Our company is relatively small in size. In total, we have less than a hundred people. And yet, our software is used by millions of people and we produce many new pieces of software a year. When we do press tours of the company, it inevitably comes up, how do we do it? The #1 answer is: Very low turnover. It’s absolutely essential. Someone whose been at their job for 10 years is far more productive than someone who is new, even if that person has industry experience...
When I was 20 I had nothing. I was working multiple jobs to pay for college and started Stardock as a way to pay for school. 20 years later, it’s now worth 9 figures. How did this happen? The number 1 rule for success I’ve found is to build partnerships. This can mean your employees and it can mean external companies, contractors, etc. that you team up with. What does “building” partnerships mean? To me, it means, working towards their success. Th...
Not that I expect those people who are wholly invested in their hate to retract or express any regret for the death threats, smearing, or abuse they sent my way, but as any lawyer who is familiar with employment law can tell you, this is as clear of a victory as you can get. I said at the time that we wouldn’t pay out a dime (except for lawyers obviously) and that only an apology letter would satisfy us. Anyone who has ever run a business with lots of employees knows that s...
In October we turn 20 years. As some of you know, Stardock started out as a 1-man shop. I was a college student paying my own way through school and I started my business to help pay for school until I could find a real job. When I incorporated Stardock, I was 22 years old (I’m 42 now). I had no idea what I was doing. I knew nothing on business. And ultimately, I gave up trying to get a “real job” because I was having too much fun doing Stardock. During the p...
As pressure mounts to raise the wages of fast food workers, advocates may want to take note that such wage increases eventually pass a threshold where it makes financial sense to simply invest in automation. As Grocery Store cashiers learned, these jobs are not a given. We are all competing not just with each other but with robots. One of the primary reasons that the gap between the rich and poor has increased so much in the past 20 years has been the rise in IT. Once we pur...
I never intended to start a company. I wanted to make CPUs. Monroe Bank and Trust interviewed me for our 20th corporate birthday. You can check it out here: http://www.monroebankandtrustcares.com/2013/06/focus-on-our-customers-brad-wardell-and.html
The Atlantic found this highly interesting cartoon from the 1950s: http://m.theatlantic.com/video/index/276344/the-wonderful-world-of-capitalism/ We are gradually losing this dynamic as the United States (and Europe) move away from a manufacturing economy and into an information economy and it’s not likely to get better. Where in the 50s, the “captains of industry” had a symbiotic relationship with their workforce – their objectives required the labor and ingenui...
I was struck by how many Steve Jobs biographers have emphasized how important it was that Jobs got kicked out of Apple. That experience changed him and in the long-run, made him a much better businessman. Pride before the fall is a truism and even being aware of it doesn’t prevent one from falling into into that trap. Right now, as I write this, Stardock is doing better than at any time in its history. But it’s only doing so well now because of changes we made 3 years ago. Because 3 ye...
The number of tech companies in Michigan is…well not very high. And I’ve noticed a trend over the past 20 years: As time goes on, an ever increasing percentage of my friends that I talk to socially boil down to one of 3 categories: Lawyers. When I started the company, I didn’t know any lawyers. The first lawyer I hired I found through the yellow pages. At our 10 year anniversary, I think about a quarter of my active friends were lawyers. Today, it’s probably about half....
The Australian Parliament has finally gotten off its duff and is probing the price gouging there. This is getting ridiculous. It’s actually cheaper for an Australian to fly to the US and buy CS6 here than to buy it in Oz! Well, Adobe’s going 100% digital and dropping box sets, so that might well not be happening any more, but the Australian legislature is demanding answers. Good for them, and high time. This has been going on for decades. Companies often charge a prem...
Is to connect super talented people together and get the hell out of their way. I am continually amazed at how much these guys/gals are able to do with so little. 2012 was a pretty awesome year but 2013 is looking to be insane.
Full priced Stardock title releases of the last 5 years as measured on Metacritic. One of these is not like the others.
I am having a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, I’ve been promising my family to work fewer hours and managed to do that to a large extent over the last couple. On the other hand, last year was such a good year and this year looks even better that it presents so many exciting and varied opportunities….if only there were more hours. The accountants haven’t turned over the final numbers but broadly speaking, it appears our sales overall increased by about 3X over 2011, which, in itse...
The Genius at Oatmeal does it again. Here is a tiny snippet: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/making_things Read the whole thing. And now a message to the hateful, degenerate scum of the Internet: Dear soul sucking trolls, If you’ve publicly posted that you won’t buy stuff from my company because you don’t like me then I say to you: Thank you. The last thing I want are horrible stupid people benefiting from my work. I realize that things I p...
This week, the hard hitting reporters from Gawker bring you: “The CEO Who Built Himself America’s Largest House Just Threatened to Fire His Employees if Obama’s Elected” [actual headline] http://gawker.com/5950189/the-ceo-who-built-himself-americas-largest-house-just-threatened-to-fire-his-employees-if-obamas-elected This bad BAD man also has a LARGE house. What a monster. [editor’s note: Sure, we could have simply stated that this man sent an email to his employees explai...