Articles for category: Initiative

September 9, 2016

Greg Thomas

Do Something Different

There are a number of apps out there that all do the same thing, in the same way, on the same platform. And there is still room for more – the path is there, the hurdles are known, the market might not yet be saturated. Get in there and squeeze the last bit of juice from that lemon. Or – do something completely different, that goes against the grain, where the pitfalls are unknown, something that questions the status quo, that forces you to lead without declaring yourself a leader and above all where no market go exists. Give that

September 8, 2016

Greg Thomas

The Fallacy of Guaranteed Tipper

The guaranteed tip occurs when you are out dining with friends or family at a restaurant with a big group and the wait staff comes to you and says… “Since this group is over x, we automatically apply the gratuity of x %” I recently had this happen to me and instinctively replied – “Congratulations” – as you would to someone who had just won the lottery. Not the best response, but the triggered response to someone getting something for not having really tried.  They didn’t need to give their best service, they already knew what they were going to

September 7, 2016

Greg Thomas

No More Learning Excuses

It used to be an ordeal to learn a new programming language. Download the framework. Patch your OS (possibly) Install pre-requisites. Do the install. Configure it. Start Learning In some cases between 1 and 5, you had to download IDEs (Integrated Development Environment)  and sometimes these cost money. So there you are now, shelling out money, installing new frameworks, messing up your computer if you do it wrong what a pain. Now, now it’s more like this… Setup an account with your cloud provider of choice – Amazon, Google, Amazon, Other. Create a VM from a template that has what

August 25, 2016

Greg Thomas

Why Startups need Marketing

In the early days of a startup, you don’t need a dedicated Marketing person. You do need someone who can handle the Marketing role. This is a key difference, because even though you don’t need to have someone fully dedicated to this, you do NEED to have the responsibilities of this role fulfilled on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And this role should not be handled by one person – because then it becomes a Marketing person – instead this role NEEDS to be handled by everyone in your team for the reason that everyone understands the value of the

August 23, 2016

Greg Thomas

Career Travels

I used to enjoy the prospect of working close to my home.  Of being able to roll out of my bed to my computer and get to it.  And on days when the weather is miserable, I still do. I’ve always seen the time getting from A to B as being a waste of time that would be better filled doing the work rather than getting to it. Lately, I’ve started to have this shift, where this is no longer the case, possibly because I’ve found many ways to enjoy the ride from A to B or perhaps because that