Endeavors Archive

At 6:20am in a coffee shop you fully expect to hear things like, “Hi sir, what can I get for you today.” Instead I heard a loud car crash followed by a blood-soaked woman screaming at the top of her lungs… “Help! Help! My boyfriend’s been shot. Help!” All heads in the coffee shop turn towards the windows… I got out of the Starbucks line …

I just finished up my National Ski Patrol refresher over the weekend. This is the 12th year I’ll be volunteering as a patroller at Mount Snow Vermont. For those of you that don’t know what ski patrol is or what we do, you can think of it as an EMT on skis or in my case a snowboard that is primarily responsible for the immediate …

This post originally appeared on Badger Engineers. My company Spinback was recently acquired by Buddy Media, the largest Facebook Management Company in the world. It’s clear that my four years studying in the Wisconsin College of Engineering has played a role in that acquisition. At the core, I’d argue that an engineering, math, or science related degree is the single best degree or use of …

Now that the dust has settled a bit and the acquisition is done, I wanted to talk a little bit about Dogpatch Labs NYC and the role they played in Spinback. 1. Collaboration For the past few months the Spinback team has been working out of a union square loft in NYC hosted by Polaris Ventures. We have been working alongside 15 – 20 other …

As the news says, today my partners and I over at Spinback are pleased to announce that we’ve been acquired by Buddy Media, the Facebook management system of choice for eight out of the ten top global advertisers. When we started Spinback the goal was to build the most cutting edge technology that would facilitate conversations and sharing of products. More importantly, we wanted this technology …

The situation in Japan is really horrible but perhaps an even worse situation is that rescue workers and aids are afraid to help those within a 12 mile radius of the nuclear power plant. Aid agencies are reluctant to get too close to the plant. Shelters set up in the greater Fukushima area for “radiation refugees” have little food, in part because nobody wants to …

As we continue to build our business at spinback we continue to engage in a number of very interesting conversations on the topic of product recommendations and sharing. Jared Spiegel, a friend of mine and someone who is currently participating in the Brooklyn Law Incubation Program (BLIP), made the following point that I thought really highlights the core of why product sharing is so valuable. …

Image by Stuck in Customs via Flickr As of today, I’ll be leaving the Lotame family to pursue a new endeavor called Spinback.com. Like all hard decisions, this one was not easy but here’s the story: When I first started Lotame I was in the midst of building a business called TheCampusAtlas.com with three of my engineering buddies from school. But through a coincidental encounter …

Image by US Army Korea – IMCOM via Flickr Mark Suster wrote a great post yesterday called “Life is 10% How You Make It and 90% How you Take It” and it’s definitely worth a read for anyone doing the entrepreneurial thing. He talks about how “happiness has to be a state of mind” and how “you need to constantly remind yourself to be happy whatever your life’s circumstances.” …

Doug Weaver wrote a great piece today titled The New Oreo, Part 3: The Audience Layer. “Anyone mildly plugged into digital advertising in 2010 can’t possibly ignore the noise and energy around audience buying. … There are many people in our industry who can go a lot deeper on this topic than I…” I’ll attempt to take it a bit “deeper” but will do so …