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When we kicked off our SQL Response 2 project last June, we decided to rewrite the product from scratch. Early on, the team decided that it would be web based. It would be easier, they claimed, to write cleaner code and create a more modular user interface. They talked about ASP.NET MVC, jQuery and separation [...]
Derek Sivers has a great blog post on his fantastic blog illustrating how talent is overrated, and why it
The Business of Software conference scratches a deeply personal itch. I set it up because I care about building a profitable, sustainable and enduring software business. I wanted to hear from the most eloquent, most experienced and most thought provoking people in the world, and meet people in the same boat as me, struggling with [...]
Just before Easter everybody involved at product development at Red Gate stopped working for a week. The only thing we expected was the unexpected. And we weren
A few months ago, I was stuck in the meeting from hell. Red Gate
Are you worried about how your software business will cope with the impending end of the world? What? You didn’t know that the world was about to end? You should definitely listen to Mark Stephen’s fantastic talk from last year’s Business of Software conference. It’s witty, it’s insightful and it’s short (under seven minutes long). [...]
Rob’s strict adherence to “release early, release often” in all areas of his life was starting to irritate his colleagues
My second attempt at a cartoon. I have no idea whether it
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Three months ago, four Red Gaters volunteered to lock themselves into a converted barn on the Suffolk coast for a week, ate pizza, drank beer and coded. When Alex, Dom, Nagashree and Rob stumbled back into the office, they
Have you ever wondered what pulling a pint of English ale can tell you about software interfaces? Or are you curious about Steve Jobs's magic ability to create news from a vacuum*? These are just two of the topics our user experience folk (they're the people who design Red Gate's software) have covered in our [...]
At Red Gate we like to try new things. The million dollar challenge and the accidental incubator are a couple of examples. Combine this with an occasional but nagging frustration at how long it can take to get stuff done nowadays and a curiosity about how much a small team can achieve if we just [...]
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This year’s Pecha Kucha finalists have got their work cut out for them. Twenty slides, twenty seconds each, it
"Sales people are different from you and me." "Yes, they want money more." A year – a few months, even – ago, I would have agreed with this. It’s common knowledge that sales people are motivated differently to the rest of us. You need to keep them hungry, drive them with low basic salaries and [...]
I've decided to offer ten free student tickets to Business of Software 2009. Here's what you need to do to qualify: Be in full-time education Be a hacker, and show some evidence of this. E-mail me a link to your blog / an open source project you've worked on / something you've built MBAs etc. [...]
Joel Spolsky is running a startup workshop in San Francisco after this year's Business of Software conference. It sounds really cool. You can find out more on Joel's blog.
Back in April I blogged about the Red Gate million dollar challenge. Red Gate is fortunate enough to be profitable and have money in the bank. We've bought companies in the past, and it felt like a good time to do it again. Finding great companies is hard, and we're lazy, so we set up [...]
As the title says. The deadline is 1st September. See here for more information.
“I know kung fu.” In the Matrix, when Neo wants to learn kung-fu all he has to do is upload a fighting module. A few seconds later and he’s sparring with Morpheus in a virtual dojo. Living in a computer simulation and being bred as an energy source for a machine master-race has its disadvantages, [...]
In one corner of Red Gate, next to the giant mural of the coloured pencils and about 20 feet from where I sit, you
Back in 1999, after quitting a job I hated that involved working on products that sucked and with and for (with some exceptions) people I didn't respect, I found myself in the small life boat that was Red Gate, with Simon as co-navigator, a small contracting revenue as a paddle and no hat. Bob Walsh's [...]
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The hardest part of learning something – whether it's quantum electrodynamics, a foreign language or sketching – is getting past the stage of total freaking hopelessness. Read more on my other blog: http://blog.neildavidson.com/2009/07/the-chasm-of-total-freaking-hopelessness.html
When somebody downloads software from our web site we follow up a few days later with an e-mail asking how their trial went. Sometimes people write back. Here's a reply that made me smile. From: ***** [mailto:******@*****.com]Sent: 17 July 2009 19:03To: Red GateSubject: RE: Red Gate Customer follow up I did not, in fact, enjoy [...]
I've set up a second blog where I'll be writing about topics other than the business of software. I've already put up a couple of posts. Here's the link: http://blog.neildavidson.com
In any sale, you spend a lot of your time listening. You find out what your customer
In a post last week, Seth Godin explained a problem with giving people feedback about their work. In essence, what happens is this. You say