Cards are 2013 National Champs and Coach P thinks he is being shot at. So awesome.
Get Low, Get Low Get Low Get Low
I’m finally getting around to reacting to some of the commentary being published about the lack of technical talent in this region (mid-west).
1) Finding great technical talent is hard in any geographic area of the country, just be glad you aren’t a young start-up in the valley fighting for talent.
2) Our conservative, risk averse mid-western culture has much more to do with the perceived “lack of technical talent” than is realized. UPS, GE, Humana, YUM, etc would not all survive in Louisville if there was an actual shortage of tech talent. It’s here, but the false sense of security that big corps provide strikes fear in people and keeps them from taking a short-term pay cut to go and try to change the world at a start-up. Imagine if your grandfather and your father worked at start-ups their whole life…that’s what happened in Silicon Valley 50-60 yrs ago and why the culture is so different there. It’s taught early in life.
3) We are in the early innings of “start-ups” in the Louisville region (low supply) and therefore not many tech people consider it an option to pursue. The more success stories we have, the better this will get. If you write, focus heavily on those successes.
4) If you have a start-up it’s ultimately up to you to find ways to get it done, whether that’s here or somewhere else. That includes finding great technical partners.
5) The idea that one day there will be a fountain of developers to dip from is an illusion and will never present itself. For a long time to come you will still have to work your ass off to convince your friend to leave his cushy salary to grind it out with you on your idea with no guarantee of tomorrow.
6) If you are on the sidelines, spend more time coming up with experiments like Ted Smith’s “Mayors Salesforce Career Institute” (in general, not necessarily in sales).
7) Generally speaking, complainers don’t come out ahead. Don’t be one and don’t hang out with them.
This isn’t a punch, just my 2 on what’s really going on with the Louisville start-up scene.
Be The Pill
In the world of software, regardless of web, mobile, cloud, desktop, etc, there are two categories:
Vitamins and pills.
Vitamins are nice to have, but you can live without them. Pills you have to take everyday to stay alive. Pills have leverage, vitamins don’t.
You should work really hard on turning your vitamin “app” into a pill “product”. Finding the 1 or 2 things that your “app” solves for your customer will define your “product”. When you strip away the noise and focus on just those 1 or 2 things you will then have a pill. You want to be selling pills, not vitamins.
Try It Local is 2 yrs old and if you know what this shirt means we can be friends (Taken with Instagram)
Derby (Taken with instagram)
Derby (Taken with instagram)
Derby (Taken with instagram)
It’s Hooch! (Taken with instagram)
C Refresher
I found this online course that focuses on the C programming language and have started to dust things off. C is what I learned in college and since I’m interested in iOS I figured I would make sure my C base was solid again before I made the jump to Objective C.
Blaze Your Own Trail
After reading my gold post from yesterday I realized that I sounded a bit trendy and just wanted to follow up by saying that you should always do what makes you happy; not necessarily what makes someone else happy. Trying to live someone else’s dreams will eventually get old because it won’t be what you want, so know who you are and what makes you tick. If it’s writing software to solve big problems then now is a great time to get busy.
