small business

A Harvard Business Review video with tactics for getting better at small talk and enjoying it, such as setting goals, allowing pauses, and starting and ending conversations.

Louis Rossmann recounts calling NYC's Department of Consumer Affairs after his repair business was fined, only to find the agency staff could not explain what the law required. The call starts around 3:14.

Ruby developer Avdi Grimm gives a seven-minute tour of Pharo Smalltalk's development environment, focusing on tools like search-by-example and the integrated, live coding experience.

Aditya Siram argues that functional programming has much to learn from Smalltalk's interactivity, using Pharo and Squeak to show live, visual, explorable programming environments.

Noel Rappin's MountainWest RubyConf talk introduces Smalltalk to Ruby programmers. He compares the two languages' object models, blocks, 1-based arrays, simple syntax and live programming environment, and walks through sample code.

A Computer History Museum demonstration with Dan Ingalls of Smalltalk-76 running on a Xerox Alto, recorded in 2017. He shows the live environment and discusses the system.

Not Just Bikes reflects on five years in the Netherlands and tours small towns and cities, from Haarlem to Veenendaal. It argues that good urbanism with walkable streets, bike infrastructure and transit is found almost everywhere there, not just in Amsterdam.

A brief demo of the Smalltalk debugger, including defining a method that doesn't exist yet while the program is stopped mid-crash.

Jason Cohen's MicroConf talk on designing a bootstrapped business by starting from your own strengths, goals and constraints. He works backward to the business model, pricing, market and product that fit, with practical points like annual prepay and pricing tiers.

Maciej Ceglowski's talk at Web Directions argues that small teams and lone programmers can build sustainable businesses without chasing Silicon Valley's grow-or-die model. He offers alternative, more achievable definitions of success.

The South Park clip in which underpants gnomes explain their three-phase business plan: collect underpants, then a question mark, then profit.

A roughly two-hour demonstration by Dan Ingalls of Smalltalk running on the Computer History Museum's restored Xerox Alto. It shows the integrated environment and language designed at Xerox PARC as personal dynamic media.

Louis Rossmann interviews Kaylie Milliken and Mellissa Wood, producers of the documentary Billion Dollar Bully, about Yelp's alleged practices toward businesses.

David Heinemeier Hansson's talk at Startup School 2008 on building a profitable startup. He argues for bootstrapping and small, well-run companies instead of chasing investment and exits.

Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software gives a GDC 2018 retrospective on surviving as an indie game maker since 1994, from shareware days through Steam. It covers business realities, costs and sustaining a comfortable living without chasing riches.

Louis Rossmann lays out evidence that a Yelp salesperson had friends leave negative reviews of his repair shop after he declined advertising. He frames it as extortion and defamation.

Louis Rossmann explains how Google delisted his repair business site for almost a year, and how having AI rewrite his authentic content into corporate-style text finally restored his rankings.

Stephen Kell's Strange Loop talk argues that C and Unix already contain Smalltalk-like dynamism and introspection that can be exposed. He presents his liballocs research on bridging dynamic and compiled languages.

Not Just Bikes contrasts typical car-dependent North American business parks with one near the airport in the Netherlands that works for driving, cycling and transit. It looks at how the design makes commuting easier.

All Cars with Jon explains how EPA fuel economy rules, especially the footprint-based CAFE formula, push automakers away from small trucks.

A Wendover Productions video on how dollar store chains expanded across America and why they displace grocery stores in small towns. It covers their business model and supplier leverage.

Clayton Christensen explains his theory of disruptive innovation at Oxford's Said Business School, using examples from steel, Toyota, Sony, Walmart and Godrej. He applies the theory to why some economies stagnate and others grow.

Robert Martin's RailsConf 2009 talk looks at why Smalltalk lost out despite its technical strengths. He draws lessons about language communities and arrogance that he argues could hurt Ruby too.

An ABC 20/20 investigation into whether the Better Business Bureau sells its ratings. It looks at BBB finances, executive pay and how grades relate to paid accreditation.

A short Frank Zappa interview clip on the decline of the music business, contrasting old cigar-chomping executives with younger industry people.

The business card scene from the film American Psycho, in which characters compare their business cards.

The business card scene from the film American Psycho, in which executives compare increasingly refined business cards with escalating envy. It is a two-minute clip of a classic dark comedy moment.

A This Week in Startups episode in which Jason Calacanis interviews David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals. They discuss bootstrapping, company philosophy and views on the tech industry.

A feature-length documentary on General Magic, the 1989 startup that envisioned the smartphone and handheld connected devices, featuring Tony Fadell, Andy Hertzfeld and Marc Porat. It covers the company's vision and eventual failure.

Jellyvision hosts Basecamp founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson for a Q&A about open source, productivity, feature requests and taking care of customers.

Ed Catmull of Pixar speaks at Stanford's 2007 Entrepreneurship Conference on running a creative company. He argues for surfacing small problems early and building good teams, with stories like the Toy Story 2 crunch.

A Business Insider investigation into the US boom in AI data centers, mapping where they are, who owns them, and how much power and water they consume. It looks at the costs borne by communities, with a focus on Virginia.

Alan Kay's tribute to Ted Nelson at the Intertwingled festival, presented using a revived Smalltalk-78 system running on emulated 1970s Xerox PARC hardware. It shows live, user-programmable software from that era.

Mike Monteiro's CreativeMornings talk on getting paid for creative and freelance work, covering contracts, working with lawyers, and refusing to work for free. It is delivered with blunt humor.

Paul Graham speaks at Startup School 2008 about how to create a successful startup. His talk emphasizes being good, not just avoiding being evil, as a strategic advantage.

Jake Birkett of Grey Alien Games explains at GDC 2016 how an indie developer survived eleven years without a hit by building a long tail of games and redefining success.

Clayton Christensen speaks at Google on where growth comes from, covering disruption, market-creating versus efficiency innovation, and jobs to be done. He also touches on measuring your life.

The Futur's guide to pricing design and creative work, arguing against hourly rates and for value-based pricing. It features Blair Enns and says to price the client, not the job.

Fox Business interview in which Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison claims Oracle will beat Amazon at cloud databases. He argues the world's valuable data lives in Oracle and says Amazon struggled to move off it.

Nicholas Ormrod's CppCon 2016 talk on how Facebook optimizes std::string with its open-source replacement fbstring. It covers storage layout tradeoffs, small string optimization and memory allocation behavior.