Entrepreneurship Articles

Is today Halloween?

Regardless of when you read this post, there is less than a third of a percent change that today is actually Halloween. For those that legitimately unsure if today is Halloween or not, Halloween falls on the same day every year, October 31st. But the point of this post isn’t […]

What is MRR?

Why even do a post on what MRR is? Because I’ve come to realize that there are people out there, that consider themselves to be entrepreneurs, that actually don’t seem to know the difference between MRR and monthly transactions. I’ve noticed this over on Indie Hackers when a user will […]

Own your mistakes

I fucked up recently. Nothing that put any lives in danger, fortunately. You see, I started doing a re-engagement campaign to reach out to all of my users that weren’t currently on my semi-monthly product update newsletter list. This is actually something that’s come up quite a few times over […]

Slow and steady doesn't win the race

The moral of Aesop’s fable, The Tortoise and the Hare isn’t a terrible one, but I’m sick of seeing it cited as a way to justify slow developer output. There’s nothing wrong with being a slow developer, but saying that you’re slow because you’re writing stable code that’s entirely bug […]

Before you send another email, read this

Okay, that title was click bait, I know. Thing is, I wanted to get as many eyes on this as I could and I wasn’t sure how many people I’d piss off by doing “another boob post” or something similar to that. Here’s the deal, my buddy Justin Davis and […]

Don't stay in your own lane

Don’t give me that disconcerting look. I’m not talking about while you’re driving. I’m talking about roles at a startup! In a small organization that is strapped for time and resources the last thing you want to be is as Alton Brown would say, a “unitasker”. Staying in your own […]

How to spend a working weekend in Austin, Texas

Austin, Texas is an exceptional city. There’s great food, live music everywhere. It’s pretty freakin’ awesome. This past weekend wasn’t one for enjoying the sights though. We had gathered in the Lone Star State to have the opportunity to be in the same room and getting some work done. All […]

How do I sign up?

One of the most frequent requests I receive on Holiday API is “How do I sign up for an account?” and “How do I get an API key?” It throws me off because there is a giant “get started for free” banner near the top of the page. It stands […]

Side projects are not a threat

Say it with me, side projects are not a threat. If anything, they should be viewed as a form of continuing education. Before you say anything, I’m fully aware that there are assholes out there that choose to run their side business(es) while they are on the clock. They tend […]

Founder Falloff

There’s too many posts out there talking about how to find a good co-founder. And perhaps if I had read them all, I wouldn’t be writing a post like this. Today I want to talk about something that I’ve been referring to as “Founder Falloff”. The situation seems to arise […]

Stop thinking, start doing

Nothing urks me more than somebody saying they want to do something and all they are doing to accomplish it is thinking about it. Had a conversation about this with somebody recently. They want to get into selling their artwork. That’s fucking great! So I proceeded to ask if they […]

Striking while the iron is hot

Right now I’m sitting in Mexico, enjoying great weather, greats friends and some great sips. Yesterday was fairly hectic with an early flight, a bit of a layover and quite the drive to get to our house for the week. BTW, I’m in Mexico on a work retreat with SumoMe […]

It’s never too late to start tracking metrics

Dashboard-driven development, metrics-driven development, whatever you may call it, it’s super important. I’m embarassed to that this, but after running a successful site for over four years, I didn’t have a dashboard with even the most basic of metrics like new users per day or anything insightful about the site’s […]

Non-binary genders are complicated

No, this post is not some rant about non-binary genders. I’m actually referring to the trials and tribulations that I went through to implement a third gender option on my social network. The title is an homage to the CSS-Tricks post titled Features Are Complicated. This isn’t some dramatization, it’s […]

Making time for side projects

I’m absolutely sick and tired of hearing people complain about not having any time for their side projects. Even worse is when I get asked the seemingly presumptive “how do you find for side projects when you have a family?” Rarely does that question get asked without a tone that […]

The pros and cons of being accessible to your users

How accessible I am to my site’s users is something that I’ve went back and forth with over the last few years. When I say “accessible” I don’t mean venturing into offline interactions or anything like that, just in regard to how I interact with the users. I tend to […]

Domains are worthless without traffic

If you know anything about my growth strategy for my social network, it’s that I’m expanding my platform horizontally across multiple domains and allowing each site to grow organically. This has led me down the road of being one of those guys that owns a ton of domains but has […]

Lessons learned from sending thank you cards to my users

I wanted to do something nice this holiday season and decided to identify some of my power users on SceneKids.com and mail them Christmas cards and some SK stickers. The users I had selected were a mix of users that have been on the site since it launched in 2011 […]

Don't be surprised by success

A trio of guys recently started to get into a space that I already have sites in. Their browser extension is called Babblr and it falls into the same realm as TumbleChat which is my chat site that uses Tumblr for the login (we also run one for Twitter called […]

The Accidental MVP

Over the last 10 years I’ve been a single digit employee at two startups in the Tampa area and both companies had completely different approaches to product development. At The Online Outpost we build an inventory management and listing platform for eBay consignment shops (remember those?!). The product was originally […]

SceneKids.com - 8 months later

This post was supposed to happen 3 months after launch, pushed back to 6 months after launch, wait maybe at 10,000 users, better still at 15,000 users but well, shit happens. Here we are just over 8 months since the initial go live and now at over 17,000 users. A […]