“Groovy Motherfucker”

Going Offline

[TL;DR: I’m starting something awesome, go and sign up for our mailing list to be the first to find out about it]

On August 1st 2010, I was an Engineering Manager with Slide. On September 17th 2010, I am leaving my role as Member of Technical Staff at Google to co-found my own startup.

What a difference a month can make!

First, an important statement that I can’t emphasize enough: This is not a reaction to the Slide acquisition. No-one should attempt to spin this as “Rod didn’t want to work for Google, so quit.” If anything, the opportunities presented by being part of Google made the decision to leave considerably harder.

I’m leaving behind an incredible team who I know are going to kick 41 shades of ass, and I’ll be standing in the crowds cheering them all the way.

So two questions that need answering: 1) What are we going to build? and 2) Why now? Let’s answer the latter first.

Why now?

For years, I’ve stated that my goal in life was to find someone with great ideas, then be their technical co-founder. I know my limits — I am not someone who can come up with blue-sky ideas out of thin air — but also my strengths — I can take someone else’s great concept and nitpick, tweak, enhance, argue and generally make it much more awesomer.

I’ve worked with Rishi for close to two years and we have a great working relationship. He’s the product guy, I’m the engineer-with-product-guy-tendencies. When we started chatting over coffee one day about ideas for potential startups, one in particular immediately clicked with me. I got excited and hand-wavey about ways it could expand; ways to shift the focus to make it more powerful to solve problems I know that my friends and I have faced.

Initially, I said I’d be happy to be an advisor to Rishi if he decided to work further on it. But as I described the idea to Joy one evening, she called my bluff. I kept saying things like “Our idea is…”, or “What we would do is…” She pointed out that I was more bought in than I was letting on to myself. So I emailed Rishi and said I was in.

So why now? Because we have a great idea, a killer team, and it’s so easy these days. Starting a web software firm is practically free — Between open-source software platforms, dirt-cheap virtual server “cloud” hosting, and a squillion online services that handle the tricky parts for $25/month, not to mention being in a city surrounded by entrepreneurial sorts who are happy to give advice, it’s almost harder not to start your own thing!

What are we going to build?

So we have an idea, a team, a company name, a two-month bootstrapping plan, and sheer damned determination; but what are we building?

At this point, I have to turn a tad coy in such a public venue since we’re still at an early stage, but the crux of it: Building online tools that make it easier for people to find things to do, find friends to do them with, and keep track of the memories after the fact.

Social software like Twitter and Facebook has made it vastly more easy to keep track of our friends online. We want to flip this on its head and use everyone’s newly-formed online connections to make it simpler to find things to do, in the real world. Y’know… “offline”.

Sounds intriguing, non? You’re left desperately wanting to know more details, oui? Then hop over post-haste to our exclusive limited-time friends-and-family mailing list signup page. That’ll be the first place we share our plans, thoughts, and prototypes, and just giving us your email address will be a hugely-appreciated show of support.

And if you want more details sooner, offer to buy me coffee or a beer. I’m a poor bootstrapping type now, and will excitedly bend the ear and pick the brain of anyone who offers me liquid refreshment.

So here I go, putting my money where my mouth is, jumping in feet first, dropping the english muffin into the start-up toaster and seeing if it pops up hot & buttered… Wish me luck!

Time to get Married

The following is my answer to the question “Question for men: How did you decide it was time to get married?” on Quora

When I first started dating Joy, I warned her that I didn’t see myself ever getting married.

Six months later, I’d proposed.

The turning point was probably when we’d been together a few months, and we were talking about moving in together. I suggested buying something, rather than renting, and Joy pointed out that I was talking about making a 30 year commitment to a mortgage, but wasn’t considering marriage.

She was right. I could see myself with her for the rest of our lives.

So, I’m afraid the answer from my perspective: “You just know.”

The importance of an API

The following is my answer to the question “Rod Begbie, what are all the reasons you want a systematic way to retrieve your answers from Quora?” on Quora

Off the bat, it’s important to state: I like Quora. I’ve had tremendous fun on the site, have learned a bunch, and gotten to gather some top notch insight from smart folks.

But the other day, I found myself spending 10 minutes writing an answer on Quora, and realised I was throwing my time away. I was writing something that will be seen by, at most, a couple of hundred people.

A couple of hundred intelligent people, sure. A couple of hundred relatively-influential-in-the-tech-industry, maximum-of-two-degrees-away-from-the-founders-of-Facebook people, even. However, that pales in insignificance to the number of wonderful, influential and awesome people out there on Teh Internets as a whole.

And even assuming that the beta-wall drops and the great unwashed get to gaze upon the wisdom of Quora, my writing is still at the behest of the great Quora gods. If they delete or edit my post, or the hard drive crashes, or they decide they’re getting out of the Q&A business and turning off the servers, all my time is lost.

By writing an answer on Quora, I was giving my time and value to Quora The Company, without getting anything of any real value back. Yes people could vote me up or down, or comment on what I wrote, but I can theoretically get that by writing a blog post and linking it on Reddit or Hacker News.

The Quora terms of service make it clear that I “own” my content. I want a way to get a feed of everything I contribute so I can store it away and do with it what I want.

Why is this important? Twitter’s a grand example. Right now, it is impossible to download more than 3,200 of your own tweets. The API simply balks if you request anything older. Luckily, I started archiving my tweets long before hitting that limit, so I have access to everything I’ve ever posted there.

Similarly, I upload my photos to Flickr. I get all the benefits of Flickr’s superior community and organizational tools, but am also able to run a script which downloads and backs-up all my photos, their descriptions, tags and comments.

And in both these examples, I am able to pull my content in real time and display it here on my blog. My output is collated and tagged in the way I want. I can run a blog search and find something I wrote two years ago, whether blogpost, tweet or photo description.

So, until Quora offers such a feed, I am resolved to not answering any more questions. Or rather, if I do, it will be by writing a blog post and posting the link to Quora.

“Creatives”

This is video of a 5 minute talk I gave at Ignite Bay Area 2. It’s inspired by the collision of cultures ten years ago at my first job, when they went from a purely tech/business/enterprisey consulting firm to being a cool sexy web firm. (I was worried before giving the talk that the problems had all been solved in the last decade — the reaction I got from the audience suggests not!)

The video isn’t the clearest, so the slides (sans nice fonts) are embedded below. If you hit the Play button on the slides at roughly the time I start talking, it should auto-advance in time with my blethering.

Incidentally, there are a bunch of upcoming Ignite events in San Francisco — at the Chirp, Google I/O and Web 2.0 Expo conferences — and it’s fabulous fun (and a great challenge). I highly recommend submitting talks.

MMX - XXL

I have never been svelte.

This much should be stated at the start. The closest I’ve come to a healthy weight was during my four years as a student. Deprived of the contents of my parents’ fridge, and not yet able to enjoy the slap-up dining that a salary would afford, I was never “skinny” or beerbellyless”.

But I am currently fatter than I’ve ever been. I’ve put on almost 30lbs in the last year. Something needs to change.

I chose January 1st for two reasons:

1. It’s traditional to make a new year resolution. The new beginning of a new year, and all that.
2. I could gorge during the Christmas period.

By luck, last week, Richard Wiseman posted a blog entry on how to keep your resolution. Some good solid advice in there. In particular, state and track your goal publicly, and keep it measurable.

This has worked for me in the past. I decided that my goal for 2008 was to move to San Francisco, was open about it, and by the end of March, I had a job all lined up.

So here is my official goal for 2010: Weigh 210lbs on December 31st 2010.

That’s a drop of almost 60lbs. I think I can probably shift about 5–10lbs this month (the start of a diet always sees a quick drop), then sustain losing 1lb a week for the rest of the year.

My expectation is that this will require experimentation and tweaking. So here is my plan for January:

• Using Lose It, a free iPhone app to keep track of calories. (Hat tip to Daniel Jalkut for mentioning Lose It on Twitter). I’m doing good old-fashioned calorie counting—no complex points calculation, no rules on what can and can’t be eaten. Your standard “Burn more than you consume, and you’ll lose weight” plan. This isn’t about changing what I eat; it’s about changing the quantity I eat.
• In the spirit of keeping it public, I purchased the Withings WiFi Body Scale, a sleek and sexy set of bathroom scales which upload your data to the web. My progress can now be tracked by anyone at @lardyarsedgit. Go on and follow it! One tweet a day, and it’ll make me feel a lot better!
• Regarding exercise, I’m starting off easy. Not going to join a gym or buy (another) treadmill. Instead, I’m going to try to take a smattering of small steps. For the beginning, I’m going to stop riding the elevator at work (taking the stairs to and from my team area on the 6th floor), and pledge to take Bacon for a 40-minute walk three times a week. If I can’t do these little things, there’s no point throwing $$$ at a gym.

At the end of each month, I’ll adjust the plan. But right now, it all feels very achievable.

My BHAG for the year? Next January, I’ll be able to sign up for The San Francisco Marathon Training Program and be able to run the SF Marathon in July 2011.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.