Coudal and Fried Share Their Ideas

Jim Coudal and Jason Fried talk to us at SXSW about the creative process, and how to turn your creative skills into something bigger.......into a business.

Photo taken by Will Pate

A consistent message seems to be to 'less is more,' 'simplicity is better,' and 'start on the side.' Obscurity is a really good thing because obscurity removes the fear of failure, so embrace it. They suggest to make your mistakes in the quiet and in the dark.

Jason talks a lot about 'less.' Keep it simple; there's enough complexity out there. Giving it less time and starting a 'new project' on the side, also means you'll be more focused when you do work on it.

The overhead is also lower; you don't need large windows servers nor do you need to spend a lot of money up front. Infrastructure software is cheap.

They also say - "don't try to be clever and add extra features that people don't need or want. Keep it simple and make it easy for people to use.......so easy that people crave more. "Build less software," says Jason.

Let's be honest. I used to know the features in Microsoft Word better ten years ago than I do today and guess what.......I use the same damn features in Word today than I used ten years ago.

Says Jason, "You need constraints: embrace them, seek them out. Take a look at what you're doing and instead of hiring more people to tackle the problem, or build a product, look at what you're doing with the product. Are we making it more complex? Do we need to make it more complex? Perhaps we should scale it back. It's easier when you have less stuff to keep an eye on."

And I'll add, it makes it more appealing and more 'embracable' by more people.

Tag: Austin Tag: SXSW Tag: SXSW 2006