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! [...]

We’re happy to see Tafiti getting such a nice reception across the net. In general there are lots of good comments as well as excellent suggestions on how to make it even better. One thing in particular that we noticed was people commenting on the tree view. The comments have ranged from the “wow” variety [...]

In addition to working on our own offerings, periodically we work with key partners to help them deliver new software experiences. When we work with partners we look for opportunities where we can inject some of our particular brand of user experience value as well as our technical expertise. We’re kind of picky and ultimately [...]

Designing our business so we could have extended periods of time off has been critical for us in terms of having the life we want. And even though I was never really in doubt, a tiny part of me wondered if after a month off in the middle of the summer I’d want to come [...]

Even when you have a job like mine where you love what you do, taking time to do other stuff is important. Personally, I don’t need recharging per se, but getting to do other activities and gain new perspective is always a good thing. And ultimately I think it helps me do my job better. [...]

As the lead flower harvester for the “florists” at They’re Beautiful!, I thought I’d share with you how the flowers were made.
To get some basic understanding of what it’s like to be a florist, I spent half a day job-shadowing Nisha Kelem, owner of Seattle’s Fleurish. We met early one weekday at the wholesale flower [...]

What an exciting last couple of days we’ve had here at Jackson Fish HQ. While it’s only a small first step in terms of the experiences we want to develop, we’ve been lucky to get a very fun reception for They’re Beautiful! First and foremost we wanted to thank everyone who’s checked it out, given [...]

We really try to be patient and not rush things. But there gets to be a point in the project where you need to just push push to get it out the door. That’s where we’re at (with a couple of projects actually) so we’re eating at our desks. On the menu today is BBQ [...]

Despite the shame and embarrassment this might bring to our new little company, we’re revealing our Guilty Pleasures Playlist that we’ve been fine tuning over the past few days.
There are some songs in the list that one might argue are just classics and therefore would cause no embarrassment. But the way I [...]

We’ve been playing with different subscription music services in the office. Jenny has a Napster account and Walter has accounts with both Napster and Rhapsody. They’re relatively cheap and they have a reasonably good selection of music. After losing our “Guilty Pleasures” playlist (of which Jenny will post the contents at some point if we’re [...]

I’m a big talker when it comes to how businesses should be transparent about their inner workings. However, it’s mostly talk. I admit that it feels very counter-intuitive to actually put it into practice in many situations. I’m trying to push the envelope a little at a time when it comes to articulating what’s going [...]

After lunch the whole team dropped by the nearby Costco to pick up supplies. I know it’s a cliché but it was surprisingly fun. I picked out a three pound box of Oreos. Three. Pounds. Of. Oreos.

…that’s how many spam comments we’ve gotten on the blog in the past week. Akismet (spam plug-in for Wordpress) is pretty amazingly effective at routing these junk comments into the spam folder (though this past week a handful got through to our main unapproved queue which usually doesn’t happen). Each of the spam comments is [...]

I recently was talking to a friend who’s doing his own startup. He’s looking for someone to head up marketing for his company. He’s halfway through his formidable seed round and expects to get VC after that. He’s already got a sizable group of devs and he’s off to the races with his product. He [...]

When we first moved into this space down in Pioneer Square in Seattle, one of the first important tasks was determining the nearest best spot for coffee. Not being a coffee person this wasn’t really a priority for me personally, but Jenny and Walter needed their fix. (They’d be blogging this themsleves, but they’re busy [...]

<cliché>I ordered the Lego Corner Café for the office.</cliché>

I literally waited a day before pulling the trigger on getting it. Because it was a $130 “luxury” that we don’t need? No, because I felt like such a startup poser. In the end though, the awesome coolness of the Lego Corner Café won me over. Screw [...]

Eating has always been an incredibly social experience for me. A chef friend calls it the “last bastion of human social interaction”. Who you go to lunch with at work is also part of a complicated social dance. (Though lucky for us it’s pretty easy since there’s only three of us.) It’s time to chat, [...]

Yesterday we delivered part two of our four part series of posts directed at the brand advertising community: Branded Software Experiences - A Cost-Effective and Critical Component of your Brand Advertising Mix. Today we’re delivering part three.
Despite all the technology, the creation of software is not a science. It’s not necessarily an art either. It’s [...]

We’re doing something kind of neat… we’re going to offset our carbon emissions by buying credits through www.carbonfund.org. From their website:
Carbonfund.org reduces the threat of climate change by making it easy and affordable for any individual or business to reduce their carbon footprint and support climate-friendly projects.
It took five minutes and for the year it [...]

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 [...]

Sorry for my lack of blog visibility. I’ve been writing code rather than English lately — we get paid more when I do that.
I wanted to mention another simple pleasure of JFM: the food.
My previous 19 years of employment were for big companies (Apple and Microsoft) with thousands of employees on a many-acre [...]

There are all kinds of warnings, admonitions, and recommendations, in terms of what to expect both positive and negative when you run your own small business. Here’s one that was a pleasant surprise. While everyone else was busy doing important stuff like coding and designing I went to the bank machine to make a deposit. [...]

OK. I admit it. We’re not the first to complain about this. And frankly, we’re so early in the creation of Jackson Fish that we’re not in a position to say we’ve created much of anything quite yet. That said, we do have goals. And sometimes, when we describe those goals, we get this look [...]

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 [...]

Over the last couple of days I rebuilt our WordPress template. Since my CSS skills sucked and my PHP was non-existent this took longer than I’d hoped. But it was necessary (and fun) as modifying the template I snaked was no longer getting the job done. (Seriously, I was unable to make the links in [...]

It’s clear that yesterday’s post generated lots of good feedback. Let’s address some of the things we’ve heard back:

First and foremost, Jeremy Wright who is actually making money in online advertising writes a great post saying that “This ‘No Money In Advertising’ Meme Needs to Die’. To be clear, I never said there’s no money [...]

The Interactive Advertising Bureau recently released these statistics:
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) today announced that Internet advertising revenues for 2006 are estimated at $16.8 billion, a 34 percent increase over the previous revenue record of $12.5 billion in 2005. The 2006 Q4 revenues totaled just under $4.8 billion, making it the highest [...]

Sometimes when you’re starting a business, no amount of preparation and thoughtfulness can avert a problem. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, we got paid for our work. Nice. I deposited the check in the bank. I wrote checks to people we needed to pay. I made sure that the amount of checks [...]

We’ve already discussed the fact that we’re not looking for angel investment or venture capital. We have nothing against outside investment and may be interested in it someday down the road for specific projects, but our priority is independence. This means slower growth, and fewer resources. But we believe constraints force creativity, so we’re feeling [...]

This week Hillel and I are at the TED conference in Monterey, California. Unfortunately I’m not a good enough writer to convey what TED is in the amount of time I have to write this (if ever). They have done their own introduction that may help. Chris Anderson’s description, “the prerelease version of heaven”, is [...]