We work with start-ups that are in various stages of fundraising.  I often talk with entrepreneurs about raising money and do what I can to make introductions.  In some cases, we’ll convert a small percentage of our services fees into an investment, so we know what it’s like to have some skin in the game.  We work with clients we believe in, regardless of our “participation,” and love the excitement of early-stage companies.

Having started Viget in 1999, we went through a bit of the tech bubble and all of the bust, and we learned a lot of lessons.  One was: no matter how good it gets, don’t bet the farm on start-ups.  So, we continue to balance our client list with traditional offline companies as well as start-ups, and that balance benefits both kinds of clients in addition our staff and our company.

There continues to be mainstream talk of a recession, and some VC’s are talking about what a downturn could mean to the investment community and start-ups seeking funding.  Even as we grow and expand, we talk about it internally — should we be concerned?

(more…)

Will lists Martin Plaehn’s Quick Hits: Do’s and Don’ts of Entrepreneurship.  There are eight of each, all good, but the top three don’ts are worth repeating:

1. Don’t hire of goodness of heart or friendship
2. Don’t hire anyone who you and your team are not genuinely excited about
3. Don’t tolerated mediocre engineers; for that matter, mediocre anyone. An early sign of mediocrity is when you downgrade tasks and expectations to align with an employee

Good advice.  Thanks to Brad for the link.

Gil is the Chief Engineer at Squidoo.  He put up a lens telling the story of how Squidoo went from an idea in Seth’s head to a profitable business and the 14th fastest web site in 2007.  They’ve always had a lean strategy, and early-on that meant hiring Viget.

“To keep our staff as lean as possible, we considered several options, ultimately leading to a partnership with Viget Labs, who helped us build version 1.0 of Squidoo.  Hiring in-house employees vs an outside consulting form can be a difficult choice for any startup. On one hand, hiring employees can be a great (and sometimes inexpensive) way to ensure dedication to your project, but the security of fixed cost development and no long-term employee commitments proved to be the right choice for us.”

It’s great to get an inside perspective on both the good decisions and the mistakes that an online start-up is making.  He touches on the benefits of short iterations and frequent releases:

(more…)

Thanks to Emily’s creative recruiting tactics, Computerworld contributing writer, Mary Brandel, contacted us about an article she was writing (Rock Star Coders) in which she wanted to “take a look at the growing subculture of developers who’ve gained (or think they’ve gained) something along the lines of ’star status’ in the world of programming.”  We were happy to talk with her (trade emails, mostly), and she got particularly good insights from Clinton, a Senior Developer at Viget.  She left off my favorite thing that he said, though:

“When I saw an ad for Viget, the phrasing appealed to me: it showed that they cared that their developers were *people* as much as code-writing machines. They realized that speaking at a conference - I spoke as O’Reilly’s OSCON last year - is a good quality: it shows you seek to expose your thoughts. Maybe that’s the core of being a rockstar programmer: you aren’t afraid to show your code and your ideas to the world, and that lack of self-consciousness propels you to greatness.”

Of course, he wasn’t responding to our rock star post.  That came a bit later. 

I like the article and appreciate Mary’s work on it.  Since we came off as the pro-rock star term slant, I’d hope that anyone who reads the article takes the time to read the job post.  I would think you’d “get” that we are in fact pretty light-hearted about the term. 

(more…)

I spent some time this morning talking with my three year-old daughter about Martin Luther King Jr.  I did my best to put into simple terms why he was great man, and his contributions to making the world a better place.  I wanted her to experience his speeches directly, so we watched a couple of shows on the History Channel and some videos on YouTube.

Being able to see the footage of his inspiring speeches and the protests that took place during the civil rights movement reminded me of one of my engineering courses at Virginia.  In it, we discussed how the television coverage of these protests — which often showed police officers attacking defenseless, peaceful people with water cannons, batons, and dogs – influenced Americans across the country in much more profound ways than photographs and news reports had previously.  In many respects, television was the technical catalyst that propelled the horrible realities of racism into American living rooms everywhere, to the point where the issue could no longer be ignored.

(more…)

I’ve blogged about Viget’s Third Third Thursday tradition before, and this past week it was that time again.  We embraced the season and set out in style for ice skating downtown in DC.  I was excited by the forecast — snow — but initially less excited by the reality — semi-frozen rain (with a bit of snow mixed in) — because I thought it would discourage the fun.  Boy was I wrong.  Even though we all got a little wet and risked serious injury, most of the group got out on the ice and had a blast.  Those who decided not to skate hung out and watched us skate gracefully try to avoid falling.

(more…)

The Library of Congress has 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials, much of it without any metadata (who is in a photo, where it was taken, etc.).  How do you collect all that metadata with a limited government staff and budget?  One way is to have smart people work with an innovative company to form a partnership whereby an active online community can willingly do the hard work for you.  A huge team doing small bits of work can accomplish a lot more than a small team trying to do a seemly endless chore, so they’re starting with 3,000 photos and asking us — the community — to tag them with anything we can contribute.  It’s yet another long tail strategy.  Read about The Commons on Flickr and the Library of Congress (announced today on their blog).

There are countless opportunities for the government to leverage web technologies and communities in ways that will help agencies fulfill their missions and benefit the public in a number of ways.  It’s great to see the Library leading in this area — I hope others follow.

Guy has a guest post from Professor Scott Shane covering the Top Ten Myths of Entrepreneurship.  It’s worth a look, though I have to disagree with #10:

10. Starting a business is easy.

That’s not a myth — that’s as true as can be.  What’s hard is sustaining and growing a business, of course.  Then again, if you’re going into a start-up and you didn’t know that already, all the advice in the world — even from Guy Kawasaki — won’t help you.

I don’t.  Yet.  But you might!

We’re looking for a great senior designer who wants to keep designing while leading our design group and helping our already-awesome design team become yet even more awesome. 

This is a rare opportunity at a small (we’re 28 people … ) growing (… going on 30) company and it’s a perfect fit for that super talented and ambitious designer friend of yours.  So tell her him that person about it.  She’ll He’ll That person will thank you for it, and so will I.