(2007-02-02) Spolsky Nyc Software Startup

Joel Spolsky found opportunities in Nyc Challenges for software Start Up-s. But New York still is the largest city in America, and there are an awful lot of programmers who are stuck in New York because their wife is going to Medical School (or is in Fashion Design), or their family is there, or they just love the city, or they want to do improv theater and this is the best place to do it - millions of reasons why a programmer might find themselves in New York. Every programmer wants to work at a product company because it is so much better than working as a slave in an investment bank. And there were none in New York. We would go to parties, and we'd find geeks, and they'd say, "Do you know of any software product companies in New York where I can work?" And we would say, "Gee, no. I can't really think of any." This is what programmers would talk to each other about: how can I get out of the Investment Bank in New York?

And on Product Development and Marketing. Every minute, every developer hour we spent on any one of these crazy things - although they had some marginal return on the work that we put into them - was nothing compared to just making a better version of the product and releasing it. If we had taken all the effort we put into these crazy schemes and put it into moving our software development schedule ahead by the equivalent amount, it would have paid off much more.