“Create more value than you Capture”

Categories essays
I have a new personal maxim. For myself. And a new personal standard for the people I spend time with, both socially & professionally, in 2012. Create more value than you capture. ~Tim O'Reilly As we grow our business, I'm finding than the type of people that are worth my time follow this maxim, whether consciously or unconsciously. Think about the traits of someone who creates more value Read the article >>

TOSAmend: Change the Terms of Online Contracts

Categories sideprojects, technology
2 weeks ago, the #occupywallst protestors were been kicked out of zuccotti park in Manhattan. It's time to move the protest to the web. It's time to #occupytheweb I am announcing today the relaunch of TOSAmend with Law Professor, Zev Eigen. We've ironed out the kinks and now we think TOSAmend will hold up in court - at least for some contracts . What is TOSAmend? TOSAmend is a free & easy Read the article >>

Startups @ Scale: Make the abstract actionable

Categories startups
This post is pretty technical. If you don't cross your 1s or circle your 0s, then it's probably best to move on to something more fruitful for you, business monkey. I've always thought that a major challenge in building a dev team is continuously improving how effectively you can respond to changes in your metrics day-to-day. One of those tasks I face is a sweep daily of our error logs. If you, Read the article >>

Techstars Bloomberg TV Show

Categories art
TechStars (I'm an alumni) has a 6-episode series about startups and entrepreneurship on Bloomberg TV. Watch the Techstars Bloomberg TV Show on cable or online, below.   These guys gave Ignighter it's start, and Adam, Dan, and I are more than thankful to executive director David Cohen for the doors he's opened for us. If you're interested in entrepreneurship or starting your own web company, Read the article >>

TOSAmend: The easy way to modify web service TOS Online Contracts

Categories sideprojects, technology
Have you ever read any of the terms of service documents you agree to when you sign up to your favorite web apps? Of course you don't.  Those documents are tens, sometimes hundreds, of pages long. You sign away even your most basic of rights.  They're in legalise.  Even if you could read them, it would take you all day! And you'd have to spend countless more hours just trying to understand the Read the article >>

Hey Google, Gmail is Awfully Slow!

Categories technology
For a company that makes a lot of noise about how the web should be blazing fast, Google has been awfully slow to address performance concerns in one of their flagship apps, Gmail. Sometimes conversations can take up to 20 seconds to load.   Searches too.  Sometimes they will not load at all and a vague "This conversation could not be loaded" message will appear in your browser. I've tried Read the article >>

6 Easy Quantified Self Tools

Categories diet, life, protips
I've written before about how, as Ignighter's CTO, I log everything I can measure.  This allows me to delve deep and gain insights about how folks are using our fledgling site. Since discovering a love of data in my professional life, I've cultivated a similar affinity for data around my personal habits.  These 6 tools have helped me track financial, fitness, and health trends in my personal Read the article >>

Startups @ Scale: Log Everything, then you can Manage Anything.

Categories startups
One thing that hasn't changed during the span of my time at Ignighter is the importance of our in-house analytics.  Ever since our first lecture at Techstars 2008, when we were prodded to "obsess over core metrics", we've been obsessed with our usage data.  Having the right information on-demand is essential to being nimble in your decision making as a management team "If you aren't measuring it, Read the article >>

Startups @ Scale: Building an early warning system

Categories engineering, protips, technology
I've been thinking how much things have changed lately at Ignighter.  We're starting to get some press, a bunch of daily registrations, and a bunch more messages piping through our once-rinky dating website.  It's beginning to feel like we're not such a small startup anymore. When milestones like those pass, it really changes the way your team builds software.  These days, I'm obsessed with building Read the article >>