Today is the official launch of the new jMockups Website to Mockup Converter, which lets you import any existing webpage into jMockups, allowing you to redesign and share it in minutes.

You can check it out here: Website to Mockup Converter.

And here’s the video demo:

Saturday probably isn’t the ideal day to publicly launch a new feature, but I’m in NYC this weekend with Chris Conley and Mike Nichoaides, two talented developers I originally met through some Philly on Rails meetups a while back. What better time to launch than among friends who have been following my progress and helping me since jMockups’ inception?

In the past I probably would have posted it on HackerNews minutes after I pushed it out to the site for people to start using. The problem doing it that way is that without a lot of people testing it beforehand, you run the risk of discovering major bugs in the midst of getting a lot of traffic. Then you have to choose between trying to fix it immediately (which due to your haste can introduce other bugs) or waiting for the traffic to die down (in which case a lot of people might have already experienced the bug). This has happened to me more times than I’d like to admit.

With this launch, I made it available to a few folks last weekend, then about half the existing user base on Wednesday. And sure enough, there were a lot of issues that I hadn’t anticipated. For example, when you work with bookmarklets you need to make sure that you prevent the browser from caching the code:

http://www.jmockups.com/javascripts/bookmarklet.js?x=’+(Math.random())

I wasn’t doing that a week ago and so I was making changes to the bookmarklet code but users weren’t getting the updates because their browser had cached the original version. Thankfully only a handful of people had tested it at that point. Imagine if several hundred had: most of them would never get the updated versions of the file, forever forcing them to use the original version of the bookmarklet. Not good.

By launching it in stages I identified issues like that and resolved them prior to the influx of traffic, making this a much less stressful day than previous launch days have been. Knock on wood…

Anyway, dear reader, I’d love to get your thoughts on the new Website to Mockup tool. Feel free to email me or leave a comment below. Thanks!

Cross post from the jMockups blog:

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As promised in my 2010, 2011, and a $4K/month challenge post, I’m going to do a quick recap each month of the progress I’ve made with towards achieving that end.

Here’s what happened in January.

Preceden

Total Sign Ups: 510

Upgrades to Preceden Pro: 18 (3.5%)

Revenue: $522

Progress: I spent a total of about 5 hours working on Preceden in January, which was split between reverting December’s pricing plan changes and with integrating Mixpanel last week to start getting better insights into how people are using the tool. To date I haven’t spent any time trying to optimize the conversion funnel, which gives me high hopes that I can at least double it with some calculating A/B tests.

jMockups

Total Sign Ups: 135

Upgrades to jMockups Pro: 0

Revenue: $19

Progress: I spent a lot of time working on jMockups in January, with a focus on improving the user experience, fixing bugs, and making progress towards launching the new website import tool later this month.

Most of the major changes were covered on the jMockups Blog:

• jMockups Updates – Property Inspector Position, Import Progress, and Bug Fixes (Jan 9)
• jMockups has a Fresh, New Look (Jan 17)
• New Way of Editing Text (Jan 21)
• jMockups User Survey (Jan 22)
• Olark Integration: Say Hi (Jan 23)
• Using Canvas Pixel Caching to Reduce jMockups’ Rendering Time By 80%+ (Jan 28)

In early January I began working with a talented San Fransisco-based JavaScript developer on jMockups with the intent of eventually bringing him on as a co-founder if the partnership went well. We got along extremely well and I was thrilled with how quickly he was picking up the code, but personal circumstances prevented him from continuing. So back to one.

jMockups is somewhere in the trough of sorrow right now:

And there’s even been several crashes of ineptitude thanks to some poor QA practices…. so I’m on my way :)

My primary goal in February is to launch the new website import tool, which will let you import any existing website into jMockups, allowing you to redesign and share it in seconds.

Before I launch it (and it’s 95% ready), I want to fix a few bugs, improve a few existing features, and set up some more in depth analytics to prepare for the potential influx of visitors after I launch it. There’s nothing worse than launching an amazing new feature only to have 50% of the new visitors run into a bug that sends them away with a poor taste in their mouth…. except for never launching it at all, I suppose.

According to RescueTime, I spent 120 hours working in January, or about 27 hours/week.

Life

January was kind unique month for me because of how much time I spent on the road for my day job: 11 days completely away from home and another 6 partially away. 27 hours/week is a bit high for me — average is about 20 to 25. The extra hours were only possible because I was traveling and did not have anything else to split my time with.

On New Years Day I began doing daily life tracking, which was inspired by several posts Sebastian Marshall has written on the topic. I’ve been tracking how much I eat out, how much I exercise, how much I spend, my finances, sleep schedule, etc. This deserves its own post, so I’ll save the details for later, but in a nutshell it’s given me some astounding insights into my life (positive and negative) and by making a few minor changes I’ve already had incredible gains from it. I highly encourage you to try it out if you’re looking to improve some aspects of your life (start with Sebastian’s posts).

With that, back to coding.

In a previous post, I described how I was banned from PokerStars. Basically I think I was playing the bot too much, PokerStars security got suspicious, reviewed my account, and figured out it was a bot.

I actually built the bot to run on both PokerStars and FullTiltPoker (FTP), but due to problems interfacing with FTP’s software, I abandoned it and focused on PokerStars.

October 2, 2008 was the day the bot was banned on PokerStars. In June 2009, I started writing about it on this blog. On July 14, 2009, less than a month after I started writing about it here, I got the bright idea that I should double check with FTP that I was still able to play on their site so I emailed them. Keep in mind I was not banned from FTP at the time I sent this email…

Support,

I have a bit of an odd question.

I have an account with FullTiltPoker under the name “…” that I used for a few weeks in early 2008 to test a poker bot I was developing.

The bot played about 300 low stakes Heads Up SNG’s but mostly due to the difficulty of building a bot for the FTP software, I turned my efforts to PokerStars and continued my work there. My account at PokerStars (“kaon”) lasted until early October 2008 when it was promptly suspended for operating the bot. I have not attempted to run the bot since that time on PokerStars, FullTilt, or any other network for that matter.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have written about my work on my programming blog (see: http://www.mattmazur.com/category/poker-bot/).

I may be intersted in playing poker again at some point in the future and I’d like to do it on FullTiltPoker if possible. For what it’s worth, I have no intention of ever running the bot again–indeed, I wish I had never tried to make it in the first place. Why tell you all this? I’m afraid I might build up a significant bankroll and then somehow your security team will learn of my former bot transgressions and suspend my account.

If I never violate Full Tilt’s Terms of Service again, can I play on your service without fear of having my account suspended?

I’d be happy to answer any questions you have.

Regardless of your decision, thank you for the excellent support.

Matt Mazur

Surprise surprise, they did not take kindly to this otherwise friendly email. Three days later they responded:

Hello Matt,

Thank you for your mail and for your candor.

Unfortunately, we have taken the decision to exclude you from the site. We have taken this decision as a precautionary measure to protect the integrity of our site. Whilst we understand that this decision will be frustrating we are exercising our authority to close any account as outlined under Term 3 of our End User License Agreement:

Full Tilt Poker retains authority over the issuing, maintenance, and closing of players’ accounts at Full Tilt Poker. The decision of Full Tilt Poker management, as regards any aspect of a player’s account, use of the Software, or dispute resolution is final.

Which can be seen here:

http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/end_user_license_agreement

You are not permitted to set up any more accounts with Full Tilt Poker. Should you do so, any further accounts will be closed and their balances may be forfeited.

Regards,

Martin
Security
Full Tilt Poker

I kind of smacked myself in the head after this. Why, oh why, did I email them in the first place? I had no intention of playing poker at that time and there was no indication that they were investigating me (though they could have looked up my account by my name), so what value did emailing them have?

After a bit of introspection, I realized the answer: I wanted to burn the bridge. Having an active FTP account was good because it enabled me to turn back to poker should I ever need extra money. But getting banned from FTP, the largest poker site next to PokerStars, was great because it forced me to abandon poker as a possibility. Sure, I could probably grind it away on some of the less popular sites, but PokerStars and FTP are where all the money is. With poker not a viable option, I had to focus on my startup pursuits because I had no fallback plan.

Was it a good decision? Check back in five years and I’ll let you know. :)

What’s your backup plan? Would eliminating it give you a better chance at succeeding at your current endeavor?

My nights and weekends pursuits over the past five years can be divided into two overarching categories: poker and startups. In both cases, I’ve received a ton of help from individuals as well as online communities including Two Plus Two and HackerNews. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the help of many people along the way.

In an effort to pay it forward, maybe I can be of some help to you. I’m not an expert by any means, but I’ve spent a fair amount of time playing poker and working on a poker bot (~3 years) as well as working on various startup endeavors (~2.5 years) and I’ve learned a lot along the way.

If you’re working on a poker bot or a startup and need an outside perspective to bounce your ideas off of, review what you’ve done, or anything else drop me a note: matthew.h.mazur@gmail.com.

Background

In January 2010 I launched Preceden, a free web-based timeline tool. In May I migrated to a freemium plan, where users could add a certain number of events for free but had to upgrade to the pro plan in order to create more than that. After some experimentation with different limits and prices, I settled on 5 events for free and a one time payment of $30 to upgrade to the pro plan.

In June I started working on jMockups, a web-based high fidelity mockup tool. From June until the beginning of December I hardly touched Preceden. At the beginning of December I started reviewing Preceden’s stats and realized Hey, this is actually bringing in some decent money so I decided to start dedicating some time each week to working on it. (For a more detailed explanation of why I wasn’t watching it closely, read my 2010, 2011, and a $4K/month challenge post.)

Removing the Free Plan

Looking over the revenue figures I wondered: What would happen if I completely removed the free plan? Instead of a user being able to create 5 events for free, new users would have to pay first to use it.

After about three minutes of planning, I decided to go ahead and implement the change.

Additional Changes

I wanted to change as little as possible so that the results of the experiment would be accurate. After all, you can’t change several variables at once and then attribute the changes to only one.

That being said, I made a few small changes to the site which may have affected the results.

1) I dropped the price from $30 to $29

2) I changed the background color the header from #112a40 (dark blue) to #244386 (a lighter blue) and reduced its height

3) I made some layout and copy changes on the homepage

4) I removed the reCAPTCHA form from the sign up page

I shouldn’t have made these changes, but at the time I was more focused on the potential increase in revenue than on running a proper experiment.

Before and After Screenshots

Click to view full size:

Homepage

Sign Up Page

Notice at the top of the new sign up page it indicates what step of the process you are on (1. Create an Account, 2. Checkout, 3. Create Timelines). I also changed the copy on the button from “Create my Account” to “Create Account and Proceed to Checkout”. The wording will come into play later.

Checkout Page

(Only present on the pay-first version)

Results and Analysis

Notes

• The number of homepage and sign up page visitors was taken from Google Analytics by looking a the number of new visitors to those particular pages.
• Promotions refers to users I upgraded because they are bloggers and bloggers can get upgraded to the pro account for free.

Analysis

From Nov 1 – Dec 4, 3287 new visitors came to the Preceden homepage, 894 visited the sign up page, 567 created an account, and 22 upgraded to a paid account. That’s a 0.67% conversion rate from new visitor to paid user.

From Dec 6 – Jan 1, 3343 new visitors came to the site, 528 visited the sign up page, 210 created an account (oops), and 5 upgraded to a paid account. That’s a 0.15% conversion rate.

Users who were able to test Preceden before paying were 347% more likely to upgrade to a paid account than those who weren’t.

Also — and this is definitely my fault — 205 people filled out the sign up page and then abandoned the process on the Checkout page. Why? Most people probably didn’t realize they had to pay before using it. Sure, the Pricing page said “$29 for Unlimted Access” without mentioning a free account and Step #2 of the sign up process was called “Checkout”, but overall the copy didn’t clearly indicate that you had to pay before you could use the app.

Another problem is that the site doesn’t include a demo. It includes examples, but nothing the user can create on their own. Adding a demo section so that new users can get that “Oh cool” moment would have gone a long way.

The good news is that about 4% of the people who created an account converted to the paid plan when they were able to test the product first. Even if the pay-first experiment resulted in better figures, I feel more comfortable letting users test the product before paying. I think this depends a lot on your app and your business model, but for a tool like Preceden there’s no reason not to let people try it for free first. Accordingly, I’m switching back to the freemium version starting today.

Lessons Learned

• If you run a web app and start building a new product, don’t neglect what you’ve already built. Dedicate some time each week to analyzing your key performance indicators and to making small changes — they’ll add up in the long run.
• The best way to test this would have been to run the experiment on a fraction of visitors to the site. For example, show a pay-only version to half of the visitors and a free plan version to the other half.
• Don’t change several variables at once when you run an experiment. Every change you make will affect the results.
• The time of the year matters. Measuring only the number of paid users would be a bad way choice because a lot of the customers are teachers and I don’t imagine a lot are on the market for a new teaching tool in December. Measuring the conversion rates is better, but there still may be a “Oh I’ll wait till after the holidays to pursue this” mentality among some of the visitors, which could have affected the results. Running this experiment simultaneously would have yielded better results.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to experiment with A/B testing and AdWords to see what’s possible. I’m also going to email the 205 people who signed up during this experiment but didn’t pay; I’m sure they’d be interested in trying it out.

Can you think of anything else that might improve the conversion rates? Leave a comment below and I may test it out.

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If you enjoyed this post, you should subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog to get future updates. Also, if you’re a web designer or developer I’d love to get your thoughts on jMockups, my new web design startup. Drop me a note at matthew.h.mazur@gmail.com or @jmockups on Twitter. Thanks!

There’s a nifty WordPress plugin called List Category Posts that makes it dead-simple to list all of the blog posts in a specific category of your blog.

Why is this useful? If you’ve been blogging for a while you’ve likely got a lot of valuable posts buried on your blog that aren’t easily accessible to new visitors. Most bloggers include a list of categories on the side of their blog, but if you’ve got a lot of items filed under a category it can take a while to peruse them all the posts. By creating a a list of posts sorted by category, you can point new visitors so they can get familiar with your site; it acts as a site map.

Your should create a blog post that lists all of your blog categories with a list of posts below them. Then include a link to it somewhere prominently on your site so new visitors can quickly scan your old posts.

You can see the list of posts I created for this blog here. And here’s what the post itself looks like:

The name attribute refers to the category name (make sure you put categories that have multiple words in quotes), numberposts specifies how many posts you want to be displayed for that category (-1 means list everything), and date tells it to display the post date next to the link.  You can see all the options on the plugin’s Other Notes page.

And the great thing about this is that it will update automatically as you add new posts.

To add a link to your side bar, go to Appearance > Editor > Sidebar and add a link to that blog post:

Enjoy!

AOL-Files

• Remembering AOL's FDO91 Programming Language January 28, 2012
• AOL-Files Head Nod August 8, 2010
• Adrian Lamo AOL-Files Profile June 26, 2010
• AOL-Files Fanfare on Digital Gangster June 20, 2009
• AOL Modal Tool April 29, 2009
• Exploits Online, AOL-Files.com's Precursor December 14, 2008
• AOL-Files Fanfare October 17, 2008
• AOL-Files.com August 17, 2008
• Nostalgia August 14, 2008

Design

• A Simple Fluid-Fixed Layout May 19, 2010
• One Way to Discourage Design Theft February 20, 2010

Domain Pigeon

• Lean Domain Search Launch Report January 17, 2012
• Domain Pigeon: Deadpool November 7, 2010
• Domain Pigeon on Smashing Magazine September 15, 2009
• Domain Pigeon Fixed August 25, 2009
• Wordoid May 22, 2009
• A Long Road Forward May 17, 2009
• Post Mortem May 13, 2009
• Finding Great Domain Names with Mechanical Turk May 13, 2009
• Domain Pigeon Adwords April 25, 2009
• Finally: Credit Card Processing April 24, 2009
• TechRadar Article April 12, 2009
• Obsessable.com Article April 10, 2009
• Domain Pigeon makes it to Digg's Front Page! April 10, 2009
• Lessons Learned Article April 10, 2009
• Inquisitr Article & A Lesson Learned April 10, 2009
• Website Magazine Article April 10, 2009
• CNET! April 9, 2009
• Here we go. April 7, 2009
• Back to Work March 22, 2009
• Updates March 21, 2009
• A Brief HackerNews Traffic Analysis March 18, 2009
• Six Lessons Learned from Domain Pigeon's First Six Weeks March 15, 2009
• Domain Pigeon Adds the # of Google Search Results March 2, 2009
• WebHostingShow.com on Domain Pigeon March 2, 2009
• Hi March March 1, 2009
• Losing Focus February 22, 2009
• Minor Updates and Dancing with Google February 21, 2009
• OK, Available February 20, 2009
• More Updates February 19, 2009
• Surprise: New layout February 18, 2009
• Free Domain Names! Well... kind of February 17, 2009
• Matt Cutts on the Structure of a Google Search Result February 16, 2009
• Domain Pigeon #11 for "available domain names" February 16, 2009
• Domain Pigeon Free w/Automatic Updates February 16, 2009
• The Importance of 168 February 11, 2009
• Czesz February 9, 2009
• Domain Pigeon 180 February 9, 2009
• The Road Forward February 8, 2009
• Homepage Updates February 7, 2009
• Wow February 6, 2009
• Ugly February 5, 2009
• Domain Pigeon Homepage Updates February 4, 2009
• Strategizing with Google's Keyword Tool February 2, 2009
• Improving Domain Pigeon's Two Most Important Pages February 1, 2009
• Domain Pigeon Title February 1, 2009
• Small then Large February 1, 2009
• More Press: Frusketing.com January 31, 2009
• Milestone: CNET Coverage January 31, 2009
• Small Adjustment, Big Improvement January 30, 2009
• Launch Day Followup January 30, 2009
• Improving the Availability Dropdown January 30, 2009
• Troubleshooting: /MSOffice/cltreq.asp January 29, 2009
• The Green Light Flashes, the Flags Go Up January 29, 2009
• Delayed Launch January 26, 2009
• Toying with SQL Injection in Rails January 24, 2009
• The Importance of Following Through January 22, 2009
• "Engines pumping and thumping in time" January 21, 2009
• Did you Know? January 19, 2009
• "Reluctantly crouched at the starting line" January 15, 2009
• Git+SSH+Github+Dreamhost+Capistrano=Great Success January 6, 2009
• 12/16 Domain Pigeon Updates December 16, 2008

HNTrends

• Farewell HNTrends November 5, 2010
• An Amazing JavaScript Port of HNTrends.com Using Raphael JS June 25, 2010
• HNTrends Data Analyzed (link) March 9, 2010
• Six Months of HackerNews Front Page Data March 7, 2010
• Introducing HNTrends.com September 7, 2009

jMockups

• Lean Designs Now Supports Hybrid Width Website Layouts May 30, 2011
• Lean Designs Will Disrupt Web Design May 12, 2011
• March Madness: Preceden Gets Some Love, jMockups's Grind Continues April 6, 2011
• February in Review: Life Tracking, Major jMockups Updates, and Preceden's Best Month Yet March 4, 2011
• Launch! jMockups Website to Mockup Converter February 19, 2011
• Seeking Alpha Testers for new jMockups Import Tool February 6, 2011
• jMockups and Preceden January Review February 5, 2011
• 2010, 2011 & a $4K/month Challenge December 17, 2010
• jMockups Launch October 26, 2010
• A Public Commitment to Launch jMockups October 7, 2010
• Recurring Billing Fun September 15, 2010
• Comparing Recurly, Spreedly, and Chargify August 7, 2010
• jMockups August 4, 2010
• What I'm working on July 21, 2010

Poker Bot

• Burning Bridges and Getting Banned From Full Tilt Poker January 23, 2011
• Poker Bot Preflop Strategy Explained December 10, 2010
• Poker Blog #2 Archive November 7, 2010
• Italian Poker Club Article on Poker Bot Development October 5, 2010
• Poker Bot Strategy for Postflop Play October 4, 2010
• Poker Bot Preflop Strategy October 1, 2010
• Joffe Decks September 11, 2010
• Confessions of a Bot Runner Article June 26, 2010
• How to Calculate Your Equity vs Every Other Hole Card Combination March 14, 2010
• Poker Bot Command Line Tool - AllHandsDesc March 7, 2010
• A Poker Bot Comment Worth Reading October 22, 2009
• Building a Shortstacking Poker Bot - A Visual History October 18, 2009
• Experimenting with a Neural Network-based Poker Bot October 13, 2009
• Modeling Human Clicking Behavior on PokerStars July 2, 2009
• PokerShark: Gaining an Edge at Online Poker June 29, 2009
• No Limit Hold'em Poker Bot Profits by Effective Stack Size June 27, 2009
• Introduction: Heads Up No Limit Hold'em Sit-n-Go's June 27, 2009
• Poker Bot Q&A, Round 1 June 18, 2009
• Talking to Nobody: Conversations with a Poker Bot June 16, 2009
• Poker Bots: Handling Talkative Opponents June 15, 2009
• How do you measure a poker bot's success? June 14, 2009
• Improving PokerStars's Bot Detection Techniques June 13, 2009
• The Last Day I Played Online Poker June 12, 2009

Preceden

• March Madness: Preceden Gets Some Love, jMockups's Grind Continues April 6, 2011
• Preceden's 15 Days @ $30/Day AdWords Results March 29, 2011
• A/B Testing Preceden's Homepage - Round 1: 37% Improvement March 13, 2011
• AdWords: Week 1 Results March 13, 2011
• How to Calculate Your AdWords ROI for a Freemium, One Time Purchase Web App March 5, 2011
• February in Review: Life Tracking, Major jMockups Updates, and Preceden's Best Month Yet March 4, 2011
• jMockups and Preceden January Review February 5, 2011
• I Eliminated the Free Plan from my Web App for a Month: Here's What Happened. January 2, 2011
• 2010, 2011 & a $4K/month Challenge December 17, 2010
• What I'm working on July 21, 2010
• On (Not) Emailing Bloggers June 21, 2010
• Adding a Survey to Preceden with Wufoo May 24, 2010
• Preceden's Homepage Heatmap May 21, 2010
• Preceden's Paid Conversion Funnel (Infographic) May 16, 2010
• Preceden 20x Faster May 9, 2010
• Preceden Updates May 1, 2010
• IE8 on OS X April 11, 2010
• Disk Inventory X Eye Candy April 10, 2010
• And then there were two April 6, 2010
• Using Delicious Tags to Describe Your Site March 23, 2010
• Charts, an LLC, and LifeHacker Coverage March 22, 2010
• Ancient Greek Timeline March 14, 2010
• White Headers, Flinging Timelines, and a little Momentum February 24, 2010
• Embeddable Timelines February 20, 2010
• Post Launch Traffic != Success February 19, 2010
• The Preceden Blog February 11, 2010
• Reflections on Preceden's HackerNews Launch February 11, 2010
• Announcing Preceden February 7, 2010
• Preceden Updates January 9, 2010
• Five changes that have helped me be more productive December 8, 2009

Programming

• How to Switch Your Cedar Heroku App from Webrick to Thin January 18, 2012
• Integrating Big Huge Thesaurus's API into Lean Domain Search January 18, 2012
• How to Automatically Back Up your Heroku site to Dropbox October 11, 2010
• Django Masterpiece June 2, 2009
• Revolution May 13, 2009
• Why to Set a Time Limit on Password Reset Emails December 1, 2008
• Macs: Productivity made Easy November 4, 2008
• Focusing on Productivity November 2, 2008
• Good Design is Easy, Great Design is Hard October 13, 2008
• Function vs Design September 30, 2008
• Scriptaculous Troubleshooting September 25, 2008
• Narrowing Down a Path September 7, 2008
• Zend, its Not You, It's Me... Why Hello There... August 10, 2008
• The Wrong Way to Get Noticed by YC August 8, 2008
• Ajax Lab: Draggable w/ Memory August 3, 2008
• Ajax Prototype Lab: Draggable Objects August 2, 2008
• Ajax! August 1, 2008

Quotes

• QUOTE: We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers August 4, 2010
• Quote: "I just wanted to become really rich and do it on my own terms" June 29, 2010
• Quote: "Every system has two sets of rules..." October 14, 2009
• The Art & Science of Seductive Interactions September 30, 2009
• Quotes September 13, 2009
• Feynman: Take the World from a Different Point of View June 28, 2009
• "Determine Never to Be Idle" June 27, 2009
• On Spirit March 1, 2009
• Some Reasons Why Your Startup Could Succeed February 14, 2009
• Meaningful Work December 31, 2008
• That Graham Guy on Credentials December 16, 2008
• Clay Shirky December 13, 2008
• Hire Yourself December 6, 2008
• Entrepreneurial Quotes December 4, 2008
• TED & Malcolm Gladwell November 23, 2008
• URI.parse November 8, 2008
• Branden on the Art of Living Consciously October 22, 2008
• PT Barnum on Business September 21, 2008
• Legal Q&A August 27, 2008
• Chris Wanstrath August 21, 2008
• Pricing Strategies August 19, 2008
• Money, Startups, Ideas August 5, 2008
• Quotes August 4, 2008
• An Investing Principles Checklist August 2, 2008
• Quotable Roosevelt July 30, 2008
• David Hansson on Startups July 29, 2008

Startups

• What are you working on? How can I help? January 15, 2011
• Startup Blogs To Make You a Better Entrepreneur December 19, 2010
• Startup School was a Blast November 9, 2009
• Notes from Startup Bootcamp October 13, 2009
• Link: 12 Ways to Blow Your Investor Pitch June 13, 2009
• Philly Emerging Tech - Day 2 March 27, 2009
• Philly Emerging Tech - Day 1 March 26, 2009
• Entrepreneurship is Getting Easier March 13, 2009
• In Praise of Audiobooks March 8, 2009
• Wolfram Alpha March 8, 2009
• Make Something Mothers Want March 5, 2009
• Carnegie on Making Something People Want March 3, 2009
• On Money March 1, 2009
• Make Something People Want? January 26, 2009
• That Graham Guy on Credentials December 16, 2008
• Hire Yourself December 6, 2008
• Domain Name Services August 30, 2008
• Decision Time, Old Guy at B&N, and Executive Summary August 30, 2008
• Hacker News Top Submissions August 12, 2008
• LLC or Corp Notes - Partnerships & LLCs August 10, 2008
• Early Adapters August 5, 2008

Misc

• Be Right Back July 17, 2011
• Blog Posts by Category December 29, 2010
• The Universal Singularity September 9, 2010
• Clever AIM Spam June 26, 2010
• Bitmap File Format October 3, 2009
• Break September 24, 2009
• The Appearance of Accomplishment September 16, 2009
• Dinner with Raffi September 13, 2009
• Blog Layout Tweak September 9, 2009
• Philly Build Guild, Round 2 August 18, 2009
• Python with crontab on Mac OS X 10.5.1 Leopard August 17, 2009
• Progress with Flash: A Dead-Simple Chart July 30, 2009
• Ads vs Content on Kaboodle July 29, 2009
• Entrepreneurs Can Change the World July 26, 2009
• Flash: First Project July 12, 2009
• Identify The Essential July 5, 2009
• Persistence July 4, 2009
• Learning Flash June 25, 2009
• Go Fish! June 21, 2009
• Man Builds Toothpick City June 21, 2009
• The Traditional Employee Model Sucks December 11, 2008
• Philly on Rails! November 18, 2008
• Go go go November 17, 2008
• Git Resources November 9, 2008
• MBA Considerations November 8, 2008
• URI.parse November 8, 2008
• Heroku it is November 3, 2008
• Updates September 3, 2008
• Ping Back Spam from autocarsinsurance.net August 30, 2008
• Updates August 25, 2008
• Netflix Delay Notice August 14, 2008
• Zend_Loader July 28, 2008
• Link@Startup Business Models July 27, 2008
• Google Should Do This July 24, 2008
• Progress July 21, 2008
• Horizons July 17, 2008
• Knowledge Connects Everything. July 16, 2008
• WSJ July 16, 2008
• Quotes July 15, 2008
• Learning Zend Framework July 14, 2008
• Learning about YouTube July 14, 2008
• First! July 8, 2008

As an aspiring startup founder, I’m always on the lookout for blogs that will help me become a more adept entrepreneur.  Fortunately for me and for the startup community there’s a lot of really talented entrepreneurs who write regularly about what they’ve learned so you can benefit from their experiences.

The following is a list of the best startup blogs that I’ve run across, which I thought I’d share in the hope that you find something new for your collection. In no particular order…

1. Derek Sivers – Founder of CD Baby and several other companies, the word “wise” comes to mind. His post Let pedestrians define the walkways is always in the back of my head while I’m working on my startup.
2. Gabriel Weinberg – Ballsy Philadelphia-based founder of Duck Duck Go, an inspirational (and quite successful) one-man search engine startup. Really nice guy too.
3. IIlya Lichtenstein – Internet marketer who recently helped more than 150 startups with their marketing efforts and wrote about the lessons learned in a series of great blog posts.
4. Jason Baptiste – Boston-based cofounder of PadPressed. His posts on startups are some of the best I’ve read. See, for example, If You Build It, They Won’t Come (something I’ve learned the hard way) and 16 Ways Your Startup Needs to be Getting Customers.
5. Eric Ries – Eric has changed the way people approach building startups with the Lean Startup movement. He also coined the phrase Minimum Viable Product, which is now common lingo in the startup world.
6. Ben Cashnocha – An all around brilliant guy, he writes on topics including entrepreneurship, travel, and philosophy.
7. OnStartups – By Dharmesh Shah and others, it offers troves of invaluable advice for startup founders in posts that always seem to begin with a number.
8. Jason Cohen – Another very successful startup founder who writes about how to do it well. Rich vs King: Why I Sold My Company and Why I feel like a fraud are great places to start.
9. Paul Graham of Y Combinator fame — his essays are essential reading for startup founders.
10. Rob Walling – Software by Rob is a new addition to the list. I recently read his new book Start Small, Stay Small and immediately identified with his approach. Highly recommended for anyone running or aspiring to run a small online business.
11. Matt Maroon – Former poker player turned YC-backed startup founder of Blue Frog Gaming, Matt excels at seeing the big picture and articulating it for his readers (just not on HackerNews).
12. Chris Dixon – Cofounder of Hunch and active angel investor who writes on investing, technology, social media, etc.
13. Mixergy – An excellent series of interviews by Andrew Warner, who relentlessly pursues the execution details behind many successful startups.
14. Sebastian Marshall – Sebastian offers practical advice drawn from a breadth of knowledge and experience on how to excel at just about anything. Here‘s an inspiring post from yesterday and here‘s a list of his top posts.
15. Balsamiq Products Blog – The more I work on jMockups, the more impressed I am with Balsamiq’s incredible execution. Too bad I’m going to destroy them (just kidding… maybe). :)
16. Steve Blank – Former Air Force officer turned Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur, Steve invented the Customer Development process which is the foundation of the Lean Startup movement.
17. Patrick McKenzie – Of Bingo Card Creator and soon-t0-be Appointment Reminder fame, he inspired me to create Preceden, a web-based timeline tool.
18. Spencer Fry – Creator of Carbonmade, a site for designers that lets you show off your portfolio, who writes about entrepreneurship, freemium, and more.
19. Jacques Mattheij – A pillar of the HackerNews community and thought leader in earning money from web apps, Jacques’s blog is not one to miss.
20. Daniel Tenner – Cofounder of Woobius, who puts things in perspective with posts like iPad: Apple for Mom and The questionable value of the real time web.
21. This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis
22. Furqan Nazeeri – Boston-based serial entrepreneur who writes about startups, venture capital, and entrepreneurship
23. Seth Godin – Seth is a brilliant marketer and businessman who shares his seemingly endless supply of insights via his blog. He’s also got some great books including  Small is the New Big and The Purple Cow.
24. Mark Suster at BothSidesOfTheTable – Musing of an entrepreneur turned venture capitalist. I came across his blog via his post How to Talk to Investors About Your Competitors.

And two non-startup blogs that you might also like:

1. Less Wrong – Less Wrong is about how to think better–a lot of it will make you go whoa. For example, check out Intellectual Hipsters and Meta-Contrarianism.
2. David Mangold – Dave is a big picture, outside-of-the-box intellectual who writes about topics including evolution, astrobiology, metaphysics, and more.

Know of a blog that might make a good addition to this list? Let me know in the comments below.

Cheers!

To be happy is an enormous achievement because it entails working very hard to learn what one needs to be happy and most people choose the incorrect things. – Marty

My great uncle and I have had a long running email conversation about life, philosophy,  happiness, and the like. One of the tenents of his philosophy, which is based heavily on the works of Ayn Rand and Nathanial Brandon, is that happiness is a consequence of living your life in a way that’s aligned with your values, which in turn should be based on your own rational self interest.

Determining your values can be a daunting task if you’ve never done it before but I highly encourage you to take some time and figure them out if you’re not sure. I came up a simple way of determining my values that works pretty well for me so I thought I’d share it with you all in case you’re having trouble:

1. Start by identifying one thing that you value. It doesn’t have to be the most important thing, but it should be something that you would say “Yeah, that’s important to me.”

2. Imagine a hypothetical life where that’s the only thing in your life. Would you be happy if that’s all you had?

3. If not, ask yourself why? What’s missing? Add that to your list of values and repeat these steps until you’ve got a life that you’d be happy with.

The list of things that make up this hypothetical world is what you value.

Here’s an example for me:

I enjoy making things. Would I be happy in a world where all I did was make things? No. It’s not enough to simply make something. It has to be something new and creative.

So I want to make new, creative things. Would I be happy in a world where that’s all I did? No. If I have someone telling me new, creative things I should make I wouldn’t be satisfied. I have to have the independence to make what I want.

So I want to make new, creative things (ie. innovate) without anyone dictating my actions or direction. Would I be happy in a world where I was an independent innovator? No. I could sit in a dimly lit room all day making cool things with legos, but I wouldn’t be happy. The things I build have to have some impact on the world.

So I want to be an independent innovator who creates things with impact. Would that be enough? What if I could change hundreds of lives but no one would ever know it was me? Recognition isn’t paramount, but I find that I would like some recognition for my work. I don’t want to be anonymous.

So I want to be a recognized independent innovator who creates things with impact. Getting there. Would it be enough to do this completely alone, without any friends or family? No. I want those things too.

So I want to be a recognized independent innovator who creates things with impact who also has a great family and friends. Yeah, that sounds pretty good to me. It’s not perfect: I could continue adding other things (physical and mental health, education, self improvement, integrity, etc), but you get the idea.

By following this simple little algorithm you can determine with high fidelity what your values are. It won’t tell you whether these things are in your own self interest (ie, you might imagine a world where you’ve got an endless supply of cocaine to get high on), but it will help you identify what’s important to you.

Give it a shot. See what you come up with.  Figure out how you’re going to get there, then do it.