[On Web] Startups in Bad Economy, SEO Cheatsheet, Jason’s Talk

Here is the list of some good articles I read this week and last week:

• Startups in Bad Economy: There are lot of views being expressed on how the current economic situation will affect the startups. I really liked Paul Graham’s view on it.
  

  Fortunately the way to make a startup recession-proof is to do exactly what you should do anyway: run it as cheaply as possible. For years I’ve been telling founders that the surest route to success is to be the cockroaches of the corporate world. The immediate cause of death in a startup is always running out of money. The cheaper your company is to operate, the harder it is to kill. Fortunately it has gotten very cheap to run a startup, and a recession will if anything make it cheaper still.

  Remember the presentation given by Sequoia around 3 weeks back. Jason from 37 signals, has a totally different (and in my opinion a more correct) view on it:

  They also say that you “need to become cash flow positive” and “spend every dollar as if it were your last.” So what was their old advice? Did they encourage their companies to spend more than they had, skimp on quality, grow grow grow, take on more risk, and accumulate more debt? Was being cash flow positive not a favored strategy before the downturn? If it wasn’t then, when was it going to be? If you weren’t in a position to make money when times were good how are you supposed to be in a position to make money when times are bad?

• SEO Cheatsheet: Found this very good SEO cheatsheet which can be very handy for quick reference if you some basics of SEO (my earlier two posts of SEO can be read here and here): http://anton.shevchuk.name/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/seo-cheatsheet.pdf
• Jason Fried’s talk at Business of Software: It is a great talk given by Jason from 37 signals on Momentum, Focus, Planning, Interruption, etc. It is a long talk and if you don’t have time and then read these notes.