I’ve left Onzo after working there for almost two years. It was an interesting time and impossible to sum up in a post. However, when I read ‘Ten rules for start ups’ by one of Twitter’s founders I thought it described the experience pretty well - I think we bumped up against every one of these in my time there:

#1: Be Narrow
Focus on the smallest possible problem you could solve that would potentially be useful. With much less work, you can be the best at what you do.

#2: Be Different
There are lots of people working on the same thing you are. And one of them is Google. Deal with it. How? First of all, realize that no sufficiently interesting space will be limited to one player. Second, see #1—the specialist will almost always kick the generalist’s ass.

#3: Be Casual
Create services that fit in with—and, indeed, help—people’s everyday lives without requiring lots of commitment or identity change.

#4: Be Picky
You can almost always afford to wait if something doesn’t feel just right

#5: Be User-Centric
User experience is everything. Don’t get sidetracked by technologies or the blog-worthiness of your next feature. Always focus on the user and all will be well.

#6: Be Self-Centered
Create something you want to exist in the world. Make it better based on your own desires.

#7: Be Greedy
Design something to charge for into your product and start taking money within 6 months (and do it with PayPal).

#8: Be Tiny

#9: Be Agile
Initial assumptions are almost always wrong. That’s why the waterfall approach to building software is obsolete in favor agile techniques. The same philosophy should be applied to building a company.

#10: Be Balanced
What is a startup without bleary-eyed, junk-food-fueled, balls-to-the-wall days and sleepless, caffeine-fueled, relationship-stressing nights? Answer?: A lot more enjoyable place to work.

Really enjoyed a series of blog posts about the design and meaning of signage in and around the National parks of Northern Wisconsin by Richard Bucht. The posts are a great read - opinionated and multi-referenced they’re really similar to having a conversation with Richard himself at the Garrick St Waterstone’s.

The signs are natural and easy going. Being hand-crafted from the woods themselves they respectfully integrate into their surroundings rather than demand to be noticed. Conventional typography and layout rules are foregone and a truer meaning emerges. As he says in the first post “When and where is ‘good design’ good design?”

I love Calvin and Hobbes! To me, this strip highlights the problem with the approach that a lot of organisations take with behaviour change: the insistence on quantifying everything.

How can we expect to change behaviour if people don’t care?

The WHSmith at London City airport showcases finance, ski and wine books instead of the usual John Grishams and Dan Browns. They know what interests their audience of well heeled, picky business travellers. What are your audience interested in?