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My recent tracks on Last.fm
The most recent tracks I've been listening to on last.fm:
May 30, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-05-30
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This bodes well for Disqus... the more you comment on your own site, the more engaging and popular it can be.
May 30, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Treasure Your Baggage
I've had two conversations with people in the last 24 hours who told me that they were trying to get over exes. The process has captured their focus and is preventing them from seriously considering getting to know new people.
I think the idea of getting over someone is terrible and that we need to stop putting so much pressure on people to "move on". Let's be realistic. Unless the person you loved changes or you change, you're always going to love or at least be a little in love with them--and that's not a bad thing. I just think most people aren't confident enough to be ok with the fact that the person they're with still has feelings for someone else.
But why wouldn't you? That's totally natural. If you were with someone for a long time, loving that person is always going to be part of who you are, and to be honest, if someone meets you and says, "Hey, I can't deal with you until you totally forget that person," then they're in a sense trying to deny part of what makes you who you are. Hell, there's a part of me that still loves my high school girlfriend from like a dozen years ago--but it's not really active love. It's just the kind of nostalgic fond memory of a time long since passed--a love for the innocence of the time. The reality is that I haven't spoken to her in years and I have no idea what she's like now... but as far as that person that I knew in that moment in time, that feeling will certainly never go away. It's part of who I am--I'm just not losing any sleep over it.
Of course, it's different if you're still actively trying to win back someone or get back together--but once you realize that's not happening, I'd be completely ok getting to know someone who has recently got out of a relationship. Ending relationships cause a lot of introspection and self evaluation. "Who am I?" "What was I doing?" "What do I really want?" These are all questions that the end of a relationship brings that I want whoever I'm dating to be asking themselves in a pretty serious way.
If anything, actually, I'd rather be with someone who recently proved the capacity and willingness to love someone and commit to them versus someone who's last attempt at vulnerability is a long distant memory.
What I'm saying is, don't be embarrassed over emotions in turmoil, or feel like it makes you some kind of relationship leper. You are who you are at any given time, and if a new person doesn't accept that, just forget them. We ALL have baggage. Baggage helps us travel. We take it with us to prepare ourselves for our trips, to hold on to valuable keepsakes that meant something to us. You'd be crazy not to take baggage with you on a trip. You shouldn't let it way you down, though, but don't pretend you don't have or need it either.
I may pack light, but I have baggage, too. Some of it is old and some of it is new, but I have no interest in anyone who can't deal with its existence.
May 30, 2008 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Manhattanhenge 2008
"Manhattanhenge (sometimes referred to as Manhattan Solstice) is a semi-annual occurrence in which the setting sun aligns with the east-west streets of Manhattan's main street grid. The term is derived from Stonehenge, at which the sun aligns with the stones on the solstices. It was coined in 2002 by Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History. It applies to those streets that follow the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 which laid out a grid offset 28.9 degrees from true east-west."
May 30, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Best. Gift. Ever.
My friend Ashley is a painter.
I helped her out recently and she transformed one of my favorite photos into a painting to thank me. The photo is of kayaks stacked up in Riverside Park after the Downtown Boathouse Harrison Street Regatta.
Check out how cool this is...
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May 30, 2008 in Kayaking | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-05-29
May 29, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
My recent tracks on Last.fm
Here's what I've just been listening to on last.fm
Create automatic posts like this one using fubnub.com
May 28, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Hey Alex, I think there's a bug in our code
ew ew ew ew ew ew ew
May 28, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Cities based on ideas are made of straw... and why Paul Graham is wrong about New York City
Paul Graham recently wrote a piece about cities. He puts forth Cambridge as a city of ideas, New York as a city that is all about money (where people doing startups are second class citizens) and the Valley as a place for startups.
I’m not about to start comparing the Valley to New York City. That’s just silly, because the Valley has a multi-generational head start on creating tech startup companies. However, given that, it does make me wonder why Cambridge and the Boston Area is so far behind the Valley, because Route 128 has been a tech center since the late 1950’s. I mean, “Harvard and MIT are practically adjacent by West Coast standards, and they're surrounded by about 20 other colleges and universities,” as Paul puts it. Perhaps he should be explaining why his City of Ideas gets less than a third of the venture capital investment that the Valley does.
I think the fact that Cambridge is a city of ideas is exactly why you could say it’s questionable how great a place it is to do a startup. In an environment dominated by academia—where you lack time pressure, a sense of immediacy—you’ve probably got just as much of a chance of creating an interesting intellectual exercise in burning cash as you do building anything that resembles a real company. I mean, have you ever tried collaborating with an academic institution if you’re a business? Your startup would run out of cash before they figured out the right academic chair to lead the effort and which pool of research money to allocate for you. It’s no accident that startups need to be spun out of these institutions to be successful. Plus, seen any hugely successful companies come out of university incubators lately? (And no, Zuckerberg’s dorm room does not qualify as an incubator.)
Also, think about it another way. What are the last 10 or 20 really novel "ideas" in the startup world? Things that required a leap of thought... We can debate it and certainly I'm up for creating a list, but when I think of good ideas, I think of del.icio.us, Skype, Wikipedia, Twitter, Bug Labs, Slingbox, Google (b/c of the biz model)... Hardly seems like Cambridge has a lock on the idea generation market in the startup world.
Ideas today are a commodity. Anyone can have an idea, so being the Capital of Ideas is pretty much equivelent to building your city of out of straw. If I were a co-founder of 3PigsTech.com, I’d think about building somewhere whose choice of building material was more formidable.
Which brings me back to New York City. By saying that “New York tells you, above all: you should make more money,” Paul Graham is basically admitting that he’s never been north of Central Park, on the Lower East Side, or out into the Boroughs. I grew up as a finance major in NYC and I made the same mistake that Paul makes. It wasn’t until I finished school and got about three years into my career that I soon realized that there was a lot more going on in NYC than just Wall Street.
When I think of ideas, I think of creativity, not just scholarly research and publication in academic journals. An idea has no value unless it’s either a) new or b) executed. If execution is a business phenomenon, I can’t imagine a better place to execute than NYC (or the Valley, if you’re a tech startup), but in terms of new ideas being generated from creative people, I wouldn’t exactly hold the ivory towers of Ivy League schools up against the creative culture of NYC. New York City is a mecca for design, fashion, dance, art, film, theater, international relations—it’s not difficult to imagine that this stew of creativity rubs off on other industries.
Hedge funds, for example, are a great example of creativity leaking into another industry. The most forward thinking, creative investors break out of old institutions to play markets in out of the box ways at hedge funds.
We even solve creative engineering problems here. Peter Semmehack from Bug Labs, an open source hardware company pushing the limits of creativity in the consumer electronics space, has always said that he has found the best and most creative engineering talent here in NYC. Need to explore a completely unfamiliar environment millions of miles away? That was the challenge for the Mars Rover, and it’s no accident that much of it was built here, by HoneyBee Robotics.
Paul also makes the point that someone creating a startup in NYC would feel like a second class citizen. I have to be honest—I’ve felt that way several times, but mostly from people outside NYC. Within the city, I’ve actually felt really supported. Most of my 21 angel investors are not only in NYC, but they’re either NYC natives or have lived most of their lives here. Among my large diverse group of friends (I grew up here, went to school here, never lived anywhere else, and know tons of people doing very different professions), I’ve received fantastic support. No one ever asks me why I don’t just go into investment banking or trading.
In fact, most of my friends aren’t even in finance at all. Some of my closest friends are a magazine publisher, a lawyer, and a producer for televised mixed martial arts. I play on a softball team with two PR folks, a clinical psychologist, a chocolate retailer, two IT guys, another lawyer, a teacher, a media buyer, and oh yeah, one guy in finance. Most of the volunteers at the kayaking program I participate in don’t even have regular 9–5 jobs. The other day, I was out on the dock with a guy that resells guitars and plays in a band, a former non-profit exec, a public health researcher, and another IT guy. And these people don’t all live in big luxury apartment buildings in midtown. They live with roommates in Astoria, in studios on the Lower East Side… just scraping by but still loving every minute of it. And we haven’t even mentioned all the actors and actresses. Surely they’re not in it for the money, right?
So, the idea that NYC is just all about the money is just ridiculous…. just as ridiculous as this:
“One sign of a city's potential as a technology center is the number of restaurants that still require jackets for men. According to Zagat's there are none in San Francisco, LA, Boston, or Seattle, 4 in DC, 6 in Chicago, 8 in London, 13 in New York, and 20 in Paris.”
How about we make the list “number of restaurants that don’t require jackets for men”? I have a feeling NYC would lead that list, seeing as the total number of restaurants in NYC minus 13 is probably more than SF and Boston combined. Is this really how Paul thinks his YCombinator startups should make decisions on where to build their business? By restaurants with jacket requirements?
But rather than argue about whose city is better, which is similar to the arugument about what language to code in, go with what you know. Generalizations will get you nowhere. It would have made no sense for me to build Path 101 anywhere else but NYC, because my network is here. I found a great technical co-founder, two amazing developers whose experience could not be any more well-suited to their tasks, and a slew of supportive angels. That doesn’t mean all this stuff comes in a box if you move your startup here, but if you can say the same thing about your neck of the woods, be it Louisville, Miami, the Valley or Cambridge, stay put, keep your head down, and build like the dickens. Your city is what you make of it and how you build your network, not what the pundits tell you it is.
May 28, 2008 in nextNY, Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
DateMEme
Last week, when I posted my "Top 10 Reasons to Date an Entrepreneur" I got a response from someone who was actually interested in going on a date.
It's funny, because that wasn't the intended purpose of the post--it came out of a conversation I was having with someone about entrepreneurs and what working on a startup does to your personal life. Then I realized, that in my 4+ years of blogging, that was the ONLY time I've ever been approached that way. 2,246 posts and, before that, not a single person has stepped forward and said, "Hey, you seem like the kinda guy I'd want to go out with."
Now, I suppose for half of that time, I've been seeing someone, but I don't think that's always been apparent. Still, what about the other half?? Perhaps there's the fear of the spotlight--as if I blog all my dates here, which I obviously don't.
The one thing I think I can say is that, while there's a lot of content here on this blog, it really does only present just a side of me. I think a lot of blogs are like that--where the professional person comes off in such a way that might be different from the person you'd get to know if you knew them personally. So, I thought it would be interesting to start a meme encouraging other bloggers to share a little something about who they are and what they want when it comes to their dating/relationship life.
So here are the rules:
Write 5 things about either a) what you value in a counterpart or b) what someone needs to know about your dating/relationship personality.
Then, link to 5 people of the OPPOSITE SEX that you want to see answer these questions (to ensure that it doesn't just look like a bunch of dudes trying to get a date.) If you're already in a relationship, you can still answer of course. This is more about getting to know a different side of you, or just getting to know you better.
Ok, here's mine:
- Despite my strongly held opinions and outspoken nature, I'm actually quite openminded and really desire that in someone else. I like new ideas and perspectives, and it is exactly this desire for feedback, pushback, etc. that helps me form such strong opinions--because I do feel like I do what I can to be surrounded by tire-kickers.
- I'm much more of a 1 on 1 person than I am about big groups. I'd rather get to know one person pretty deeply than meet 30 people and just get names and what they do for a living.
- I want to meet someone who is passionate about something--anything. It doesn't have to be their career (although if you're going to spend 8-12 hours a day at something, that might as well be it), but I just can't relate to people who can't get really really psyched about at least one thing in their lives.
- I need someone with a calendar--someone who understands how to stick to some kind of schedule. That's really different than someone who needs a routine. Being spontaneous is fantastic, but I also can't deal with last minute cancelations or leaving things too up in the air. I don't see my friends enough. I don't see my family enough. So, if you can't tell me whether or not you're free Saturday afternoon at least a few days in advance, don't expect me to cut out possible family time to leave it open for whenever you figure out where the wind will take you that day.
- I take care of myself and find it difficult to date anyone who doesn't respect their own body. I don't think I could date a smoker, and while you don't have to be a gym rat, getting some kind of exercise at least a couple of times a week shows that you care about yourself and your body--that you think enough of it to keep it up. I do, however, love desert, so ice cream is a big exception to this--Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia... rrrrrggggg.
Ok, I'll tag Shri (even though she's married) , Rachel, Tik, Tara, and Whitney (although you can learn a lot about her here). Funny, there were a couple of other women that I wanted to tag, but I knew they'd never repost this, because their blogs are solely professional. I think that's very telling, because a lot of women don't even want to open that door at all and let all the crazies in. :)
May 27, 2008 in It's My Life | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
