September 2010
1 post
9 tags
WatchThe Day I found out my cofounder gave himself a raise
Trying out something new: video blogging. What do you think?
August 2010
2 posts
4 tags
The Day our investors came to see the office
We started MessageSling in two places: Scot’s house, and the SnowHo ski house in Killington, Vermont. During the weeks, I’d head over to Scot’s house. On the weekends we’d head up to the mountains for 3 or 4 days at a time. We’d get a few hours of skiing in each day, and work the rest.
It wasn’t as awesome as it may sound.
Sitting on a couch or at a kitchen...
6 tags
The Day I stopped writing The Day Series
I can’t believe it’s been 2 months since my last post on this blog. Seems I have some ‘splaining to do.
To make a long (two month) story short, a lot has gone on in my life recently. In the past 2 months I have:
Quit my job
Driven across the country in a UHaul w/ my car in tow
Broken up with a girl that was crazy — and that I was crazy about
Flown across the...
June 2010
2 posts
5 tags
The Day I snubbed someone and didn't even remember...
I just got back from dinner with a buddy of mine from college named Chris. We hadn’t really talked in years, and just randomly decided to get together and catch up.
We talked about what he’s doing, what I’m doing, reflected a bit on MessageSling, and then, mid conversation, he hit me with a ton of bricks:
Chris: Ok I gotta ask —
First of all, I use that line. When I...
6 tags
The Day we turned down TechCrunch for DEMO
When Scot and I left our jobs to start MessageSling, we didn’t know we were going to start MessageSling. We didn’t have the name. We didn’t even have the idea. We just knew we wanted to be in this sweet spot:
It’s pretty funny admitting it, but when we left our jobs, we had a better idea of how we were going to launch our company than what our company was actually...
May 2010
2 posts
3 tags
The Day I let my first employee go
His name was Robert Paulson.
Just kidding. His name is CJ. We hired CJ right out of WPI to be a developer for MessageSling. CJ’s a bright kid. We met him at a “Meet the Entrepreneurs”-type dinner hosted by WPI’s Venture Forum a couple months after starting the company.
When it came time for school to end, CJ came knocking on our door. The decision whether or not...
4 tags
The Day I found out Randy Pausch Died
For those of you who don’t know Randy Pausch, do yourself a favor: block off 80 minutes, and go watch this. 76 minutes for the video, 4 more to wipe the tears from your face and blow your nose. Seriously. If “the second head fake” doesn’t make you tear up, check your pulse.
I left EMC to start on MessageSling in December of 2007. By mid July 2008, things were in full...
April 2010
2 posts
3 tags
The Day I (tried to) leave EMC
In college I tried to start a company three times. Twice I entered local business plan competitions. Once I applied to this new cool thing in Boston called Y-Combinator and got called in to meet a couple nice guys named Trevor and Paul[1]. All three times I came up short, and never got around to scratching that entrepreneurial itch.
In high school, I impressed my AP calculus teacher by...
4 tags
Introducing 'The Day Series'
In December 2007, I left a cushy job at EMC as a Senior Software Engineer to start my first company, MessageSling.
I left to start the company w/ Scot Junkin, a friend and fellow geek from WPI. We started without funding. We started without experience. We started without even a clear idea of what we wanted to do. But we started because we needed to.
Eleven months later, we were out of money...