Startup Success Podcast, Open Source For-Profit Startups, One Laptop Per Child 2008, and $19 Usability Testing

The Startup Success Podcast - After the demise of The Micro-ISV Show, Bob Walsh is back discussing issues affecting software startups. A good weekly listen.

Open Source, For-Profit Startups - “FairSoftware is the place to start and grow your online business. We help you team with others, track revenue and share it openly and fairly. Hire people in return for a share of your income stream instead of upfront cash. You save money and they have more incentive to collaborate.”

One Laptop Per Child Give One Get One 2008 - For $399 you get one XO laptop for yourself, and one is sent to a child in a developing nation. The keyboards are small, but they run Linux and have wireless NICs.

$19 Usability Testing -  This is awesome. For around $19 (you can add bonus money to get your tests completed faster), you get a 15-minute video of a real user going through your site or web app, and a written summary of their findings. I’ve used it on two projects and it has raised a slew of issues we had no idea people would have problems with. Definitely worth a look.

And finally, from Paul Graham’s essay Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy (emphasis added):

If we’ve learned one thing from funding so many startups, it’s that they succeed or fail based on the qualities of the founders. The economy has some effect, certainly, but as a predictor of success it’s a rounding error compared to the founders.

Launch Your Product. Quit Your Job.
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I'm a full-time Serial Micropreneur based in Fresno, California and I run the Micropreneur Academy, an online learning environment designed to get one-person web startups from zero to launch in four months.

I use the term Serial Micropreneur to describe an entrepreneur who creates the lifestyle of their choice through a portfolio of one-person technology businesses (MicroISVs, SaaS websites, e-commerce sites, etc...).