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No need to spend time on it, there will not be a test later :-)

When was the last time a website got slashdotted in the last 10 years? My websites could handle being slashdotted — and my webhost provider will send me a bill for the bandwidth.

The reason I'm asking is because I'm starting to suspect that you're a highly advanced chatbot.

That's on my to do list as a programming project.

[...] a known database of stock responses ("bankrupt", "govt. contractor", etc) [...]

One of the reason my comment history scraper script saves to a CSV file is that I can load it up in Excel and search by keywords. All my comments have a keyword or two.

[...] I'm willing to bet you're not self-aware enough to realise that you're stuck in a conversation loop, endless repeating yourself with no awareness of the fact that your audience has already heard you give the same speech multiple times.

Go listen to Guy Kawaski on YouTube. His core speech is why a dog food delivery app doesn't work. The beginnings and endings are slightly different, but it's always the same speech that he gives 50 times each year.

I'm curious to see if you can meet that hurdle; are you self-aware enough to not repeat your employment history in part or in full for the next 6 months?

Uh, no. I'm having too much fun. :P

Powerpoint doesn't work? Its your fault. Didn't embed that YouTube video correctly? Its your fault. Your laptop can't talk to the projector? Its your fault. The Projector doesn't work? Its your fault. If you aren't professional enough to have your research paper backed up on a thumbdrive, a second laptop for your group presentation, or even /gasp!/ a paper copy, ITS YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT.

Hmmm... sounds an awful lot like you're quoting Guy Kawasaki's The Art of the Start without proper referencing ... ;-)

- Jesper

Parent was unfortunately moderated as "insightful" despite unsourced misinformation. Here's a sourced correction for you. Note that Google makes extensive use of MySQL in production:

Question: What's the biggest MySQL DB?

That's like asking what's the biggest Ferrari! What counts is performance and scalability. Omniture runs over 250 billion transactions per quarter on a farm of MySQL servers. Google uses MySQL for AdSense and AdWords. Other large installations include Wikipedia, Travelocity, Weather.com, etc. The databases can be hundreds of gigabytes. Sites run on hundreds of servers, some on thousands.

Read more: "How to Change the World: Ten Questions with Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL" - http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/08/ten_questions_w_2.html#ixzz0GEf5dFmI&A

If there's one man who could replace Jobs when he decides to leave / retire, it's Guy Kawasaki.

Why can't we just agree that taxes in general are a bad thing?

Because that just is not the case; it is an oversimplification. From the rest of your post I take it you live in the US. A lot of US-ians never take the time to see if their mantra of "This Is The Best Country In The World" is actually correct by comparing their own country to other countries. When you compare the US to other countries you will see:

• the US does not compare good when you look at how happy its inhabitants are.
• the US has the largest number of people doing life sentences because of something they did as a minor
• poverty rate is about 12.5% One in 8 people in the US live in poverty. That is bad for a developed nation, worse than Thailand for instance.
• more than 1% of the US population is in prison

Why am I bringing all of this up in a taxes related context? The end of Soviet Russia has proven that too much tax (everyone gets the same, in theory) did not work. There was not enough incentive. The total opposite, having as little tax as possible, which you sort of see in the US, is also not working correctly.

A lot of the countries that are higher on the happiness list (or lower on the crimes etc. lists) have way higher taxes than the US. This allows for instance the authorities here in NL to prevent or counter-act ghetto-forming by opening up 'buurthuizen' (neighborhood houses) in which people can follow courses etc. This leads to less crime and more people doing something useful in our society.

Is the government as productive with money as a private business? No. But there are things better left to government. Do I like paying tax? No. Would I rather pay less and live in a less pleasant environment? No. So I pay tax and I am glad for the system we have here in the Netherlands. But then again, our politicians seem to be a lot less corrupt ("campaign donations" here are frowned upon) and we have to reach consensus because we do not have a winner-takes-all system like in the US.

The bottom line: please look beyond your own country to see how taxes can add to the welfare of people paying those taxes. And then: please try and change your political system in a way that taxes are put to better use. Sorry if I seem to be patronizing, but I rather see the US turn into something good that something worse; and that makes me care.

As http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/06/how_to_kick_si l.html points out "If I had to point to the single biggest reason for Silicon Valley's existence, it would be Stanford University--specifically, the School of Engineering"

Think of all the companies that have been spawned out of people from Stanford, some of which happened while they were still going to school there. Examples: Google, Yahoo, SUN (Stanford University Network), MIPS

You don't nead a mission statement...you need a mantra. I'm also a fan of making a business plan one page long. It forces you to cut out the perfunctory bs...like projecting sales 5 years out, when all you've got is essentially a public beta. Just do it. Do it quickly. And if you're not cash flow positive within 6 months, then stop doing it.

if you're a tech entrepreneur, you might find these interesting:

guy kawasaki's ten favorite books

definitely second guy's suggestions of influence, crossing the chasm and innovator's dilemma; i'd also include the tipping point and blink (both by malcolm gladwell, quick reads -- kinda fluffy but interesting), seth godin's all marketers are liars, high tech startup by john nesheim, emotional intelligence by daniel goleman, and windows internals by mark russinovich, and for web design don't make me think is pretty good... what else -- i like joel spolsky's stuff, particularly user interface design for programmers, joel on software, and best software writing I is interesting too. paul graham's hackers and painters is also an interesting read if you haven't read his essays online.

n.b. i was logged into amazon at the time of copying those links, and judging by the length of the urls, there's probably some referrer shenanigans in there. if that bothers you, feel free to (un)mangle the link (i don't really care about making 17 cents or whatever if someone clicks one of the links).

-fren

What proportion of active MySQL users pay for service, and what is the average income per user?

More or less answered as the first question here.

To avoid asking something that's already been answered, here's a synopsis of some of his more recent interviews.

In Guy Kawasaki's Blog, he's asked:
1. How do you make money with an Open Source product?
2. What changes in the Open Source community's attitude have you encountered since you decided "to build a company" around MySQL?
3. Do you compete head to head with Oracle or do you have different customers?
4. What's the biggest MySQL DB?
5. What's the weirdest use of MySQL?
6. What's the most "mission critical" use of MySQL?
7. How does a company controls what's happening to its product when the Open Source community is doing the programming and testing?
8. Is Open Source hindering innovation because it's one thing to debug an existing product but it's another to design a new one?
9. Who fixes the most bugs?
10. If MySQL ceased to exist as an organization, would MySQL the product continue?

In InfoWorld, he's asked:
1. Recently, a number of open-source developers have expressed their unhappiness with the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the second draft of GPLv3. Are you concerned about a potential forking of the license as some people stick with GPLv2 and others move to GPLv3?
2. How do you decide when MySQL needs to develop new features for the database and when to rely on the open-source community for those innovations?
3. So, is open source then a more forgiving environment than the proprietary software world?
4. What's ahead in 2007 for MySQL?
5. What's the latest news on Falcon, the transactional database engine being developed by database architect Jim Starkey who joined MySQL in February?
6. Is MySQL's current dominance of the open-source database market ever a cause for concern?

In Forbes, he's asked:
1. How is open source software influencing what the bigger tech giants like Oracle, IBM and Microsoft will do in the next year?
2. Do open source firms that sell to large, proprietary software companies risk being dubbed sellouts by the community that's helped them develop their software?
3. How do Oracle's recent open source acquisitions affect MySQL?
4. Is Oracle more of a threat now?
5. What is MySQL's workforce like?
6. MySQL recently took funding from Red Hat, Intel and SAP. What's the strategy here?
7. Is there an IPO for MySQL in the future?

In LXer, he's asked:
1. What are your short and long term goals do you have for the MySQL database system?
2. Realistically where do you think you will pick up quick conversions to enhance your immediate market share from your competitors? Later, how much market share must MySQL commercial versions have to pick up to have long-term viability?
3. If you see your main opportunity is in the replacement of Oracle installations does MySQL match or exceed the forte of Oracle in the transaction per second processing? Are you now aimed at the lower end of the Oracle market installations? What will it take to be really competitive with Oracle at the upper end of the scale?
4. If you see your natural market as the range SQL Server is now aimed at, small medium business and departmental installations, can you match their ease of administration? If not what is the salient argument for such companies to install MySQL over the competition? Since you are primarily aimed at the market willing to pay for your enhancements and support, do you see any advantage in offering a MySQL product that will undercut MySQL server from below?
5. What trade offs have had to be made to make MySQL 5.0 commercial version more feature rich and robust?
6. Where do you see competition arising from for pursuing the paths to th

Those trying to figure out the relations between Google and Apple, apart from the obvious ones, may be interested in reading this post from Guy Kawasaki, and check out the "Apple and Google" report he shows as an example.

It's ironic that the guy himself has a blog, he's an Amazon employee and he publishes "Amazon employees shouldn't be blogging" diatribes on it. I mean, I myself think blogs are idiotic with rare exceptions, but his choosing of the medium is entertaining.

And every one of those eight is in an area where someone else already has an entry.

Not neccesarily a bad thing. Guy Kawasaki has commented that there are a lot of smart people in the world... if you come up with an idea, look around, and see abolutely no competition, then you have pull a Scott Adams and ask yourself, "which is more likely?"

• I am incredibly smarter, luckier, and/or more insightful than each and every other person on the planet who might have ever had the chance to come up with this idea. In a sea of six billion faceless drones, I alone am unique.
• There are smarter people in the world - much smarter than me - who have thought of and then discarded this idea as the disgusting piece of trash that it is.

Now, you see, the trick is that if you are somewhat smarter, luckier, or more insightful, you have two choices. You can attempt to come up with something completely original and new, which is really risky, as shown above. Or, you can enter a known, existing, money making market where your somewhat-smarter brain, store of luck and somewhat novel insgihts will allow you to out-maneuver the barely sentient cretins who currently inhabit that market niche. Still somewhat risky, but not anywhere near as risky as trying to create a completely new market.

"The real iPod killer won't be an mp3 player" Guy Kawasaki says something similar. Innovation is not progressing along the same curve (i.e. adding a Helvetica 18 point font to a daisy wheel typewriter) but jumping to another curve (i.e. laser printers).

I have found forums to be the key in the communities I participate in. You can build other things around them, but the forums are the bedrock. Other then that, check out what Guy Kawasaki has to say in: The Art of Creating a Community

...prevent giant business partners and competitors and the like profiting from doing things with our software and users we didn't authorize.

The ironic part of this is how the Mac became popular. When Apple's Mac team started to market the Mac, they figured there were three programs any home user would want: word processor, spreadsheet, and database. So that's all they marketed. Sales were mediocre at best, despite what was arguably one of the world's best TV commercials.

The Mac really took off when a little company called Aldus wrote a desktop publishing program called PageMaker.

Source: Keynote speech by Guy Kawasaki, former 'evangelist' for Macintosh.

It discusses more than just business plans, but I highly, highly recommend you read The Art of the Start: Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything by Guy Kawasaki. ISBN# 1591840562, it's on Amazon for $17.79 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591840562/). Guy Kawasaki (http://www.guykawasaki.com/) has written several business books with a tech-focus, and was one of the first 'evangelists' at Apple for the Macintosh.

I'm right in the middle of (trying to, at least) following his advice with my own startup, and my girlfriend actually has a fairly successful online store and eBay business that after reading this book, I realized she started up much in the same way he recommends, and she's done well so far.

One interesting concept he pushes heavily in the book is bootstrapping - using your own resources to get the business up and running and generating some type of revenue, and then using that revenue to purchase the things you really need to generate the big revenue, etc. This model works really well for some types of online storefronts - it really all depends on how expensive your inventory is and how many different types/components/colors/sizes you have to stock, as well as how much inventory you need to keep on hand.

Before my girlfriend had enough money to buy a large inventory, she carefully purchased 2-5 of each item she thought she could sell well, up to whatever limit she had on how much money she could spend, and sold those. With the profits she made on those items, she started purchasing dozen-packs of the items that were selling well, and after those kept selling and generated even more revenue, she started using that money to branch out into new products. She's managed to start everything on her personal credit card, and after a pretty rough first year, she even manages to pay the credit card off each month and still have a good bit of money left over.

It's almost embarassing, actually, since the business I'm starting has yet to make a dime.

Obviously, if you have other resources such as a line of credit or bank-loan of some form that will charge lower interest than your credit cards, use that, but never underestimate how much you can do on your own, without needing investors. And once you do need investors, think angel investors, not VC's.

If you still think you'll need more capital than you can fund from personal resources or angels, think about bringing on a partner, someone you know who may be able to contribute some additional resources. Especially if it's someone who is a non-techie or has a more business-oriented background. I'm not talking about hiring an MBA, but it's important to balance your skills, strengths and weaknesses with someone else's, so that when you do hit a situation you don't know how to handle or need assistance with, that partner has a better chance of being able to see it from a different angle and help the business succeed.

Finally, about the business plan - Business Plan Pro is a pretty nice software package (Amazon.com sells it for $16 off the normal price, at $83.99 - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 9PF1QO/) that includes quite a few sample plans and other resources and guides for writing a business plan. You can write it on your own, using your favorite text editor, using the websites of SCORE and other organizations as a guide, but I found Business Plan Pro's help with the financials was worth the price of the software. Even though a majority of the numbers in the financials of a business plan are just best-guesses and often completely wild, random guesses, potential investors put a lot of weight into the numbers they see, they want to see that you know how to put together these tables and that they have some sort of reassuring numbers to look at.

And revise it. Plan to revise your business plan often. Write

Unless you really need a lot of capital to start out with (and probably even then) avoid VCs like the plague. They will f*ck you and not even say thanks. Seriously, their job is to let someone else take all the risks, then jump in and make a metric buttload of money off of an idea that has already been proven. They are very seldom risk-takers, and they are generally ruthless. There are somne exceptions, but if you must find a VC, do your homework first. Talk to entrepreneurs who have worked with VCs. Get first-hand info from people who've been through a VC experience and survived to tell the tale.

When writing a business plan, cut through the crap. Read Guy Kawasaki's stuff. He knows what he's talking about. His piece on business plans is brief and to the point, which is how your business plan should be.

Good luck to you!

What i'd need... ...is a book about how to get things started.

You mean like Guy Kawasaki's book, The Art Of The Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide For Anyone Starting Anything?

Now you have no excuses.

Guy Kawasaki's How to Drive Your Competition Crazy is great because it talks about what really makes people do your job for you in promoting your product. It also doesn't assume that you have a huge, traditional marketing department.