How to build a personal runway when starting an online business

Many people are learning web development with the goal of building an online business. The lure of "automatic income" from an online product is enticing, but building an online business is much different than building a traditional business.

In particular, it's easy for would-be Internet entrepreneurs to underestimate how long it will take to make a living with your new business. I was reminded of how dangerous this pitfall can be when I saw What It Feels Like to Launch a Startup With Two Weeks of Runway and the subsequent Hacker News conversation.

What is a personal runway?

A personal runway is the amount of money you'll need to support yourself and your family until your business can pay you enough to take over that burden or you can find investors to foot the bill.

Big wins, big fails, and other lies we tell ourselves

Amy Hoy is creeping up my list of people I respect. She has incredible insight into building web apps, shipping products, and being successful at things in general. All of these things are values shared by the New Method community. So when Amy talks about something, I tend to listen.

This time she discusses the lie of winning big, failing big, how we trick ourselves into caring about the wrong things, and the power of habits among other things. This time though, she does it with a video, which shows a little of her personality. You can hear the drive in her voice. It's cool.

Check out the KhanAcademy redesign

KhanAcademy is the juggernaut of free, online-only education. They're massive and growing. They're tagline is "learn almost anything for free" and I don't doubt it with over 4,000 videos and lessons.

They redesigned their website and it now does a much better job of communicating what KhanAcademy is all about. Plus, it's mega-responsive. Adjust your browser size to see it flex with the viewport.

This Week at Treehouse: Forum Search

The big news at Treehouse this week, is that the Treehouse forum added the much requested, search feature.

This was part of a larger update to the forum which included:

• Featured filter, Treehouse's answer to stick posts.


• Unanswered filter, to see threads which have 0 replies


• Badges were added next to the names of Treehouse Staff and moderators

In other news, Treehouse quietly launched a new video series Web Academy, which is in partnership with hosting provider Media Temple.

This series expands the existing Quick Tips feature on the Treehouse blog into a video series, which focuses on the hosting side of creating web sites. A common theme in the series is the topic of performance, so far there have been videos on improving performance: in your JavaScript, by using gzip compression, by using CSS sprites and using CSS & JavaScript minifying techniques.

How a duck can help you solve problems

I'm serious. A duck can help you solve problems. To be clear, I'm not saying a duck can solve your problems, but ducks do have a knack (quack?) for helping you solve your own problems. It's real. Stop laughing.

Here's how it works.

Get a non-living duck. Rubber ducks are super popular, but stuffed formerly-living ducks or stuffed never-lived-before ducks work just as well. Put it on or near your desk. When you get stuck on a problem, ask the duck for help. Voila!

Why beginner web developers should write as much as possible

I'm a big fan of writing as a way to reinforce the things you learn, celebrate your successes, learn from mistakes, help others, and see how far you've come. In fact, I believe in the discipline of chronicling your learning journey enough to make it a key feature of the future of New Method. I already have two aspiring web developers lined up to blog their learning journey on New Method and hope to have many more. I want New Method to be a place where beginner web developers can talk about their journey, the personal side of it, not just the technical side of it.

Writing about your learning journey shouldn't be hard, either. It should feel natural. It should feel like updating a friend about how your newfound education is coming along. So, because I like lists, here are a few ideas of things your can write about while you're learning web development:

How to gain experience as a beginner: Build something

Learning web development is tough, but getting paid to be a web developer is a whole different challenge. If you've just learned (or still learning) web development, how do you gain the experience you'll need to land a paying gig or even get a full-time job?