how radical

10 Sep 2009

My Startup Exhibitionist Fetish

Just read When in Doubt, Make it Public, that linked to an old Jason Kottke piece. Both discuss the somewhat counterintuitive fact (at least for me) that making information public often turns out well for all of the parties involved. It stoked my open book startup fantasy. When I'm thinking about things, I like to imagine doing the exact opposite of my gut reaction or what most people would do. I'm a private person by nature and hold most things, especially business information, close to the vest. While building Slicehost, I developed this weird fantasy to reveal everything - right down to customer counts, overall growth and accounting details. If someone asked, we'd answer, publicly. A business exhibitionist fetish if you will. I think it started with the waitlist post. People were upset, we were at wit's end and laid everything out. The response was great. Public companies reveal their financials quarterly, but I'm envisioning something more frequent and informal. The upside would be complete transparency with customers and possible suitors, the downside would be competitors (current or potential) getting a look behind the curtain. Then again, maybe nobody would care and it would be a geeky case of TMI. The Dropsend sale comes to mind as a related example, if you know of any others let me know.

8 Sep 2009

Shred your junk

Lots of changes for me recently, including a couple of physical moves. Thanks to a packing service and some planning, it went perfectly. Until this morning when my brother called frantically, claiming that an attorney at his wife's office had found a bunch of my credit cards this weekend. I assured him that was impossible, because I don't have any credit cards and my wallet was in the gym bag slung over my shoulder. My mind started racing, the only thing I could think of was that somehow a bunch of my papers and personal items got tossed during the move. Even worse, was someone opening credit cards in my name? Sure enough my sister-in-law called back with several of my old credit cards, Discover, Amex, an Amazon Visa - most nearly 5 years old! The lady from her office found my stuff lying in the street, across town, recognized my name and gathered it up. First, what are the odds? Second, thank you and good karma to her for taking the time to pick it up. Lastly and most importantly - shred your old stuff. I went through every piece of paper in my apartment, so I must have hidden these old cards instead of destroying them. Whatever they were in, I tossed. Then someone crawled into a NASTY, smelly, wet dumpster at my old place, went through the trash and plucked these out. Disgusting, but lesson learned. It was already on my todo list - but a new shredder is on its way.

3 Sep 2009

Cessna goes medieval

I got a kick out of this Cessna ad. Namely because I was trying to estimate the number of people who come across the ad, stop to read it and are actually in a position to purchase a business jet. Then I started thinking about how it's identical to any number of chest pounding, adrenaline pumping Nike ads, except it's for... CEOs. The corporate world is brutal, Cessna will help you kick ass, take names and be all visionary and shit. All jokes aside, I stopped to read it so kudos to the marketing team. Unfortunately I cannot afford a jet.

30 Jul 2009

Kuruma Zushi = Heaven

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matt via iPhone

14 Jul 2009

Allstar Vids

I have a long one of Obama throwing out the first pitch but it'll take too long to upload.

(download)

14 Jul 2009

Allstar Game Pics

Click here to download:

Allstar_Game_Pics.zip (8129 KB)

9 Jul 2009

We'll See

I liked this story and wanted to archive it, from Derek Sivers.

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A farmer had only one horse. One day, his horse ran away.

All the neighbors came by saying, “I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.” The man just said, “We’ll see.”

A few days later, his horse came back with twenty wild horses. The man and his son corraled all 21 horses.

All the neighbors came by saying, “Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy!” The man just said, “We’ll see.”

One of the wild horses kicked the man’s only son, breaking both his legs.

All the neighbors came by saying, “I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.” The man just said, “We’ll see.”

The country went to war, and every able-bodied young man was drafted to fight. The war was terrible and killed every young man, but the farmer’s son was spared, since his broken legs prevented him from being drafted.

All the neighbors came by saying, “Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy!” The man just said, “We’ll see.”

6 Jul 2009

Tattoo worthy?

"Losing money indefinitely isn’t just a financial failure. It represents a failure to truly understand how a service or product is creating value for a customer, how to communicate that value, and how to persuade the customer to pay above and beyond for that value."

Link

22 Apr 2009

Databases from the Edge (of sanity)

Jason and I are giving a talk tonight at our alma mater this evening and were reminiscing about some of our entrepreneurial highs and lows. The Kaleidoscope Database was a legend in the first Slicehost office and fueled waayyyy too many geeky one-liners. The ad below was torn from a Visual C magazine and hung over my desk for some time. My favorite part? IT WILL NOT COME CHEAP!

A brand new concept of Data Base technology, which operates on a principle called "Harmonics", utilizes only 800 bits of storage and is accessed by what we call "Sweepers".