isn’t easy. It requires a lot of work and a huge investment of time and energy.

These entrepreneurs are not afraid to bring lots of new people into the organization, knowing that some will then be around for the long-term. This isn’t as much about matching the right people to the right stage of a startup as it is about working with a lot of different people.

They bring lots of new people into their lives all the time — as advisers, employees, and friends. Some of these become wonderful long-term relationships. Great entrepreneurs never let their environment become stale. They’re always adding interesting new people with new ideas to the mix.

Don’t just try out new product features. Try out new people and approaches to business. Treat your startup as a fluid environment rather than a static one. You’ll create a better product — and a better startup.

Yes — and No.

In a lot of ways, it does feel like 1999 all over again. Entrepreneurs are out raising money, venture capital is flowing, and more deals are getting done that have gotten done in a long time. Banks and attorneys report anecdotally that they are signing more lockup agreements than they have in a while. And just yesterday I read a plan that basically said “our competitor raised $25M so we think we can too.”

The investing environment is frothy and prices are expensive for Series B deals, especially those that are consumer facing. A lot of the frothiness in the late 90’s was generated by the venture community itself — deal after deal got done. And certainly there is once again a lot of money available.

There are four key differences from eight years ago, however. They are:

1) Widespread broadband
2) A much lower barrier to starting a company
3) Resurgence of the angel community
4) Immediate consumer adoption (or not)

Widespread Broadband

Broadband adoption has sky-rocketed. While the market crashed back in 2000 and 2001, broadband — and the Internet — took off. This enabled a huge set of applications to be delivered that involve streaming media, rich content.

It also means, simply put, that people spend a whole lot more time on the Internet than they did back in 1999.

Much Lower Barrier to Starting a Company

Just as importantly however is that the barrier to starting a company today is much lower than in the 1990’s. Just about everything you need is either cheap or free through hosted applications or open source.

Joomla and Drupal for community sites

Ruby on Rails and CakePHP for quick implementation
Gmail and Google hosted mail for domain specific email

Mantis for bug tracking

Wiki’s for collaboration

Google Apps for business applications Amazon S3 for processor cycles and storage
Dedicated hosting available via lease

Google Checkout and Paypal for online payments

Off-shore development resources

Talk to web companies started even in 2004 and most of them still run a huge set of their own servers. Servers they have to maintain and that have to go on the balance sheet as a capital expense. Talk to web companies started in the last 18 months and most if not all of them lease dedicated servers or use Amazon S3.

People talk about the huge impact of open source and hosted services on business. But the even bigger impact is on the entrepreneurial community and the ease with which one can start a new company.

Immediate Adoption (or Not)

Distribution is now immediate through the Internet, and so too as a result, is adoption or lack thereof. As Paul Kedrosky pointed out, compare the speed of adoption of the Sony Walkman to that of the iPod. Adoption moves an order of magnitude faster now than 10 years ago — whether for consumer electronics or online offerings.

So you can build out an idea and test whether consumers — in the form of actual consumers or business customers — are going to adopt your offering a lot faster than you could in the last decade. Google Checkout and Paypal mean that just about anyone can take a payment online. Angel Community Resurgence

Angels and small funds are back and a key part of the deal-flow process. This has always been the case, but in the last few years, angels and a select group of smaller, very early stage funds such as First Round Capital, O’Reilly Ventures, Omidyar, and the Founders Fund have emerged.
This provides a rich ecosystem for entrepreneurs by providing them with capital, hands-on expertise, and venture relationships. And it’s great for venture capitalists, inundated with deal-flow due to the decreased barriers to starting companies.

Is It 1999 All Over Again?

Yes — and No. The key difference is that the user adoption experiment — that is, the process to determine whether a business customer or a consumer is going to use a new product — can be run faster and more capital-efficiently than eight or even three years ago.

It does not cost less to scale a company. But running the initial experiment, and trying out a number of ideas before settling on a specific plan is an order of magnitude faster and less capital intensive than it used to be. That drastically reduced opportunity cost is great news for both entrepreneurs and venture investors.

Many great blogs and books tell you how to perfect your pitch to potential investors. What they leave out, however, is the most important pitch of all: the non-pitch. Successful entrepreneurs have mastered The Art of Not Pitching. Here’s how.

The key to not pitching is first and foremost that you are not raising money. But you need money to start or grow your business. Right, I know. This is the great irony of venture capital: the companies we are most interested in investing in do not need our money. They may want money from venture capitalists, it might help them go a lot faster, but they are going to carry out their vision with or without us.

Just last week I met a highly successful entrepreneur for lunch and he gave me the classic non-pitch. We talked for well over an hour, but never in that time did he pull out a single slide. Yet I would love to work with this entrepreneur.

He was able to communicate his concept and strategy in just a few sentences. He didn’t need a pitch because he was already busy building his product and acquiring users. Our money would help him scale, make key hires, and go faster, but he was busy building his vision.

The best entrepreneurs are starting stuff all the time, with or without money. This is simply in their nature. They aren’t starting completely new companies every second, but they are using every interaction — without thinking about it — as an opportunity for user or customer input, a chance to generate a new idea for a feature that might be useful, or a new company they might want to start somewhere down the road.

It’s not that the best entrepreneurs happened onto one idea and that was it, it’s that they were busy trying one idea after another and one of the ideas they tried stuck. Often the best concepts arrive when you are hard at work on something else.

Ultimately just about every deal does need a pitch of one form or another to synch the deal — to go in front of the partnership. But the best entrepreneurs can communicate their concepts so simply that no pitch is required — potential recruits, investors, and board members can “get” the concept without a slide deck. This enables them to come in and not-pitch: they may take us through a slide deck, but they could just as easily communicate their unique insight and vision without one.

How do you get to that point? It takes a lot of work. Forget the classic elevator pitch — far too long. See if you can describe your key insight in a sentence or two. Accomplish that, and a new avenue of pitching will become available to you: the non-pitch.

My best learning comes in the form of either fast, simple lessons communicated from others to me, or long struggles the result of which cause my business acumen to take huge and often sudden catapults forward. What is as valuable as the learning process itself is finding my own simple examples that crystalize my beliefs into lessons I can articulate, apply, and repeat. The Queen illustrates two such key lessons for startups.

I’m talking, of course, about the movie that portrays the actions of the royal family (primarily in the form of the Queen), the prime minister, and the public following the death of Princess Diana in 1997. It’s been said elsewhere that the movie was funny and moving - it was - so I won’t bother repeating the rave reviews here.

The Queen wasn’t at the top of my list of movies to see, which is why I shouldn’t have been surprised when I got some of those classic, simplified examples I’m always hoping to find. Just as I’ve come to expect that the best learning comes unexpectedly, so to do the best simplified examples come in situations that weren’t part of the plan or at the top of my list of things to do.

Here they are:

1) You have to surround yourself with the best advisers who give you phenomenal advice, but ultimately you must make the call, even if it flies in the face of some of the advice you receive.

That’s what separates the decision maker from the advisers. Collect as much data as you can, but ultimately you’re making a decision based on what you believe is the right move. With smart advisers around you, the right advice is often in the room somewhere. It’s deciding which advice to listen to and which to ignore that matters.

Case in point: the difference between Blair and his speech-writer. As portrayed in the movie, the speech-writer was using every opportunity to take down the Queen while pumping up Blair - and he took the "take down" part too far. Blair recognized how bad a move the "Queen bends on knee to Downing street" headline was immediately ("when you screw up, you really screw up"), while the speech-writer didn’t: the decision maker versus the adviser. Had Blair continued to listen to his speech-writer as adviser in that instance, he would have created an enemy rather than an ally in the Queen. The Queen learned this critical lesson to about hearing advice but then making up her own mind - her mother and husband where both advising her to do nothing, others were advising her to take action: she had to take in all the data and then make a decision.

Lesson for the entrepreneur: an ability to collect huge amounts of data and then make your own decisions (even despite what others are saying) is a recipe for success. Knowing that, you just have to incorporate rule number two, which is:

2) Survival is dictated not by your ability to evolve and adapt, but by your ability to evolve and adapt faster than your environment.

Case in point: The Queen doing what she was raised to do, taking actions based on the experience of going through the war, what tradition indicated, when the right thing was to respond flexibly and uniquely to unique circumstances.

As Blair pointed out in the movie, flexibility - and evolution - is what it takes to survive. Every entrepreneur knows that, of course, but the real insight to be taken from this example is not just that you have to evolve to survive, but that you have to evolve faster than your environment is.

The pace at which your environment is evolving dictates the absolute minimum pace at which you must evolve to survive. Change slower than your environment, and you go extinct. Go faster and you have a real shot at winning.

Had the Queen waited another month to evolve her thinking, it would have been too late. As it was, it was down to the wire — "the time for statements is past," Blair tells her in the movie.

Startups fail for lots of reasons, but by far the biggest isn’t that they don’t evolve and adapt at all, but that they don’t evolve and adapt faster than their environment. It’s your relative pace that matters.

We recently switched from DSL to Cable and I have to say it is incredible. That is, now that it’s working. It’s been quite the ordeal getting from the initial setup to having it actually work. But download speeds of 6Mbps, sometimes 8Mbps+ are amaaaazzzing. How did we get here?

The initial install was easy - they give you a 2 hour window (gotta love that compared to the 4 hour DSL window) to be home. The technician shows up, does some stuff to the wiring, and hooks up the modem. Suddenly you’re running at 6Mpbs+ (as indicated by DSL Reports). That was great for a couple days until our high speed cable started flaking out. The modem would lose the signal - power down, power up, and we were back in business. But then the next day the modem would be disconnected again.

The solution was to replace the cable all the way from the house to the pole. Apparently there was some water in there that was causing the signal to fade in and out. The phone techs were convinced it was the modem or some other problem - but the technician who replaced the cable solved the problem. Of course, it took 2 visits to do that - first visit they replaced some of the cable, which solved the problem, but only temporarily; second visit they replaced all the cable, and that did it.

Gotta love being able to download a movie rental.

I enjoyed this article on the differences between Windows 95 and Windows Vista… more than 10 years later!

For those of you who have asked, here is our itinerary through Patagonia. One change you could make if you were going to do this approximate itinerary would be to fly into Buenos Aires and do the El Calafate / Chalten part of the trip first, and then head into Chile. That said, the Fitz Roy was the most visually impressive part of the whole trip — had we seen that our second or third day in, everything else might not have been quite as cool! As it was, we were amazed by the incredible beauty of the Torres Del Paine, and then when we got to Chalten, we were astounded that we could see something even more inspiring.

We booked our frequent flier tickets back in February of 2006 — about 11 months before our actual trip. We also reserved far ahead for the huts in Torres Del Paine since they have somewhat limited availability. When we went, in December, most of them were full up every night. The food at the huts was quite good — big meals, hot drinks, even wine and drinks.

On the ground, transportation was very reliable. Every bus we booked departed and arrived on time. Most of the bus companies use Mercedes or Volvo buses; all the ones we rode on were in good condition. You can book the buses ahead by going to the bus company office the day before or call a travel agency — we had a local travel agency book all the buses for us which made things very easy — highly recommended if you don’t mind paying a bit extra for them to do the work.

We traveled with our good friends Eric and Kim. A lot of people have said, “wow, how did you guys possible travel together for three weeks?” The answer is: it was fun traveling with another couple. Traveling, especially in foreign countries, always has challenges, but what really made this work for us was: a) Flexibility and b) independence. That is, we didn’t try to do absolutely everything together. We would have a great dinner as a foursome and then split the next night and do our own thing — or the guys would go grab pizza, etc. This worked out well.

I haven’t described the scenery too much in words because… a picture speaks a thousand words, or, in the case of the scenery in Patagonia… no words could adequately describe the amazing scenery we saw. I also tried to describe mainly what we did in the notes below — some day I will capture all the people, sights, and emotions from this trip in writing, but the photos do it best for now…

Day 1: Flight to Santiago, arrive next day.

Day 2: LAN Airlines, same day, 4 hour flight to Punta Arenas. The flight was not full, but apparently they are pretty full during January and February, at the height of the season. We stayed at a Hostal this night, which I would not recommend, so I am leaving it un-named. It wasn’t bad, but it could’ve been better.

Day 3: Early morning, Bus to Puerto Natales (3.5 hours). We used the afternoon to buy some supplies, get some rest, and chill out. We stayed at the Amerindia Hostal. This hostal was a great base for us in Chile. The people are friendly, breakfast is good. Internet access is slow to unbearable, but if you don’t need that (or are willing to walk 5 minutes to a local Internet café), it’s perfect. Rooms are shared bath or private bath. We wanted somewhere low-key and not too ritzy since we were going to be starting our week-long hiking trip — hostals love back-packers and we enjoy meeting other people who are out traveling around. Down the block is the local Laundromat… where you can pay to have them wash, dry, and, yes… fold all your clothes in a matter of a few hours. We left two big rolling bags we had with us at the hostal, and just took our backpacks into the park. Puerto Natales is a cool little town with lots of good, small restaurants. You can get cash from the cash machines using a US ATM card. If you want something more upscale, the hot new hotel in town is the Hotel Indigo, which used to be a hostal — they rebuilt it and turned it into a hotel. It has awesome views of the water but because it’s right down by the water, it was ultra windy when we were there.

Day 4: Took the “JB Bus” into the park, arriving there at 10am. Then a little shuttlebus, which you pay for in the park, to Hosteria Las Torres, a really nice mountain hotel. Great restaurant, small but comfortable rooms. This hotel was actually a lot nicer than I had anticipated — we could have stayed at the mountain hut, a few hours hike away, but it was great to have a nice bed, our own shower, etc. for our first night in the park. Email: info@lastorres.com. Tel 363-363.

After dropping our bags at the Hosteria and having some lunch, we started the “W” hike, which is named for the shape of a W that the hike takes — look on a map of the area and you’ll see it. The “W” is part of a larger circuit but is more popular due to the availability of huts for the entire hike; the circuit requires some camping. We hiked up 19KM to see the Torres — which cleared for just long enough that we could see them, after hiking through some driving rain and even a little snow. The weather is variable — it could pour for 30 minutes and then be perfectly sunny for the rest of the day. All in all, though, I would say we had amazing weather our whole trip. Back to Hosteria Las Torres, dinner at the restaurant with wine and “pisco sours.”

Day 5: We left mid-morning and hiked 11K to Refugio Los Cuernos. The bunks here go three high and the top bunk is pretty high off the ground! Great place, good food, good wine, and a beautiful location. They rent sleeping bags so you can rent one for the night and not have to carry your own. I would say it was around here that we really settled into the trip and realized we were on vacation — the park is a long way from anywhere and until this time we were sort of just getting from our home to the vacation! Los Cuernos can be booked via Las Torres. Having made all these reservations via email, it was pretty cool to show up in another country and for them to have our reservations all set. (I did call about 3 weeks before our trip started to reconfirm all the huts. They can all be booked but are a little challenging to book. An email, followed by a phone call, then another email seems to work great.)

Day 6: We got up early and hiked 25KM to the Grand Paine Lodge. This lodge has nice bunkrooms — it was recently built and is a huge place. The bunkrooms have 3 bunkbeds (6 beds) in each room. Very nice, if somewhat impersonal. I found the other three places we stayed at to be a lot more personal. This day is the highlight of the hike — you hike up a long hill to the French Valley, where you see the amazing glacier. You can keep hiking farther after that (which we did), but if you turned around after seeing the glacier (shown in the video earlier in my blog), you’ve seen the most beautiful part. When we saw this, we figured this would surely be the highlight of the trip — it was spectacular, beautiful, and incredible but… there was more to see.

Day 7: We hiked 11KM to Refugio Gray. We were pretty tired by the time we got here — the previous day is a long hike. You can continue hiking a bit further — hike 20 minutes and you get to a great lookout onto Glacier Gray; hike an hour and you get to a second lookout (called “mirador” in Spanish). This is a real mountain hut, the hosts are super friendly, and the food was excellent. The rooms are more rustic, but it has that real mountain hut feel to it, which we loved. We hiked a bit further to see the Glacier from the lookouts.

Day 8: We got up early and took the boat from Glacier Gray back to Hotel (Hosteria) Grey. This little boat takes you right up near the glacier and up to the ice chunks that have broken off into the water — where we saw some of the bluest ice ever. It was a beautiful end to a great hike. They serve you whiskey on glacier ice on the boat, which is neat. At the hotel, we had a warm lunch, went for a little walk, and met up with a tour group from the agency that had booked all the buses for us. They took us in a mini-bus back to Puerto Natales where we returned to the hostal, did some laundy, ate dinner, etc. All of the huts we stayed at had hot showers, hot food, etc.

Day 9: We took an early bus to El Calafate (Argentina). A minibus picked us up in town and took us out to Estancia Alice (this is both a farm and a very upscale hotel — we stayed at the farm for 2 nights). This place was ultra quiet and comfortable, and had a huge buffet dinner and show. We also saw sheep-shearing (something you may want to see once but once is probably enough!) and we hiked around a beautiful bird sanctuary that is part of the farm.

Day 10: We took a guided tour into the park and saw the Perito Moreno Glacier. This glacier is huge — photos cannot adequately capture it. A few years ago, so much water pressure built up that a huge part of the glacier calved off and fell into the water. This was spectacular. We also got to go climbing “mini trekking” on the glacier, which was very cool — crampons and all.

Day 11: The hotel gave us a ride back into town and we took the 8am bus to Chalten from El Calafate (4 hour bus ride). El Calafate is in the middle of nowhere, but Chalten is really in the middle of nowhere. Because a number of valleys meet up where the town is, the wind blows constantly — all the buildings, even the smallest houses, are made of brick and concrete — even the inner walls in a lot of places. You see people hunched over walking against the wind. It’s a cool little town with good places to eat and hang out. This afternoon we went for a hike where we got a glimpse of the Fitz Roy. We stayed at Hosteria El Puma — a fantastic place with a fabulous restaurant — highly recommended.

Day 12: We got up early and hiked the main Fitz Roy hike. The hikes are at the edge of town and you just walk out the hotel door and start hiking. We hiked up and up and up; the clouds parted; and we got to see an awesome view of Fitz Roy (see photo on blog). Up until this time we had bragged to each other about how lucky we were to have seen the French Valley and Glacier in Torres Del Paine NP; but then when we saw the Fitz Roy in all its glory we were just speechless — Wow. I think this was a 12 mile hike, but have to check.

Day 13: We got up early and took the bus back to El Calafate. From here back to Puerto Natales, Chile (all in one day), where we returned to the Amerindia and did more laundry, etc. The next day we took a bus from P.N. to Punta Arenas (where we started out 2 week earlier), and checked in for our Crucero Australis cruise. Before the cruise, we had a pretty funny lunch at a very fancy touristy place and then bugged out to a coffee shop to have coffee and dessert (it’s funny what you remember.). It was quite the contrast going from being really far away from anything to the “big” city of Punta Arenas. We boarded the boat around 6pm.

Day 14/15/16: The next four days were spent on the cruise — going from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia, Argentina by way of Cape Horn. On the cruise we were able to get off on Zodiacs and go see penguins, more glaciers, and sea lions. The penguins were the coolest, of course. (More to come about the cruise.)

Day 17: We arrived in Ushuaia, Argentina (actually, the cruise arrives late the night prior); we disembarked and took a cab to the airport to pick up… our rental car! Thankfully it only took me a couple minutes to get comfortable driving a clutch again (good thing for that Toyota Starlet 15 years ago.). We stayed at Hosteria Los Fuegos, just outside of town — very quiet, really nice rooms, good food. We had an amazing meal in town (restaurant name coming soon) for lunch and then drove out to Estancia Halberton. It was fun being mobile. It’s also amazing how much luggage you can pack into a little car.

Day 18: We went for a long hike up to a lake (somewhat hard to find) and went into town this day — the hiking was very quiet… almost as if they didn’t really want to encourage you to hike out there — not like Chile where all the trails are marked in great detail. We had dinner at a restaurant with a great view… again, name coming soon. The best food however was the dinner at the restaurant and the lunch in town.

Day 19/20/21: We dropped off the car and flew to Buenos Aires on Aerolineas Argentinas (about 3 hours), where we stayed at the Design Suites. We met Mariano and Claudia, who built sypad.com, thesalesbell.com, and a host of other sites, which was very cool. (It’s pretty awesome meeting your off-shore developers in-person having never met them before.) We also met a friend of Eric’s from business school. They were all incredibly nice and took us out to some excellent meals. We went out to dinner on New Year’s eve and had a great time along the river watching the fireworks and dancing. (More details about Buenos Aires, or B.A. as we got fond of calling it, to come.)

Day 22: A rest-day, we walked the city (which was experiencing a heat wave!) and packed up — flight home that night.

You have to love the overnight popularity of FlashElement TD.

Takeaways?

1) Content rules. Better content beats a more complex platform any day. No complicated download, no complex platform - just a killer app. I’m rooting for FlashElement to break Alexa 1,000…

2) Hits can now come from anywhere and skyrocket in popularity overnight. The big game companies have teams in the hundreds of people each to create a killer title. Granted, FlashElement doesn’t have 3D graphics or real-life photos, nor is it multi-player, but it does have deep logic, lots of levels, and a highly addictive quality to it. This title came out of a single programmer in the UK.

3) One amazing programmer or a small team of great programmers beats a big slow team. Of course we’ve known this ever since The Mythical Man Month was published; but the rule still applies that a phenomenal coder or coders can put together something cool a lot faster than a big team can. I’ll take a small nimble team any day.