Eric Dorsey

In the early half of 2016, the hot topic around the Kansas City startup community was funding, specifically outside investment. There isn't enough of it. Which companies were moving away to get it. Which were staying here because of it. Whether the problem is actually late stage funding. Or whether you actually need outside investment at all. I've always disagreed that the problem is funding. The money will come if the companies we are creating are good enough. What Kansas City lacks is the…

Vertical integration. It's one of those words that they use so much business school that makes you wonder if it actually means anything. I hate those words as much as the next developer, but this is the best word I can think of to call the concept I want to write about. If your company builds a product, the more of the different kinds of work your company does itself that go into the product, the more vertically integrated the company is. Most software startups are fairly vertically integrated…

It's a question I ask often. In fact, my girlfriend regularly gets annoyed because I ask this question so often and without even thinking about it. It's one reason she refers to me as her six foot toddler, because kids are notorious for asking this question without relent. I choose to think this is because I've managed to hold on to part of my child-like sense of wonder. She probably would give you another reason. I'm trying to break my habit of asking her 'why' so often, but I think most people…

Everyone has an opinion on outsourcing. Some will tell you it is the answer to all your problems, getting cheap labor that works when you don't, who wouldn't want that? Some will tell you that it only causes you headaches. Like most issues, it isn't that cut and dry, but there is a balance that makes sense as a software startup. I doubt there is a startup in existence that doesn't outsource something. If you're building the software for your database or web servers in house, you're likely to run…

I always wanted a standing desk. I attribute it to growing up working in a server room for my dad's company. In most server rooms you generally work standing at a rack of servers and I spent a few too many sleepless nights trying to solve a particular server problem standing in front of a server rack, staring at a monitor. At Freightview, we have some furniture made from pipe and topped with wood (actually made of pallet wood, after all we are in the freight industry), building something with…

This is a post that outlines all the things I think have been major take aways from my time working with startups in and around Kansas City. Most of this advice is probably valid far wider than just in Kansas City, but since my experience is very localized here, I figured it wise to hedge my bets. Over the last 6 years, I've learned a lot about startups. I have immersed myself in startups. I've written software for about 10 different startups and sadly, most of them are no longer around. So…

This picture was taken by the Curiosity Rover on Mars yesterday. It might be one of the most awesome pictures humanity has ever taken. It may even be even more awe-inspiring than the Pale Blue Dot, but I believe Carl Sagan said it best: “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions…

I'm in the middle of polishing a web app my team is developing at the office. Jared and I sit next to each other and go through the app page by page, and fix what needs to be fixed because he sees things that I miss. Of course, we run in to a bug that needs to be fixed before we can continue with our business. Damn. How long is this gonna take? Its about 3:00pm, people are talking, I'm on edge because this bug has me stressed out because it is particularly troublesome, seemingly without…

I was going to write a long in depth look at what all I accomplished in 2013 as well as some of my failings. I got bored of it and deleted it, because if I didn't even want to write it, who would possibly read it? 2013 is the year I transformed from a simple web developer into a software engineer. I really started to understand why process, testing, and maintainability is super important in this field and especially when working with start ups. I learned more in 2013 than I probably did in the…

The single most important thing to understand when managing a software project (or any project for that matter). The tradeoff between features, quality, and time. “When a project cannot meet all three goals—a situation Healthcare.gov was clearly in by March—something will give. If you want certain features at a certain level of quality, you’d better be able to move the deadline. If you want overall quality by a certain deadline, you’d better be able to delay or drop features. And if you have a…

I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV. Weejay, one of the companies I work with, received a letter from a law firm in KC a few weeks ago. The letter basically claimed that their client had a patent pending on what they described as something along the lines of an "audio visual entertainment system." I'm not sure if thats the exact wording, but its about the same amount of vagueness. The letter didn't reference the patent or even who their client was. Pretty much a scare tactic. I guess they…

I should start this by saying, I am a K-State fan through and through. I bleed purple and I despise KU, but I wanted to take an objective look at why I despise KU, so that maybe KU fans or anyone can understand it a bit better. This should a bit different than my typical K-State/KU rant, given that I am completely sober and K-State lost about a week ago, so I’m pretty much over it. Go Shox.   I think the number one reason why at least I, and I have feeling a number of K-State fans, despise KU is…