I was given the chance to speak at TechCocktail about relationships last week, along with Rohit and Scott. It was a great night talking about how relationships are so crucial for an entrepreneur. I stumbled across a few mentions of “luck surface area”, and it instantly resonated with me. Go read it now. As I think about Contactually and my role as CEO, one of my biggest directives is...
As an undergrad, I was a textbook example of an over programmed person spread too thin. I was involved in so many different organizations and activities that I was never able to adequately perform or commit to any of them. Up until recently I was running a freelance firm with a dozen or so concurrent clients, leading multiple community efforts, helping a couple friends with their startups...
The passing of another birthday doesn’t hold much significance for me – rather, I am very conscious around college graduation. For me, that marks the point at which the training wheels came off, and I was on my own to fend for myself and search for my true calling. ’06: Graduated ’07: Working at a major consulting firm ’08: CTO at a nascent design agency ’09:...
It’s been a little over a year since we held the first DC Tech Meetup, and a little over a year and a half since we launched ProudlyMadeInDC, which can be considered a catalyst for the Meetup. One can confidently say that everything has been up and to the right with all aspects of the greater DC startup ecosystem; more startups, thriving startups, investments, acquisitions, M+A, etc. For...
On May 15th, 2011 was the day I first wrote down in Evernote (where I collect all my product ideas) an idea for a Proactive CRM The failure in CRMs is that YOU have to actively decide to put a contact into the system. Lame. Google Apps hook-in It monitors your email, then when you reply to an email from someone, or send someone an email, it then knows that it’s someone who should be added...