Mike Schorah

I absolutely love  my Macbook Air with OS X. I flip up the lid, type in my password, and within seconds I'm working. No waiting for the device to spin up out of hibernation. But I'm beginning to think that I get more concentrated work when I'm using iOS on the iPad or iPhone. Whatever I'm working on takes up the whole of the screen automatically. So I focus more easily without the distractions of a Twitter feed in the corner of the desktop, or a notification badge for another email to read, or a browser tab just a click away... We no longer 'just' watch TV. We always have a second, or a third, screen to hand. On the one hand I convince myself that I am able to multi-task; on the other I fret that my ability to concentrate on a single task without distractions is diminishing. So, Macbook's going to sleep for the rest of the day. I'm going to do everything I need to do today from the iPad and see just what impact that has on my concentration on the m...

A friend of mine asked for some war stories of entrepreneurship over a couple of beers. My best advice was to point him in the direction of Eric Ries super book, almost a manual, certainly a must-read ... The Lean Startup . At its heart, though, my experience is one of focusing on a few simple principles: In addition to the necessary and sufficient test , and turning Weaknesses into Strengths , we actively use our geography to help us. And it's really all about having the right attitude . We can see problems as obstacles, or as hurdles to be overcome. I no longer expect problems to disappear, but to change and be replaced by new things. Provided that the challenges are changing then, crudely, we're making progress! Get more like this

A friend of mine asked for some war stories of entrepreneurship over a couple of beers. My best advice was to point him in the direction of Eric Ries super book, almost a manual, certainly a must-read ... The Lean Startup . At its heart, though, my experience is one of focusing on a few simple principles: In addition to the necessary and sufficient test , and turning Weaknesses into Strengths , we actively use our geography to help us. My programming colleagues have continued to be based in America, though not necessarily where I used to live. I'm now operating out of GMT time zone again from the UK. Sure, there are some costs and inconveniences that this brings. But overall it's a huge benefit ... By being rigorous in our use of project management and communication tools we can extend the working day. Many is the time when I've done background research, assembled resources and started a ball rolling with, say, a database schema set up so that my US-based programm...

A friend of mine asked for some war stories of entrepreneurship over a couple of beers. My best advice was to point him in the direction of Eric Ries super book, almost a manual, certainly a must-read ...  The Lean Startup . At its heart, though, my experience is one of focusing on a few simple principles: In addition to the necessary and sufficient test , we actively try to turn our weaknesses into strengths. For example, we don't have to waste resources on expensive office premises. We have a small team so the communication overhead is low; we don't have to have extensive group meetings to ensure everyone is co-ordinated around the same goal. We can iterate fast and often, making tiny steps that subtly change direction to hit what has become a new priority... Get more like this

A friend of mine asked for some war stories of entrepreneurship over a couple of beers. My best advice was to point him in the direction of Eric Ries super book, almost a manual, certainly a must-read ... The Lean Startup . At its heart, though, my experience is one of focusing on a few simple principles: Test everything, is it necessary ? I'm constantly shifting and re-evaluating to make sure that what we do is actually the right thing to be doing: we don't want to waste effort on doing stuff we don't have to. Test everything, is it sufficient ? When I've got my list of necessary, and only necessary, things; I run a second test, to make sure that we're not missing anything. It's surprising how often that second check throws up something that really is necessary. So these two tests, necessary and sufficient , are about focusing our energies; and concentrating on the things immediately at the top of the pile. We use a fairly sophisticated project ...

For years I've battled to get rid of problems. Now my attitude is different. It's not realistic to try to remove problems, life is always full of challenges and outright difficulties. Instead, I'm trying to make sure that this  week's problems are different from last week's . That way, there's a real measure of progress. You see, if all I do is go round in circles trying to fix the same old problems then nothing much is being achieved, and it's costing a lot in the process. But if I knock some problems on the head and move on to the ones that follow then great! One of the best ways I see this working is when the problem of needing a customer gets solved with an order; then the problem becomes one of growing capacity to resource that order ... That can start off a virtuous spiral of activity through which growth occurs; but always with problems to solve on the way. Get more like this

Sadly maths is not my strongest point. Can you check my calculations? With a 58% cost saving this customer will have paid for the iPad and software in much less than 200 data entry operations... One of our customers measured their data input operation at 6 mins/form conventionally; vs 2.5 min with Red Starfish .  So that’s 10 forms/hour conventionally; 24 forms/hour with Red Starfish.   At their admin cost of £26.50/hour that’s a Data Input processing cost of £2.65 / form conventionally and £1.10 / form with Red Starfish ... So Red Starfish costs 42% of the conventional approach; or is 58% cheaper! If they're saving £1.55 every time they do data input via the iPad rather than conventionally then the iPad and software is paid for in rather less than 200 cycles. Am I right? Get more like this