At Twitter, Dick Costolo (CEO) makes sure that all new hires can answer three simple questions:
1. What’s my job?
2. How do I know I’m successful at my job?
3. Why does it matter if our company succeeds (vision)?
Mike has a great post on team building and company culture. I encourage you to read the whole thing.
(disclosure: we are investors in Mike’s company Skillshare)
Band Of Horses | Knock Knock
New Band Of Horses, everyone!
Many years ago a company called Karelia developed a cool desktop app for the Mac called Watson.
Wikipedia describes the story of Karelia quite well:
The Karelia logo was inspired by events that occurred shortly after Dan Wood created Watson. The application was designed as a complement to Apple’s existing Sherlock 2 application, providing users various plug-ins to view specific internet content. Watson was released in November 2001, and the popularity of the program grew quickly.
Wood was later invited to a meeting at Apple, in which he was shown a demo of Sherlock 3, which incorporated the same look and nearly all of the modules featured in Watson. After voicing his displeasure to Apple Developer Relations, Wood received a phone call from Steve Jobs, during which Jobs indicated that he saw Karelia as the handcar in the way of the steam train that owns the tracks (a very similar experience to that of Cabel Sasser of Panic Software). Despite this setback, Karelia Software has continued to create popular Mac software and has since incorporated the train tracks and handcar into their logo.
The story became known to developers as “Getting Sherlocked”. Third parties getting trounced by the big platform.
Building interesting desktop apps for MacOS or Windows always came with the getting sherlocked risk.
But with the web, developers have learned to build on top of each other. Consider Amazon Web Services, or Twilio, or Mongo.
Yet the desire for the bigco to try and crush the little co seems to be a constant.
Recently, Google launched Google Drive. It’s clear they don’t want Dropbox to be the category leader in file sharing and sync. Even though Dropbox on Android is superior to Dropbox on iOS.
Google basically bolted Google Drive on to their existing popular Google Docs. Here is the big honking Google Drive promotion in my Google Docs dashboard.
If I’m Dropbox, I’m not loving this.
But here’s the thing. Dropbox is still a much better product in my opinion. It just works. And their iOS app is better than Google Drive’s iOS app.
This morning I got up quite early and read through 4 pitch decks from entrepreneurs. All of them contained a Dropbox link. None of them had a Google Drive link.
As I mentioned in this twitter thread, I’m a big fan of Google in general. They have built extraordinary products and have made even more extraordinary acquisitions with Android and YouTube. That’s the Google I love.
I don’t love when a big company bolts on an app to an existing product line specifically to nuke a competitor. That’s what Google Drive feels like to me.
And for that reason I’m a loyal, happily paying Dropbox user.
via Marco.org:
I’ve been using a Retina MacBook Pro for one week, only as a secondary computer, and I’ve already changed my font, redesigned my narrow layout’s header, and conditionally replaced an image with text. I’ve noticed that fonts, especially, respond extremely differently on the Retina screen: many of my old, non-Retina choices simply didn’t look good, and many fonts and metrics that were previously poor for screen use can be used nicely on Retina screens.
great advice.
and so here I am: still standing in the arena, in hand-to-hand combat with demons mostly of my own making, aiming to make a small dent in the universe. nowhere near a great success story, yet fighting the good fight and perhaps helping others to achieve greatness as I attempt a bit of my own. I’ll be 46 in a month, well past the age when most folks have already shown what they’re made of. but I’m still grasping for that brass ring.
late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope) by Dave McClure
I’m catching up late but it’s now obvious why this post was tweeted like crazy today. Well done Dave.
Maine, Day 2
It’s a constant struggle for survival,” he said in his courthouse chambers, which have a sparkling view of Monroe Harbor on Lake Michigan. “As in any jungle, the animals will use all the means at their disposal, all their teeth and claws that are permitted by the ecosystem.
Maine Weekend
Every summer, for the past 9 years, we go away with our good friends Reiko and Luke and all of our children for a weekend.
We’ve known them since undergrad and I’m so happy our kids are friends too. They think of each other as family and so do I.
This year we are trying out something new and spending the weekend up in Maine. But really it doesn’t matter where we go – as long as we are together.
(All shots taken using the Olympus OM-D E-M5 and a 25mm f/1.4 Pana-Leica)
Watching Ellie play tennis
Last night we went over to Lincoln to check out the fireworks show.
It was the first time I really tried my Leica M9P with long exposures and a tripod. It was pretty tricky and most didnt work out. I liked a few including the one I’m sharing on this post. I put the focus ring at infinity, kept the shutter open for 4 seconds and kept the ISO pegged at 160. I should have shot it at f/8 or f/11 (accidentally left it at f/4) since the fireworks were so bright anyway.
During the show I glanced over at my family and loved the look on their faces. Grabbed my Olympus E-M5 and took a few snaps.
I think I liked the family shots better than the fireworks.