Ken Dyck

Jason Fried:

If I hear “lifestyle business” one more time I’m going to hurl.

Kathy Sierra:

Television is bad for your brain. But television shows can be good for your brain. Until now, that’s been the struggle—if you kill your TV (the cause that’s dearest to me), you kill your chance of watching the shows until/unless they come out on DVD.

Jeff Cornwall:

Health insurance costs are consistently ranked among the most important issues faced by small business owners. This is not a surprise since the cost of offering health insurance is much higher for the smallest employers as seen in a recent study released by the SBA.

Paul Graham (via Larry Borsato:

How do you get good ideas for startups? That’s probably the number one question people ask me.

I’d like to reply with another question: why do people think it’s hard to come up with ideas for startups?

That might seem a stupid thing to ask. Why do they think it’s hard? If people can’t do it, then it is hard, at least for them. Right?

John Gruber (via Ash Mishra):

I suspect that many Mac users — as well as some aspiring developers — have only a half-conceived notion of the economics involved with becoming a successful indie Mac developer.

The basic idea is that a developer comes up with an idea for an app, implements it, ships it, and starts selling software licenses for, typically, around $20-40 a pop. If he can sell 1,000 licenses in a year, that’s a nice hobby. Sell 2,000, and he’s getting close; at around 3,000 licenses per year, revenue is probably in the ballpark range of a full-time salary. (Keep in mind, however, that, say, $80,000 in software license revenue results in much less personal income than a job with an $80,000 salary; salaried jobs tend to come with things like health insurance.)

Arun Natarajan:

Business Week has a cute little quiz to help wannabe entrepreneurs find out if they have the stuff.

Jared Cosulich:

I really had no idea how lonely it would be to try and start a company by myself… I am very passionate about this project, dedicating every waking free moment I have to it, and I know that it would never work out if I tried to partner with someone who didn’t have the same passion for the idea. I also think that it would tough to start a company with someone who had significantly more years behind them and experience than I did as it would be difficult to see eye to eye on controversial decisions.

John Jantsch:

Look, this post is hard for me to write. I like to think of myself as an NPR kind of smart guy, but I have to tell you that the one place I turn to keep myself rooted in how the world thinks and buys, you know, marketing research, is PEOPLE magazine.

Peter Rip (via alarm:clock):

I think there is a real Entrepreneur Bubble these days in Internet software. Step A is seductively easy – buy some servers, write some code. Just understand that 10-100 other teams around the world are doing the exact same thing. How will you sustainably differentiate yourself? What will you do when 15 other similar sites appear in the next 12 months?

2006 Winter Founders Program:

Y Combinator is now accepting applications for the 2006 Winter Founders Program. The WFP is like our Summer Founders Program, but takes place in California. It will run from January through March 2006.