Seems to tie in well with my own thinking of creating B2B-esque businesses.
What Happened to "Real World" Startups?
Working Smarter
I read this article (from my backlogged RSS reader) this morning and found it very valuable, especially since I have been contemplating tackling the problem of budget & capacity constraints vs ambitions.
Personally I've come to the conclusion that along with working smarter, it's just a case of prioritizing one's time and chasing low-hanging fruit.
Smileys
I absolute love the new Smiley campaign that 37Signals has implemented to track (and publicize) their customer satisfaction. Absolutely genuis!
In a recent article, they also share some insight into the data that they aren't publishing and the analysis makes for some interesting reading. As a 37Signals customer and someone that has tried to build his own business using the best of 37Signals knowledge, I love how I can actually see the team make a massive effort to get to 100% customer satisfaction. That is absolutely immense and I really appreciate how they are going about this in a very public, transparent and honest way, which just installs so much faith into them as a team and a company.
Bubble 2.0
There's been a lot said lately about us replicating the Dot Com bubble all over again and even though a much-respected figure like Paul Graham has stated his believe that we're not in a bubble, the doubts remain.
I'm yet unconvinced by either to be honest; I understand all the reasons why people wouldn't think we're in a bubble, yet I'm very cautious about some of the valuations being thrown around in what may just be a very ambitious funding environment at present.
When all else fails though, fall back on what we know: years and years of data. The above-linked article highlights that (listed) tech companies at present trades on similar ratio's to other non-tech companies, which at least seems to indicate that people outside of the supposed bubble isn't throwing their money at it (which is what I understand happened in Dot Com).
What do you think about the bubble?