DPL Reading List – June 10, 2016
Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week.
Funded Vs Bootstrapped: Comparing The Metrics Of 37 SaaS Companies (Thanks to Brian Zimmer for recommending this article) – “I’m tracking what’s going on in the SaaS world for some time now and I’ve definitely noticed the rise of bootstrapped SaaS startups in our industry. This trend is not new but I have the feeling it’s accelerating. I meet and speak with more and more founders which run this kind of businesses (and are very happy about it). So naturally when I saw that on Nathan Latka public SaaS metrics spreadsheet there were 12 of them, with a breakdown of their core metrics, I decided to make a comparison with the VC funded startups of this same list.”
Startups Can’t Explain What They Do Because They’re Addicted To Meaningless Jargon (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “’Content.’ ‘Platforms.’ ‘Synergy.’ ‘End-to-end.’ ‘Solutions.’ It’s nearly impossible to find a startup at the conference that doesn’t resort to jargon when describing itself. These words sound technical and informed. But they mean nothing, and they make it difficult for ordinary people to understand what a company actually does. In an effort to either sound smart and attract investors, or to simply dress up an otherwise boring product, startups that rely too much on jargon end up alienating the users they want to attract.”
9 Useful Apps For Product Managers (Thanks to Brian Zimmer for recommending this article) – “If you are a product manager, you know just how important great tools are for planning and managing your team’s progress on a daily basis. If you’re looking for applications to help make your workflow more organized and efficient, here’s a list of nine great products to try.”
The Broken Window Theory In Design & Product Development – “The Broken Window Theory is also present in design and product development. I just recently noticed this on a project I was working on. During the project we postponed a lot of small little things. “Let’s do it later” we said. A classic mistake. As a result, we as a team felt increasingly less motivated to work on this particular project. I felt that everything was falling apart, I wasn’t happy with it but I couldn’t tell what it is that bothered me so much.”
Library Agnosticism (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “The choice of library should always be based solely on the technical advantage that the library gives to your project, not on popularity or prospective new developers. As engineers, the thing that makes us most attractive to employers is our ability to learn and adapt, and it’s those who continue to learn and adapt that ultimately have successful, long careers.”
360 Million Reasons To Destroy All Passwords (Thanks to Nathan Wilkinson for recommending this article) – “If you used your email address to sign up for Medium, you probably noticed that they don’t use passwords anymore, either. So let’s ditch passwords. The web will be less frustrating. And a whole lot more secure. If you’re on the fence about this, go change all your passwords. Really. You should.”
The Impact Of The Blockchain Goes Beyond Financial Services (Thanks to Brian Zimmer for recommending this article) – “In the mid-1990s, smart managers worked hard to understand the internet and how it would affect their businesses. Today, blockchain technology is ushering in the second generation of the Internet, and if companies don’t want to get left behind, they’ll need to dodge the Innovator’s dilemma and disrupt from within.”
