Shit, I can’t even spell it.
Since the last startup I was CTO of was acquired in 2009, I’ve been working for other startups and agencies as a consultant. While my main goal in life is to be building startups that I am the founder/co-founder of, consulting has been a great way to pay the bills while I iterate with different products, ideas, and people, figuring out the next big thing to throw myself into with all my...
The past sixth months we’ve seen an explosion in the DC community. Events where we normally may have expected a few dozen of the same faces to show up have now grown into the hundreds. There seems to be this constant flow of new people, new companies, and general enthusiasm around creating new ventures in the region. We’re hoping that this becomes self sustaining, and all signs point...
I’m honored to be on Washingtonian’s list of Tech Titans this year.
Onward and upward.
It’s been a little under five months since we launched the first version of ProudlyMadeInDC, a website that has helped shed light on the growing startup community in DC. It’s received more media attention and traffic than I expected when it was built. Since then, we’ve launched two additional initiatives – the DC Tech Meetup (800 attendees expected for next week) and DC...
It’s been great watching the early stage startup community grow in the DC region over the past six to twelve months. Companies are getting funded, new ventures are being created every day, and on the whole, the entrepreneurs in the area no longer feel like lone wolves wandering around with no support network. As I’ve become heavily involved the mechanics of the community, through...
As mentioned previously, I’m co-founder of ProudlyMadeinDC, a central site showcasing DC’s startups, showing to the world, and to ourselves, that DC is an up-and-coming startup hub. We started it as a small side project, but it’s grown to become real movement, helping to power the rise of DC startups. I presented at Ignite DC 6 (slides below, full video coming soon), so what I...
As a hacker-founder (an entrepreneur who develops their own products), how familiar does this sound to you: Have an awesome idea. Don’t tell anyone about it. Decide to build it, convinced that everyone will love it. Still don’t tell publicize it. Keep working on the product. Not as wild about the idea anymore. Come to some milestone in the product. Show it to one or two people. Start...
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. I’m behind in writing this post, but I’m happy to finally get around to talking about this now. I’ve been working on a new startup. Say hello to Structo. Structo was born out of a pain I saw as a web developer, and, in speaking with many other web developers, I found I wasn’t alone. There are...
[insert usual excuse about blogging absence] While I am firmly established as an entrepreneur, having started one company of my own (skeevisArts) and been CTO of a now-acquired startup, I know that the business that I’m in is a means to an end. As much as I love to work with awesome clients and grow my roster weekly, this is not what I want to do long term. My dream is to build products...
December 4th, today, marks a pretty big day in my life. Since I was in middle school, skeevisArts was the moniker I used for any “professional” work I did (back then, I used the professional label pretty loosely). Skeevis was my nickname back then, and considering that I was doing mainly creative work at that time, skeevisArts was appended to everything I created. But on December...