Archive for February, 2010

PairUp Conference: Building a Startup

  • February 22nd, 2010
  • Posted in Talks

I will be speaking at the PairUp Conference April 8-9, 2010 in London; doing a pair presentation with Nick Pellant.  The both of us will be speaking on how to go about starting a tech startup, and focused on inspiring the youth of the UK! [ READ MORE ]

Adaptation

Growing up my family moved around every few years, which meant that I was the “new kid on the block” a handful of times.  Every new school I entered required me to learn a new system, and most of the time I was the only brownie, which made my social-life a little more challenging.  Being a [ READ MORE ]

Testing Traditions

I come from a culture that reveres degrees, status, and tradition.  While I think those things are important, they just aren’t important to me.  When I was 10 I told my mom I wasn’t going to have an arranged marriage, her response: “We’ll see.”  We are still seeing…  At 18 I told my pious parents [ READ MORE ]

Pre-Launch Prep

I’ve been advising a few pre-launch startups that are getting ready to do their first ever product launch.  From first-hand experience I know that the first product launch can be nerve-wrecking.  You expect the product to be pixel perfect, and all the features to be fully functional and bug-free.  But there is such a thing [ READ MORE ]

Getting Traction on Trendy Technology

As a startup founder I’ve been fixated on understanding technology adoption, and trying to not spread myself too thin: writing a web app, native apps for smart phones, and potentially an iPad app, or whatever else might come out in the next couple of years. Here’s how I’m figuring out who will adopt my product and [ READ MORE ]

Think About Scale from the Start

If you are thinking about scaling a web application or service, congratulations, because you have users that liked you or were curious enough to sign up and stick around! You will of course be acquiring more users shortly.  While the trajectory of user growth is unknown, and depends a lot on your usage model (viral [ READ MORE ]

Epilogue: Mint.com Femgineer to Femtrepreneur

Almost one month ago I left Mint.com to strike it out on my own.  I remember leaving the building after saying goodbye to people that I had helped hire, and built a product with for over 3 years of my life.  The days leading up to my last day were filled with a bit of [ READ MORE ]

Importance of an IDE

The first time I saw my VP of Engineering use Idea Intellij I feel in love with it!  All those shortcuts, a debugger, running a server, refactoring code, inserting exception handling, and the ability to do auto-complete!  I was coming from an Emacs, NEdit, VI background, which are all powerful in their own right.  I [ READ MORE ]

Ruby Tuesday: Debugging

When I was a freshman at Duke, coding away in Teer basement, I would often hear disgruntled engineers shout: “Damn, I’ve got 300 syntax errors, I left off the semicolon!  Why does everything have to be so exact?”  Those were the days of coding in C++, a language in which you had to actually compile, [ READ MORE ]

TalkShoe Podcast

I was interviewed this afternoon by Anne Swift.  She focused on my experience as one of the founding engineers at Mint.com, and how that has helped me start my own venture.  Enjoy the podcast! [ READ MORE ]