A little over a year ago, we were overhauling our metrics, and were looking for a practice for measuring overall happiness, primarily with our product. There are straightforward quantitative metrics you can leverage and track, which we do, such as conversion rates, churn, and ACV. But we wanted a signal that would give us a leading indicator as to how successful we were overall. We happened on...
I never valued company culture. Culture, mission statement, values – that was all stuff that I never saw anyone pay any attention to other than lip service. Any conversations about values seemed so far removed from the day-to-day of what I was doing. Fast forward to today – Contactually is passing 40 people. Values, mission, culture – that’s what I think about the most...
Beyond the commonplace tools (Google Spreadsheets, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Apps, etc) and the obvious (Contactually!) – I’ve listed out some tools that I use daily, if not multiple times daily, to assist me. Trello – We use Trello to organize anything we’re working on – from product feedback to ideas to my personal to-do list. Join.me – This is our go-to...
In 2010, I started working on a startup called Struc.to. It’s dead now, not even worth the hosting costs or domain registration. All that’s physically left is ~300 stickers I never distributed, a standing banner I haven’t gotten around to throwing out, and a dog bowl my wife had made for me (or Astro) as a gift. Struc.to had the chance to be one of the first BaaS (backend-as-a...
I wanted to be a DJ. In college, I had put together a little bit of money from internships to buy a basic CD setup. I was terrible. I sold my equipment. When freelancing, I was making enough money to buy a proper rig – Technics SL1200MK2s, Rane mixer, Scratch Live, coffin case, etc. I took months of classes. All I needed to do, in my mind, was put in my 10,000 hours and I’d get to...
This is one of a series of posts about our honeymoon to Thailand in December 2012, which consisted of Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pai, Phuket, and a long layover in Tokyo. Scroll down to the bottom to see pictures, and click on any of them to see an enlarged version. This was tapped out on my iPad, so forgive any typos or sentence fragments. 1/1-1/2 – Happy New Year! We packed up, spent the...
This is one of a series of posts about our honeymoon to Thailand in December 2012, which consisted of Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pai, Phuket, and a long layover in Tokyo. Scroll down to the bottom to see pictures, and click on any of them to see an enlarged version. This was tapped out on my iPad, so forgive any typos or sentence fragments. 12/26 – Travel Day! We said goodbye to Pai and the...
This is one of a series of posts about our honeymoon to Thailand in December 2012, which consisted of Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pai, Phuket, and a long layover in Tokyo. Scroll down to the bottom to see pictures, and click on any of them to see an enlarged version. This was tapped out on my iPad, so forgive any typos or sentence fragments.  12/24 – Goodbye Chiang Mai! With the one eight...
This is one of a series of posts about our honeymoon to Thailand in December 2012, which consisted of Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pai, Phuket, and a long layover in Tokyo. Scroll down to the bottom to see pictures, and click on any of them to see an enlarged version. This was tapped out on my iPad, so forgive any typos or sentence fragments. 12/20 – Checked out of the Shanghai Mansion and...
This is one of a series of posts about our honeymoon to Thailand in December 2012, which consisted of Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pai, Phuket, and a long layover in Tokyo. Scroll down to the bottom to see pictures, and click on any of them to see an enlarged version. This was tapped out on my iPad, so forgive any typos or sentence fragments. 12/14. Packed up the house, 845 flight to Chicago. 3 hour...