Writing

Never Stop Learning

March 14, 2016 in People & Culture

4 Ways to Simplify New Concepts and Skills

It seems like everyday I become aware of something new I don’t know. It also seems like the rate at which I don’t know is increasing. Everyday I see my bucket list of skills I’d like to learn inch further into a state of impossibility. However I recently started listening to a podcast series by Tim Ferriss, an entrepreneur, investor, and a New York Times best selling author. In it he talks about his most recent book, The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life, and how to approach learning new skills or concepts easier and in shorter amounts of time.

The Apostles and Inbuilt Bias

March 12, 2016 in People & Culture

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The other night we had several friends over for dinner during which we started discussing the new teaching series at Lakeside Church, Acts. It’s definitely one of my favorite New Testament books, mostly because of the startup-type energy of the early apostles during the rise of the 1st century church.

Moments

March 10, 2016 in People & Culture

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Through the ebbs and flows of life, there are moments that remind you that you have something special in front of you. These moments are often fleeting as moments go, therefore it’s important to pause and take note. This is especially true if you work at a technology startup, which tends to be more volatile in nature. I believe I’m in of these moments and this post is a chance for me to do just that, pause and take note.

One Man’s Trash Is Another Man’s Treasure

February 29, 2016 in Management

Or why technical advancements should be distributed across verticals & markets.

In 2010, Twilio launched their text messaging API service and began a revolution of sms-based communications within products and services. Fast forward six years and we’re still seeing a lot of growth around SMS integration and now, the proliferation of SMS-only products and services such as GoButler.

You can’t steer a parked car

February 27, 2016 in Management

You can’t steer a parked car.

Methods for Problem Solving

February 24, 2016 in Management

Solving problems using the First Principles method and the 5 Whys method.

Creating value and changing the world is all about problem solving. Either socially, economically, or technically. Even if your life pursuit is not about changing the world, you’re still faced with problems big and small every day.

Most problems that occur in life are not usually the root problem. In that, the problem facing you is actually an effect of another problem. When faced with a problem, your first instinct is to quickly resolve it. This is often the case in work environments where the pace is quick and people are looking for answers. The effect of this is that by not addressing the root problem, future problems can and probably will arise.

Scrape LinkedIn Profiles to CSV with Node.js

October 30, 2015 in Engineering

I recently wrote this node script to read LinkedIn profiles from a CSV and scrap the data from each into a new CSV. If you’re interesting in analyzing employee or market data, this is a great way to source the data.

Sourcing Utah Startup Data From AngelList using Node.js and R

August 25, 2015 in Engineering

Whenever I want to learn something new, it helps to think of a project or use case that I can work on rather than just learning snippets here and there. For a while now I’ve been tinkering with node.js and R. I’ve really begin to adore these two, especially when it comes to data. Sourcing data with node.js is a glorious thing and analyzing that data with R is even better. At Equation, we’re engulfed with data day in and day out so ramping up on these two has been great.

I’ve been looking forward to the upcoming StartFEST, Utah’s very own startup festival. Since I’m focused on data, I wondered if I could get some context on the current startup ecosystem in Utah. I decided to take some time and use this opportunity to use node.js and R to pull together some data. Below are the steps I took to gather and display the data using node.js and R.