Joel Spolsky (“Joel on Software”), founder and CEO of Stack Overflow, discusses lessons of building successful software companies. Host Nate Black spoke with Joel about the venture funded “land grab” situations vs. “bootstrapping with profitability”. How do venture capitalists think and how can you make fundraising easier? What’s the strategy to keep as much ownership of your company as possible? Besides growth and revenue, a third factor of a company’s valuations is risk. “Proof points” are a way of demonstrating low risk and will earn a higher valuation. What is the deciding factor for whether you will be successful when starting a company? What do founders risk when failure doesn’t mean going hungry? Rants include: what software companies still get massively wrong, how to do remote teams right, how developers undervalue their time by reinventing the wheel, how to make sure you are happy in your next job, and how to be a good citizen on Stack Overflow.
Show Notes
Related Links
- Joel’s blog: “Joel on Software”
- Fast growth vs slow growth companies
- Glitch (formerly Fog Creek Software)
- Trello
SE Radio theme: “Broken Reality” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com — Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0)
