I’ve never understood this kind of thinking. If you want to give your money away you are absolutely free to do so. The Gates Foundation does wonderful things. If you want to fund government, pretty much every public school system of any real size has a foundation. If you legitimately want to pay more in taxes just ensure you have a taxable event every year. Hold no investment for a year and pay short term capital gains. Take zero deductions, etc, etc, etc.
I have worked in software for 20 years with numerous being very early stage ventures. I would say that most of the problems I’ve faced in software venture is with non-technical founders who, generally speaking, provide minimal value until product-market fit is achieved. This sounds like the kind of question I might have faced in those ventures. If it’s a software venture and the founder is not either a skilled designer, talented product manager, or a developer working very closely together, it’s very unlikely to succeed. Perhaps a better question is “Developers, what is the worst experience you have had with a non-technical founder?”
This is a nice presentation about URL best practices, but it doesn't really get into the most relevant or interesting topic of RESTful API design which is resource design representation. I'd love to see more in these specific areas with concrete examples of the approach others have taken.
My issue with this has less to do with the rate and more to do with the overall tone of it. Sam has done some excellent work, no doubt, and should charge whatever rate he finds appropriate. However, the presentation of this is likened to a gold cufflink clad lawyer with a monogramed shirt who proclaims with a laugh, "I don't get out of bed for less than a grand an hour," as he sips the brandy and takes a draw on the Cuban cigar before expelling its smoke in your face.
For the first six months or so of a startup's lifecycle, it's all about building a product. If you can't build a product, you're overhead at best and a distraction at worse.
I was with a startup and was the only technical member of the founding team. While the two other members personally bootstrapped the venture, I have to admit that outside of the funding, they were of very limited value during the first 6-9 months when development was the primary activity. In anything, they were a distraction because they constantly changed things, expanded scope, etc. Needless to say, it wasn't a successful venture, and from here on out, I plan to stick with only technical founders.
I agree. There is absolutely no excuse for not having some sort of source control and deployment system in place at an organization with a commercially deployed solution. Why would anyone regard such a system as optional? It is irresponsible.
I frequently fork projects on Github, add features/fix bugs, send a pull request and then delete my fork after my changes have been integrated. I've started to consider keeping my forks around for this reason alone but that strikes me as a waste of Github's disk space...
You can obviously build a very successful company outside "The Valley." However, I view being in the entrepreneurial "hot spots" like having multiple founder with a technical background--it just increases your odds of success.
I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Yunus in Dhaka and touring a village bank back in 2008. His personal office was simple and sparse (and not air conditioned) and he was very kind and down to earth considering his accomplishments. It is sad to think that a (probably) corrupt government could oust him from his own creation where he has done some much for so many.