It’s Christmas Eve!!! Wowzers. I really didn’t see that one coming. But as a bit of light and fluffy Christmas reading I thought I’d put together a list of favorite startup books for the Upverter blog. If you’re interested in software, startup culture, or the useful side of business writing and trying to figure out what to read over the holidays you should take a look. Just a couple of these and you’ll be on your way to a million in no time!
So I’m probably not allowed to say this… But I’m not much of a Tron fan boy. (*Gasps from the audience*) Seriously though, I hadn’t even watched the original from start to finish until just the other day with Steve (he made me watch it so we could go to see the second one this week). But really, as cool as the effects and 3D were, they writers really, really, grasping for a plot. Like really, really. I enjoyed the movie, it wasn’t boring, and it did, as Steve noticed, shared a very similar vibe to the first movie - which was kinda cool. But fuck guys, could you not have come up with a slightly more coherent story? a better reason? more purpose to the hippy zen vibe or more bad-ass to the epic battle, or a plausible reason to mention tron (new tron?) so, so much without him doing anything but the multi-colored drowning thing at the end? Maybe there is imagery there that I didn’t catch - but WTF? pick one, or do them all better, or come up with a better story. But at the end of the day Daft Punk shouldn’t be the highlight of the movie. Today is a better day. Stress is better, work is smoother again, and I’m on my way home for Christmas - which is gonna be a blast! Oh, and were gonna put the mad polish on our little demo over the next week, and its gonna be bad-ass!
Zak is a little stressed the last couple days. Not exactly sure why (I have a couple guesses…), but I’m full-on, throbbing veiny forehead, stressed. Not cool. In an effort to get shit off my chest and calm the fuck down - here’s my take… So first on the list Christmas = Dramatic Mom. She is laying it on pretty heavy lately, which SUCKS. I can’t just do my job without catching shit about family. and while I agree with her on its importance - I agreed before the lecture, and am doing the same thing after the lecture. except my life is now shorter and I have this guilt shit. Second, legal paperwork SUCKS. Incorporation, shareholders agreements, bylaws, vesting, intellectual property, ugh. I have taken what I think is a shine to the business side of things. and I’m pretty sure I’m not so bad at it. But I just can’t stand reading this painful vague lawyer porn. Thankfully we are just a few more signatures away from finished. Third, I’m wicked cooped up. No exercise, no sports, no walking, cold as shit outside, not even any ‘extra-curricular’. Just work, 16 hours a day. The work is coming along great - but I’m starting to lose my shit. My current plan on this is to start doing something like P90X in the basement - but I need to step away from the keyboard long enough to let that happen! Fourth, things have been a bit tense lately. With the drama and the cooped up and the legal shit there just hasn’t been a good chill-out moment and misinterpretations are at an all-time high. Really I’m not worried at all about any of this - its just the time of the year and the stress level where it is. Give people a few days to veg over Christmas and we’ll be great again! And lastly, Christmas - despite our lovely founder marriage - is a lonely time of the year for me. It always has been. I never really had a calm loving relationshipy Christmas whenever I was dating (for a lot of reasons lets just say it was pretty stressful), and for most of my dating life I was single around Christmas. And being (deep down) the sentimental romantic that I am, its lonely. And to ice the cake - for me Christmas is also the anniversary of the end of my most significant romantic relationship. ugh. Now somehow, despite all of this, I still do, very very much, love Christmas. It is my favorite holiday, I love the movies (I still watch the Grinch every year), I love the food, the eggnog, the festivities, the family, the bad songs, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, all of it! and I’m hoping that tomorrow morning I’m going to wake up - take a deep breath - and its gonna be Christmas time, and that vein in my forehead is gone!
Check out the Upverter blog today. I wrote about all things hardware startups + Christmas. I don’t write know why, but hardware happens at Christmas and if you think soldering is hard sober - I just dare you to try it smoked on eggnog and spiced rum!
You know that wooshing noise deadlines make? Know how it always happens and everyone pretends like its gonna be different next time? Well we are still on track for ours! In fact, right now, we are ahead of schedule for December. And so I thought I would write about it while I still could, ‘cause who knows when its all gonna fall apart! haha. December was from the very start a push towards our demo. Everything we have done int he last 2 weeks was in an effort to get to the point of showing something resembling a product (and progress!) to our family, friends, and investors. And we are almost there! Its only taken 3 refactors, a couple throw outs, and a few months of dedicated work - but were close. and I’m pretty confident that everything we are writing right now is gonna end up running deep inside our alpha over the next couple months. which is super neat! Fingers crossed we stay on track (our next deadline is friday…) and I’ll let you know how it comes along. In other news one of these days I need to write about my new favorite addiction = Paths of Glory. You must know by now that I like my board games - and this is my latest fix. Steve has been nice enough to whallop my ass at it twice now - but I think I have figured out where I went wrong, so I’m gonna win the next throw down… for sure… i think… haha.
For lack of a better name, and to a little bit quote Calvin and Hobbes, Steve and I created one hell of a snow ghoul last night. We have gotten about 1.2 meters of snow over the last few weeks, which then melted down to a bit less than a meter over the weekend. But thankfully it is snowing again and we will get another 50 odd centimeters in the next couple days… haha. I think Steve cries a little bit every morning when he gets up and remembers he isn’t living in California anymore. I feel a touch sorry for him, which normally fades quickly into taunting and snowball fights. boo yeah! On the less artistic front, Steve and I are deeeeep into a quite enormous overhaul of the javascript client. Its going very well, but its brain hurting and I feel like all I do is refactor shit anymore. Steve has promised me there is tunnel light soon, but I’m itching to do “real” work again. The talks with the noisy and influential folks in New York are going great, and are really only hampered by December being an insane month for everyone. I still have to deal with that whole Christmas thing - I think I have it figured out, but need to do the shopping thing sometime soon. And otherwise life here is great!
In the event that you, like a lot of people, don’t know what the hell OSHW (open source hardware) is, you should check out my Upverter blog post today. Shit, you should check it out anyway! Basically OSHW for lack of a better description is the hardware guys trying to build something equivalent to the GPL and the FSF. They have been sharing for years now, they just want to give it a name, and want a better way to talk about it - which I totally support. And you should stay tuned, because it would be my opinion that these hackers and OSHW guys are about to hit an inflection point, with lots and lots of growth in the next 3 years.
We had some pretty incredible meetings when we were in California, and given time I will try to tell you why all those people were so great to meet with. But if I had to pick the one meeting that really stood out for me it was the Parallax guys. These guys are pretty kick-ass. They have been doing the equivalent of opensource hardware for the last 20 odd years, and hell, they even created the BASIC stamp! And as a result there are more robots out there chugging around peoples basements with Parallax hardware in them than you could probably imagine. I was for sure stunned when I heard just how many chips these guys sell. Parallax is in a little town outside of Sacramento, north of San Francisco. And we had high hopes for this vist from the start - so we got up early on morning and hopped in a Zipcar and while I did a couple of calls with other people we were trying to meet with, Steve managed to get us safely across the bridge and on our way north. It was a bit of a drive but it was so very, very worth it. We met with the Parallax opensource hardware guru and evangelist David Carrier (and in case he googles himself - thanks again for the spinnerets, they’re great!) and we shot the shit about opensource hardware and what we are trying to accomplish at Upverter - and it was absolutely awesome. He had some really great feedback, and we are going to do everything possible to make our tools at Upverter fill the needs to these kind of visionary companies. But then came the exciting part… we got a tour! We got to wonder all around Parallax checking out all the cool toys these guys have, including a very impressive manufacturing line. It was pretty neat. Walking around those kind of shops always gets my hardware and manufacturing juices flowing - and you could really tell these guys cared a ton about building something people wanted and the quality their customers got in the end. very cool. So we headed back to San Francisco in the end (to sell some Ikea shit), but that was my favorite meeting. And I really just wanted to say thanks to the Parallax guys for being so kick-ass. At Upverter we are gonna do our best to make your pain points go away and empower you to keep doing what you’re doing. As for business now and today, things are going awesome. I mailed the December update and got a great response about our progress, and there is still lots of excitement, which is good. Steve and I are making huge progress on the client - should be demo friendly in just a week or so. Mike is making great strides for us in community development land with the blog and twitter feed - which is great, its black magic that someone has to do, and I think hes good at it! So really across the board all we need right now is a few weeks of dedicated hacking, and then a few thousand users… sounds like a piece of cake!
I have a confession to make. I am party to an epic and probably poetry worthy bromance with my business partner Steve. I’m talking Butch and Sundance, Wayne and Garth, Matt and Ben, even Kirk and Spock. This is huge! But, before I go any further, I should dispel any concern about this being a sexual or San Francisco style “bromance” - don’t worry, I still like the ladies, and Steve hardly ever lets me past 2nd base anyway ;) haha.
But seriously, when they talk about marrying your startup business partners they aren’t messing around. Steve and I spend a little more than 14 hours a day within 4 feet of one another, when we are traveling this could be as high as 23 hours a day depending on sleeping arrangements. I literally spend more time with Steve than I ever have with anyone else, ever, baring my mother in my first few months of life. Now, you come to learn a lot about a person when you spend this amount of time together, and I would very much like to tell you about the inner workings of our founder bromance…
But first some general pointers. First off, generally speaking, you have absolutely nothing to talk about. Ever ask a friend whats new, or how they are feeling today? Well it gets old in about a day. So you had better damn well be ok with sitting in the same space quietly. Secondly you had better like this person, because you are gonna spend more time together than any significant other you ever have, in your life, ever. And thirdly, there is no makeup-sex equivalent in startup land, so learn to apologize for being a douche, and don’t start a business with someone who can’t be wrong. Now,as for our bromance specifically - lets just say people are weird, myself included. We all have quirks, and funny things that make us tick. I wish to share with your some of Steve’s lovely quirks:
And more as a peace offering to Steve than for your reading enjoyment, these are my best guesses at the things that I do, that drive Steve absolutely batty:
The first ever Upverter monthly update went out today to our mailing list of eager hardware hackers. I also posted it on the Upverter blog, so check it out there if you didn’t get one in your mailbox. And signup on the Upverter homepage if you want to be on the mailing list too! Summary is: Everything is going great, and we are super excited and we can’t wait to go Alpha so everyone else can get in there and hack on what we are building.
