Startup Next Door

Back when I did my first startup, we were pretty hardcore about data privacy.  We had an overpriced SSL certificate, we encrypted credit cards and other customer data, encoded our PHP code with Zend Encoder, and disallowed SSH connections except from specific IPs.  We were in charge of security.

Nowadays, PCI Compliance is the boss.  If you store or transmit credit card information in your organization or site, you will have to conform to the PCI DSS rules in order to do business.

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Thanks to a comment by Wade on the article “A Businessperson’s Introduction to Servers”, I looked into the BizSpark program from Microsoft.

BizSpark is a program to help young startups get all the software they need to run their businesses.

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For a long time, I stayed away from JavaScript.  I would use it for very small interactions, but for major functionality like menus and UI, I stayed away.  The reason was twofold:

• Was too hard to test and get working across multiple browsers
• Was just so confusing! Gah!

So I missed the big Ajax revolution and opportunities thereof.  Even when I finally caught up with Ajax at the end of 2005, I was still trying to use cross-browser goodness via if/else statements.  Even as late as 2007, my berating of JavaScript could be heard amongst co-workers.  Such encouraging phrases as “it’s object-based, not object-oriented” didn’t help me.

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I posted an update to one of the most popular articles, “The Benefits of an Umbrella Company” based on correspondence with a reader.  The update is at the bottom.

This is an article I’m posting just for fun.  We’ll get back to bootstrap startup advice next time.

I ran across a spreadsheet I made in 2000, when I was just figuring out what skills I would need to become a professional web programmer and get paid the big bucks.  I had pored over numerous job postings on Dice.com, and from that I created this data:

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Every web developer tries to save time and effort when making a website.  The sign of a good developer is the ability to turn laziness into efficiency.  Instead of doing the same boring thing again and again and wasting time, a good developer will create ways to do it again in a way that reuses work they’ve done before.

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As I mentioned before, my bias for Linux comes from me being cheap.  And since it’s my responsibility to provide free and low-cost options for you to build your business, I’m sticking with it.

If you have VC or angel funding, you can spend money without regard for current or future costs.  Lucky you.

If you’re building your business on a shoestring, free is great.  But you don’t want free stuff that will cost you an arm and a leg later.

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If you read my last post about servers, you may be wondering how much this is going to cost to get a server.  Don’t worry.  It’s not as expensive as it once was.  Let’s go over the options.

Why can’t I just run my startup on my own computer?

It’s a noble thought, and you wouldn’t be the first to think it.  First of all, your ISP is not going to approve of you running a web server on their network.  Second, your IP address at your home will change from time to time.  If it does, your site will be down because your domain (www address) will be pointing to the old address.  There are ways around that but just don’t.

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If you’re a programmer writing web software, you don’t need this article. Move along, please.

This article is for the businesspeople.  You’ve got a great startup idea but you don’t know much about web server technology.  You want to build your business, and will be looking for a contractor or programmer friend to build out your prototype or the whole thing.  This article will guide you to what’s out there as far as server environments.

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I mentioned yesterday about a service that will record a professional voicemail greeting and phone directory for you.  Today I’ll go over a service that offers professional voice recordings exclusively.

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