It’s been a while since I’ve dropped by your site. I just wanted to say hi and let you know that i dug your opinions on the flash lite 2 development. I’ve been working with flash lite 2 for about the last two months and it’s a different beast to have to wrap my mind around. I’m definitely looking forward to your UI component set for flash lite 2. I have a feeling that i’ll be looking to purchase it :-)

One, don’t let the tact worry you too much. If you are honest and genuine people will appreciate that more than if you try to hide who you are under a veil of politeness or BS. Smart people will recognize it, and respect you less for it. Beyond that if you begin a long term relationship by showing your “polite face”, over time the real you will come out anyways, and pulling a bait and switch is never appreciated.

I’m sure there are a ton of companies who are waisting VC money, of course thats how it has always been. If this is a bubble, than it is one on a much smaller scale than the last. The reason I say that, is that this bubble is fueled by a resurgence in online ad revenue, it seems to be (at least for now) viable for companies to build business models by offering products or services to users and only gaining revenue from ads. Only time can tell whether this is the advertising market realizing that eyeballs online are just as important as eyeballs watching a TV, or whether it is an inflated ad market. Either way, if the payouts for the Ad revenue fall significantly, that will certainly break a lot of these recent business models. One other thing I’ve noticed is that acquisition values seem to be based on user bases these days, rather than revenue. If users become extremely fickle in their use of online apps, larger companies will go back to basing their acquisitions on revenue or long term viability. That will also break a lot of these recent start up’s exit strategies.

Some people with silly ideas get VC funding, but it just seems like they are getting less of it than they did in the last bubble. Following startup news and such, I just have a gut feeling that the average seed, and series A funding sizes have gone down significantly. These days, if you’re outside the valley and need more than 3 million in funding, it usually has to come from more than one VC, and it definitely has to come in more than one round. Lots of people talk about the completely self funded startup, which I think is still for the most part a myth. Building products with Flex or AJAX or whatever is easier, but not so much so that you make a huge splash in the market without an infusion of money. Most people still have the mentality that if I develop something wonderful than it will market itself. This is true to some degree, but the splash you make can still be increased greatly if you spend some money getting your name out there.

Like you, I also want to do more product development this year. Its more enjoyable than service development as the pressure of the deadline in product development usually isn’t as intense. A little pressure is good, it helps bring people together towards a common goal and set a mentality of hard work. Too much pressure does the opposite though, it burns people out and lowers quality. For product development, the focus is more on making it work the best it can for its target audience. In most services jobs the focus is more on getting it done within an extremely tight deadline, and being able to change huge chunks of your code base on a dime. As exciting as it can be to see how fast your team can go from design to delivery, its something I would rather experience only a few times a year. And thats really only to keep the team bonded and my own skills sharp.

-sj