Links tagged with “business”
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The end of Unto This Last.
Oh no, another really sad business tale. Such a shame.
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Tom Blomfield: Monzo growth
How they got to 1 million users. Most interesting for the things that worked differently to expected, for better or worse.
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How we built a $1M ARR open source SaaS | Plausible Analytics
Always nice to read about how a bootstrapped business grew by doing their nice thing well. (via @simonw)
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A short essay on pricing pen plotter art
An excellent, interesting and useful post from Rev Dan Catt on pricing your art (any kind of art really).
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Welcome to Your Bland New World of Consumer Capitalism - Bloomberg
Lots of great examples of similar copywriting, brand statements, company visions, etc that all want to be unique.
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A Land of Monopolists: From Portable Toilets to Mixed Martial Arts - BIG by Matt Stoller
Interesting to consider the private-equity-fuelled monopolies in so many (relatively) small industries. Business for business’ sake. More in the following issue.
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Running Costs
I love this breakdown of the costs of running Buttondown’s email newsletter business. I wish more small companies would/could do this.
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All Things Linguistic - Part I - What is a Weird Internet Career?
Gretchen McCulloch on how she ended up with her weird portfolio career as an internet linguist. (via Kottke)
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Mwie Ltd (13 Nov., 2019, at Interconnected)
Matt’s thoughts on five years of being an independent consultant are interesting. I daren’t think too closely about my *mumble* years of freelancing.
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Marketing Expert Scott Galloway on WeWork and Adam Neumann
I’ve read a lot of articles about WeWork and this is by far the most frank and fun (but not fun if you’re an employee or landlord). (via Money Stuff)
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Anna Shipman : JFDI - Finance for non-accountants
Nice clear explanation of profit and loss, balance sheets, etc.
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The spectacular power of Big Lens | The long read | News | The Guardian
On the Italian company that makes a large proportion of the world’s glasses frames merging with the French company that makes a large proportion of the world’s glasses lenses. Fascinating. (via @antimega)
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Bloomberg Opinion - Money Stuff
Matt Levine’s weekdaily email is so good. US-focused business/finance, clearly written (some of it a bit over my head), a personality, some great lines, and lots of it.
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In The Eternal Inferno, Fiends Torment Ronald Coase With The Fate Of His Ideas – The Yorkshire Ranter
I imagine this as a chapter in a book called “How the Modern World Works”, which would make you go, “Ohhh, yes, that explains that mess.”
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Ceci n’est pas un blog - Autopsy of a slow train wreck
Describing how the author shut their company and why they should have done it sooner. Good to read about mistakes.
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The Exquisitely English (and Amazingly Lucrative) World of London Clerks - Bloomberg
A good insight into a world I knew nothing about. Now I know who those people are pushing carts of boxes of papers, who I see on the way to work. (via @iamdanw)
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Choose your own business adventure – Buckley Williams
Transcript of Nat Buckley’s talk about why you should quit your job and start your own company, which is very good.
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Email transparency
From 2013, with a 2014, update on how Stripe have (most) of their internal email visible by everyone internally. (Lots of Google Groups.)
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Three Years in San Francisco » Mike Industries
Some good thoughts on building teams, management, product managers, diversity, etc.
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They don’t tax free time (Monevator)
A good post and loads of comments - lots of people talking about working less to avoid going into the higher tax bracket.
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The toxic side of free. Or: how I lost the love for my side project (part 1)
Five parts on the difficulties with running a website, JS Bin. DDoS attacks, spammers, when and how to make people pay, child porn, and, most troublesome of all, the new VATMOSS rules.
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Daytum - Some data about Good Night Lamp
Alex’s overview of how much each bit of making and selling 200 IoT lamps cost. Always interesting to see this kind of thing from small businesses.
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No Dickheads! A Guide To Building Happy, Healthy, And Creative Teams. — Medium
So good. Sounds like such a great place to work and do good work.
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The Entrant’s Guide to The Automobile Industry | Asymco
Fascinating to realise quite how different the (mainly) US car industry is to so many other more dynamic, less consolidated ones. (via Daring Fireball)
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Hardware by the Numbers (Part 1: Team + Prototyping) — Medium
Four parts. I’m not overly fascinated by making hardware, but enjoy reading general starting/growing-a-business experience, even if it’s focused on making a business with the aim of exiting. (via Tom Taylor)
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A Year of Reflection — Today’s Office — Medium
Jan Chipchase on design studios, taking risks, his year of “creat[ing] the minimum viable process and infrastructure to be able to take on challenging projects that can have significant impact, and do good work.” (via @cityofsound)
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They didn’t know - the impact of #VATMOSS on really small businesses — Ysolda
What a mess, on HMRC’s part. Paying tax wouldn’t put me off running a small business, but confusing and ambiguous rules, and the huge fear of inadvertently doing it wrong, would. ( via @tomstuart)
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The Old Guard – Rands in Repose
On the pattern of a group of people staring something and, as it expands, new people join and try to understand and codify the accumulated knowledge that is used by the original group through instinct alone. And the conflict that results. (via Tom Taylor)
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After the flood | Journal
Max Gadney on ten things learned after three years in business. Includes “No Hobbies” and “No Babyfoot”. Focus.
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The Disruption Machine - The New Yorker
Taking apart Christensen’s ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’ and everything that goes with it. Very good.
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How Chipotle transformed itself by upending its approach to management – Quartz
I don’t know why I love articles about the management of restaurants, and restaurant chains, so much.
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The coolest culture hack of all is not hacking your culture » Boyes Club
Good. “If you tell me you want to ‘hack’ your culture, what I hear is, ‘I don’t know how to make the people working for me simultaneously more engaged and more productive, so I’m going to attempt to manipulate them in ways based entirely on my own misunderstanding of human behaviour and hope that gives me the results I’m looking for’.” (via @tomstuart)
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Diary of a Corporate Sellout — The Message — Medium
Andy Baio on what it means to sell a site to a larger company. When you give up ownership, you’re selling the community.
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The Internet With A Human Face - Beyond Tellerrand 2014 Conference Talk
Text of a great, if depressing, talk about privacy, internet advertising and business models by Maciej Cegłowski. “Investor storytime is when someone pays you to tell them how rich they’ll get when you finally put ads on your site.” (via @antimega)
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The Invention of the AeroPress
About the invention of the Aerobie (I had no idea the tiny lip around its edge makes a huge difference), the Aeropress, the inventor and the company. Lots of interesting tidbits.
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Five Reasons Not To Raise Venture Capital, by Rachel Chalmers | Model View Culture
Very good. (via Waxy)
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We Don’t Sell Saddles Here
Really good in-house memo from Stewart Butterfield to the Slack team on what they need to do to build their customer base, for a product that most people don’t know they need.
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Two big announcements.
Aside from the news itself, this is such a nice, human, down-to-earth piece about the company (37 Signals) and its news future. Also, doing their best to keep existing products supported, no job losses, etc. So un-Valley. (via @waxpancake)
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How Netflix Reinvented HR - Harvard Business Review
Interesting HR stuff that Netflix does differently: no set amounts of holiday, no rigid expenses policies (only “do what’s best for Netflix”), no bonuses, no vesting periods, etc. ie, being adult and sensible. (via Stellar)
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Scaling startups
Chad Dickerson of Etsy, from 2010, on important things about a company’s engineering culture when growing it quickly. To read again in the new year.
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Jay Porter | Observations From A Tipless Restaurant, Part 1: Overview
I didn’t bookmark this when I read it, but it keeps springing to mind. All parts are worth a read, on the nature of restaurant tipping, differences between good and bad waiters, the male patron / female waiter relationship, etc. (via Kottke)
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How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet
“Build something good, and the buyout offers start rolling in. But while selling out in most other fields of creative endeavor is frowned upon, it’s a given on the Web.” True, but this assumes you think of a start-up as a creative endeavour, not a business. But still.
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Boys Clubs
Highlighting all the 100% male boards, etc, etc. Very good. Also: Tumblrs as a hyper-focused lens on the rest of the web. (via Waxy)
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An acquisition is always a failure
“Big companies aren’t just big versions of small companies. They’re another class of entity entirely, more concerned with sustaining their own rhythms and control structures than experimenting with strange ideas from acquired ex-founders.” (via @aden_76)
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Can Hospital Chains Improve the Medical Industry? : The New Yorker
About new ways large US hospital chains are trying to optimise things, but actually most interesting when talking about how The Cheesecake Factory does its logistics and training. (From August 2012 via ?)
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Our Incredible Journey
I should have started this years ago - cataloging the time when start-ups are bought by a larger company and then delete all of their users’ content. Do send me more examples, old and new.
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What Your Culture Really Says - Pretty Little State Machine
“’…the company is managed with no hierarchy.’ What your culture might actually be saying is… Management decisions are siloed at the very top layers of management, kept so close to the chest they appear not to exist at all.” Very good. (via @mala)
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Short Cuts (London Review of Books)
Paul Myerscough on Pret a Manger. 91% of employees are immigrants. Social security as a subsidy to companies whose products would otherwise be too expensive for their non-social-security-receiving customers.
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Amazon, Apple, and the beauty of low margins — Remains of the Day
An interesting look at Amazon’s business, low margins. stock turnover, pricing strategies, competitors, etc. (via Migurski)