“The words “coincidentally” could easily go in front of a half-dozen of the sentences above. Things just sort of always worked out, even when they didn’t look like they were going to. I have put faith in people, and relationships - perhaps a foolish amount of faith, to be honest - to put me in the right place at the right time. “

Recently I lamented that I was getting sorta sick of the word “startup.” This article, in a way, describes why I feel this way. There is a lot of noise and hype that surrounds the “startup scene” that this article describes as the “years of summer.” But when winter comes, the hub-bub will fade and all that will be left is the hard work of “real entrepreneurship.”

I’m not interested in the noise and hype. I want to build a real company and a good product. Let’s get to work.

Excellent study from Laura Brunow Miner on the way editorial decisions and design decisions blend to create a successful online publication. A must-read for anyone who designs or writes content for the web.

I think design by committee is a sign of lack of trust. If a designer has the experience and the presence of mind to gather all the information from the people closest to the problem, they can then put their skills to work to solve that problem.

I ask for input a lot to make sure I’m understanding the problem, but if the design doesn’t work, that reflects on me, the designer. The committee should respect and trust their designers to make it work.

Some good advice from Keith here, both for designers and their teams.

This is amazing.

Tim Ferris talking about software engineering, with a shout-out to Pivotal Labs and TaskRabbit. We love working with Pivotal and learn a lot every time we do a project with them! There’s some great stuff in here about entrepreneurship and running a startup, too.

For the sake of your teammates or clients, please follow these guidelines. I know it takes extra time and you can’t be bothered, but it has a MAJOR impact.