Notes on MVP development, website strategy, and lessons from 25+ years of turning ideas into products. No filler, just insights worth sharing.
What it takes to replace a WordPress site with static files: what transfers, what doesn't, how long it takes, and how to tell if you're a good candidate.
Content management systems solved a real problem in 2005. Most of those constraints are gone, but we kept the database, the plugins, and the maintenance bill.
A twenty-minute audit you can run on your own site to find out whether your monthly website fee is buying real work or buying nothing at all.
AI bots can generate thousands of expensive page requests on a WordPress site. Why it happens, why robots.txt won't stop it, and what to do before September 15.
A site with 15 visitors a day blocked 1,170 attacks in 24 hours. Nobody targeted it, nobody has heard of it. Here's why being small doesn't protect you.
A step-by-step recovery plan for a hacked WordPress site, from someone who cleans them up. What to do in the first hour, this week, and long term.
Every company that squeezes its users creates an opening for someone who doesn't. That's not idealism. That's economics.
Built an app nobody uses? The problem isn't your code or your pricing. It's that you don't actually understand the problem you're trying to solve.
In a world of rug pulls and enshittification, actually caring about people isn't naive. It's the most durable competitive advantage you can build.
AI tools are incredible for prototyping, but writing code is the easy part. Building, hosting, securing, and maintaining software still requires human skill.
The offshore MVP failure pattern I see repeatedly: unusable code, no documentation, security gaps, and a rebuild that costs more than doing it right.
Why asking capable people to work for free doesn't work, what it signals about the person asking, and how to respond professionally.
Written for builders. When somebody asks you to be their technical cofounder, the request tells you what they think your work is worth. How to read it.
If startup equity is so valuable, why does it only flow one direction? The answer reveals everything about what that equity is actually worth.
That CTO role you're applying for might not be a real job. Here's how to recognize deal flow harvesting disguised as employment.
The startup ecosystem has become a dream factory that profits from founders, not businesses. Here's how to see through it.
Success requires luck, but luck isn't random. It compounds on capability. The goal isn't to get lucky. It's to become someone luck can work with.
The best way to learn your business is to do every job yourself. Not forever, but first. Direct experience teaches what delegation can't.
Product-market fit gets all the attention, but launching teaches you far more: how people actually use your product and why your assumptions were wrong.
The tech startup narrative dominates, but software isn't the answer for everyone. Without a tech background, it might be the hardest path, not the smartest.
Standard MVP advice assumes you're paying developers. When you're building yourself, the calculus changes, and sometimes building more is the smarter move.
The standard MVP advice can backfire. Sometimes minimum viable isn't minimum valuable, and a too-small product generates noise, not signal.
Founders obsess over market opportunities but skip the most important question: why are you the right person to build this? Fit matters more than opportunity.
Chasing trends and imitating competitors is a losing strategy. The founders who win choose carefully, commit fully, and compound effort over years.
The theme looked perfect in the demo. Now your site is slow, your Core Web Vitals are failing, and you're not sure why. Here's what you actually bought.
Your WordPress site is slow despite caching plugins and better hosting. Here's what's actually happening, and why more optimization might not be the answer.
Before you look for a developer or cofounder, answer this: do you know if anyone wants what you're building? Are you sure software is the answer?
The cofounder search costs more than time: it costs optionality and equity. Here's what matchmaking events don't tell you.
Real numbers on MVP development costs in 2026. What affects pricing, what you're actually paying for, and how to think about the investment.
How expensive is WordPress in 2026, really? The real accounting of hosting costs, security, maintenance, and hidden expenses most site owners never see coming.
Written for founders. The advice to find a technical cofounder assumes a venture path most companies never take. Why the search fails, and what works.
Amazon shipped a feature I had publicly asked for two years earlier. A short note on what it feels like when a good idea finally lands somewhere.
Every web design project has someone who can derail it late. How to spot the spoiler early and structure work so one person cannot sink the project.
Social media made communication constant and disposable at the same time. A look at what we quietly gave up when everything became a feed.
After enough creative projects you notice what separates the ones that work from the ones that do not. Three things that consistently decide it.
Clients arrive with ambitious visions for their website. The uncomfortable truth is that every website is a marketing project, whatever else it is.
Four questions that drive most of the work on any design project, and why answering them early prevents the expensive kind of disagreement later.
A candidate looked perfect on paper and said all the right things. On the hiring instinct that fires late, and why you should listen when it does.
How to evaluate a WordPress theme before you buy it, what the demo will not tell you, and the questions that separate a good purchase from a mistake.
Hundreds of spam emails after a WordPress rebuild, fixed in ten minutes with a honeypot field. The simplest form spam defense that still works.
How to hire a freelancer without getting burned. What to ask, what to check, and the warning signs that tend to show up before the money does.
What the Obama campaign did with its software raised a real question about giving work away. On the open-source ethos and why paying it forward pays.
Wanting a product nobody has built yet is uncomfortable, and it is also where most good ideas start. On trusting your own unmet needs.
Finishing is easier than starting, at least for me. On why personal projects stall at the very beginning and what actually breaks the deadlock.
Some products feel magical and others feel like a chore. The difference usually comes down to whether using it is something you want or have to do.
Creative people get stuck in ruts. The most useful question is not what to do next, it is what you have quietly stopped doing without noticing.
A 2012 retrospective on software upgrades that made products worse, and why shipping change for its own sake erodes trust users already gave you.
A real-world UX failure spotted on vacation, and what it says about designing for attention rather than for the person trying to get something done.
Windows 8 got the big vision right and the small interactions wrong. Why micro-interactions decide whether people actually like using your product.
Small businesses under pressure often cut their way toward collapse. Why shrinking is rarely a strategy and what to do when revenue is falling.
A designer told me he had quoted a number that scared him. On pricing your work honestly, and what quoting too low actually ends up costing you.
Responsive design felt like a media format change, the way CDs replaced eight-tracks. A 2012 look at rebuilding the web for unpredictable screens.
Content marketing works when you have something to say and fails when you do not. On writing that earns attention instead of manufacturing it.
The secret to winning business turned out to be embarrassingly simple: be decent to people. Why professional courtesy is still a competitive edge.
When you build things for other people, it is worth asking whether the design decisions you agonize over actually matter to anyone but you.
Was Facebook Timeline designed to be inefficient on purpose? A 2012 argument about interfaces that optimize for engagement rather than the user.
Checking the weather revealed how badly alignment can break a data display. A small example of why visual structure is not decoration at all.
When your job description shifts with every client, your preferences are the thing that stays constant. On knowing what work you actually want.
It is easy to romanticize some other era of building things. A short argument that the tools and opportunities available right now are remarkable.
Designing for one person alone is a different problem from designing for people interacting with each other. Why that distinction changes decisions.
Ask Jeeves put a butler between you and your answer. A short piece on interface metaphors that add friction while pretending to remove it.
Web projects burn enormous time in discussion before anything exists. Why building a rough version early beats another round of meetings about it.
The single question that drives UX work more than any other. Asking why you are building something prevents most of the expensive mistakes later.
Waiting until the picture is clear in your head is a good way to never start. On designing your way to clarity instead of waiting for it to arrive.
UX design does not have a finish line. Why the honeycomb model matters, and how treating launch as the end of the work guarantees a worse product.
Most creative work lets you leave your mark on it. UX design does not, and understanding why changes how you evaluate every decision you make.
What actually makes a landing page convert, based on designing a lot of them. The elements that matter and the ones that just make it look finished.
A refrigerator taught me more about bad interface design than most software does. Anatomy of a real-world UX failure and why the pattern repeats.