There’s an open consultation about to end, on the changes MBIE would like to make to NZ’s R&D incentives. In particular, they’ll phase out the Callaghan Growth Grants and replace them with R&D tax credits. As the FAQ says, There are differences in the definition of eligible expenditure between the Growth Grant and the proposed R&D Tax Incentive (for instance, overseas expenditure on R&D). The proposed R&D Tax Incentive has no R&D intensity threshold, a much higher cap and lower minimum R&D expenditure threshold than the Growth Grant. Some firms may get less money, but others might get more.

I was just catching up on Tim Kong’s excellent blog, when I read this great quote from Dan Carter:

“One thing we talk about over and over with this current All Blacks side is about never focusing on the outcome. We view the outcome as a function of following our processes. That might sound a little dry to some, but looking back at every major loss we’ve had over the years, they mostly started with us thinking too far ahead of the game.”

(Wynyard Group, an NZ tech high-growth company [or, perhaps, not-so-high growth] just entered voluntary administration. On Twitter, a friend was adamant bad luck had nothing to do with it. Instead of a tweetstorm, here’s my response in a vintage retro format known as “a blog post”)

You can always look back at every failure and assign one or more causes, because SOMETHING always kills the startup.  And someone is always responsible for the fatal decisions. That’s “pilot error” for startups.

It’s bloody hard to build something new into the world.  Don’t let anyone tell you it’s easy: there’s a lot of unfunded and unrecognised work that you have to do before you can get to the point where fame and/or fortune arrive.  And once you’ve finished the painful birth of your new service or product into the world, maybe even defining an entirely new product category or unserviced market segment, dozens of unimaginative parasites will appear from nowhere and try to eat your lunch.

I write a short daily series for O’Reilly Media, Four Short Links, which I’ve done for years.  I recently posted a link to someone’s “10 Golden Rules for Becoming a Better Programmer” and said “what are your 10 rules for being better in your field? If you haven’t built a list, then you aren’t thinking hard enough about what you do.”

Dan Meyer cheekily tweeted “Money where your mouth is, Nat! What’s your top ten list for becoming a better link farmer?”.

I was asked for comment by Bill Bennet from the NZ Herald, for a piece on Kiwi startups moving to Silicon Valley.  He built a nice little article, in which “Torkington says” features heavily.  My policy is that if I email journalists, I’ll blog my side of the conversation for transparency’s sake.

I had two more comments responding to ideas he’d thrown in email, but I’ll wait to see if they make it to print before blogging them (don’t want to steal his thunder–I know there are millions poised on my every word and I’d hate to deny him traffic *wink*).

In this internal 1972 DEC memo (PDF) about the PDP-16 re-release, modern tech companies should find plenty of familiar territory:

While the PDP-16 has been marginally successful to date,
some problems have been noted.
1. Since the product, in its present form, is relatively
   complex, it is difficult to train salesmen.
2. Since the product is currently offered as a set of options
   uniquely configured for each situation, the salesman does
   not have the feeling of security of a predefined box that
   he can see and feel.
3. Although the PDP-16 has been well received by computernicks,
   it is still somewhat of a mystery to neophytes.
All of these hang-ups can be traced to a single source,
namely, inadequate product identification.

There’s also a chart that goes up and to the right, hand-drawn grids that would eventually be spreadsheets, and an org-chart.  Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

I moderated a panel today at Gather on the topic of “Work”.  We had representatives from different types of work: self-employed, salaried employee, startup, and investor. As moderator, my role wasn’t to share my opinions. Fortunately, on the Internet I’m also blogger, and my role as a blogger is to share my opinions. So: opinion follows.

The whole concept of “work” is fraught. We treated it as “how you make your money”, but that’s a concept that comes with a pile of baggage. If I make money from a lot of things (one panelist had her IT business, her music, and her writing all contributing) then which, all, or none of those are my “work”?  Our language opposes “work” with “play”, but what if I like what I do? If I volunteer, is that work? If my partner earns money and I contribute my labour to upkeep of the family and house, is that “work”? Each of those is a set of dissertations and an argument waiting to happen.

The NZ Arts Foundation has launched Boosted, a way to crowdfund arts projects. Now, if you’re like me, you’re probably wondering “don’t we already have several ways of doing that? I mean, Kiwi artists have already used Kickstarter and PledgeMe to fund projects.”

Boosted’s key point of difference is that, being operated by a charitable non-profit, your donations are eligible for 33% tax rebate. So everyday punters like us can enjoy the tax advantages of philanthropic donation, the same way that the millionaires do. To get that tax rebate, however, you can’t receive anything for that donation: no tickets, no hip flask, no signed postcard, no posters, no “flown to Austin for lunch at a fancy hotel with me and my artist friends”, and all the other rewards that Kickstarter and Pledgeme and other crowdfunding sites are built around. Your only reward, so far as I can tell from careful study of Boosted site, is the inner glow of donation and a tax rebate of 33% of the donated amount.

Kiwi Foo Camp just ended. This year, I collected Twitter handles as part of registration and I wanted to create a Twitter list. Twitter doesn’t provide an easy way to do this: you’re supposed to visit each person’s Twitter page and then add them to the list. Many clicks, many hours, no way is that fun.

1. ttytter to the rescue! Follow the website’s instructions for installation and tying it to your Twitter account. If your experience is like mine, this will be the most time-consuming part of the process.