The more well known you are, the less control one has over the narrative. That’s why those who try to “leak” things to the media or try to manipulate the media narrative are playing with fire.  Most situations situations are fairly boring. Boring doesn’t generate page views. As a result, there is a tendency to spice those headlines up. Brad: The Narrative To use myself as an example, here are some facts vs. narratives I’ve read. Issue Narrative ...

I'm told that my interview with Wired magazine regarding the death of Steve Jobs is scheduled to show up in the August issue of Wired.  Keep an eye out! 

I get asked this a lot. And the answer I gave most recently was “About a third smaller than it is today.” As a statistical nut, I made a pie chart of what I spend my day doing. It was depressing. Most of my work day is spent doing business stuff.  And the more “successful” (and I use that term with some derision these days) the worse it gets.  Every week I can count on an hour of legal review. What kind of legal landmines do we need to watch out for now? If you’re a bus...

I was somewhat bummed to read on Coding Horror that Jeff Atwood is leaving the Stack Exchange.   As many of you know, we are pretty religious readers of Coding Horror and Joel on Software . Jeff’s blog had come up quite a bit recently as we are in the process of coming up with new coding standards here at work.  More specifically, his recent blog on anti-aliasing was a major inspiration for doing “spot antialising” in Elemental: Fallen Enchantress (the id...

Mashable Business has a good article today on starting a business. They list 6 things which are very useful. It’s missing a few items that I think should be added or emphasized more. Here are 7 through 10 that I would have added: 7. Get used to failing often. The article talks about not being afraid to fail. But I think most people will take that as meaning that your business might fail.  In my 20 years of running a business, 90% of the things I’ve worked on have failed (...

I started my company when I was still a teenager. And I can tell you, looking back, I wish I knew now what I knew then. Starting a company with no capital and no partners is most definitely the hard way to do things. But I had no money and none of my friends were comfortable taking the necessary risks. The result was many years of long hard slogging. Sheer brute force in terms of hours being put in. Capital trumps time. Anyone who says time is money really has no idea what they’re talking a...

As we enter the New Year, 2011 has some hope in front of it but I’m not ready to predict anything too exciting. For business owners, interest rates remain very low which makes capital for those with good credit ratings readily available.  3.25% interest rates are not uncommon right now for those who know how to obtain it.  Thus, it becomes a question of how certain you are to generate net revenue that exceeds what you borrow at the going interest rate. Historically, I’ve disl...

So as some of you know, I recently built a big house. And by big I mean ridiculously, offensively big. Naturally, the class warfare people have come out of the woodwork in certain circles to complain. Do I need such a large house? Nope. Then why? Because I wanted it. It was one of the personal objectives I had set out for back when I started my business. But doesn’t such an extravagant display of wealth merely demonstrate how unfair our system is? Sure, I may have work...

http://gawker.com/5641211/steve-jobs-in-email-pissing-match-with-college-journalism-student?skyline=true&s=i A woman buys an apple from a local farmer. The woman now has an apple and the farmer has money. Both parties have made, what they believe, is an even trade. Yet, time and time again we see people who feel entitled to something beyond the original trade. In this case, the woman buys an apple and now expects the farmer to help her out on something unrelated. What amazes...

I’m an engineer. I went to college for it. Got a degree in it. Dilbert cartoons apply to people like me. One of the things that’s been really challenging since having my own company is just how idiotic the business world is. You read about it. You hear about it. But seeing the idiocy first hand is just incredibly frustrating. Why did such and such deal get made? Because someone had a better technology? No. Because someone made a better business case? No. Instead, all too often I see de...

  Ego isn’t the same as pride. Pride is the enemy. It is the destroyer. Pride is what makes people go against their own best interests.

One of my observations on the net is that the better known I become, the more likely someone will flame me and try to explain how much more they know than I do in one of my professional areas of expertise. Whether this be the game industry, business, or PC software development, I increasingly will find some guy on a forum who will smugly try to tell me how much smarter than they are than I am. Now, maybe they are smarter than I am. But strangely, what I suspect is more likely is that t...

The other day I got my social security statement in where it shows how much I have made each year since I started working. The amounts are all over the place, especially after I made Stardock my career. There is something truly unique in the personality makeup of the entrepreneur that founds his (or her) own company from scratch to execute on some new idea and then builds it up to something that involves hiring employees and dealing with significant amounts of revenue. For one thing, I thi...

I've often been asked what it takes to be successful in starting your own business and being successful at it. Similarly, I have seen in various political debates about how CEOs are largely replaceable/disposable which I know from experience is definitely not true. Below are some traits that most successful entrepreneurs I've met have (some may seem incidental but they are key and few people are good at all these things): Must be pretty good with money. Budgets. Forcasting, e...

When my company was smaller and struggling, I drove a very modest car. Nothing is a bigger obstacle to success than consumerism. People who squander precious resources on consumables are their own worst enemy. But in the past few years, as the company has become increasingly successful, I have increased the budget on what consumables I purchase. My attitude hasn't changed, I actually spend a smaller percentage of my income on consumables than I used to. It's simply an increase in consumption ...