At the end of 2009, I took my first job at a growing tech company. I was fresh out of graduate school and hungry to start applying my computer science skills. I moved from Florida to San Francisco with a suitcase and a dream. Everything else was put aside. This means I left my girlfriend in Florida and burdened her with dealing with my apartment and various loose ends I didn’t have time to wrap up. On top of that, I had no place to live in San Francisco, so on the flight over I messaged a few people on…
I write this on July 19th, almost 5months since my work environment shifted from my office to my home. It’s been an adjustment, but a mild one compared to the devastating economic impact the pandemic has had on hourly workers. Workers that are mostly employed by the hospitality, retail, and airline industries.
60% of Americans can’t cover an unexpected expense of $1,000. One missed paycheck can make or break someone’s month or year. …
TLDR; People constantly need to make decisions. Making decisions is hard. I’m going to share a simple, top of the funnel methodology I use to filter decisions.
Facts: Decision volume increases as you get older. Decisions increase in magnitude as you get older. The types of decisions change signficantly as you get older. 👵🏼 👴🏼
This evens out a bit when you hit a certain age…
There are numerous resources you can use to get better at decision making, but for me it comes down to using a mix of principles, context, logic and intuition to narrow down the…
Disclaimer: I wrote this about 1.5 years ago and never published it. Since I took last week off, I figured I’d publish this today and follow up with a fresh post tomorrow.
About a year and a half ago, WillCall was acquired by Ticketfly. The move made perfect sense; we were a product focused team that built iOS and Android apps offering the easiest ticket buying experience, and Ticketfly was an established company with ticketing agreements and deep relationships with venues across North America. All we had to do now was tap into the inventory Ticketfly had and sell the…
Three years ago I decided I wanted to excercise more regularly. There are countless benefits to a steady exercise routine, and I won’t bore you with the details. My goals were to be physically stronger and increase my mental focus at work. The one thing I underestimated was how crucial a steady exercise schedule and routine would be to my success.
Schedules I tried
Working out after work — This worked for a while, but I quickly realized that my post-work commitments were getting in the way of getting to the gym. In addition, I noticed that I had less…
Quick context: In an effort to get back into writing, I’m going to start sharing some unfiltered notes every Sunday. They will be simple posts that cover topics on my mind during the week. Feel free to call me out on anything.
For the past few years SV has been preaching to build useful things that people need. YCombinator, which is the leading incubator in the world has gone as far as to say that [with the exception of a few ideas] they would only invest in companies that want to up-end existing industries with technology. You can read endlessly…
A Day in Saint-Malo (Brittany, Northwestern France)
WE FOUND THE SPOT!
On this day, we were in search of The Sculptures of Rothéneuf. After a brief foray into town to get coffee, we started out driving in the direction of Rothéneuf, which is a small commune in Saint-Malo. Saint-Malo is a small port city in Brittany, in Northwest France. The many windy roads provided us with spectacular views, and one of my favourite pieces of landscape — Hay Fields. This is one we crossed about 700 meters from the entrance to the Rothéneuf rock sculptures.
BUT FIRST… LUNCH
After we knew where the entrance to the sculptured…
I was sitting outside of a cupcake shop in SoHo, next to a pair of elderly people. I could not tell what their relationship was yet, but it was certainly familial. A few minutes later I learned that the two were mother and son.
Few words were uttered between the two. The silence they shared was serene, peaceful, and understanding. Long intervals of silence followed by a few abrupt sentences. One interaction particularly stood out. The man -- who looked like he could be an Alfred, asked his mother if she wanted a cupcake.
"Ma, you want a cupcake?"
"What?"
…
On May 1, 2011, I exchanged stability for variability: I quit my job at Zynga and began the journey of building a product and a company with my good friend Ben Bloch. We had good momentum and an excellent support team. We took a small friends-and-family round and began crafting a new communication tool that would enable close friends to quickly meet up. Our first iteration of Whim was complete in approximately four months, and we began distributing it to some of our close friends. We soon identified certain flaws in the product, by listening to our beta users and…
