The Business of Software conference will be held in Boston, October 24-26th October 2011. Use code BoSAug to save $550 on the full ticket price until 6th September.

Another day, another offer of unearned riches. I was just about to send off my details when I realised something didn’t quite ring true.

“Good day, my name is Gerald Johnson,i work with a notable bank in wales as a senior staff . I have an urgent and very confidential business proposition for you,I contacted you because of your good name to the society and i believe that we can handle the situation together.A deceased man who was a Gold Dealer made a numbered time (Fixed) Deposit in our bank, Upon maturity,I sent a routine notification to his forwarding address but got no reply.After some months, I sent a reminder to the same address, and was told that he died from an automobile accident.I therefore made further investigation and discovered that he did not declare any next of kin or relations in all his official documents, including his Bank Deposit paperwork in my Bank. This sum of 10,600,000.00 Pounds is still sitting in my Bank and the interest is being rolled over with the Principal sum at the end of each year. No one will ever come forward to claim it, my proposal is that I will like you as a foreigner to stand in as the next of kin to the deceased so that the fruits of this old man’s labour will not get into t! he hands of some government offici I have planned this deal in such a way that we will never have problem, All legal documents to back-up this fund will accompany the funds to your account, you will never have problem with the financial institute of your country or mine or from any source, but you must keep this information only to yourself until the money is successfully transferred.You will be required to provide this remaining information; MARITAL STATUS YOUR AGE: MOBILE PHONE NUMBER; OCCUPATION: POSITION/RANK IN OFFICE: A SCANNED COPY OF EITHER YOUR INTERNATIONAL PASSPORT OR DRIVERS LICENSE. In my next email, i will give you the contact of a seasoned lawyer who will help us to get all the Required legal papers, but i will want you to respond to me immediately, even if you have not Scanned your ID, you can still respond so that i will make sure that this transaction did not exceed more than 10 working days and the money will be transferred to your account. Awaiting your urgent response Yours Faithfully, Gerald Johnson”

Then it struck me, there is of course, no, ‘notable bank in wales’. Close call.

Jason Cohen’s Business of Software talk in 2010 was a cracker. As someone who has consistently broken the rules he spoke about rules and when you might break them. He also offers great advice about advice. He explains why you should always remember that advice, even from the best known and admired sources, should always be taken in context and offers a framework for filtering the legion sources of advice out there for entrepreneurs so that you can work out what is appropriate for you.

My notes from the session here.

Jason is talking at this year’s Business of Software on, ‘Honesty in Business’. Save $550 on full delegate rate by 1st September if you use code BoSAug on registration.

Transcript of Jason Cohen’s talk.

Talk transcript.

Joel Spolsky: Our last speaker of the day is Jason Cohen, who you all know if you’ve been here before. Smart Bear Software was his company, which he sold, and his current company is WP Engine. A big expert on code reviews, I hope you’re going to talk about that. Uh-oh. He said no. Good, because he talked about that last time. Please welcome Jason Cohen.

Jason Cohen: What’s up, Business of Software 2010! [Cheering] What’s up, Business of Software 2010! [Applause]. Great. Sweet. This is really just disturbing to have a time. I’m already 55 seconds in, does that sound right? OK. I feel like I’ve earned an extra 30 seconds at the end. So here’s the thing, if you can only take one thing away from this talk it’s this. When I’m finished talking we’re going to all drink and party. [Cheering] Yea! Right. So every word counts.

So, this by the way is not a litter box. I would not do that, that’s disgusting. This is actually a casserole made out of cornmeal and peanut butter. Which someone thought, I think is actually even more disgusting. Anyway, I’m a software developer. That’s still how I identify myself. I’ve started now four companies. And I’ve done every kind of thing within those companies, and I write, and I do all these different things. But still if you asked me how I felt, I still feel like I’m a coder. That’s how I identify myself.

And so when I started Smart Bear, the company I’m most known for, coding was the one thing that I was sure I could do. This was not going to be the downfall of the company. I knew I could pretty much implement any feature within reason that people wanted. So I was comfortable with that.

As the digital media industry evolves and increases in complexity and competition, we want to ask the most entrepreneurial minds, “How can we make money from this? Which business models can best capitalise on this opportunity?”

In this, the 5th BLN ‘Digital Media’ discussion dinner, we will bring together some of the most dynamic, succesful, media, software and technology companies to discuss the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.

BLN dinners are a great opportunity to meet and share problems with peers (under Chatham House Rule) in a relaxed, informal and fun atmosphere, allowing you to spend time thinking about working on, not in, your business.

Outcomes for attendees have included:

• Business Relationships – partners/customers/suppliers
• Market intelligence from other leaders in their field
• Opportunities to profile raise at leading industry events, publications and blogs
• Personal opportunities for advisory boards, NEDs

We are delighted to have the support of BDO and Taylor Wessing for this dinner.

There are many opportunities to attend networking events but BLN events are both high quality and a little different. You can see feedback from previous attendees here.

Please note that by applying we CANNOT guarantee a place, although we do our best to accommodate relevant individuals. Our priority is always to ensure that our guests are relevant to the specific discussion/sector focus.



Peldi, Founder and CEO of Balsamiq talks about all of the things that he worries about, some of the things he doesn’t and the secret to sleeping well at night.

If there is a better, more concentrated source of advice for the founder of a startup or growth business, let us know. We will give the person that offers the best answer a guest pass to this year’s Business of Software.

My notes from the conference including some of the slides.

Transcript of Peldi’s talk.

Joel Spolsky: All right. How many people use mockups, Balsamiq mockups? Is that everybody yet? OK. What? That was like a little bit less than all. OK. For the other three of you, let me explain what it is. And I don’t normally do advertising for the speakers here. But this is a brilliant product. Well, actually let me tell you a story about something a long, long, long time ago. Does anybody remember ERwin? Does anybody use ERwin? Some of you used that. So this was a wissy-wig Windows-based application. You can still get it. It’s like $12,000 because it’s Computer Associates and they’re just milking it. It was a wissy-wig thing where you would draw entity relation diagrams and you’d put your tables and your columns in there. And there was absolutely no way to make an ERwin diagram look good. It was impossible. Because you had to align everything manually and then you had to like select like the four little boxes and then click, “Align Left”, and then you had to select the four little boxes and say, “Make same width,” and then you would get real tempted to make the table names be bold. And then that wouldn’t look really good so then you’d try Helvetica and then you’d come up with a color-coding scheme for the thing and you would spend 98 percent of your time basically doing PowerPoint when you’re supposed to be diagramming your databases for some reason, I’m not sure why. But, (Laughs) I guess some people do that. And if you ever tried to like automatically import a database which it could do for you, you got all your lines were crossing and everything was all a big mess and you spent four and a half hours untangling it and then the fonts were bad and the default font was ridiculous and you couldn’t read it. And it was just a complete nightmare. So Mockups is the exact opposite of that. It’s a way to mock up it’s not for databases it’s for your user interfaces. And it forces you to use one font which is Comic Sans. (Gagging noise) It forces you… everything is sort of scribbled so nobody thinks that this is what your app is really going to look like. When they look at your Balsamiq Mockup they understand that it’s a friggin’ mock up and that they should be paying attention to the words, the relative position of things, what the buttons are and what the functionality is and not fonts, typesetting, choice of colors, etc. So it’s a really, really brilliant app for mocking things up and I’m really excited to hear from Peldi. [Applause]

Peldi: All right so, you don’t know this Joel but I was recording the whole thing so it’s going to go on the website tonight.

So I know there’s no break so I put in a little bit of music at the beginning if you want to stretch or go to the bathroom. We need audio urgently. I’m going to restart because the beginning is the best part. But I’m serious about getting up if you need to.

Audio: Expectations? Expectations, watch. (Music) (Applause) (Laughter) (Music) (Laughter) (Music) (Laughter) Sp 2: Yeah. (Applause) So this was, Bobby McFerrin and I sort of took the title of my talk from what is most famous song. He’s a brilliant man, I love this video. It still gives me goose bumps.

I’m going to start with a story. Parents in the room might relate to this but I think it’s a relevant story which is that, I had a baby five years ago and then you’re in the hospital and it’s very blurry what’s going on and then you come home. First of all it’s kind of incredible that they let you take your kid home out of the hospital without any sort of license. How can that be legal? I really don’t understand. So then you get home and it’s the first night and one thing that nobody told me at least is that newborn’s respiratory system is not fully developed and so when they sleep they’re totally erratic, they sound like (breathing noises). And you’re like, “OK, something must be clearly wrong. We’ve got to call the doctor right now. This is horrible.” Right? And then two minutes later they get totally quiet and peaceful and I’m like, “OK, now they’re dead, obviously.” (Laughter)

So, they make noise you worry, they don’t make noise you worry some more. You know, welcome to parenting. But then you know, you get used to it and you’re able to sleep on it and then the baby becomes this amazing kid and adult and they’re so independent and they’re able to do crazy things and you’re so proud of them. And yet you worry. Like, “How deep is the water there?” And, “What’s going on?”

So, my name is Peldi and I am a startup founder. You’re supposed to say, “Hello Peldi.” (Laughter) This is sort of a therapeutical group session here or something. All right. So first of all I want to thank Neil and Joel for having me. This is unbelievable. And I can’t understand why they got me but I do have a hint which is that I went to speak at Red Gate, Neil’s company last year and after the talk this woman came up to me and said, “You know we get a lot of people come to talk to us and they’re all so polished and well-dressed and they really seem to know their stuff. And they’re at a level where… I can never be like them but you.” (Laughter) You! Like this I guess. So I can be that guy. I’m totally comfortable with that because I can’t quite understand why this is happening to me.

Had a great talk with Peldi at Balsamiq yesterday, he is on the advisory board for Business of Software and one of the most inspiring entrepreneurs I have the pleasure of knowing. Watch his amazing talk from Business of Software 2010. He pointed me to a video that he draws some of his inspiration from – it features John Nese who knows more about soda and fizzy drinks than anyone else on the planet. Intense passion is a very powerful thing. Here it is.

The other things that seems to inspire entrepreneurs is people with extraordinary skills doing extraordinary things, preferably with a little it of danger thrown in for good measure. In this case, there is a LOT of danger thrown in. Hat tip to Ed Bartlett for the pointer to this.

Incredible is an overused word but this is INCREDIBLE.

Reid Hoffman describes being an entrepreneur as a bit like jumping off a cliff and assembling an aeroplane on the way down. That is a bit like jumping off a cliff and turning yourself into an aeroplane on the way down.

Where do you find inspiration? (Apart from the Business of Software Conference of course).

Dan Bricklin invented the spreadsheet amongst other things. In this talk he shares the knowledge he has gained from producing software that people buy for over 40 years. A brilliant talk from someone with absolutely nothing to prove in an industry he has played a major role in leading since the seventies.

My notes from the conference talk are here: https://thebln.com/2010/10/dan-bricklin-business-of-software/

Business of Software, Boston, MA, October 24-26^th 2011 http://businessofsoftware.org For people growing sustainable, profitable, software businesses.

Joel Spolsky: Alright, our next speaker needs no introduction so I’m not going to introduce him. Please welcome Dan Bricklin. [applause]

Dan Bricklin: Thanks, thanks very much. Um, I’ve been follow-, I’ve been out of town until late last night, but I’ve been following this on Twitter and I realize that you guys have already seen these great, great speakers, so if I mess up it’s okay because you’ll already seen great stuff, which takes some of the pressure off. So, I’m gonna cover a lot that I’ve learned over the years. Let’s see, so I wanna talk about all, there’s always new technology. This is stuff that you can, that should be able to serve you for a long time. When should we care about new technology and how do we take advantage of it, because that’s often how we’re gonna be making money and stuff and which products to do and stuff of that sort. So I’m gonna try to touch on a lot of that. And I’m gonna try to apply some sort of a methodology.

What have I learned over 40 years? Um, it’s been over 40 years of developing products that other people use, ay-yay-yay. How many people have been developing for 40 years or so? [laughter] Yay! I saw one or two, yay! Okay, well, so I went from, on the Apple II I was one of the most popular productivity products on the Apple II and I have one of the most popular productivity products on the iPad now. Okay? I wrote a little bit of code for this and I wrote all the code for that one over there. So, and in between I own the one laptop per child, I have an open source spreadsheet that I did and Social Tech sells it. So, I’ve been on, whatever the technology is I might have touched it. Um, so I might be able to comment on it with a little bit of knowledge, which is of course dangerous. So, when there is new technology or some new opportunities, you have to ask yourself some questions, such as: “What is this new thing for?” Ya know, what about it is better and will it do a needed job, which I’m gonna talk about and how can I make sure whether this is the right thing?