A few thoughts on my new column on Startups and Entrepreneurship

I never did put out an intro to my my new VSM Column on Startups and Entrepreneurship, so I guess I'll consider this post an "Introduction and Hello" or something similar.  Here are a few thoughts in no particular order:

• These are my experiences.  My experiences are based on my actual experiences.  I've been directly involved over a long period of time with 3 startups.  Two of these startups were successful and one went into the ground at 500 miles an hour.  These are my long term startup experiences.  I've been involved with several other startups on a short term consulting experience.  None of these short term startup experiences have been successful due to reasons outside of my control, but you knew I would say that.
• I'm a developer that get's business.  I've had it drilled into my head forever.  I hated it when I was young, but now I get it.  It is one of the few experiences that I can remember as being positive about my youth.
• I don't live in Silicon Valley nor have I ever been associated with the startup life style of SV.  Given that most developers that read Visual Studio Magazine are .NET developers and there are few places using .NET in SV, at least that is what I am told, I'm going to focus on the realities that I see outside of SV.  If you are in SV and your read my stuff, great.  If you are in SV and you hate what I say, great.  I would actually like to hear about that.  If you like my stuff, great.
• These are my experiences regarding what has worked for me and what has not.  If your experiences and my experiences are different, great.  I don't have a problem going back and saying that something else worked for someone else.
• If you are a software architecture wonk and think that software architecture is the most important thing, then you are a moron and I'll probably say something along those lines in my column.  The most important thing in a software based startup is to create business value.  If your architecture delays your product, it sucks.  Get something out, get feedback from the users, act on that feedback.  Now, your stuff needs to be secure.  That is also important, but architecture, not so much.  Architecture is something that high end consulting shops use to sell more of their high end hours to CIOs of Fortune level companies.  This column is about getting going.  If you want to invest in cool architecture, invest in it when your startup has moved into the Fortune level of companies.  
• People and dedication are the most important things that you should look for.  It doesn't matter if someone is from Harvard or XYZ polytechnic.  What matters is people and the dedication that they have to solve a problem.  You don't know if someone is dedicated until they are in the foxhole of software hell with you and you are taking grenades on a Friday night.  Are they getting up at 5 am on a Saturday to go to test out software changes from users and to get feedback?  Are they even willing to act on that feedback?

If You Build It, Will They Come?

Url: https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2016/01/06/app-to-market-4-listen-to-users.aspx

Users are the most important part of your application, startup, and, ultimately, business.  You must provide them something of value.  That something must resolve some pain point that they have.  It must do something to somehow make their lives easier.
This time, I'll look back at three of the startups I have been involved with and how each one worked with the users:

• The first was a real estate multiple listing service that was successful.
• The second was a pay-for-placement search engine that was successful.
• The third was a FourSquare-type of service for searching local services that was formed and worked several years, then saw success dry up when listening to customers was refused and FourSquare started up.

Handling Events in the Xamarin MessagingCenter - article

Url: https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2015/12/01/xamarin-messagingcenter.aspx

Tightly coupled systems are a nightmare to deal with. Having references everywhere causes all sorts of problems with reusability. Think about this in the standpoint of mobile systems where we would like to share code between iOS, Android and Windows .NET systems. Having to pass around a reference to a UIViewController or Activity/Fragment so that you can make some type of change can be a nightmare. iOS doesn't understand an Android Activity/Fragment, and Android doesn't understand a UIViewController.

What's a developer to do? Thankfully, there are a couple of answers to this problem. The first, and most obvious, solution is to use standard .NET/C# events. Remember, nearly every feature in the .NET Framework is a part of Xamarin products. The second possible solution is something that is Xamarin.Forms-specific: the Xamarin MessagingCenter, which I'll explore in this article.

Navigation with Xamarin.Forms

Url: https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2015/06/01/navigation-with-xamarin-forms.aspx

Xamarin Forms was released a bit more than a year ago. Since then, the product has grown, gone through rounds of features and bug fixes, and feels very much like it's ready for use in applications. And since then, mobile apps are no longer relegated to one screen. Mobile apps should work on multiple screens of functionality. And even then, users must be able to navigate between screens in a standard way. In this column, I'll look at how Xamarin Forms can be used to implement the various approaches to navigating on various devices.
Note: In early-to-mid 2014, this column featured articles on standard navigation in iOS and Android, but this column will show how to implement standard navigation with Xamarin.Forms. Also, graphics are not my specialty -- please excuse the graphics.

Startups and Technology Article 1 - Getting Your Application to Market

https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2015/06/23/developing-and-selling-apps.aspx

You are a developer.  You are at the top of your game.  You can make bits do magical things over the web.  Your database can run circles around anyone else's. You've got a great job. 

Unfortunately, that job is at a soulless corporation. That company sells widgets that have changed very little in the last 125 years. There is a ceiling for you as a developer at this company. You have users in marketing and production. Some of them you love, some you loathe. You long for something more. 

You hear about people making lots of money by starting product companies, but you aren't quite sure what you have to do. You watch Silicon Valley on HBO. You hear about this thing called Y Combinator. Then, one day it happens, you hit upon a great idea. It's something that you see all kinds of need for. What should you do now?

Data Binding with Xamarin and iOS (iPhone & iPad)

Url: http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2015/04/01/a-simple-data-binding-trick.aspx

Applications and businesses live on data. Data is what makes a business a business, generates value for customers, and allows a company to generate income. Displaying data to a user is a common operation, especially in mobile. It might be immensely important for a salesperson to get the last bit of information before visiting a client or to display the location of a restaurant via a local consumer-oriented app. In this article, I'll look at the UITableViewController class that allows you to get at and display that data in an iOS app.

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