Reflection by entrepreneur Tim O'Reilly

This post is a bit unusual for me, but it fits because the Internet is the product of business and entrepreneurship as much or more than it is of research and education.

O'Reilly Media is one of earliest Internet companies. O'Reilly started as a technical writer then began publishing books on the Unix operating system. By the time the Web appeared, the company was publishing Internet and programming books and they built the first commercial Web site, which was later sold to AOL. Today O'Reilly Media is a profitable group of enterprises with nearly 500 employees and collective revenues approaching $200 million.

Founder Tim O'Reilly has written a longish blog post in which he recounts the history of the company and talks about what he did right and what he did wrong. He modestly features six key mistakes and the lessons he learned from them, but there is a lot on what he did right as well.

Recommended reading for those interested in tech business and management.