I just saw this inspirational blog post by Paul Buchheit Here’s a quote:
Forget about your lack of talent, skills, knowledge, time, resources, or whatever else you need to be “good enough”. Start an inane blog, take bad photographs, upload boring videos to YouTube, write bad software, create useless products, play bad music, and make ugly art. Forget “good enough”, and then simply indulge in the joy of creation.
He also states he likes xkcd :)
In the final article of this series we’re going to write a script in PHP that will dynamically create an RSS feed from entries in a MySQL database. If you decide to use this script in your own custom application, you may need to change parts of the script, such as the query. You can check out the script here.
Let’s take a look at the script to see how it works.
The first part will define some parameters to establish a database connection. This includes information such as the host, username, password, and the database.
This next part is important.
header(‘Content-type: text/xml’);
print “<?xml version=\”1.0\”?>\n”;
This sends the appropriate header information to the client telling it that this is in fact an XML file. Without this line, your feed will show up as plain text and will be read as such.
After the header information, we begin the actual RSS feed. This should look familiar as it was covered in the previous article. Simply fill this information out as it relates to your site or have it retrieve the information from another source, such as your database.
<?php
 // Connection to db
 $mysqldb = new mysqli(HOST, USER, PASS, DB);
 // Query to select posts
 $query = “SELECT * FROM posts”;
 $result = $mysqldb->query($query);
 if($result->num_rows) {
  while($row = $result->fetch_array(MYSQLI_ASSOC)) {
?>
   <item>
    <title><?php echo $row['post_title']; ?></title>
    <link><?php echo $row['post_link']; ?></link>
    <author><?php echo $row['post_author']; ?></author>
    <description><?php echo $row['post_content']; ?></description>
   </item>
<?phpÂ
  }
 }
?>
This is the part of the code that fetches the posts from the database and turns them into the RSS feed. Simply retrieve all of your posts from the databse and use a while loop to print them all out as items of the feed. Once the loop is done, close the channel and RSS tags and you’re done! You now have an RSS feed that will update itself when you update your MySQL database.
My notes were pretty much what was said at Startup School, so I want to take this opportunity to put down what I got out of it in my own words. This list is some of the re-occurring themes amongst the speakers as well as some key ideas I took from it.
1. You will probably fail, but you’ll learn something along the way.
I think having a pessimistic view will turn your startup experience into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Will you really put a lot of effort into something you know is going to fail? Why should you?
I think you should expect your startup to succeed, but know that failing is the worse that can happen. This way you will put all of your effort into it and learn more than you would if you half-ass it.
2. Focus on 1 idea.
Don’t scatter your resources among many mediocre ideas. Instead focus on one great idea and do it well. This will put you at a competitive advantage.
3. Get Venture Capitalist Funding or “Smart Money”
When a venture capitalist loans you money, they want you to succeed. Why? If you succeed, they make money as well! Part of the deal is that they’ll help you out by pointing you in the right direction, or will connect you with someone who can help you out. Think of it as buying help.
4. Frugality
When starting out, you want to squeeze every penny for what it’s worth. The Partovi brothers took it to extremes by saving paper clips attached to documents and having people bring in their own cups. In fact, they made frugality part of their company culture. This is also something VCs will look for when you present to them.
5. Make important decisions early on
Who is CEO? Who is on the board of directors? These decisions should be made before the company is worth anything. The CEO should be someone who is well spoken and is a good salesperson. If you make this decision when your company is starting to make money, the person who may not be the best candidate may step up for financial reasons.
As far as who is on the board of directors, choose people who understand the business, such as the founder. Don’t choose people who want to be on the board as part of some sort of hidden agenda; they’re in it for themselves, not the business.
6. Don’t take the company culture for granted
This should be something else that should be established early on. Determine the overall culture for your company early on and set an example. As companies grow bigger, the culture seems to fade away and politics begin to set in. If you establish this at the beginning and enforce it, you will delay the inevitable drama/politics that come with having more employees.
7. Diversity
This is one topic that was actually brought up with two different viewpoints. Mitch Kapor said that a company should have diverse viewpoints, while Mark Zuckerberg said that a startup company should be young and technical.
I tend to agree more with Mitch. Having a variety of people allows for a larger amount of viewpoints. If someone has an idea, another person is bound to find holes in it and patch them up before a release.
8. Hire Great People
Be picky about who you hire. At first your company will be small, which is why it is critical that you have your ideal team. If not, it’ll be more likely that you will fail. Hiring great people is one of the keys to success.
9. Get a co-founder
This is one of the biggest key factors to get VC funding. If no one wants to help you start a business, you should probably look into another idea; It’s that important.
10. Redefine Success
To some success is making lots of money. However, let’s be realistic, are you really going to make a lot of money doing your first start up business? Probably not. Will you learn a lot? This is more likely. Make it a point to learn as much as you can with your experience.
Every year Slashdot redesigns their site for April Fools Day. Last year it was the “omgponies” theme and this year they added the “slashdotit” feature complete with fake stories (which people actually believe and then post to digg). I saw this story and I loled (in the literal sense). I really wish someone would develop it. I wonder what Samuel L. would have to say about it?