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by brandon272 5942 days ago
Rule of thumb: If you don't have big enough balls to call a business contact and personally ask them to explain themselves when they do something you don't like or make a mistake, then you are not ready to run your own business.
2 comments

With all due respect, what makes you qualified to say who is and isn't ready to run a business? Do you own your own business? Is it doing as well as MetaLab?

The best part of owning a business is getting to handle situations like this however you want, and living with the consequences on your own terms.

It's just my opinion. I made no claims about being "qualified" to dictate who else is qualified.

My opinion is that running a business more often than not requires, for lack of a better term, "having balls". You need to make difficult and tough decisions on a day to day basis. You need to be able to follow through and stand behind what you're doing.

As far as MetaLab's success, I have no idea whether or not my business is doing better or worse than MetaLab. MetaLab appears to have a steady stream of projects. And, don't get me wrong, I think Andrew is a great designer (as are his colleagues). I just think that his handling of these situations, especially the Mozilla situation, has been poor. I also think he needs to grow a pair and learn to defend his designs directly instead of engaging in theatrics via his blog and Twitter.

This is news.yc... unqualified opinions are a dime a dozen.

The best part of owning a business is getting to handle situations like this however you want, and living with the consequences on your own terms.

I think that brandon272 has a point, but he didn't articulate it very well. MetaLab has been successful, but I don't think that stunts like this have caused them to be successful.

Big enough balls? Should they meet on the playground at 3 o'clock after Biology class too?

Let's be clear: Andrew is successfully running his own business. You're a silly person on the internet. You might want to take that into account when deriving your rules.