In December 2024, in response to the press/advocacy campaign by Marc Andreessen and other crypto advocates regarding a phenomenon they call debanking, I wrote Debanking (and Debunking?) in Bits about Money. That piece is the definitive expl…
I described Tether in 2019 as “the internal accounting system for the largest fraud since Madoff.” This remains true. Earlier in 2022, in the wake of the Luna/USDT collapse and shockwaves hitting the industry, I wrote that their May 2022 at…
[A quick note for readers of Japanese who may be looking for a translation which was here previously: 残念ながら、以前リンクされていた本文の和訳が翻訳者のサイトの更新により、アクセスできなくなりました。ご了承ください。] I’ve been in Japan for ten years now and often get asked about how business wo…
Samuel Hulick, one of the guys I trust most with regards to SaaS user onboarding, joined us for this episode of the podcast. I met Sam first when he was writing a book on the topic. The best evidence I can give you for the proposition “Sam
[Editor’s note: At nearly 7,000 words, you probably don’t want to try reading this on an iDevice. Bookmark it and come back later.] Imagine something a wee bit outside your comfort zone. Nothing scandalous: just something you don’t do often…
I’m Patrick McKenzie (patio11 on the Internets) and for the last several years I’ve run a small software company. My first product was Bingo Card Creator, my current product focus is Appointment Reminder, and I do occasional consulting for
If there was one course I could add to every engineering education, it wouldn’t involve compilers or gates or time complexity. It would be Realities Of Your Industry 101, because we don’t teach them and this results in lots of unnecessary p…
Yesterday about a hundred thousand people visited this blog due to my post on names, and the server it was on died several fiery deaths. This has been a persistent issue for me in dealing with Apache (the site dies nearly every time I get R…
[Readers have translated this essay. You’re welcome to translate it into any language; I’d appreciate you sending me an email so I can link to it. John Graham-Cumming wrote an article today complaining about how a computer system he was wor…
Some weeks ago I mentioned that I was implementing a user survey in Bingo Card Creator, using Wufoo. About forty of my customers have now taken the time to give me detailed advice. I thought I’d share some things I learned. A few takeaways
For three years now I’ve been running a small software business in my spare time. It has been a very educational experience, especially in showing me that many things we think we know about software, programming, business, and the like are
Recently on the Business of Software forums I gave someone advice regarding web design. (I seriously, seriously envy his design prowess — the website for his VST host software is one of the best I have ever seen for a microISV.) One issue I…