capitalism My First Pitch Deck While working at a large company back in 2006, my frustration with lacking innovation reached threshold and I a) wanted to do something inspirational again, and b) wanted to finally plant my roots down in Boulder. I blogged about my ultimate leap into the abyss, and finally into my current
management What's Your Exit Strategy? Job candidates still ask this question a lot. I'm experiencing the current wave of it at Gnip [http://www.gnip.com/] where we're doing a lot of hiring [http://gnip.com/careers]. I'm always surprised by the question because it's vestige from
Life Spans: A Career in Connections All of my programming life has been spent playing with sockets; client and server. The guy that introduced me to the networking stack was Lou Montulli [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Montulli], and he said something to me as an impressionable kid that has driven everything I've
company "Critical Path" Roles During an enlightening conversation with another Boulder entrepreneur yesterday we had a short side conversation that concisely exemplified a concept we're all familiar with, but often get wrong when hiring. In my mind, at the highest level of role characteristics abstraction there are two categories of positions, "
Paying for Health: Give Forward At Lindzonpalooza [http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2012/04/14/tales-from-lindzonpalooza/] this past weekend in Coronado, CA, a handful of companies (varying in stage, though most very early) presented to friends, and potential investors. Give Forward [http://www.giveforward.com/] stood out in an interesting way for me. Simply put, they&
work Discretionary Energy "You're investing in a great challenge when you're applying discretionary energy to it." I don't recall who first told me this, but it has guided me for well over a decade now. It motivates me to select things to work on that
management Scaling Me 2 This timely post, that I stole the title from, by Matt Blumberg [http://www.onlyonceblog.com/2012/04/scaling-me] took the words, in a timely manner no less, right out of my mouth. I'm seeking inspiration from Matt (unbeknownst to him) to get some of my "first
company Staying Connected: Company Update Emails About a year ago one of Gnip [http://gnip.com/]'s employees pulled me aside to ask some pointed questions. This person had noticed a few things happen in the office, and let his imagination run wild to the point of believing Gnip was being acquired. In reality, that
hiring Gnip is one (leap) year old! Yesterday (leap day!) was Gnip's four year anniversary. It's been a wild ride to be sure. It took awhile to find the groove (Bijan Sabet coincidentally just posted on this topic [http://bijansabet.com/post/18548961644/patience-persistence]), but patience and persistence paid off. Here's
social networking The Commercial Data Ecosystem's Publisher Phases For the purposes of this post "Social Networks" translates to "Publishers." My company, Gnip [http://gnip.com/], brings the public, real-time, activities created by users on Social Networks to our customers. From a vocabulary standpoint, we simplify things and refer to these Social Networks as Publishers.
software David & Goliath; Internet Tech Sector & U.S. Government By way of the Silicon Flatirons "The Digital Broadband Migration: The Challenges of Internet Law and Governance" [http://www.silicon-flatirons.org/events.php?id=1003] conference last night, I somehow found myself at a reception with a few dozen brains much bigger than mine; thank you Dean Phil
technology Modern Software Labor Challenges: The Perfect Storm Many moons ago when I graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in "Computer Science Applications" (the University's attempt at hybridizing Computer Science with a School of Arts theme (Political Science for me); think "double major"), two things were obvious: software engineers
startup Partnership I had a great conversation about partnerships with Chris Moody [http://chrismoody.com/] this evening. Chris and I have been working closely together for six months now at Gnip [http://gnip.com/]. As one of our investors put it, "the company is ending the year having completely exceeded any
iTunes vs. Amazon Fire I've been intrigued by Amazon's Silk browser [http://amazonsilk.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/introducing-amazon-silk/] and associated Fire product. In the process of talking about it on Twitter and Facebook, one of the software industry's brighter individuals (and former Netscape/Mozilla colleague of mine)
mri Injury Update A year ago I sustained the most significant injury of my life [/my-brush-with-personal-disaster.html]. It has been a truly unbelievable experience. Here's an update on where I am, and how I got here. There will be some detail in here that may seem odd to 99.99999% of
TechStars Cloud (Skynet) Building server-side applications/systems has changed forever thanks to virtualized infrastructure. I'll never forget asking a colleague at Netscape when I'd just started my professional career "why are we thinking about hardware at all?!? Shouldn't software just abstract all of that?" He
boulder Lijit Acquisition Wow. What an illustration of how sticking with a company/team through thick and thin can yield big dividends. With a little time, amazing things can happen. I'm overjoyed with what the Lijit [http://www.lijit.com/] team pulled off. After four years (at least) of various strategies,
Sate I was talking with a friend awhile ago about how I behave under certain circumstances. He was trying to read me and I clarified things by telling him that when I'm notably happy, things are likely very stressful and heading in the wrong direction. When I'm
programming Minimally Viable Products & Native vs. Web Apps This is unfortunately two blog posts poorly mashed into one. I couldn't reign in my stream of consciousness into something more coherent. I usually don't publish under that circumstance, but I want to get these thoughts out so I can creatively move forward with the thoughts.
apple Twitter, Apple & The Most Profound Namespace Network Effect Since The Dawn Of Man I've blogged about my feelings regarding the utterly dismal state of authentication on the network, and client-side, today [/2010_11_01_archive]. It's a pain we've all, sadly, just accept. It's also a pain that will soon, partially, go away on iOS
friends Social Graph Overlap After A Week With Google+ After one week of Google+ being in the mix, here's my reaction to where my "friends" are. This doesn't attempt to say where engagement is. 99% of my "engagement" with "friends" on Facebook is with a tiny set of FB
life Hiring & Poaching We've been doing a lot of hiring at Gnip [http://gnip.com/careers] lately. While I've hired a lot over the years, I've never hired across this broad a role/responsibility spectrum before, nor in such a small geography as Boulder. I pulled this
patterns Taking Things Head On I had two major challenges hit me without notice this past week. One personal, and one business-personal. After working through the immediate associated drama and challenges, and letting the first wave of aftershocks pass through, folks involved with both independent situations made comments to me like "I'm
patterns Sleeping Sweet Spot I fall in/out of good/bad sleep periods every several months or so. I'm in a total sweet spot right now (probably a function of my life being so busy since taking on the CEO role at Gnip), and have been for awhile. It feels great! I&
boulder Running Straight Into The Abyss Time flies. While telecommuting for AOL from Boulder back in 2006 as a Technical Advisor, I realized something had to change. But for a four year stint in Silicon Valley, returning to Boulder in 1999, I'd spent my life in Boulder, yet I'd never really made
