- I am the founder of Snowtide — which sells PDFTextStream, a PDF text extraction library for Java and .NET – and the creator of the Clojure Atlas. I do a lot of programming in Clojure and just a little in Java.
– Chas Emerick
Category Archives: Entrepreneurship
Stymied from within (an entrepreneurial experience)
In his interview of Andrew Warner, Jason Cohen provided a nice snapshot of the experience of being a software entrepreneur (taken from the transcription provided on the interview page, emphasis mine): You hear all these stories of success, and luck … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Entrepreneurship
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Recovering from and avoiding “cloud service” lock-in
We all love our shiny cloud services — until they break, die, or otherwise go away, turning all those unicorns and butterflies into what can only be described as a bark salad. Case in point: sometime this week, I’ll be … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Cloud, Entrepreneurship
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Opa
Right now, I’m sitting across a table from my grandfather. He’s remarking for the hundredth time today that he can hardly see, though he’s spotting specks of planes flying in the sky and clearly enjoying bathing in the sunlight streaming … Continue reading
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Uncategorized
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Ashton’s plight, fight or flight
Joel Spolsky is a stellar writer and a fine storyteller. His latest, the apocryphal tale of Ashton, tells of the plight of a software developer stuck in a crummy job, surrounded by sycophants and half-wits, desperate to escape the inevitable … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Entrepreneurship, geek
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Xerox’s Inspirational Carlson and Wilson
This book tells a great story, but I’m not writing a book review. What struck me most reading this book was the glimpse provided of Chester Carlson, the inventor of electrophotography, and Joseph C. Wilson, the co-founder of Xerox (née The Haloid Photographic Company). As far as I can tell, these men were forces of nature unto themselves, and possessed an array of values and principles that I find remarkable and inspirational. Continue reading
Posted in Books, Business, Entrepreneurship, History
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Reducing purchase anxiety is a feature
Talk to anyone outside of the software world, and you’ll quickly realize that one of the most gut-wrenching, anxiety-inducing acts is buying software. Even if one has evaluated the product in question top to bottom, past experience of bugs, botched … Continue reading
Posted in Announcements, Entrepreneurship, Open Source, PDFTextStream
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Venture capitalists are entertaining, but please don’t take them too seriously
VCs say the darnedest things, and especially as it’s become clear that venture capital isn’t at all required (or even desirable) in many situations, one needs to be careful about how much of the VC worldview one takes to heart. Continue reading
Posted in Entrepreneurship
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Paul Graham’s Y Combinator leaves Boston, entrepreneurs dive under the bed
Last Friday, Paul Graham announced that his Y Combinator incubator was leaving Boston for Silicon Valley. This has been picked up in a variety of areas by Boston-local entrepreneurs and those that watch that space. The reaction has been predictable, if you know just how much of an inferiority complex people have vis á vis Silicon Valley. Continue reading
Posted in Boston, Entrepreneurship
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Speaking about Snowtide and Entrepreneurship at CCV
I just returned from speaking to a class at the Community College of Vermontin Rutland. I was asked to speak to the Principles of Marketing class being taught there by John Hutchins, my friend, Snowtide shareholder, ex-Digital salesman, and father … Continue reading
Posted in Entrepreneurship
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I <3 Guy Kawasaki
I might write more about specifics, but I wanted to get this link out there. I only now came across Guy Kawasaki’s entreprenuership video series hosted by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. It’s from 2004, so I’m probably the last … Continue reading
Posted in Entrepreneurship
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