Blog
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Is your CFO doing your bookkeeping?
Let’s hope not. That would be a waste of their skills, and certainly their time and effort could be better used elsewhere. Then why are you asking your CTO to write your code? Manage your network? Upgrade and secure your servers? These are all tasks a talented technical founder provides to a Startup. But once…
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AI Killed Computer Language Preferences
It used to be that everyone in tech development had a preference for a language, and it was often the one you were most familiar with. Like a religion, the more you used your language, the more you were convinced it was the only language that would do everything. But in the age of AI,…
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When to Outsource
In our personal or professional lives, there’s always a time to outsource. Maybe you lack the skill to pull something off. Maybe you lack the employees to do it. Maybe you can’t spare the time, or maybe you just want to spend your time doing other things. All of these are valid. But often, we…
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Don’t Build a Service that’s a Wrapper
If you have a driving motivation for building your next service, do it! I’ll always encourage the next entrepreneur to build their dream. But before you start, consider how unique the offering is. Has it been done before but in a friction-filled way, and you’ve reimagined it? That still sounds worth it. Does your idea…
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Feeling Passionately about an Issue
We all have things we feel strongly about, and the subject of these emotions runs the gamut. But it becomes complicated when we fervently believe in something but contradict ourselves. Feel passionately about Climate Change? Then you shouldn’t use air conditioning or drive a car. Feel passionately about animal cruelty? Then you shouldn’t eat meat.…
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Treat Each Customer as Your Only Customer
I recently got a notice from a software vendor that they were raising their prices by over 3x, with 30 days notice. A quick search into the company showed a recent S-1 filing that roughly said, “We’re going to keep raising prices to extract more value out of users.” While that is certainly a pricing…
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Subtractive Solutions
Many solutions we implement are additive: We want more customers, more revenue, more good Press. Subtractive solutions are just as important, but work without offering anything more. But I think you’d agree, having no spam makes reading your email easier, keeping rabbits out of your garden gives you peace of mind, and having your headache…
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Always use the good stuff
I recently had to do some work on my house that involved CAT6 Ethernet cables, so I looked for some modular plugs (AKA end caps), and found an old crimper to use. After over an hour of frustration in cutting, stripping, pairing, connecting, and crimping, my Ethernet tester told me the all the cables I…
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Avoid overlapping AP channels
When building a Unifi network with APs, it’s tempting to find an open channel, free from neighboring networks, and put all your APs on that same channel, but that would be a mistake. Channel frequencies are, at their core, radio signals on a certain frequency. If you put to APs close enough that their radio…
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Meshing with Unifi networks
When setting up a Unifi network, especially if it’s at home or somewhere that’s not commercially wired, it’s pretty common to run into a room where you just can’t get a good signal from the nearest wired Unifi AP. The logical next step it to put a new Unifi AP in between this room and…