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Entrepreneurship boils down to the simple fact that a team of really smart people who can get things done are going to get smart, useful things done.

Joel Spolsky

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Joel Spolsky
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: January 1
Businessperson
Chief Executive Officer
Computer Scientist
Programmer
Software Engineer
Albuquerque
New Mexico
Avram Joel Spolsky
Going
Entrepreneurship
Really
Useful
Things
Smart
People
Team
Simple
Fact
Facts
Done
Boils

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The secret of Big Macs is that they're not very good, but every one is not very good in exactly the same way.
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Not having a schedule is OK if it's your PhD and you plan to spend 14 years on the thing, or if you're a programmer working on the next Duke Nukem and we'll ship when we're good and ready. But for almost any kind of real business, you just have to know how long things are going to take, because developing a product costs money.
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If something seems possible, that's probably because someone is already doing it. When something seems that it can't possibly work, nobody tries it. Real innovation happens when someone tries anyway, overlooking an obvious flaw, and finds a way to make an idea work.
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Beware of Methodologies. They are a great way to bring everyone up to a dismal, but passable, level of performance, but at the same time, they are aggravating to more talented people who chafe at the restrictions that are placed on them.
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Never put yourself in a position that will put yourself at risk if you make the wrong decision. We spent cash on everything. It's fashionable to make 'bet the company' decisions, but don't do it.
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Talk to your customers. Find out what they need. Don't pay any attention to the competition. They're not relevant to you.
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Remember, just because Microsoft can do something, doesn't mean you can. Microsoft makes their own gravity. Normal rules don't apply to them.
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Full service brokers, in this day and age of low cost mutual funds and discount brokers, are really nothing more than machines for ripping off retail investors.
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Common programmer thought pattern: there are only three numbers: 0, 1, and n.
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Something is usable if it behaves exactly as expected.
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If your goals is to produce something of permanent value, you start to think differently about you want on the site.
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Design adds value faster than it adds cost.
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An idea isn't worth that much. It's the execution of the idea that has value. If you can't convince one other person that this is something to devote your life to, then it's not worth it.
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We just have to come in every morning and somehow, launch the editor.
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Writing code is not production, it's not always craftsmanship though it can be, it's design.
Joel Spolsky
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Good software, like wine, takes time.
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Nothing works better than just improving your product.
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I've been using Vista on my home laptop since it shipped, and can say with some conviction that nobody should be using it as their primary operating system - it simply has no redeeming merits to overcome the compatibility headaches it causes.
Joel Spolsky
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People ridiculously overvalue aesthetics and beauty when evaluating products. It's one of the reasons iPods, and, for that matter, Keanu Reeves, are so successful.
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So if you want to get things done, you positively have to understand at any given point in time what is the most important thing to get done right now and if you're not doing it, you're not making progress at the fastest possible rate.
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