Ryan Carson

Please allow me to play devil's advocate to this story. Full disclosure: I very much dislike Jolie O'Dell (epitomized by this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ek4xXPOtlY), as well as the CEO of Treehouse, Carson (instigated by this: http://ryancarson.com/post/35939367603/you-can-do-it-alone).

I am in no way saying that what Treehouse is trying to do is a bad thing, nor that we shouldn't be providing much better resources for learners, though I don't think such education should be paywalled for monetization. I'm very much pro-Khan Academy, Coursera, StackOverflow, etc. I've spent SO much of my free time in IRC channels teaching people and helping people with their problems and I've never asked for a penny in return, so I have a lot of resentment towards any company that wants to charge for access to basic education (https://teamtreehouse.com/subscribe/plans). I'm very much for proliferation of high quality teaching materials for learners of all ages and all levels, and so I am conflicted somewhat by this story, and I fully expect to get downvoted to hell for this, but I think it's worth considering motives here. Even the best of actions that are used to veil inconsistent or conflicting motives are questionable, and this seems like wolf in sheep's clothing.

>The school I’m most excited about is in San Jose. All the kids are from at-risk homes — they have single parents who are working full time; they’re from minority groups. … Out of 12 [students], we think four or five are…

Part 2 discusses more about forming projects and clarifies that whilst there are no 'formal' managers to cajole people into doing things, there still need to be 'sticks' to hold groups together.

http://ryancarson.com/post/61606695537/how-to-set-priorities-create-budgets-and-do-project

I think it's interesting that beneath the tagline of 'people work on whatever they want' there is actually an expectation that peer pressure will prevent this; once you're onboard with a project, you are expected to stay and contribute otherwise you will be penalised in your quarterly reviews. So manager-in-person has been replaced with manager-in-peers.

This is also the means by which people are discouraged from working on solo projects; since no-one can really rate them at review time, they'll slip down the rankings.

As usual, however, no discussion about how boring regulatory things are done.

Edit: actually that last statement was incorrect, sorry . If there is such a need then management is imposed:

There isn’t any top-down prioritization (unless we are required by law to act on an issue or some “red alert” type work is required, which should be rare)

Very good points d4nt,
1. The unmentionable (elephant in the room) to investment is that typical Investors tend to look for 10x payback, that orients all future business decisions. Getting outside capital has one value in my mind, enables capturing a market quickly that has the potential to scale up fast and has a high ceiling. I too am working on bootstrapping while in another job (In an Enterprise B2B play), I'm 55yrs, my first customer is in negotiation with me, a Fortune 50 company) and this is pre-product. My plan is to fund via Customer investment...
2. My network has also been great. Need to talk with 4-5 Fortune 50 companies? Found them in my LinkedIn network.
3. Totally agree here, life is more than work, as much as you may love it. Ryan Carsons Blogs is excellent, and he's a very balanced person and build a great company (http://ryancarson.com/about). Some great tips about work life balance and focus.
3. Energy is about passion, not physical endurance!!

We implemented Trello, along with daily working/billing about a month ago, and I don't think we'll ever go back. Working on one project per day instead of trying to do 100 things at once cut my stress in half and doubled my productivity.

Trello makes it easy to see what's getting done by whom, and who is available to work on the next item coming down the pipe. Client work gets done faster, and we have more time for internal projects. We have one board for invoices, one for leads, and one for projects. Its a great system.

So, we owe a huge thanks to the folks at Fog Creek, and I can't understand why we can't pay them. But also to Ryan Carson and Thomas Ptacek, for their strong recommendations of Trello[1] and daily billing[2], respectively.

[1] http://ryancarson.com/post/24884883426/how-i-manage-40-people-remotely
[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4101802

When Ryan Carson's post made the rounds here not too long ago, I was really surprised by what got them thinking about removing their managers. http://ryancarson.com/post/61562761297/no-managers-why-we-removed-bosses-at-treehouse

By 2013 we had grown to 60 people with seven managers and four
executives. As we added more people to the team, we noticed
something disconcerting: rumors, politics and complaints started
appearing.

If you have more than two people in an organization of any kind (company, sports team, high school, PTA), you're going to have all of those things, and it has nothing to do with good or bad management. They seem pretty happy with their decision to have changed their structure, but if they think that the rumors, back channeling, and quiet lobbying are gone, I think they're going to be disappointed.

I think your advice's spot on: 1. focus, 2. Avoid feature creep. Regarding control, I wanted to add what Ryan Carson's 2 cents regarding VC funding:

"I was against raising venture capital for a long time. I felt giving away some control of your company would be distracting. Now that we’ve raised $5m, I can say raising money with the right investor will really push you faster and harder as an entrepreneur. It feels like going from university sports to the pros. The pace is faster and everyone is more experienced. I’m so glad we’ve raised money and it’s taken me to the next level as a business owner."

Source: http://ryancarson.com/post/25580650719/7-dos-and-donts-for-founders