founder's mentality

Fantastic advice, for software builders:

Headline driven development

Here is a simple process for shipping software projects that works. First, decompose the project into a stream1 of headlines. Then pick an aggressive date to ship the first headline and work like hell to meet that date. Have everyone work only on one headline at a time– the upcomi

Billy Oppenheimer on small steps to get to big leaps:

One of Hugh Howey’s other hobbies is sailing. Once he had the luxury of writing full-time, he sailed around the world. “You can’t get to where you want to be in one day,” he says, “just like you don’t sail around the world in a day. You just look at the horizon and say, ‘I can sail that far.

worth remembering: so often the shiny new thing quickly shows signs of being mostly hype, while the unassuming, homey option proves its staying power

nostalgia kills companies

(h/t emma chozik)

find the shortest distance between thinking and creating, between thinking and a feedback loop.

More companies die of indigestion than starvation.

-Bill Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett Packard

What people need most is confidence, not advice

(reminds me ot Tyler Cowen’s high value of raising people’s aspirations)

pick the person who wants it most, not the most experienced

The secret of any great project is to keep it moving, keep it from losing momentum.

-William Zeckendorf

highlights from Danny Meyer’s autobiography via David Senra:

1. I had an uncontainable drive to win.

2. The inception of Shake Shack actually began with a humble hot dog cart. Small as the project was, I took this cart quite seriously. I was asking myself, "Who ever wrote that rule that you can't push the envelopes of excellence and hospitality for