by Colin Young

Classical, coffee, and coding on a Saturday

Colin — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 19:53:35 +0000

Took this picture in the new but temporary Cloudbot “offices”. Man, the weather is better here, but I can’t wait to get back to Chicago.

Pics from the Mission St Incubator, San Francisco, CA

Colin — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 04:25:18 +0000

People work here. People live here. People also drink craft beer from a kegerator here.

A twilio app to lookup movie quotes

Colin — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:51:09 +0000

Text a quote to (773) 672-3265. Click here to access the app. Inspired by johnsheehan‘s challenge on twitter.

Why failing fast is a blessing in disguise

Colin — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 05:56:48 +0000

Photo graciously CC-licensed by Flickr user behruz. My last startup idea, I’ve determined it can be revealed, was a mobile payments startup. We wanted to handle mobile payments by smartphone in a totally different, way faster way than anybody’s done before. We knew our tech would work, and we hoped we’d be able to probably [...]

Your mom has to understand your startup

Colin — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 21:42:51 +0000

Photo is CC-licensed by Flickr user kkanouse. As all of us entrepreneurs are with family either in person or in our thoughts this Thanksgiving weekend, don’t forget to ask yourself questions about your company or startup ideas in the context of that wider world: Do people in the “normal people” column, like my family, understand [...]

Learning vs. building

Colin — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:26:10 +0000

Photo credit: flickr user joewatrach. In all kinds of industries, there are systemic disconnects between what students are trained on, and what the actual industry demands. As a CS student who has made somewhat of a break from the academic world, I want to shed some light on the problem of why there are so [...]

Startup Weekend 2010 Recap

Colin — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:46:09 +0000

What an awesome weekend. Had a blast and met a ton of people, and I’m extremely grateful I went! If you haven’t seen them yet, check out some writeups by the judges at Twilio’s blog (John Sheehan), and FlyoverGeeks (Ed Domain). My team, ubercmd, worked on a one-window, one-actionbar interface for getting things done with [...]

Startup Weekend 2010

Colin — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 19:52:50 +0000

Gone fishin’ at Startup Weekend Chicago for the weekend! Not sure what I’ll be pitching – need to narrow it down to one idea!

Be prepared for users

Colin — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 02:03:08 +0000

Earlier today, I did something as innocuous as setting up a profile on about.me, a profiles startup much like flavors.me. When I signed up, it invited me to tweet my profile’s URL: .bbpBox2100605455704065 {background:url(http://a3.twimg.com/profile_background_images/109564855/twbg.jpg) #11153b;padding:20px;} p.bbpTweet{background:#fff;padding:10px 12px 10px 12px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#000;font-size:18px !important;line-height:22px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata{display:block;width:100%;clear:both;margin-top:8px;padding-top:12px;height:40px;border-top:1px solid #fff;border-top:1px solid #e6e6e6} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author{line-height:19px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author img{float:left;margin:0 7px 0 [...]

How to give feedback well

Colin — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 15:27:44 +0000

In the course of a well-lived life, you’ll hopefully be asked to give feedback on someone’s hard work. Sometimes you’ll be an expert in the domain (this happens most often in the workplace, and is where you can get your best practice); and other times you’ll be armed only with extremely general knowledge to help [...]