Peter Cooper is the founder of Ruby Inside, Ruby Weekly and Javascript Weekly. He’s also built and sold two web apps. We We caught up with him to find out how and why he builds so much, and any habits and practices we can learn from him to get building and releasing more stuff.
Key points:
New book coming out : Self Promotion for Geeks
Started FeedDigest to serve personal need initially, then scaled into a business that sold after 2-3 years.
Code Snippets – Delicious for code. Also sold in 2007.
Started RubyInside.com to promote the Beginning Ruby book. Grown into one of the main Ruby community sites.
Income is spread out from many different sites and projects.
Doesn’t consider himself to be a productive person!
Peaks and dips of motivation – getting an office and schedule has helped.
List all ideas and thoughts – using pen and paper/whiteboard
Break tasks into smallest chunks when not feeling productive – even down to 60 second tasks
Focus comes naturally from the things you are interested in or get traction
Throw as many small things out as possible and see what sticks
Often the thing that takes off isn’t the thing you expected
Your pricing model will dictate whether you can employee others
Use gut instinct when deciding what to build or do
If you think you’ll be annoyed if someone else did what you were thinking – make sure you do it yourself!
Follow people who are always experimenting and trying new things
Put social capital in the bank by getting involved in community projects