Hacker Monthly #15 by Netizens Media

Author:Netizens Media [Media, Netizens]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Netizens Media
Published: 2011-08-01T04:01:30+00:00

By JASON COHEN

Everyone says small startups require focus. Say “no” to anything that distracts from your goal, your vision, your strategy, tempting though it is to explore all opportunities, hoping each time that this is the one that will catapult you from Mixergy listener to Mixergy interviewee.

Lack of focus results in half-assed initiatives, each interrupted by apparently greener pastures before you’ve invested the time and devotion it deserves. Learn to say “no!”

Ah, but then again you must also experiment with new ideas. Fail fast! Pivot! Test! Doubt! Always be collecting evidence that you’re wrong, always be trying new things in case you’ve been blind. Never pass up an opportunity to change, learn, grow.

So…how are you supposed to explore other ideas if you’re also supposed to be saying “no” to anything that diverges from The Plan?

Here’s what I do: I never say “no.” But I carefully qualify “yes.”

I learned this trick while still in high school. In the mid 90s, it was clear that Apple had lost the personal computer battle, and all their developers were fleeing like rats off a sinking ship into the ocean of opportunity that was Windows 95. As a maven of the Macintosh API and still willing to admit it, I landed lots of small contracting jobs fixing up code that other developers wouldn’t touch.

My typical rate was $25 per hour, which when you’re 17 seems like a lot of money.

One day I got a call from some poor schleps I didn’t want to help. They had just completed a new product written in Java and it was broken on a Mac, and could I help? None of their customers used Macs, so they didn’t think Macs were important. But then it turns out the main investor is keen on seeing the demo on a Mac, and when they tried it, it didn’t work. (Yay investors!)

I wanted no part of this. Java was new and known to be full of bugs, and anyway I was a C/C++ kind of guy, and I didn’t want to get involved in an academic fad language like Java. (So yeah, I simultaneously decided that (1) Java is a fad and (2) I’m sticking with the Macintosh Toolkit; five years later one those platforms had zero developers and the other had one million, and I picked exactly wrong.)

I could have said “no.” Given my specialty and my goals, traditional career (or startup) theory says I should have said “no.”

But instead, on the advice of an older, wiser friend, I showed up at their office and said I’d do it for $100 per hour.

I fully expected them to laugh in my face. Maybe I would receive a condescending talking-to about the audacity — nay, the impudence! — of someone of my age and experience walking in here and demanding such outrageous compensation, someone who, let’s be clear, is technically too young to even enter into a legal consulting agreement in the first place.

And then I would have slinked out of there embarrassed, but ultimately no worse for wear.

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