Category: Business

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Business Personal

Eighteen Intelligence

Leon AtkinsonMy life has been quite busy lately. After nearly two years as VP of Engineering for BTS, I left to start a consultancy. It began with a casual comment to a few friends that if they had 2-3 months worth of work for me, I’d consider cutting loose. Mark Celsor has been dealing with a flood of new business in the past quarter and was eager to have me work with Vine Street Interactive. Meanwhile, Jenny Martin asked me if I knew anyone available for Facebook API work. Fortunately–or unfortunately depending on perspective–both of them wanted my help right away. Saying yes to either of them meant saying goodbye to BTS. Saying yes to both of them meant saying goodbye to daylight….well, nearly so.

Since October, I’ve been working two full time gigs while also making preparations for the launch of my new company, Eighteen Intelligence Corporation. For tax reasons, the paperwork won’t be filed until January. California makes all corporations pay a minimum of $800/year in taxes, so it makes sense to start a company early in the year. I’ve been trying to work about 10-12 hours/day 7 days/week for more than a month. I’ve had to take a day off here and there to prove to my family and myself that I still exist. I see light at the end of the tunnel now, as one of the two projects is going into the bug-checking phase and should launch in a couple of weeks.

I hope the other project wraps up mid-December and leaves me a couple of weeks to enjoy the holidays. I expect to available to you help you with projects in January. How can I help you? Thanks for asking! If you’ve worked with me, you know what I’m capable of. (Horrible, isn’t it?) I’m concentrating on building Internet applications, particularly those integrated with Facebook. I’d enjoy helping you start from a requirements specification and see the project all the way through launch. I can help in a CTO-ish way to set up best practices for your team, or I can be a really fast coder who helps you make an insane deadline.Eighteen Intelligence Logo

You can read more blah-blah-blah marketing stuff at the 18int.com Web site. Please contact me about any opportunities for us to work together. Thanks! And since it is the season, I should also thank a few people who’ve helped me out recently. Thanks to the BTS folks for employing me. Thanks to John Szeder for sending leads and projects my way. Thanks to everyone who’s already asked about my availability. Thanks to Kathy Marshall for accounting advice. Thanks to Jenny and Mark for the projects that enabled me to launch this adventure. And of course, thanks to Vicky and Tre and Henry for putting up with me toiling in the basement office.

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Business

The Fractional CTO

Silly pie chart illustrating the idea of a fractional CTO.
Proproportions shown for illustration purposes only. Actual sizes may vary.

One of my favorite things is solving technology problems. Fortunately, I get paid for that. Unfortunately, I’d rather do more of it. Therefore, I’m putting out a call to anyone interested: if you need a fractional CTO, ask me.

My friends introduce me to other entrepreneurs and describe me as a genius. They usually skip the “evil” prefix. It’s true, I’ve been hacking around in the Web space for a long time now, and I have a few tricks to share. I tend to underestimate what I can do, so I defer to their judgment.  What I do know is how much I enjoy helping someone else figure out a tough technical problem. Lately, I’ve been thinking I’m not getting enough of that. I’ve been asking people one-by-one, and now I’m putting the question out to a wider audience. How can I help you?

One recent example is a social games company that needs help profiling their PHP scripts. That’s something I’ve had to do many times over the years. Actually, it was really important when we were coding apps in PHP3. I’ve also been offering advice to a several startups who are trying to get to an alpha version. And I’ve been helping my friend John Villarreal juice up his media business.

So I’ve landed on this concept of the fractional CTO. If you could use the services of a CTO for a day or two a month, please let me know. I’m happy to help.

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Business News Politics

Are you ready to swim?

“The truth hits everyone like a million atom bombs, and I can’t understand how everybody can be so calm. Time is running out and we all just sit around. So leave your message at the beep, ’cause I am leaving town.” —Leave a Message, Get Dead

Yesterday was Tax Freedom Day, although here in California it’s April 14th if you consider our higher-than-average income taxes. Divide up the days you work: the first hundred days are for the government. The balance are for you to spend on yourself, if you ignore all the other extortion you pay as sales tax or other fees.

It’s impossible to “get by” in the US now. The average family is left with $100/month after mortgage, food and health insurance, a scenario assuming no vacations and one car! So many people are out of work and leaning on government to take care of them, that 33 states are out of money to fund jobless benefits. California is at the top of the list. When income can be variable, a rational approach is to save during times of plenty to cover the lean times. Government does not work this way. Government moves by political pull and the expedient solution of the moment.

As all odds mount against any rational, moral person being able to make his way through life here, the Galt Meter tilts into the red zone. Can you imagine a meter that shows how close we are to the nightmare world described at the end of Atlas Shrugged, a doomsday clock that shows how close we are to destruction by weapons of immorality? It seems we’re now at a 53/47 split. Nearly half of us work so the other half can loaf and tell us what to do. Furthermore, the top 10% of producers pay 73% of taxes.

Mark Steyn calls tax-payers suckers, the rubes filling PT Barnum’s pockets. In fact, we are livestock. Within the system, we have little choice but to pay. You can choose self-destruction in the form of unbending resistance, or you can choose self-destruction by exchanging your soul for a whip in your hand. Disobey or obey. This dichotomy is false. The alternative is to stop participating.

The way forward is out. An incredible opportunity approaches. Statism is dead!  What was a theoretical conclusion will soon be demonstrated empirically. Because of its imminent failure, statism’s captains will lose sanction, and no longer be recognized as authority. That inspires fear and excitement, similar to jumping off a high cliff into deep water. Are you ready to swim?

References

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Business News Politics

Rollback of Welfare Not the Only Way Out

In today’s TIA Daily, Robert Tracinski mentioned the Washington Posts’s Robert Samuelson’s continual apoplexy over the U.S. governments reckless course towards insolvency, and he concluded, “The bills are coming due for the welfare state, and the result is that we are entering a period of permanent fiscal crisis—a crisis that can only be solved if we decide to begin rolling back the welfare state.”

I would like to respectfully take issue with one word in that conclusion: only. Certainly, a rollback of entitlements would slow the inevitable decline of the state, but it’s not the only way, nor the most likely. Imagine the federal government coming to a consensus such as, “we just can’t afford it right now, so we’re halting subsidies for agriculture.” That’s an unlikely fantasy. What seems more plausible is a sudden disappearance of multiple programs, and the ones who’s beneficiaries have the least pull. Realistically, you can already see this. Big corporations get giant bailouts but schools want for funding.

It seems more likely that we will find decisions to cutback left unmade but made for us thanks to the hard facts of reality. These government programs will meet their just ends, and there will certainly be strong emotional reactions, tantrums even. I’m speaking euphemistically–I won’t be surprised when there are riots.

Some of these basic services our parents and grandparents handed over to the government are necessary and desired. (Being able to drive around on pavement is nice!) When the government fails to provide them, an opportunity might be seized. Without the a gun-powered monopoly chasing entrepreneurs away, what kind of wonderful solutions can we expect? I’m not sure, but I have been considering how I might help. Is anyone else thinking about how a collapse will provide an unprecedented chance to be productive?

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Business Politics

No Bailout. You Fail? Out!

I suspect (hope!) we’re headed towards a tar and feathering of two jokers who have attempted to pull one over on us: Paulson and Bernanke. Both are urging swift action with no time to think. Bernanke is quoted in a New York Times article as saying “There are no atheists in foxholes and no ideologues in financial crises.” In fact, there are many atheists in foxholes, brave soldiers who risk their lives despite not believing in an afterlife. And ideas are precisely what’s needed now, not a rush for a fresh grab of power by the government.

Paulson is quoted as saying, “There was only one way that we could reassure the markets and deal with a very significant and broad-based freezing of the credit market. There was no political calculus. It was overwhelmingly obvious.” To call the solution obvious is to insult your intelligence and bully you into not responding. It’s a great tactic if you’re selling used cars.

George Will has a brilliant piece today, in which he states “The essence of this crisis is lack of knowledge, including the inability to know who owes what to whom, and where risk resides. In such a moment, government’s speed should not vary inversely with its information.” He goes on to argue that handing over such a gigantic sum to Paulson for spending as he wishes, answering to no one, essentially creates a fourth branch of government.

This is exactly what what I was warning of in my last post, Don’t let this “crisis” be another excuse to give away your rights.

Congress has been handing over responsibility to special appointees of the executive branch for many years, which is arguably unconstitutional. Congress passed the laws that created this crisi. Congress approves the appointments of Bernanke and Paulson. Congress has failed and should be replaced unless they somehow get the guts to stop this insanity right now.

Bush has failed, too. His team has been meddling with the market and created this immediate crisis. Recall that they argued that they needed to bail out Bear Sterns in March 2008 in order to avoid what we’re going through now. Given that it hasn’t worked, why are we even considering more of the same?

I sincerely hope that our elected officials do not hand over the power and responsibility we’ve given them to these unelected, anti-thinking hucksters. I hope they wake up and realize most of us do not want a bailout for failures. What we need now is careful, thoughtful deliberation in public.  If congress chooses to fail, there should be no bailout for them either. We should sweep them all out of office.

Update: Is this crisis even a crisis at all? It’s possible that banks are simply measuring their worth according to misguided regulation. Read Maybe the Banks Are Just Counting Wrong from Saturday’s WSJ. That makes me hope there’s deadlock on this bailout plan for long enough for everyone to figure out we don’t need it.