Shanti’s Dispatches

Paul Graham was speaking at the FOWA Summit in London going on this week. Stephanie Booth was there to take notes for those that couldn’t make the trip across the pond.

Notable notes:

Hackers actually like to make stuff, they’re not in there for the money. So actually, if you let them make stuff, you can pay them less! Big companies are paranoïd about their brand, they should be less scared about releasing stuff. Companies are judged by their successes, not the crap stuff they might have released (look at Google). Just let developers release stuff to the world.

Google’s 20% time idea is probably one of their biggest achievements. I hear it’s actually a lot harder to wrangle that 20% time into your schedule, but just the fact that that’s an official policy is pretty cool.

Another PG quote, on hackers being assimilated into a big company after acquisition:

Talked with a guy who had his startup recently acquired by a big company. From a “lines of code cranked out”, they were 1/13th as productive after the acquisition. Something about big companies that just sucks the energy out of you.

Sean Tierney of Grid7 has a podcast online with Y Combinator co-founder Jessica Livingston.

You can bookmark this, digg this or check the cosmos