book : "Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup"

In these tough economic times, some of you who are developers may think to start their own business. The Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup book is about developers who want to start their startup. David Welton has written a review on his blog : Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup.

I find the « Starting for the Right Reasons » discussion very useful : it's so easy to be wrong on this.

Here is an extract :

«
Most developers want to build software products for the wrong reasons.

Reason #1 : Having a Product Idea
If you have an idea for a product, odds are high that you have a product/project confusion.

A project is a software application you build as a fun side project.
[...]

A product is a project that people will pay money for. In other words, it's a project that has a market (a group of people who want to buy it). Without a market, a software application is just a project.

Most developers who come up with an idea know exactly how they will build it, but no idea how they will reach potential customers. They think a link on TechCrunch will drive hundreds, if not thousands, of sales.

On rare occasions the product-first approach works, but for the most part it's a recipe for failure.
»

Apple vs Google - on the ongoing battle between previously strategic allies

BusinessWeek publish Apple vs. Google, an article on Apple Inc. and Google subtitled "How the battle between Silicon Valley's superstars will shape the future of mobile computing". This article gives clues to understand what is going on between the two compagnies that were strategic allies and that now consider each other more likely as a concurrent. It seems to be all a matter of how to make money from ads on mobile devices.

The side bar contains the following table :

Beside the figures, the way they consider business, the mind of the compagny, the Big challenge they have to face to, the decision process and employees who matter are interresting.

Here is another article, The battle for the clouds (Google) from the What matters..... blog to complete the BusinessWeek article.