Make My Logo Bigger!

I am giving a super-short version of this presentation at the 500Startups WarmGun conference. This is the extended version.

So You Have an Interview With YC?

Relax. Don't worry. Go interview, have a conversation, enjoy yourself.

Behavior Oriented Design

This post is about toilets, green technology, and user behavior. The thinking that applies here, also applies to thousands of objects that we use in the everyday life. This toilet is just an example.

Minimal Viable Personality

Clipper, the Caltrain nemesis.

If you live in the Bay area and often commute to San Francisco, Caltrain is probably your best friend, but the friend has a powerful enemy, the Clipper card! Designed as a 'sophisticated' solution that lets you pay for the train without actually buying a ticket, Clipper has a way of making each trip a ginormous pain. Do you agree?

Microsoft is Doomed

This post is a reponse to the recent news about Microsoft first quarter loss in the history. Originally posted as a comment on Hacker News, I am resharing it here because I believe in what I said and think it is important to share.

Identity is broken

Username and password are the standard means of authenticating around the internet. It is necessery, useful, but terribly user-unfriendly. People who aren't used to digital world have trouble getting them right. "Normal" people find them simply annoying. Tools that we have in place are simply bandaids...

Take Tuesday Off!

Do you feel overwhelmed when you do nothing but work for seven days a week? Do you believe that work should be measured by the impact of things that you create, rather than numbers of hours spent in the office? If you answer yes to either, then you should not be in the office today.

Make an effort.

Have you been a victim of dumb fucking emails from your friends who assume that your time is worth less than theirs and you are just waiting to hear from them day long? Read on.

Let go. Live a little.

Dave McClure, the casual pirate, is known to be a little bit out there, when it comes to public speaking. With over 80,000 followers on Twitter he's got a few people who like him, and of course a few who think he's an idiot. You be the judge, but yesterday at Startup Weekend Dave gave yet another one of 'those' presentations, which left the audience wondering.

To manage a startup, you need to manage your time first.

Just about two weeks ago I killed email. I could not completely archive my inbox. Instead, I changed my approach to email and it changed my life.

Start Now, Make Something.

If building your own company is something that might sound interesting, now is the best time to try. Just like many of you, two years ago I was a student, waiting to get into the "real" world. Instead of working for a nine-to-five, I really wanted to build a business. Not knowing what it would be, I moved to Seattle and since then, I have had a blast!

I Killed Heroku -- Here's How

Sometimes when things aren't broken you probably shouldn't fix them. Last night I tried a new heroku gem, which was going to make deployment faster. Instead, I completely destroyed my heroku instance and spent the night stitching it back together. This is the story of how not to destroy your production environment in one click.

Hacking Startup Names With Yellow Pages

The summer after highschool I had a pleasure of working at a moving company as their customer service department. Although I remember learning a ton about patience, customers' needs and the value of business insurance, there was a rare lesson that I would like to share. It is about naming your next big company!

Dear Seattle: Let's shut up and start building some companies.

Over the last few months, there has been a lot of talk about Seattle lacking the "right" entrepreneurial environment, and what steps need to be taken in order for this city to be just as hot as the Valley. I find these talks very frustrating and damaging to the ecosystem because Seattle now comes across like a sore loser in comparison to the Valley. Hey, even Boulder sounds better than Seattle and I bet most people didn't even know where Boulder was, five years ago! Let me tell you a story and with this example show you what actually needs to get done.

Not getting into TechStars was the best thing that came out of TechStars

When Peter, my co-founder and I started building a really cool social rss aggregator, we thought it was the best thing since sliced bread and well worthy to be a TechStars company. Although we didn't get into TechStars, the application process taught me a really valuable lesson.

Sneak Peak Inside Zappos HQ

Due to our astounding intelligence, Zappos invited me and my friend to come and check out their campus. Afters spending a few hours around casinos, we hung out at the Zappos office and ate lunch with some of the funniest people around. Below are a few words about the company and a bunch of photos, from Las Vegas and from around the Zappos office.

Saving Color, One Photo At A Time

After raising 40 million dollars and miserably failing the product launch, Color has become a standing joke and is now a synonym to "failure". Swimming in money like Scrooge McDuck and being hated on by the startup community, the company is looking for a miracle. I have an idea, crowd-sourced marathon photos!

The heart has reasons that Reason knows nothing of.

Two years ago I screwed up a relationship with a smart and beautiful woman, whom I was madly in love with. I was a complete asshole, made a billion mistakes and the best part, I didn't even know it. Two years later, I finally understand some of it. Although I can't bring the past back, I know there are plenty of geeks out there who will repeat my mistakes. By sharing what I learned, I hope you could make your relationships work before they burn down in flames.

What Google Must Learn From My Failed Startup

With so much chatter about Google+, and whether it will live or die, I must tell you the story of my failed startup, and how with only 10 beta users I learned that Google+ is going to die a slow and painful death. You are welcome to argue with me, at the end of the post, but first, please read carefully. I am quite certain that I am right.

How to spot bogus profile photos with Google Image Search.

Google Image Search now has a wondeful feature that lets you upload a photo and search for photos similar to the one uploaded. Among many uses, you can use this feature to cross reference your twitter followers and to find out whether they are real people, or just bogus spammer accounts.

A Startup That Will Make You Drool!

You know those days when you get home hungry, but have no time to make a decent home-cooked meal and instead you settle for an unhealthy alternative? There is now an app for that! Two Seattle wantrapreneurs, Richard and Ash, have started a company called BigStove. It is "a way for individual chefs, cooks, caterers, and small restaurants to get their amazing dishes in the hands of customers who want meals that match their taste." In other words, if you're feeling adventurous but want a unique restaurant quality meal at your doorsteps, this is the place to go.

Launching with a Big Bang!

Have you ever wondered how to launch a web startup and get noticed? Of course you have! Usually the answer is simple - make a LaunchRock splash page, put a link on TechCrunch, get some users, raise $50MM bucks, fail. But, if you don't have the funding and actually have the skills, there is a better way.

How to build a Facebook Application with Ruby on Rails, MongoDB, Koala and Heroku.

HiDaddyILoveYou.com was my first Facebook application that uses FB Connect to log you in, to post to your wall, and then of course, in the best traditions of Facebook, to download all your personal data and store is on my server. I would like to share what I learned while building a Facebook application in rails, in terms of creating an application with Facebook Connect, Ruby on Rails, MongoDB and Heroku, and all the other things, that consumed 80% of my time.

Best Father's Day Gift

If it has just occurred to you that Father's Day is around the corner and you have no gift, I've got a solution for you. If you did find a gift, but it's either: a crappy gift, a type of a gift that your dad is going to throw in the closet and never take out, a gift that will be re-gifted, sold on ebay or forgotten, this applies to you too. The gift I have in mind is unique, it is special, it is guaranteed to deliver value, and it is a lot cheaper than most of the stuff you can find in the stores today. I am talking about the gift of learning and self-expression.

3 Steps to Getting Featured on Hacker News

Getting your post to trend on HN is as much of a skill as it is magic.There is just one basic principle that will get you trending. It is the most important, the most obvious, and the most overlooked! I have tried before, learned my lessons, and when my post entitled 3 Lessons From a Coffee Entrepreneur trended #1, getting 7,000 unique visitors in the first four hours, I hit the nail on the head. This was a fantastic experience and I would like to tell you the key steps that can get a post trending.

3 Lessons From a Coffee Entrepreneur

John is the owner of the Canal Street Coffee. He is sixty-six years old, and he spent most of his life being an employee. After years of working in blue collar jobs, John finally opened this cafe 5 years ago. First time in his life he was at the top, and he was learning on the fly. The business was doing well, until the recession came along and he had to lay off a few staff and get behind the counter himself. This is a story of how John turned his upcoming problems into opportunities and what you should learn from his experience.

The Future of Education

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about Education. Some people say it good, some say it's bad, and neither side is right or wrong. At the end of the day it is obvious that education is a good thing overall, but the way it is done now might not be the optimal way in order to produce a society that is able to answer the questions of tomorrow. I would like to contribute to this discussion and introduce the notion of efficiency. To succeed in the future, we need to understand education, to cluster it and to re-prioritize segments in a way that would boost rates of consumptions and absorption, while giving more room to creativity and hands-on applications of knowledge.

3 Easy Steps To Get What You Want

Everybody wants to be successful, and entrepreneurs, in my mind, are the people to look up to. Entrepreneurs work very hard, fail often, but at the end, almost always succeed. There is no silver bullet that makes one a renowned success, and often it is a combination of skill, dedication, luck and most important of all - persistence. So how do you win in life? Well, you do exactly what the winners do. Here are 3 steps I, and many others, use to become successful.

Best Coffee Shops to Work from in Seattle

I am a geek and a wanterpreneur. Instead of working from an office, I prefer to work from either my home or a good coffee shop. Seattle has many coffee shops, but not all of them are great. When I first moved here, choosing a good place to work, meet, and to socialize was difficult, and I decided to aggregate a list of the best coffee shops in Seattle, giving everyone else the opportunity to have the best "office space" possible.

How to get enough exercise and to stay healthy at a startup

Startup founders and employees always complain that with too much work and not enough time, it is really hard to stay in shape. "We don't have time to play sports, gym closes too early, and ramen is all we can afford." I say this is all garbage! If you want to be healthy and exercise, you will find the time and the energy. I have two suggestions as to how you could go about playing some sports, and eating less junk food. I can't, there is no reason why you wouldn't be able to.

WeFigured.com Dominated Amped Hackathon

Success is when preparation meets opportunity, and it was definitely the case for our team. The reason WeFigured.com won the competition was not just because it was a kick ass idea and a demo that leap-frogged others by a mile, but it was mostly because we positions the team to win.

Yes we can! A Massive Coworking space in Seattle!

This is a response to the post by Seattle's Wantrapreneur Evan Jacobs...There are enough of startups and money in Seattle to make this possible. The 600K price tag proposed by Evan is a pity change for companies like Google, Facebook, or Amazon (sorry Microsoft, you're not cool anymore). Is that really so hard for these companies to open a coworking office, and maybe in exchange swallow some tiny percentage of future products? To get this show on the road we need people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and make this happen.

Why Google Needs a Charismatic Leader

Google, following Apple's footsteps, hosts an IO event every year where they announce new updates, products ...etc. However, unlike Apple, Google miserably fails at creating a truly "magical" experience. This spans from their organization at the events, to users experience on their platforms, to at last, their Keynote speakers.

Mark Suster (@msuster) Keynote at Seattle 2.0 Awards

On Thursday, May 5th, the annual Seattle 2.0 Award ceremony took place in Seattle. Mark Suster was the keynote speaker, covering many aspects of building a startup, and in particularly building one in this community. Some notes from his speech are below.

How to Outsmart Zappos Coding Challenge.

When Zappost hosted a coding challenge in Seattle, with Tony Shieh and a bunch of other great folks present, my solution, utilizing the graph theory instead of the breadth-first algorithm, actually ran faster and kicked ass!

How and Why I built PresenterMate

When your desktop is cluttered, it could be hard to focus on what you are writing. PresenterMate removes the clutter in one click. In an intant, distractions disappear and your work becomes the most important thing on the screen.