“The meal is a full course, in exquisite detail, from apt-get install openvpn to /etc/init.d/openvpn start and is guaranteed to satisfy all discriminating self-funded companies.”

“The Internet is big. Really big.”

“Four Serpents were unleashed and the masses trembled. Each wyrm took a name that conjured dread: Incorporation, Taxes, Contracts and the progenitor of them all, Fear.”

Have you moved all your programming tools into virtual machines yet?

“My God. It's full of databases.”

“Yes, sensei!”

When Joe Developer graduates from college with a shiny new Computer Science degree, it is likely that he won't have a job, let alone become a millionaire. But, ten years later, if he isn't a millionaire by then, he has an even worse chance than he did when he started.

Venture capitalists as clowns, industry titans as dinosaurs and self-funded entrepreneurs as lunatics. That means you're the lunatic.

“New Zealand? Why, no, of course not. Welcome to Wonderland, you ignorant little girl!”

“Welcome to Jurassic Valley!”

“Ladies and gentlemen!  Children of all ages!  Welcome to the Venture Capital Circus!”

Frogs in a pond.  You might call San Francisco Bay a pond.  Like the goofy frogs in this piece, Silicon Valley companies and their venture capitalist overlords may be the object of scorn or ridicule but there's a lot to learn by seeing what's behind their ribbits and croaks.

The lion is the king of the jungle and, for his kingdom to thrive, his rule must be fair and just.  The lion must provide every animal, even the smallest, with three things: a patch of land to call home, protection from predators and fair rewards for fair work.  In self-funded company terms: meaningful work, the means to do it and, especially, a fair slice of equity as a reward.

A piece of software is a revolution.  You start with nothing.  You work on it for a few months.  And it's still nothing.  You work some more.  Nothing.  And more.  Then, one day, it's something.  Welcome to the revolution!

There are big fish and small fish.  There are pretty fish and ugly fish.  Small pretty fish have different fates than big ugly fish.  Some fish live comfortably off a Palau beach but others just get the skewer.  If you're doing your own self-funded software company, you've got one of three strategies: become the big fish, avoid the big fish or get eaten by the big fish.

“Attention, Employees! Be happy. The CEO is your friend. Trust no one.”

To beat a Las Vegas casino, you need luck and strategy.  The software market is a casino, too, with its own versions of roulette and blackjack, where luck and strategy are just as important.  While there isn't much that you can do to make your self-funded software company luckier, you can have a good strategy.

In all the comic books and all the movies, Superman never said: “You know, I'm always saving people.  I'm always saving the world.  But, today, I don't feel like it.  I feel like ... watching TV.”  No, Superman was always motivated to get the job done.  If you're doing your own self-funded software company, how can you be single-minded like Superman even though you are a mere mortal?

If you have no paid employees and no sales, you don't need to incorporate.  You don't need to learn about payroll taxes.  You don't even need a business license.  You aren't in business.  Not yet.

Don't blink!  That's what a 15-day trial version of a piece of software says.  Before the user knows it, it's over.  And, before you know it, the user uninstalls it.  Was that a trial version or a "mistrial" version?

Most self-funded shrinkwrap software companies I know begin their lives making development tools.   This is not surprising: they are following that old saw that says write what you know.  And, of course, developers know about development tools.  If it were up to software developers, there wouldn't even be a class of people called dumb users because the only users would be software developers using one development tool to create more development tools.

Joke:   What's the difference between HTML and XML?  HTML requires 100,000 lines of code to satisfy one W3C Standard and XML requires 100,000 W3C Standards to write one line of code.