“I didn’t go along with the cash-shredding of [the dot-com boom]. I didn’t take venture capital, hire 200 people, and spend money like crazy. I had the mentality of, “I don’t care if I’m running a lemonade stand or a dot-com, it’s the same thing. How much do the lemons cost and how much are people buying? Maybe I’d better find some cheaper lemons or make less lemonade. Maybe I need to improve the quality of my lemonade.”

—Founder Dany Levy on the success of DailyCandy

(Via SvN)

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management) and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog. If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website. If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

More quotes to read.

What’s that?  You don’t have any decent weekend reading?  Here, let me help.

Robert Scoble: The idiocy and brilliance of American policy toward entrepreneurs.

Code ninja? Prove it: 10K Apart is a contest to build a web app in less than 10 kilobytes.  As they say, it’s time to get back to optimizing every little byte like your life depends on it.

Salt & Fat with its recipe for all-butter pie dough.

20 great, free iPad comics.

Bradley and Bethany: Dave Wineman with some clever – and quite good – App Store review fanfic.

Bill Murray has never seen Seinfeld.  This and other very interest bits are revealed in this GQ’s very rare interview with the actor.

GM is figuring out how to connect with enthusiasts.  I think this is a brilliant move.

Paul Graham on the acceleration of addictiveness.  The iPhone and iPad are an Internet addict’s hip flask.

Finally, I am borrowing a colleague’s Canon 5D Mark II. It’s amazing and I totally see the allure of full frame dSLRs over their cropped-sensor counterparts.  I am soliciting creative ways in which I can return to him my Nikon D90 and keep his Mark II without him noticing.  Ideas?

Have a good weekend, everyone.

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management), Workday and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog. If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website. If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

More Linkology posts.

Tim O’Reilly is one of the people who inspired me to write for several blogs and proffer analysis and commentary to an unsuspecting public.  The CEO of O’Reilly Media, a $100M company and growing, O’Reilly is a guy who’s completely devoid of pretense.  He’s not playing the game for anyone other than his own passions, and as esoteric as that is, it comes across in his net persona.  He is, in everyday parlance, one of the good guys.

Inc.’s Max Chafkin has a superb profile of O’Reilly, which everyone interested in the intellectualism and leadership of Silicon Valley should read.

“This is a lifestyle business that got out of control,” O’Reilly said when we first met. O’Reilly is 55 and has a craggy, weatherworn face, and he speaks with the warm self-confidence of someone who knows a lot more than you do but is happy to share. “My original business model — I actually wrote this down — was ‘interesting work for interesting people.’ “

Worth reading yourself, and certainly worth passing on.

Jerry Murrell, founder of the astonishingly good Five Guys Burgers & Fries, talks to Inc.’s Liz Welch:

The magic to our hamburgers is quality control. We toast our buns on a grill — a bun toaster is faster, cheaper, and toasts more evenly, but it doesn’t give you that caramelized taste. Our beef is 80 percent lean, never frozen, and our plants are so clean, you could eat off the floor. The burgers are made to order — you can choose from 17 toppings. That’s why we can’t do drive-throughs — it takes too long. We had a sign: “If you’re in a hurry, there are a lot of really good hamburger places within a short distance from here.” People thought I was nuts. But the customers appreciated it. [...]

When we first opened, the Pentagon called and said, “We want 15 hamburgers; what time can you deliver?” I said, “What time can you pick them up? We don’t deliver.” There was an admiral running the place. So he called me up personally and said, “Mr. Murrell, everyone delivers food to the Pentagon.” Matt and I got a 22-foot-long banner that said ABSOLUTELY NO DELIVERY and hung it in front of our store. And then our business from the Pentagon picked up.

The entire interview is just fantastic.  There’s a Five Guys about a half hour from the MIPRO offices, and it’s worth every bit of the drive.

Not a lot of energy for editorial today, mainly because I’m way behind on sleep because I’m a hockey zealot and incapable of not watching a Red Wings playoff game, no matter how late.  And tonight, for game two, I’ll be up just as late as two nights ago, hopefully less frustrated, but still yelling at the TV like an imbecile.  And if things go really well, maybe tonight’s game will be officiated by refs with functioning eyeballs.  One can dream.

Anyhow, here is this week’s collection of fine hypertext products.  Enjoy.

The head of the NSA loves his iPad, calling it ‘wonderful’.

How not to choke under pressure/performance anxiety.

Slate has a full list of words David Foster Wallace circled in his American Heritage Dictionary.

Errol Morris, award-winning documentary filmmaker, provides his definition of a stupid person.

The Library of Congress acquires Twitter’s entire archive.  Now, when humanity’s day is long gone and an alien civilization unearths the archive, they can slog through it and wonder how me managed to build a global information network in the first place.

TEDx talk: raising kids to be entrepreneurs.

Don’t take your iPad to Israel unless you’ve been jonesing to have it confiscated by government officials.

Finally, go Wings.  Play like it’s the playoffs, okay?

(Ed. note: Jim Prokes is one of MIPRO Consulting’s Managing Partners.)

This deserves bluntness: 2009 wasn’t an easy year for many people. Painful decisions had to be made, jobs were lost, businesses were stagnated, and even though we managed to avoid outright panic, fear still governed us. And this is to say nothing of the personal problems many faced, as many struggled with unemployment, debt and perhaps the question of whether or not home ownership remained viable.

It’s 2010. Never before in my business career have I seen a symbolic change mean so much to people on both personal and professional levels. When 2009 ceded to 2010, for the first time ever, it was a palpable change.

Based on what I see so far in 2010, the new year kickoff momentum is carrying forward with people, both on professional and personal levels.

I’m a natural optimist. While I know we’re not out of the woods yet, I often get asked about what I see for 2010 as a business owner. I’m happy to say that I can give an answer today that I couldn’t last year: I think things are looking up. Here are five reasons why:

New year, new budget. The clients we’re talking to whose budgets have reset are saying that because of some of the macro-indicators coming out positive, they have budget this year, and no shortage of areas in which to spend it. From what we’re seeing it’s not a budget explosion, but there will be IT investment this year in strategic areas.

Pent-up project demand. The cutbacks of 2009 helped save money and bolster expense conservatism, but that doesn’t mean demand went away. Every client we meet with has a long list of initiatives they want to get underway ASAP. Naturally, the more strategic the project (Business Intelligence, moving enterprise tech to the cloud, upgrading to high-value, modern ERP platform versions), the more likey it will see executive buy-in and funding.

People are sick of being afraid. Purely anecdotally and based on subjective observation, people aren’t walking on eggshells like they were last year. 2009′s pervasive fear has given way to mere nervousness, and people can function when nervous; it’s not paralyzing, and it doesn’t lend itself to panic as easily. I pay particular attention to asking other business owners how things are going thus far, and each of them is happy to say pretty well. People and businesses are beginning to feel comfortable spending again. From our own perspective here at MIPRO, I know we are.

The headlines aren’t entirely bleak. You’d be hard pressed to find any positive headlines in 2009, but so far 2010 is offering some glimmers of hope at a mainstream media level, to wit: Fed sees recovery spreading across US, Fed’s Beige Book Says Economy Improved in 10 of 12 Districts, simply to point out a couple. Are there still bad headlines, and do we still have a lot of work to do? Absolutely. But for the first time in a long time, parts of the economy are starting to come up for air.  Let’s hope they  keep swimming.

The strategic positioning factor. We wrote in late 2008, at the onset of the economic crisis, about how some companies were still investing to be able to come into a recovery state with improved systems, business intelligence and strategic market positioning. While those were few and far between during 2009, so far we’ve already met with many companies about how they want to invest now to be able to reap the benefits by 3Q 2010. And, pragmatically speaking, they want to invest now while the gettin’ is good: most vendors are coming off a rough fiscal 2009, so buyers know vendors are willing to be flexible and work hard to win new business. Some of our clients have said they think the window of vendor discounting is closing, so now is a smart time to invest if you’re going to make the investment anyway.

I don’t write for this blog much, but as a business owner, I wanted to throw my thoughts out there as we break into 2010 in earnest.

What have your experiences been? Agree with me, or disagree? Love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Forbes’s Marc Kramer with an excellent list of questions that hearken any business’s fundamental reasons for existing.  The questions themselves are below, but you should definitely read Kramer’s whole piece.

1. What is our purpose for existing?
2. Who is our target customer?
3. Why does anyone need what we’re selling?
4. If there is a need, is it enough to support a profitable business?
5. What were our competitors up to?
6. Can you reduce expenses – without harming the product?
7. Do we have the right leadership?
8. Do we have the right employees?
9. How will we continue to drive revenue?
10. How are your employees holding up?

Full article here.

Paul Graham went back and asked the founders of all the startups he’s funded about what surprised them about starting a startup.  In other words, what did they wish they knew going in that they do now?  The list is intriguing.  Here are the biggest:

1. Be careful with cofounders.
2. Startups take over your life.
3. It’s an emotional roller-coaster.
4. It can be fun.
5. Persistence is the key.
6. Think long-term.
7. Lots of little things.
8. Start with something minimal.
9. Engage users.
10. Change your idea.
11. Don’t worry about competitors.
12. It’s hard to get users.
13. Expect the worst with deals.
14. Investors are clueless.
15. You may have to play games.
16. Luck is a big factor.
17. The value of community.
18. You get no respect.
19. Things change as you grow.

Perhaps the best quip is this one, under the Persistence Is The Key category:

I’ve been surprised again and again by just how much more important persistence is than raw intelligence.

Read the whole article here.  It’s worth your time.

Jason Fried:

Making money takes practice, just like playing the piano takes practice. No one expects anyone to be any good at the piano unless they’ve put in lots practice. Same with making money. The more you practice the better you get. Eventually making money is as easy for you as piano is for someone who’s been playing for 10 years.

This is one of the reasons I encourage entrepreneurs to bootstrap instead of taking outside money. On day one, a bootstrapped company sets out to make money. They have no choice, really. On day one a funded company sets out to spend money. They hire, they buy, they invest, they spend. Making money isn’t important yet. They practice spending, not making.

Bootstrapping puts you in the right mindset as an entrepreneur. You think of money more as something you make than something you spend. That’s the right lesson, that’s the right habit, the right imprint on your business brain. You’re better off as an entrepreneur if you have more practice making money than spending money. Bootstrapping gives you a head start.

As usual, some nicely crystallized advice for startups/entrepreneurs.

These days, almost all ‘traditional’ advertising equates to voluntary contributions to the ocean of ad noise out there that nobody pays attention to.  It’s boring, wordsmithed into the ground, filed so that every possible catchy edge has been worn into dust.  It’s been  reviewed by legal and boundary-cased so that no possible negative impression can be formed of the advertiser.

It’s safe.  Boring and invisible, but by gum, safe.

This is why the great majority of advertising is ignored outright.  People’s attention is limited and taxed, and there’s this strange, resultant Darwinism: if you don’t engage people in an interesting way, your ad will die, as will your company branding ROI.

Nevertheless, there are examples of smart and creative traditional advertising out there.  Companies that are brave and willing to Purple Cow their efforts can do some pretty interesting things.

To wit:

In early 2009, Audi posts a billboard for its A4 sedan challenging, “Your move, BMW.”  Not too long thereafter, Santa Monica BMW responds with an M3 billboard that says, “Checkmate.”

Going on and on about how much I love stuff like this would be embarrassing.  But I will say that this stuff is so rare because most companies aren’t brave.  Most companies get caught up in what negative things could come to them instead of being creative and fun and having a sense of confidence about their intentions, character and marketing.

So yes, you can do traditional media placements right.  But you can’t play it safe at the same time.  Choose one.

(Via Signal vs. Noise)