Let’s get this out right up front – I have no question that there is discrimination in the tech industry. I gave an hour-long talk on this very subject at MIT a couple of weeks ago, where I pointed out that everyone’s first draft of pretty much everything is crap – your first game, first…
I went to the Western Users of SAS Software conference last week and came home sad. It wasn’t for the reasons you’d guess. No one sexually harassed me (as if!). I did not forget how to code a confirmatory factor analysis in the middle of the pre-conference class I was teaching. The other statisticians didn’t…
I certainly understand how you could think that all CEOs are rude and all investors are assholes but it’s really not quite that simple. This occurred to me today as for the 4th (or was it 5th?) time in a row, I told someone talking to me that I had to go because I had…
First, the big, exciting news, if you have not heard it – we are one of EIGHT COMPANIES IN THE WORLD selected to be part of the Boom Startup Accelerator for Educational Technology. Can you tell that I’m super-excited about this? At lunch today, for the second time in two days, someone asked me what…
A few months ago, in between everything else in my life, I had been working on applications for accelerators and an executive summary for investors. While money is always a good thing, I was surprised by the unexpected benefits. The questions asked by investors are the same ones you should be asking yourself. If you…
It was recently noted on our company twitter account that I’m out of town so often that I’ve come to resemble the Travelocity gnome in more than stature. I’ve been traveling on business for nearly my entire career. Despite the proliferation of Google hangouts, Skype, Webex, Go-to-Meeting, FaceTime and God knows how many other technological…
As further proof that God has a sense of humor, my career has been full of reversals. Where I was once the pain-in-the-ass young hotshot who knew everything and thought my boss was stuck in the past century, now I have to deal with people like that. For my first few years as an employee,…
Our Project Manager, Jessica, made the very insightful comment at lunch the other day, No one cares how hard it was for you to make. When people are looking to buy your product, all they want to know is what it will do for them. That young woman has a bright future in marketing. Unfortunately…
I find it weird when I make people nervous. I’ve had people shake and stutter so much that I thought they had some sort of disability, only to find out later that it was a reaction to meeting me! My family and friends say I’m intimidating, which I also find bizarre. I am, literally, a…
Every day, every week, I face the same question that all entrepreneurs ask themselves – “How do you know when you are done?” Most days, I start work around 10 am and finish about 14 hours later. Usually, I take off an hour for lunch and an hour for dinner, or take a few hours…