Carsonified

Hey everyone,

Just to let you know, I’m currently sorting through the re-design mockups that you sent through. I’ll be posting them next week. Sorry for the wait!

Cheers,
Ryan

The Bath Carson Systems Team (Andrew is based in California & Alex and Marat are in Russia) went out to lunch yesterday and we had a really interesting discussion.

We were discussing Kathy Sierra’s post about the death threats she’s recieved and I feel like we came across something interesting: a blog starts to breakdown when it gets too many readers.

As soon as a blog gets large, it’s starts fracturing and becomes a hostile environment. I’d guess that this number is around 50,000+ RSS subscribers.

A small to medium sized blog has ‘family’ feel about it. This is accentuated by tools like MyBlogLog. You start to get to know the faces and opinions of the other folks. I definitely feel that way about Carsonified. We’re at about 4,000 RSS subscribers (including the folks still subscribed to BNA) and I think it’s a nice place to ‘visit’. People respect each other’s opinions around here.

But blogs like TechCrunch are a whole other world. As many of you saw, I got a barrage of plain nasty comments there. There wasn’t a sense of mutual respect.

So what’s really going on

I believe that this happens because trolls can slip in and out unnoticed. They can spread their vitriol and negativity, and then just disappear into the masses. There isn’t that sense of responsibility.

I know that Six Apart (and specifically Mena) has tried to fix this with Vox. I’d be interested to hear how they’re doing and if their signups are on the increase.

I had an amazing conversation with Ryan Allis, the 22 year old CEO of Intellicontact. I am so impressed with how he has taken his company from a small shop to a multi-million dollar company with 50+ employees, in about three to four years.

What really struck me though, was how he knew his numbers inside and out. He is absolutely hard-core about measuring everything. It was like a slap in the face - as CEO of Carson Systems, I just don’t know enough about what’s going on.

I guess what I’m learning is that I need to transition out of the day-to-day management of our projects, and move into a role where I’m evaluating and acting on important measurements. For every business, the measurements are different. However, it takes a good sit-down to brainstorm what’s important and what’s not. Once I know what’s actually working for us, I can guide our team to do more of it.

In order to help me do this, I’m putting together a monster Excel sheet that’s going to have everything I need to know. Then I’m going to ask our team to fill in the numbers from their projects on a weekly basis. This way I can react quicker to both opportunities and problems.

How do you guys measure what’s going on in your companies? Please share!

Howdy folks,

We’ve still got about 2,000 folks subscribed to the old Bare Naked App feed. I’d really appreciate it if you could unsubscribe from:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/barenakedapp

to the new feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/carsonified

Thanks!
Ryan

Yikes. Lisa (our new DropSend manager) just came across a project on GetAFreelancer.com asking someone to build a DropSend clone.

In a way I’m flattered, and in another way, it creeps me out.

I guess someone has seen all the figures I’ve been publishing for DropSend and has decided they could do it as well. I probably shouldn’t be surprised.

I’m not worried though - ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s all in the execution.

Wanting to “build a DropSend clone” is one thing. Actually doing it and being successful is another thing entirely.

For a great post on this subject, head on over to Dick Costello’s blog and read Strategic Advantage (part II).

Mike just posted my article Web Apps 101: Your Three Point Success Plan.

Feel free to have a read and comment. There’s some big lovers and haters in the comments - it’s all pretty crazy :)

There was some really interesting comments on How much cash should you have in the bank?. Thanks everyone!

A lot of the comments said that a better measure would’ve been how many months of expenses were in the bank. I agree, but this was still really interesting to me. The actual cash in the bank has a much more nitty-gritty realness to it :)
View the full results of the survey here. I’ve also included a screen grab below. It’s interesting to me that the majority of the survey participants are from small businesses (1-10 people) and have less than $10K in the bank.