I recently had a very interesting conversation with a friend who recently launched an online business, and it surprised me how our fears are never what they seem to beIt went something like this:B.: I need your help. I launched my product a few months ago, but I am not getting any sales.Me: Do you have traffic?B.: Not much, about 100 visitors a monthMe: Then you need to get more traffic. You probably need at least 100x that amount in your market to start seeing any sales.B.: And how do I get that many people?Me: It might take a while, but find out people who would love to have your product, or...

Good Idea or Bad Idea?I’ve got an idea for a product. I’ve talked to some people. I know some people in the industry. I have been cold calling others. The idea is promising. The price point people have agreed with is about where I would like it to be. I’ve shown some mockups around and iterated on them. Now, I feel the need to start writing code because, well, I like writing code. And I’m comfortable writing code.But I see lean people.Steve Blank, Eric Ries, Jason Cohen, Ash Maurya, and a thousand other blogs think I should talk to X people in Y stage...

As a developer, you are sitting on a goldmine. Do you even realize it? No, seriously, a @#$% goldmine!Never in modern history has it been so easy to create something from scratch, with little or no capital and a marketing model that is limited only by your imagination.Think about the biggest websites you visit or use on a regular basis: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Foursquare, or even Google for that matter -- all of them were created by developers who created something from little more than an idea in their head. Was it easy for them? Heck no. But it could only have been done in today's day and...

Since I’ve technically been unemployed now for a week, I’ve spent most of that time brainstorming some new ideas and putting them into a Google Spreadsheet.This week I began going through that list and pulling out the ones I think have a chance and I narrowed a pretty large list down to just a few.Let’s take one of the examples from my list. It doesn’t have a name, so let’s just call it Patient Connect.The idea behind Patient Connect is that it integrates with any type of scheduling and patient management software any private medical practice or clinic uses t...

I’ve been an iPhone developer for over three years now. The first app I built was CookieCombo. We sold enough copies to go bowling twice, but still it was completely worth it. We tweeted about it, and got some awesome gigs out of that. Everybody was in need of iPhone developers, and there was a huge shortage. Good times.As more and more people got to know that I’m an iPhone developer, I got to hear the following phrase more often: “Hey, you know, I got a great idea for an app”. It started with tech-savvy people saying this, but now it seems like everybody and their mo...