It is a false and foolish but widespread misconception that “innovation” goes only in the direction of additional complexity.
Anonymous asked:
As a Sparrow user, what do you think about the Google acquisition?
I’m sad because I love Sparrow and I wanted it to continue to improve. Most notably, I’m disappointed there will never be push notifications on iPhone (which means I’ll have to keep Mail on my home screen in addition to Sparrow forever now) and that they’ll never fix the bug where account avatars are blurry in Retina on Mac. I’m disappointed and sad because Sparrow is truly fantastic software and, like pretty much ever other user, I want it to continue to be.
But I don’t think the Sparrow team made the wrong decision. I don’t think it’s fair to begrudge people for successfully building something and then selling the company. Is it unfortunate for users? Sure. But does that make it wrong or does this mean the team is screwing us? No. They deserve success—they built something amazing. Do I wish their success would have been in the form of purchases of Sparrow and therefore continuing development? Absolutely. But the software market is a hard place and sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.
One of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left, John Sculley got a very serious disease. And that disease—I’ve seen other people get it, too—it’s the disease of thinking that having a great idea is really 90 percent of the work. And if you just tell people, ‘here’s this great idea,’ then of course they can go off and make it happen. The problem with that is that there’s a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between having a great idea and having a great product.
Yesterday, my business line rang, and on the other end of the line someone asked if I was still hiring for the iOS Developer position. I confirmed we were. “Great! I have a great applicant and I would love to discuss his qualifications with you.” Ugh, I thought. Recruiter.
We can’t have nice things. We can’t have small design companies who make kick-ass products, we can’t have new ideas or features or applications. We can’t have any of these things because Facebook is an internet juggernaut, slowly rolling over everyone and everything.
Karbon was founded in 2010. In the past few years, we’ve designed and built some amazing applications for some huge clients. We even won an Advertising Age award (which sounds extremely impressive). We work day-in and day-out to build solid applications with beautiful user interfaces and thoughtful user experiences.
We started with two people. In our second year, a third developer joined the team. And now we’re ready to bring another solid iOS Developer on so we can continue to provide first-class applications to our clients.
Anonymous asked:
Ok, so this might be the most boring question you got this year.. but I will ask anyways. I have been working on building my software development company for past one year and things have been relatively good in 2011 however, I constantly find myself either under quoting the price or not being able to close the projects on time. For 2012 I want to focus on mobile development, any suggestions for us on how to capture clients?
I know exactly what you’re saying, and it’s hard. There have been several times in my career when I’ve been in exactly the same boat. The competing issues here are landing projects and making profit. It’s very easy to get projects if you lower your prices, but you’ll go nuts with stress when you realize how little you’re actually making for the work. But the flip side here is if you stick to your guns on pricing it’s possible you’ll find yourself without any clients and that’s not a good position either.
From my experience, in times like the ones you’re describing, I lived and died by referrals. But to get referrals, you need to have good friends and a good portfolio. A lot of Karbon’s initial business came from referrals and from the public response to Ego. So one way to get in the door is to build or sell a product people like. You’d be surprised how varying our initial clients were, most of whom kept mentioning they liked Ego. Sometimes work you never thought would have as large of an impact turns out to be a great asset. Building your own mobile products for example purposes is relatively easy so it might be a good idea to try to put something out there you’re proud of.
At the end of the day, you need to charge the appropriate amount for your work—don’t undercut yourself too much. But you may find that occasionally you need to meet a client halfway on pricing. That’s not unacceptable, just be careful not to sell yourself short.
Anonymous asked:
Do you think you could ever get a house on a freelancer's "salary"?
I know plenty of people who have freelanced their way into owning a home. It depends a lot on where you live, how much you make, and how secure your incoming work stream is. If you live in New York City, buying a co-op or condo or a house in the outer boroughs is various levels of insanely expensive, so you’d better be doing pretty well. Los Angeles is the same. But if you’re a freelancer who lives in, say, Kentucky, it’s probably quite a bit easier to buy a place. Location counts when it comes to purchasing land and homes.
To get to the core of your question, I think the simple answer is yes: It’s definitely possible to make a large salary freelancing. You’re going to need great clients with appropriate amounts of money and spending habits. And you’re going to need to work a lot. Eventually, you’ll hit a maximum income that’s based on the physical reality that you’re only one person and you can only work so much. When that happens, you’ll hire people.
