Simon Willison’s Weblog

Subscribe

Entries tagged startups

Filters: Type: entry × startups × Sorted by date


Is there a good online calendar for upcoming technology conferences?

We’re trying to build exactly this with http://lanyrd.com/—not just for technology conferences, but they are definitely our largest niche.

[... 208 words]

Is it a good idea for new start-up to outsource Software/App Development?

It depends on what you mean by “outsourcing”.

[... 130 words]

What would the level of interest be in a “FailConf” where people shared their business and technology epic failures and lessons learned?

It already exists: http://lanyrd.com/2010/failcon/ and http://failcon2010.com/

[... 36 words]

What startups host 100% of their private code on GitHub?

http://lanyrd.com/ does.

[... 19 words]

Is the 90-9-1 rule of user participation a myth?

Anecdotal evidence from crowdsourcing style projects I’ve worked on tend to support the basic principle (if not the exact ratios). The vast majority of the work on projects I have been involved with ends up being performed by a tiny subset of highly active users.

[... 60 words]

Does Quora have the same problem as Stack Overflow?

Quora isn’t one community, it’s thousands of separate communities—a community for each tag, and then a community for each user comprising their followers. As such, I think it will scale much better than the Stack Overflow community did, without needing to split out in to separate verticals.

[... 64 words]

Questioning Steve Ballmer

This morning I attended a half day briefing at Microsoft UK entitled “The Online Opportunity—What Makes a Successful Web 2.0 Start-Up?”. Despite the buzzword laden title the event was well worth the trip up from Brighton, mainly due to the Q&A with Steve Ballmer (a pretty rare opportunity).

[... 423 words]