Before I get into the post, a quick update, since I've been short on those lately. The trip to Munich was successful. I really enjoyed DLD. I posted a bit of a travelogue in my DLD07 set on flickr .

Anyway, to continue in my recent theme of writing about starting about a business.

I've been trying to sort out for a long time why the spreadsheet is so special. It has magic powers. I put in these numbers and I can make them dance.

Now I think that it's special because it combines two seemingly opposite traits. First, when I build a budget or a "financial plan" in my spreadsheet I make a lot of seemingly haphazard guesses. I put in hard figures but they're guesses. Like that I'm going to hire X people in Q4. Or they're oddly round numbers, like all PCs cost $1000. These numbers are essentially speculative.

On the other hand, the spreadsheet is so concrete. Even though I put in these nice round numbers, when it all flows through the chain of equations, it comes out in dimes and cents. I can see specific amounts broken down any which way I want. By department, by project, by employee. And I can make a small change and watch it ripple through the whole document updating all of the precise dollars and cents.

Ultimately, I can make the whole document even more concrete by fine-tuning the figures until they reflect some kind of shared reality that myself, my advisors, and my investors all agree upon.

So somehow, this consensual hallucination that I create (and then refine with my team) has the ability to progress over time, in a very gradual, almost invisible process, into a practical, solid document. At some point it actually becomes reality (or at least I can update it to reflect what actually happened, or compare real and projected results). That's pretty damned flexible.

PS I once saw an amazing short film or TV show about the history of spreadsheets. I think I found it on some bittorrent site some years ago but I can't find it any more. Any help would be appreciated.