Let's Take This Offline
A decade ago, I started Joel on Software, a blog that put my company on the map. But as the business matures, I've come to realize that blogging is holding me back. — You've started a business. You've built a great product. Now you're trying to get the word out.
Context & Ripple Effects
When Blogging for Dollars ran in Business 2.0 in 2006, founder blogs were treated as a monetizable asset class, and Jeff Jarvis was already poking holes in media-company versions with his critique of newspaper blogs. Spolsky's Joel on Software sat at the top of that wave — an influential programming voice whose posts doubled as marketing, and who had spent 2005 sharpening the genre's combative edge with pieces like 'Architecture Astronauts Are Back'.
His announcement that he is ending the blog after a decade reframes the question: not whether blogs pay, but whether they still serve a company that no longer needs to be put on the map.
First-order effects
- Spolsky's company loses its most visible acquisition and credibility channel — the writing that, by his own account, put the company on the map goes quiet while the business keeps running.
- The developer audience built around the blog has to find new sources for the commentary they came there for.
Second-order effects
- Other founders who modeled their content strategy on Joel on Software face the same maturation math: if a decade-old blog can be retired as 'holding the business back', the ROI case for founder-blogging as marketing gets re-examined across the startup world.
- The attention the blog captured doesn't disappear — competitors and community sites have room to absorb the displaced readership.
Third-order effects
- If founders increasingly treat blogs as a launch-phase tool rather than a permanent institution, corporate communication shifts toward product-attached channels as companies scale — a structural move away from personality-driven marketing toward company-owned messaging.
- It sharpens the split between blogs as media businesses (the 2006 framing) and blogs as growth tactics with an expiration date.
The trend: Founder blogging is completing its arc from scrappy differentiator to optional legacy channel as startups mature into established businesses.