Entrepreneur Geek

If you are a startup, you have read 37Signal’s opinions on business, productivity and building software. Here are some inspirational quotes from their latest book Rework. I took these insights from Dharmesh Shah’s onStartups blog. And put them together along with the index of essays in a downloadable PDF. Print this and stick it in a visible place!

I enjoyed reading Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson’s earlier book – Getting Real too. Of course, what worked for 37Signals (for Basecamp, Campfire, Ta-da list and their other products) may or may not work in your situation. Their advise is still valuable and worth pondering over for any startup / productivity aspirant.

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1. Great businesses have a point of view, not just a product or service.
2. Writing a plan makes you feel in control of things you don’t actually control.
3. Don’t sit around and wait for someone else to make the change you want to see.
4. Stuff that was impossible just a few years ago is simple today.
5. Failure is not a prerequisite for success.
6. Don’t make assumptions about how big you should be ahead of time.
7. You have the most information when you’re doing something, not before you’ve done it.
8. When you build what you need, you can assess quality directly instead of by proxy.
9. Solving your own problem lets you fall in love with what you’re making.
10. What you do matters, not what you think or say or plan.
11. When you want something bad enough, you make the time.
12. The perfect time to start something never arrives.
13. Start a business, not a startup.
14. You need a commitment strategy, not an exit strategy.
15. Huge organizations talk instead of act, and meet instead of do.
16. Build half a product, not a half-assed product.
17. Getting to greatness starts by cutting out stuff that’s merely good.
18. The real world isn’t a place, it’s an excuse. It’s a justification for not trying.
19. The big picture is all you should be worrying about in the beginning. Ignore the details.
20. It’s the stuff you leave out that matters.
21. Decide. You’re as likely to make a great call today as you are tomorrow.
22. The longer it takes to develop, the less likely it is to launch.
23. Focus on substance, not fashion. Focus on what won’t change.
24. When good enough gets the job done, go for it.
25. When you make tiny decisions, you can’t make big mistakes.
26. Pour yourself into your product.
27. You rarely regret saying no but you often regret saying yes.
28. Instead of out-spending your competitors, out-teach them.
29. Let customers look behind the curtain.
30. Better your customers grow out of your product, than never grow into them.
31. You can’t paint over a bad experience with good marketing.
32. All companies have customers. Fortunate companies have audiences too.
33. Don’t hire for pleasure; hire to kill pain.
34. Leave the poetry in what you make, there is beauty in imperfection.
35. Marketing is not a department, it’s the sum total of everything you do.
36. Don’t make up problems you don’t have yet.
37. A business without a path to profit is a hobby.

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Download printable PDF with best insights from the book here for free!

You can also download the excerpts from here.

Do you dream of writing a book? A technical one? Three years ago, I was creating my future plan and writing 6 books was one of the top items in the list. 

Today, I have two books already in print and have learned a lot on the way. One of the lessons is to get the right publisher. I am fortunate to have Packt as the publisher of both my books – Mobile Web Development and Open Source Content Management Systems: Beginners Guide. 

A wannabe author will have a lot of questions. They may include:

• How is the overall experience of writing a book?
• During the writing process, what issues/ difficulties I may expect? And how to deal with them?
• Does writing a book overshadow personal life?
• I have a full time job, how do I manage my time?
• What benefits can writing a book bring to my specialist area?

Want to hear my story? Go ahead, and read my answers to these questions! At the end, I have valuable tips from my own experiences too!

Aliza Sherman reviewed my Mobile Web Development book on the Web Worker Daily – a GigaOm site yesterday. One, it was good to be on GigaOm network (I am impressed with Om Malik and his ventures), and second Aliza had very positive comments for the book.

It was interesting to see her comparison of Mobile Web with the early days of Web. And how fascinating it was to learn HTML! Here’s what she says:

If I were still coding, this book would probably mean as much to me today as Teach Yourself HTML in a Week by Laura Lemay meant to me back in the 90s. Even as the person who hires the coders on development projects, it was an interesting read, particularly getting a glimpse of how far HTML has taken us and where it seems to be going.

She also says, “The gist of the book is to help you create mobile-friendly sites and mobile-ready apps.”

That’s pretty good! Thanks Aliza for your affirmation on the value of the book!

And while on the topic, I must not forget the excellent review Joe Dolson did a while ago. Joe said:

My overall reaction to this book was positive. It covers a wide variety of key issues for mobile web programming in an easily understood manner.

Mehta goes out of his way on many occasions to emphasize the serious importance of considering who (and what!) will be using your mobile web application.

Joe is a good critic, and identifies three problems with the book too. Thanks Joe for doing a thorough review!

For more reviews, checkout MyMobileWeb‘s review, Martin’s chapter by chapter overview and the reviews on Amazon.

Also the example chosen is simple but at the same time enlightening. The author has demonstrated that he has done an excellent research on open source tools and standards for mobile web development. The chapter on Mobile AJAX has been also a very good choice, as Mobile AJAX is the future. (from Morfeo / MyMobileWeb)

In this book you find the outline of the mobile web applications development world, some principles for self-study, some useful hints and examples and – last but not least – the inspiration. I would recommend this book to every developer interested in the mobile web. (from Dev::Info)

One of the biggest hurdles in mobile web development is to make the site usable on different devices. You can follow the least common denominator approach and use only those features that will work on all target phones. But many a times you want to take advantage of device specific features in your mobile web.

What do you do then?

Well, you adapt the design and content to the device! And how do you do that?

Read the Chapter 4 of my Mobile Web Development book! It shows you exactly how to adapt your XHTML MP based mobile website to different devices using WALL, WURFL etc.

Here’s the chapter outline:

• What is Adaptation?
  • Do I Need Adaptation?
  • Can’t I just Use Common Capabilities and Ignore the Rest?
  • How to Determine the LCD?
  • OK, So How do I Adapt?
• Fancy Pizza Selection
  • What are Those <wall:*> Tags?
  • Let’s Make Sense of This Code!
    • Can I Use All XHTML Tags?
    • Will This Work Well for WML?
• Device Detection and Capabilities
  • XML Processing can Bog Down My Server, is There Something Easier?
  • What About W3C’s DIAL?

• Other Useful Tools for Adaptation
  • Dynamically Resizing Images
  • Quick and Easy Way to Make Your Blog Mobile
  • MyMobileWeb: Going the Semantic Way
  • HAWHAW: As Simple as a Laugh?

Click on the image below to download the free PDF.