Even though we’re on winter break here at JFM we had to interrupt the peace and quiet of our blog because Bob Garfield wrote a huge and thoughtful piece for AdAge on widgets. Given that we’re at the very early stages of having advertisers fund useful consumer web apps, any time someone super influential, like [...]

It’s been a busy month here at Jackson Fish Market, and now it’s time to pursue some other interests. JFM is officially “on break”. Luckily through the magic of technology, all of our websites will continue to function. And if they don’t, alarms will be raised, fighter jets will scramble, people will be woken [...]

There are many ways we could count the start of Jackson Fish Market: the day the state issued our license, the day Jenny showed up, the day we got our first paying gig, the day we got our first check, etc. But in this webby world it seems like the day our web site went [...]

We’re looking for someone to do some part time blogging and community participation over here at Jackson Fish Market. If you enjoy blogging, participating in forums, and like the products we’ve created (or at the very least want to make them better), then we may have some part-time work for you.
Send us a note [...]

We’re back after the Labor Day weekend and our cozy workspace has gotten a little quieter. Our first ever class of interns — Luke, Tyler, and Alex are off to school. They each did an excellent job this summer and we’re super pleased. A quick refresher:

Our promise that the interns would ship something.
Our announcement of [...]

A few weeks ago Robert Scoble and his trusty producer Rocky came by our offices. They did a great job putting together this interview. Now it’s posted for your edification/enjoyment. Or so you can tease us.

Note: Walter escaped the camera somehow. Next time we’ll get him front and center.

We don’t get too many visitors here at Jackson Fish, but today our old friend Robert Scoble came by to chat with us (as well as with the nice folks at Smartsheet who we did some work with) about what we’re doing.
You can see the short version of the video (shot using Robert’s cell phone [...]

Hi everyone… we had a lovely break. Walter’s is being unexpectedly extended by a day due to the weather in Chicago, but we’re here. We also are excited to welcome our first every class of interns here at JFM. The plan is that they will conceive, design, develop, and ship an app from start to [...]

As you may or may not know from having (or not having) followed us here for awhile, periodically we take a break. There’s been lots of discussion over the past few months on what it means to work at a startup. Should you work 4 days a week? Should you take time off? Should you [...]

If you made it to our inaugural Secret Society Meeting at Jackson Fish Market World Headquarters last month, then you already know we’ve moved our working offices from the northwest corner of our building over to the northeast corner. The new space is not only much bigger, it also comes with wonderful floor-to-ceiling windows! [...]

There’s been a blip in the blogosphere (and the Seattle Tech Startup mailing list) lately about corporate culture and how hard people should work at startups. Posts of note include:

37 Signals announcing they are moving to 4 day workweeks (among other things).
Jason Calacanis saying you should fire people who aren’t workaholics (among other things).
37 [...]

Posts will be light this week as we’re working towards some key milestones on various projects and attending a conference for part of the week. More consistent blogging will return next week.
(On a fun note, Marcelo over at Sampa, the guru of Seattle Startup indices, has put our small blog on his new list. I [...]

To those of you who got here because you read about us in the Times today… welcome!
For those of you who’d like to check out, head over to the Times. There’s even a cool pic.

By no stretch of the imagination do I claim credit for having made something that lots of folks consider great (other than my kids). But we’re not talking about kids and as my wife will point out, I had only a modest role in that anyway. I’d like to talk about creating things that people [...]

Hi everyone. Hope you had a lovely holiday, new year, etc. We’re back in the office and already hard at work on our next offering. We’ll start blogging regularly in a couple of days, but for now we’d like to remind you of a few things that are going on:

We were fortunate to get nominated [...]

Hi Crunchies voters. We were thrilled to find out we were nominated for “Best design/user interface” in this year’s inaugural Crunchies (Crunchy?) Awards. Thanks so much for coming by. In addition to our blog (which you’re on right now) check out the two experiences we shipped to see if you think we deserve to win.
Check [...]

Believe it or not… it’s been one year since we created our little startup - Jackson Fish Market. Our first blog post — Hello World — was back on November 20, 2006. We try not to pat ourselves on the back too much here… given that we have what feels like an endless amount of [...]

Signals vs. Noise recently tried answering the question of how they moved from consulting to product development:
“37signals made the move from clients to products one day at a time. Basecamp was developed alongside client work and was treated as essentially a third client. It had to compete for resources on equal footing with other clients, [...]

I’m pretty sure the short guy with his back to the camera is my great grandfather. The Jacksons are not exactly a tall folk. Note the scary carp(?) drawing on the left window. I think the sign on the right window under the words “Jackson’s — Quantity Quality & Varieties” says “Live Carp”. Where else [...]

We are growing our ranks of designers and software developers by offering full-time paid internships in our Atelier internship program for the summer of 2008.

We have all the standard accessories: cool location, cool hardware, semi-cool people ;), free snacks and drinks, Lego, Wii, etc. All the same stuff that everyone else has. What we also [...]

We’ve been working at this startup thing for several months now and with every day we learn more. Sometimes we get surprised when things turn out just as we expected. But more often than not we realize what really works for us after much trial and error. This is definitely the case when it comes [...]

Several folks have asked us to post pictures of the JFM headquarters but since we’re still in the process of spiffying up the place, I’ve posted just a few early pictures and details to give you an idea of our small but very hard working space.
We’re located in Seattle’s Pioneer Square district at 620 Alaskan [...]

We make no secret of admiring 37 Signals for bootstrapping a profitable self-sustaining business making great and authentic products that people love. To that end we have no problem in letting them do the talking instead of us when they’ve already said what we’re thinking but much more articulately:
“For companies trying to build new web-based [...]

In the post a couple of days ago I pointed out that a much likelier way of guaranteeing a regular income is to create a solid business with low overhead and consistent returns than betting the farm on the long shot flip or IPO. Astute readers will notice that this “solid business” typically requires that [...]

My we’re serious.

E. O. Wilson said tonight that TED is boggling his mind. You can imagine how the rest of us feel. But before I collapse into bed I wanted to mention that four times today (I think) people have looked at our badges and asked if we run the Pike Place Fish Market. You know, where [...]

The blog is about to get more interesting cause it won’t be just me posting anymore. Walter Smith will be adding his thoughtful insights as a fellow co-founder of Jackson Fish Market. Even better than his blog posts will be all the code he writes. But that will take a little longer to hit the [...]

In my completely unscientific fashion I’ve found that in my experience an unusual number of people engaged in the business of making software have many creative endeavors and dreams outside software. Lots and lots of musicians. Lots of photographers. And lots of people who will secretly tell you (once they get to know you) that [...]

As described in the last post, the most frequent question I get is “what are you doing”. It’s true that I often answer “we’re making software for consumers.” I’ve also often tried this alternative: “we’re making an independent consumer software company.” Not as short, but more accurate. Those in the industry often ask what I [...]

Inevitably the single most frequent question I get asked since embarking on this venture has been “what are you doing?” And also inevitably the response I give is “making software for consumers.” This almost always generates the knowing nod from the other party that says “ah, you’re keeping it a secret.” But that’s not really [...]