Strange Loops

Incredible article about being running an indie record label.

DX: You described Minnesota as void of industry when you guys started Rhymesayers and forcing you to learn the ins and outs of the industry on your own. Is there an advantage to not being based in New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles?

Siddiq: I think it was for us. I think there’s advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that it really created the situation for us to really be self-sufficient which, in the long term, has meant more to our longevity that anything else – next to the people that are actually involved in it. We didn’t know that at the time. But that was definitely something that was created by us being here and not in some major market.
…
You meet a lot artists on the coasts – I’m generalizing, obviously – that have this greater entitlement when they come from a place like New York or a place like L.A. For us, coming out of Minnesota, we literally did not feel entitled to shit.

Never forget that just because most of us are starting technology based business, there’s a wealth of information and advice to be gleaned from people running non-technology businesses.

If you’re at all interested in being an entrepreneur, read this article.

Good post about what to call a non-vc, “OMFG WE ARE GONNA IPO THIS SHIT” business:

The profile of an indie business would be similar to independent practitioners of any craft. An independent musician, for example, might eschew a major label who may force them to make compromising sacrifices in hopes of making that artist more commercially viable. Instead, the Indie musician takes distribution and promotion into their own hands. This doesn’t mean they will never sign with a label or that they wil forever be left to their own DIY devices. But that when they do pick a a label, they will do so on their terms.

He settles on “Indie” business. As much as I like the term & the effort, it still rubs me the wrong way. It qualifies your business with a label & identifies how “different” you are from the norm. For me, the best part of the article is this comment:

I like the term Indie, too. Or, “Punk” business (doing it for the right reasons). But, in reality, it’s really just “business” for the 99% that aren’t involved in the startup world.

Exactly.

Cabel Sasser from Panic describing his experience with AOL pondering a purchase of Panic:

The lesson? It seems you can either be free to do anything you want, to create anything you dream of without answering to anyone, or you can be rich. You’re not likely to be both.

Every single entrepreneur I know struggles with this every single day of their lives.

Fascinating essay by Matt Gemmell on all things religion & morality:

Indoctrination of children into religious belief systems is one of the great unpunished intellectual and social crimes of human history, and it continues almost unabated to this day. The word “indoctrination”, of course, means teaching someone to accept a set of beliefs uncritically – which is exactly what happens. To argue that a four-year-old, taken to Sunday School or such for the first time, is even capable of applying a critical analysis to the dogma is laughable. These children are victims, and the crime is one of morality.

Why does it continue? For the very simple reason that, if we took an enlightened stance and allowed children’s personal development to remain unfettered by religion until they reach adulthood, after which they could then evaluate and decide for themselves, religion all but die out almost overnight. It cannot survive the calm light of reasonable, rational, evolved inspection, by those who have not been infected by its fairy stories whilst too young to defend themselves.

Really a good read & worth the time.

Also, as George Carlin said long ago:

More people have been killed in the name of god than for any other reason.

To Gianforte, though, that kind of improvisation isn’t really bootstrapping. Not the heart of it, anyway. Bootstrapping is both bigger and simpler than saving a dime whenever you can. If you boiled down his philosophy of bootstrapping, it would run something like this: lack of money, employees, equipment — even lack of product — is actually a huge advantage, because it forces the bootstrapper to concentrate on selling to bring cash into the business. There’s an expression that Gianforte likes to quote: “In war you’re either making bullets or shooting bullets.” In other words, for the bootstrapper, business is all about just two things: making product and selling product. It’s not hard to see which one is closer to Gianforte’s heart. “Nothing Happens Until Someone Sells Something” reads the sign in his otherwise spartan office.

Most entrepreneurs go as long as possible NOT believing that.

Awesome memory from Paul Budnitz:

“My dear Ezra,
You son of a bitch. Come back home for the holidays, your mother misses you. As far as I am concerned you can rot with your Shikse wife, but make your mother happy.”

Another gem from Maciej Ceglowski:

Whether or not this is done in good faith, in practice this kind of ‘exit event’ is a pump-and-dump scheme. The very popularity that attracts a buyer also makes the project financially unsustainable. The owners cash out, the acquirer gets some good engineers, and the users get screwed.

In a perfect world, Maciej and I would sit down with a fine tequila and discuss our ludicrous choice to building a company that makes money.

And make no mistake, bartering away your “one and only youth” (jwz again) working 100-hour weeks on a web site for the promise of a big fat carrot on the end of a stick 80 million lines long, dangled by a fat statesm–venture capitalist, who will make 3x or 10x or 100x more than you, in the vanishingly unlikely scenario that you “succeed”… is clearly stupid.

Really awesome article from Amy Hoy. It’s incredible the load of shit people are willing to believe and never once question the motives of the people doing the shoveling.

Focus: It means saying no, not saying yes.
Simplicity: Make complex things simple.
Courage: Don’t hang on to ideas from the past even if they have been successful for you.
Best: If you can’t enter the market and try and be the best in it, don’t enter it.

Focus. Simplicity. Courage. Best.

Never confuse simple with easy.