June 2012
9 posts
2 tags
A day in the life of a CEO
I got a great question from Sahil …
@ryancarson can you blog about how you spend your day running your biz? What biz activities do you focus on now that the product is up?
— Sahil Parikh (@sahilparikh) June 26, 2012
Here is a typical day for me as the CEO of Treehouse. As many of you probably know, we work a 4-day week.
Monday - Thursday
4:54 AM - Wake up. I use the...
1 tag
My favorite blogs
If you’re a CEO, Founder or Business Owner, you might enjoy these blogs. I read them religiously.
A VC - The blog of Fred Wilson, one of the Partners at Union Square. A legend in tech venture capital.
Hacker News top 50 - Only stories that have 50+ points on HN
Ben’s Blog - The blog of Ben Horowitz, one of the Partners at Andreesen Horowitz. Another very smart venture capitalist
...
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Renting vs Buying
Our house in Bath England has been on the market for at least two months and we’ve had exactly one showing. Ouch.
We had two options:
Drop the price
Rent it out until the housing market recovers We decided to put it up for rent and the next day we had a showing and they immediately took the rental. Hot damn.
If you don’t need the equity out of your house when moving, clearly the better...
7 Do's and Don'ts for Founders
I recently got a request from @marcusedvalson that I’d like to tackle …
@ryancarson Would love to hear an unfiltered bulleted list of advice for first time founders / startups. Do’s, Don’ts, Must’s
— Marcus Edvalson (@marcusedvalson) June 7, 2012
Based on running my own companies since 2004, here’s my list …
1. Ignore email
Email-creep is enemy #1 to...
1 tag
When to kill your startup
I received another great question from @softwaregravy
@ryancarson I’d love to see a blog post on when to walk away from something in progress. When do you pull the plug? cut your losses?
— John Hinnegan (@softwaregravy) June 11, 2012
I’ve started five products. Two failed, two were acquired and one is active (Treehouse).
Why did two products fail and when did I pull the...
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How I manage 40 people remotely
I recently asked what you’d like me to cover here on the blog. I got a great question from @tfav
@ryancarson I would love to hear about managing a remote team.
— Travis Favaron (@tfav) June 8, 2012
I’ve been running Treehouse since August 2010 from my home in the United Kingdom. We started with just three people (me, Nick Pettit and Jim Hoskins) and now we’re about to hit 40...
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Selling your company doesn't make you happy
I started my first company eight years ago in 2004 and I’ve been through two acquisitions. The first company I sold was DropSend in 2008 and the second was Carsonified in 2011.
Like most entreprenuers, I believed I needed to sell a company for a pile of cash in order to be successful. I’m not sure why I felt like this. I believe it was related to reading about acquisitions in the...
2 tags
Taking advantage of kids for profit
We recently installed FarmStory on our iPad and after watching our 4-year old play it, I believe they’re taking advantage of children to spread their other game titles.
After you play the game for a bit, a huge poster board appears on your farm (WTF?) that asks you to install another one of their games (Pet Shop Story, in this instance).
The only way to get rid of the stupid thing is to...
