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management

A collection of 21 posts

Honey in Boulder

Honey in Boulder

Our Boulder office foyer.Earlier this year I joined Honey [https://www.joinhoney.com/] in order to help them scale product and development beyond their headquarters in Los Angeles. The company is growing rapidly and in a look toward the future, it wanted to distribute and diversify its ability to

Are You Really a Leader?

The following transcription from Dee Hock's Birth of the Chaordic Age says it all. Whenever I'm asked about leadership, I always fumble around with some incongruent response that only makes sense to me. What I really need to do is memorize this and just regurgitate it.

Investing: Humans or Machines?

I ran a test to try and compare human money manager strategy against machine money management strategy. It wasn't scientific and it had a handful of holes, but, I looked at 14-months of returns (from 02/2015 to 06/2016) for both the professional (1'ish % fee-level)

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

We've all heard this adage a million times. I've been saying it at home, and at work, a bit over the past few months. My son is a decent carbon copy of me (poor kid!), and if you know me, I'm generally a man

Deliberate Action

I was just responding to an internal email thread at Gnip [http://gnip.com/] and the following came out. As I re-read it, I thought it might make a good blog post. Here it is. One of the most valuable things we have is our deliberate, conscious, and directed trajectory.

Trajectories

My company, Gnip (a social media company) [http://gnip.com/], blew the doors off of 2012 [http://blog.gnip.com/gnip-2012/]. The business grew tremendously, we saw concrete manifestation of an ecosystem we've visualized since the beginning, and the product lit up business after business with the public

Techniqued v. defined

About a decade ago, a colleague of mine used this word to describe an odd interaction we'd just had with someone else. It has stuck with me ever since, and I've been compelled to share it a few times over the past couple of months. As

Speak the Unspoken

Gnip (a social media company [http://gnip.com/]) grew a lot in 2012. We did a lot a of things really well (we have an experienced, proven, management team), but I personally botched a least one thing. I let certain aspects of process and reasons for doing certain things go

Product or Services? What Kind of Company are You?

At Gnip (a social media company [http://gnip.com/]; where I work) we are, of course, always working to "do the right thing," when it comes to how we build software. There is a lot of great work and discussion going on these days regarding the assurance that

Zero Chance

"We have zero chance." I overheard someone say this the other day. Basked in innovative and dynamic communities (Boulder & San Francisco), I hadn't heard those words uttered in a long time. In fact, I can't remember when I last heard them. It caused

Too Many Software Chefs?

When we started Gnip (a social media company [http://gnip.com/]) nearly five years ago, it was a blank slate. I vowed to only hire the best, most experienced, software builders & artists. Sure "best" is subjective, but we'd define it ourselves and nail it. "

Overwhelmed With Joy

WARNING, this post runs into high corny factor in a hurry. I'm also going pretty stream-of-consciousness-style because I'm too tired to polish and think clearly. some of the exalted Gnip team24 hours ago Gnip's (the social media [http://gnip.com/] API) Big Boulder conference

CEO: Helping or Hurting?

A thought provoking exchange with someone on the Gnip [http://gnip.com/] team last night, wound up revealing a behavior I've developed, unconsciously, as CEO. As CEO of a 25+ person company (Gnip's at around 40) you can't deep dive on as many challenges

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

"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, "

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

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

Staying Connected: Company Update Emails

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

Development Process

Tonight I was asked some high-level questions about development process. I wound up responding w/ enough material that I thought I'd share the thoughts here for broader consumption. > Hey guys,Please feel free to ignore this email but I'd extremely appreciate some advice if you

Gnip's 2009 Rocked My World

After spending 2008 building a phenomenal development team, early 2009 tested me like I'd never been tested before. Half of my career has been spent building/managing teams, and I thought I had it dialed in. Along the way, feedback from individuals (peers, bosses, employees), raises/bonuses, and

Hiring; and Personal Responsibility

Gnip is growing, so I'm face-to-face with the beast that is hiring. Finding smart, compelling, passionate, committed, persistent people is hard. Assuming you find one (big assumption), testing your thesis is the big gamble. Even if you do a half-dozen face to face interviews, some "try before