Uh-oh...MBA in the title. Cue edw519 popping in to tell the tale of how all he remembers from b-school is his professor telling him that a degree in business is a degree in nothing :)<p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com+%22a+degree+in+business+is+a+degree+in+nothing%22" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com+%22...</a>
<i>This recording contains explicit language and is not appropriate for all viewers.</i> Sometimes you've just got to go with the brand, you know? ;)<p>Edited to add: This talk is very, very good -- much of it is what you've heard from 37Signals before, but it is well delivered and there are unique insights too. (In particular I like how people are socialized into maladaption to the preferences of professors. Oh, and I agree with this: "Our most important competitive advantage is good human writing" -- it is probably my most important skill that I talk the least about.)
I attended this talk in person, and have to say it was easily the most entertaining of the series I've seen all year.<p>The most interesting take-away was that DHH wants to build scalable companies in the sense that profits grow non-correlated to the workforce, ie. you don't hire 2 more people for $500million more in profits. Someone asked, wouldn't it good to employ 100k of people and create 100k jobs to which DHH said, no it's better for my personal wealth (which is the point of all good business) if I keep the profits to the smallest number of people possible - those 100k people should actually go out and make shit instead (his words). Food for thought.
The talk was done at 5:30, in the following four hours it was trimmed down, intro voice & music added, uploaded w/ a photo taken at the event, found by someone here, and posted to HN. Got to love the internet.
Definately a good talk, and really inspires me to try and finally get something built and released in my spare 10 hours a week. I have been messing around with various projects over the last year or two, but it takes a long time to get anything decent done in 10 hours a week with one person before the motivation runs out.<p>One thing that just occurred to me, is that while DHH was working 10 hours per week on Basecamp, I'd bet that Jason Freid was putting in at least 10 hours on the design side too. For me, the programming side of things isn't the big time sink - its getting the application to look and flow correctly. I would guess that for every 10 hours I spend coding, I spend at least that trying to get the UI to look even half professional.<p>Thats not to take anything away from the achievement of building Basecamp in spare time, more an observation of how much more productive I would be if I had someone doing the UI elements along side me.
Only after this talk did I fully understand the difference the company he is trying to make / building (37 Signals) and the path that so many others follow.<p>Great advice that should be considered before any company brings on VC money.
My take-away:
1) Goal: "Make a dent on the universe"
2) Don't take VC money, which is a "time-bomb"
3) Don't be a workaholic. "Greatness comes from well-rested minds". Constraints force you to do less and different things.
4) No overnight success. It takes time.
For those that wish to see a video of roughly the same talk given by DHH at Startup School '08:<p><a href="http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/david-heinemeier-hansson-at-startup-school-08" rel="nofollow">http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/david-heinemeier-hans...</a>
I found this really inspiring. It reminded me why I put myself on my MicroISV path.
I've heard him say many of the same things before, but this was a nicely distilled 20-minute version.
I think it's funny that he referenced Domino's pizza CEO as an example of a lame MBA. Because just within the last week he resigned to coach college football at Michigan. Bizarre.<p><a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=4797284" rel="nofollow">http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=4797284</a>