So I found a new solution.

Step 1: Download your whole calendar. I used Google Takeout.

Step 2: In ChatGPT with o3, upload the file with this prompt.

I’ve just uploaded a calendar file. I want an xlsx with all the people I’ve ever met with in the bay area. Consider only meetings with 5 or fewer attendees (including me). Filter out people who have glowforge.com emails. It might not say the location in the location field, and ‘the bay area’ covers a lot, so you’ll need to be creative about this. The results should be a spreadsheet with: Name, email, number of meetings, last meeting. Sort by most recent meeting first. Then show the first 10 rows.

Phone numbers are often followed by location, so if a line has “+1” in it, ignore that line.

That’s it. Sit back and watch the gears whirl for a bit, then download a spreadsheet of all the folks you’re overdue to catch up with.

I’ve signed on as a research fellow at Wharton’s Generative AI Lab with the incredible Drs Ethan and Lilach Mollick.

I’m working with them to share some of the the lessons we’ve learned building generative AI tools at Glowforge so more people can put them to work. And I’m excited to investigate some of the strange and truly bizarre phenomena I’ve been seeing in the world of LLMs.

I know the blog’s been quiet… guilty. I’ll be sharing some of the interesting tidbits soon!

Last week, I attended an unconference called ORD Camp. At the event, attendees create sessions together around their passions and expertise. Everyone is a “speaker”; there’s no hierarchy of VIPs and attendees. Participants this year included astronauts, public school teachers, national reporters, government officials, and radio and TV show hosts, to name just a few.

The organizers, Zach and Fitz, have been deliberate about inviting diverse participants. This year, they called me up and asked me to give a short introductory talk. A number of people have asked me to make it available, so I’m sharing it here, under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Hi! I’m a white dude. So are Fitz and Zach. They asked me to give a five minute talk to my fellow white dudes.

I’ll be honest – I’m terrified. Talking about race and gender is deeply uncomfortable for me.  It’s probably uncomfortable for you too. But that’s OK – we’re here to grow, and to learn, and we’ll stumble through it together.

As white dudes, I think we share some things in common.

• We’re usually surrounded by lots of other white dudes. That’s significant, because humans feel more comfortable when we see people who look like us. And when we feel more comfortable, we’re more likely to participate, and be ourselves.
• We’re raised in a society where it’s unusual that speaking up puts us in danger. Most of us don’t regularly stop to think – if I say this, am I putting myself in jeopardy?
• We’re rewarded and encouraged for making our voices heard. Society expects us to take up a lot of room in the room, and many of us are raised to do that.

That can affect the way we interact with the world. And it can affect the way everyone else here interacts with each other, too.

Being a white dude means we have power and privilege.  And – there’s a set of default behaviors associated with power and privilege that can be pretty toxic to what we all want to accomplish here together at this event.

Five minutes isn’t enough time to unpack that. But it is long enough for me to give you a crash course in being an awesome participant here.  I’m going to give you a tool kit to make your ORD Camp experience better for yourself AND better for all of our non-white-dude friends. Which is literally everyone else!

Here’s the secret.  When you’re in sessions, you’ll find yourself experiencing them two ways: speaking/teaching, and listening/learning.  A common white dude default, certainly my default, is speaking/teaching – even when, perhaps, we’re not the world’s greatest authority on the topic. But this event is amazing, because we have a chance to listen and learn from truly amazing experts.

So this weekend, join me in trying something different. Make your ORD Camp about listening instead of talking.  And because I’m terrible at this and know how hard it can be, I’ve got three pieces of advice.

1. Plan ahead for the panels you’re going to teach and the ones where you’re going to learn. Pick a couple where you’re an expert and participate actively. Pick a dozen where you’re not and be a great listener.
2. Take notes for yourself.  Jot down what’s being said – you’ll get more from the session, and, crucially, it makes it easier to keep your mouth shut. I say this as someone who has a lot of trouble keeping his mouth shut.
3. Look around the room and do the math. 20 people? Every time something interesting happens, roll a d20 in your head, and speak up on a natural 20. To make this easier to remember, I brought a bag of one hundred 20-sided dice, which you can find on the table outside. Please take one. If someone in your panel needs a reminder to make space for others, just playing with your d20 might do the trick.

Finally, a cautionary tale: at ORD camp two years ago I was in a session on underrepresentation in tech. Most of the attendees were underrepresented people in tech. Most of the words were spoken by white dudes.  It was embarrassing. Fellow white dudes, let’s not be those dudes.

ORD camp is amazing. We have very little time and so many amazing people to share that time with. Let’s make the most of it: reduce our footprint and make room for other voices. Spend more time listening and less time speaking. Speaking of which… thank you.

Special thanks to my dear friend Anita, whose compassionate critique of an early draft saved it from being much, much worse. Anything good is hers, anything lousy is mine.  

The aftermath of this talk was incredible, and I’m still processing it. I had a lot of conversations about topics I’ve never really explored before, with people of all backgrounds, who wanted to discuss this.

On top of that, I was asked to serve on the first ORD Camp Code of Conduct Committee (yes, as the representative white dude).  The whole experience was incredible, and I’m still thinking about its impact on me. More on that to come.

Sometimes we get second chances.

I’m going in next week for testing to confirm that I can help. You might be able to help, too. Please visit marrow.org and sign up – or update your contact information – today.

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Angel investors have little in common, and range from occasional dilettantes who throw a kilobuck at their former college roommate’s sure-fire app idea, to career investors who’ve made fortunes placing thoughtful bets on startups, to lecherous “service providers” who lure in unsuspecting companies with promises of “investment” only to add conditions and caveats. Classic nonsense propositions include that you pay them a percentage of any investment funds they raise (simultaneously a terrible idea and illegal) or that they “invest” with advice instead of cash.  My personal favorite was the “advisor” who offered to help fundraise in exchange for a large equity grant and a five-digit travel allowance. Monthly.

In any case, now I’m counted amongst the shadows. Since selling Sparkbuy to Google I started putting a few dollars here and there into startups. And I’m sad to say that I’m now one of those terrible angel investors who drove me nuts when I was first starting to raise money. Truly, you don’t want me on your investor rolls. Here’s why.

I don’t want to be an angel investor. I laugh heartily when I get emails like “do you want to increase your deal flow?” or “I think you’ll be really excited about this investment opportunity.”  My investment strategy is to try and avoid investing in startups. I don’t look for deals; I actively try to avoid them. I will find any excuse I can to beg out of investing, but as with many things, I’m terrible at this, and sometimes fail and accidentally invest anyway.  But even then…

I don’t invest enough to make it worth the hassle of having another investor. My preferred check size is $10k. I’m like the guy who goes to the fancy restaurant and orders an appetizer, then fills up on the free bread. $10k is pathetic and puny enough that most smart companies will turn up their nose at me. In fact, I advise most companies that I consider investing in that they probably shouldn’t take my money because it’s not worth the incremental headache to put a small investor like me on the rolls.

I’m almost certainly going to say no. I’ve got my own startup now, and it’s basically the coolest thing I’ve ever worked on (a 3D laser printer that makes amazing and beautiful things at the push of a button… shameless plug, we’re hiring), so I’m putting my time and resources in to that. I don’t have time to take the meeting, do diligence, fill out paperwork, sit on hold for 30 minutes with my stupid bank trying to remember the street I lived on in fourth grade so they can approve the wire, and all that other nonsense. Which means…

I’m intensely, terribly lazy. After all my trying to avoid investing, I generally fail in just a few cases – when the CEO is a friend, when I know the company well via some pre-existing coincidence, AND when there are already A++ investors who I know and trust involved. Because then I can count on them to do all the hard work, and just write my puny little check to go alongside. Because…

I’m not going to call you. I’m not going to check on my investment, or offer to drop by, or otherwise do much at all. I’ll take your calls, and help when you ask. If you’re curious, I usually pitch in pretty heavily around CEO stuff, particularly cofounder strife, fundraising, and selling the company. But I mostly just get involved if you call; you’re going to have roughly zero percent of my standing brain time. Unless you request otherwise, the only time you’ll hear from me* is when…

I will lose my share certificates when you sell the company. Sorry, karma sucks. Every damn one of my investors (who asked to keep their share certificates) lost theirs, and I’m so careless I’m almost certain to do the same. So, pro tip: tell your lawyers to keep the share certificates for your angel investors on their behalf. It will save you a lot of misery and paperwork.

So don’t have me as an angel investor. I’m just not worth the hassle.

* One exception: at any given time I’ll be closely involved with ~3 startups. I may be on the board or just a formal advisor. I do my best to stay current with those companies, scout opportunities for them (press/hiring/fundraising/etc), meet as often as is helpful, give lots of advice that basically consists of me repeating crap that’s in my book, etc. I’m not very good at it, though, so this is a really rotten deal, particularly now that I’m busy with my own company. So while you don’t want me as an angel investor, you really really don’t want me as a board member/advisor (although I do have one “slot” open since Kate sold Popforms, entirely because she is awesome and no thanks to me). Basically I’m too expensive and not very helpful. You’ve been warned.

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I deeply respect Elissa. She went through some amazing ups and downs in her startup journey. In fact, they haven’t ended yet – Elissa’s since parted ways with her Glimpse cofounder discussed in the story and founded a new startup, JeKuDo (not to mention edited a book, Lean Out).  And Elissa still speaks well of her cofounder from Glimpse and, even as there was all sorts of turmoil resulting from his actions, refused to pin the full blame on him, as would be easy to do.

It was one of the hardest stories for me to tell, because I had to reconcile some fundamental tensions. Elissa had a lot of respect for her cofounder based on firsthand interaction, but I, based on a small amount of second hand information, did not. This was Elissa’s story, but I am the one telling it. I needed to accurately reflect what she told me, but I needed to be sure I believed what I was writing.  I think I came out with something that’s true to both Elissa and me, as well as pulling the curtains from around a story which ripped through tech headlines.

The whole story caused some consternation for my publishers, so at the last minute, I agreed to remove the actual text of the tweets that triggered the climactic reckoning in the story. We agreed that I’d provide those online for those who wanted to understand the context of the story. If your curious, you can read a sampling at this article that preceded the events of the story, and this one that followed it.

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 Unfortunately we’re not ready to tip our hand quite yet, so I have to be a little coy. The company is called Glowforge.

We’re making a real, tangible thing – a piece of hardware – powered by a giant stack of software. It’s incredibly complicated, with everything from electronics to injection molded plastics to firmware to a web app. It’s not an incremental thing; it’s approaching science fiction. It’s actually a product that makes it simple for people to create real, beautiful products. Really simple. Like a very, very early prototype of a Star Trek replicator – but not for food.

There’s a bit more about us in this article in Geekwire. We’ve already got some of the most amazing folks:

• Tony Wright, Y Combinator alum and founder of RescueTime.
• Mark Gosselin, founder of Consumerware and Cequint, which sold for $112.5 million.
• Kira Franz, who was Logistics Chief for Chef.
• Dean Putney, the sole developer behind boingboing.net.
• Tim Ellis, who created the electrical systems behind the Genie lift.

…and we’re not done yet!  We need a few more engineers to round out the core team. We need front end and back end engineers. A firmware engineer. A mechanical engineer experienced with injection molding. We’re funded by an amazing set of investors. Our office is a century-old building that used to be used to build Boeing airplanes. We have a seven ton vertical mill and we’re building out a full electronics lab for the hardware team. It’s pretty amazing here.

If you’d be interested in working together – shoot us a note? It’s a ‘jobs’ address, but I see every mail that comes through there.  And if you want to be the first to know what we’re up to, you can add your name to the launch notification list at glowforge.com.

It would be great to see you here.

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Robot Turtles midmortem at $250k

This was a blog post written in the middle of the storm. I  wrote up some of the techniques I used to construct the campaign and published some live data from the actual campaign, including traffic sources and amounts.

Anatomy of a $631,230 Kickstarter Video

This was a blog post I wrote after the campaign was finished. As the title says, I went deep on the video – the whole story of how it got made, the theory behind it, strategy behind the script, etc.

3 semis, 65 countries, 36 tons: Shipping my Kickstarter

Shipping logistics is one of the hardest parts of Kickstarter campaigns, so I wrote a piece for VentureBeat about all the gory details.

Shell Game with Dan Shapiro 

One of the best interviewers in the business, Glenn Fleishman (a Kickstarter creator himself) dives in deep to how production gets done, how to structure the campaign, and more.

How Dan Shapiro created the most-backed game in Kickstarter history

This talks more about the inventive process (and goes beyond Kickstarter)

This Guy Just Sold $600,000 Worth Of Board Games

This was an interview halfway through the campaign where I touch on a bunch of different aspects of the campaign – timing etc.

I hope some of these are helpful. I’m going to have a significant section in my forthcoming book on startup CEOs about the strategies and opportunities around crowdfunding (among other types of fundraising) so stay tuned!

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While I’m a huge advocate for #diversity & women entrepreneurs, having a startup weekend just for women is kinda #pointless.

— Rahul Sood (@rahulsood) September 11, 2014

He went on to apologize, sort of but not really, complain about being taken out of context, and brag:

I feel like being taken out of context kinda sucks. My apologies to anyone who misunderstood the point, I fight for entrepreneurs everyday. — Rahul Sood (@rahulsood) September 12, 2014

The context thing is weird,  because I went looking for context in his previous tweets and could only find complaints about bad entrepreneurs, complaints about how busy he is, and billion dollar startup ideas. I went looking for some “context” to put this in, and could only find  this tweet. No idea if Rahul shares the sentiment,  but he did follow the guy immediately after he tweeted it.

@rahulsood As long as we draw attention to race/gender separation it will continue to exist. Can’t believe ppl haven’t recognized that yet. — seangfuller (@seangfuller) September 11, 2014

I have seen this perspective before: “If we ignore the problem, it will go away”. I think it would work for sexism as well as it does for Ebola.

[[Updated]]

Yes, this is exactly what he thinks. If we ignore our problems they will go away. From Geekwire:

“WRT to my tweet – as long as we draw *extra* or even *exclusive* attention to race and gender separation it will continue to exist.” – Rahul Sood

I think Wikipedia best explains the flaw in Rahul’s argument:

Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be observed (seen, heard, touched, smelled or sensed in any way). This is a fundamental concept studied in the field of developmental psychology, the subfield of psychology that addresses the development of infants‘ and children’s social and mental capacities.

There are a lot of wonderful people who have worked very hard to make Startup Weekend a source of inspiration and creation for entrepreneurs of all stripes, men and women.

#throwbackthursday #tbt Where it all began for Zaarly @StartupWeekend pic.twitter.com/4GfOgZwOQY

— Zaarly (@zaarly) July 3, 2014

Adriana Moscatelli: As I said several times now, I wouldn’t have started a company, had I not attended Startup Weekend Women’s Edition. There is good research out there supporting that same-sex role models are helpful in motivating women in STEM. 

A friend who’s participated in Startup Weekend for years (but asked me not to use her name) said it better than I could:

Startup Weekend had a partnership with women 2.0 for years and held joint events that always sold out. They weren’t exclusive to women but were around 60% women. The company Foodspotting came out of one of those events.

It was incredibly positive and drew women to experience it that might not have before since they knew there would be other women there. We got great role models of women who were CEOs and CTO’s of startups who were passionate about being role models for women. Women who attend women specific events will often attend non-women specific events later which improves diversity for all events.

If Startup Weekend helps people get towards the first step of entrepreneurship then that is exactly the place we should spend our efforts in increasing diversity. The funnel isn’t big enough. Ask the women who became entrepreneurs because of the many women specific events if they were “pointless”. I doubt it. And it is their opinion that matters here.

There are many spectacular entrepreneurs, men and women alike, who give generously of their time to make entrepreneurship more accessable to everyone. Rahul’s comments on behalf of Microsoft Ventures dishonor them all. As someone who worked at Microsoft for years, has many friends there, and still carry a lot of affection for the place, I’m deeply disappointed.

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Until today, when I had the amazing opportunity to be a guest on an episode of the Gweek podcast with Mark and my good friend Dean Putney. We covered a lot of ground (Robot Turtles, Little Bits, Homestar Runner, EC Archives, and of course Potato Salad) but I had a particularly good bit of fun returning to the ‘cheap planes’ topic.  Except now, of course, for a few hundred bucks more, you can upgrade to a cheap UAV. You should listen to the whole show here:

LISTEN TO THE GWEEK

but there are some things a podcast just can’t do justice to properly, so here are some supplemental links. During the podcast I talk about my favorite plane.  I am on my second one; the first got caught up in surprisingly strong winds off the coast of Aruba and was lost at sea. It costs $20, and the electronics to fly it will run you less than $100.

Start with the plane.  This is the Turnigy Bonsai.  It is an elevon plane, meaning that the two flaps act as ailerons (one up/one down) or elevators (both up/both down). There’s no rudder, so to turn you roll right, then pull up. It’s easier than it sounds and a lot more fun than rudder planes. ($23.45)

The Turnigy Aerodrive SK3 – 2118-3100kv  motor will let it fly straight up… while accelerating. Note that it’s about twice as beefy as what the plane’s designed for so you’ll need a bigger battery too to offset it. ($14.25)

Props have two numbers. The first is diameter, which gives you lifting power. The second is pitch, which gives you speed. Increasing either puts more stress on your motor. This 5×5 APC-style prop will push our little 17g motor to its limits. Zoom! Be sure to mount it with the letters facing away from the motor. ($1.57)

The aforementioned motor is actually a brushless AC motor (thanks, Nicola) so you’ll need a “speed controller” to convert your DC battery to AC pulses that can run it. The H-King 10A ESC is a fine choice for the job ($6.75).

You’ll need batteries to fly the thing. The 460 mah 2S packs on the left are on the light side, so you have enough lifting power for a camera as well.  ($4.44 each) The 850 mah 2S packs on the right will give you more flight time if you’re not carrying up a camera.

Don’t forget a charger. The Turnigy 12v 2-3S basic charger will do the job; just be sure you have 12v laying around somewhere to power it. If you don’t, the B3AC will work, although you’ve have to salvage a US power cord if you’re from around these parts.  ($4.49)

In either case, you’re going to need something for the battery to plug in to. They use JST connectors. They’re half price if you assemble them yourself. I say, splurge. ($2.07)

And here’s that camera. If you don’t have a fast microSD card, grab one of those too.  ($8.85)

Almost done: you’ll need servos to move the wings. Just two of them, since there’s no rudder. It seems counterintuitive to have roll control but no yaw control, but trust me, it’s much more fun that way. I like the HXT500. You might want to get a spare too. ($3.64 each)

The biggest investment: your transmitter and receiver. I use a Spektrum but I think the Turnigy 5X should do just fine. It has the delta mix function you’ll need to combine your aileron and elevator channels.  Just be sure to remove the plastic case from the receiver to save weight. ($24.99)

Last but not least, I like attaching the wingtips with industrial-strength velcro so you can rip off the wingtips and throw it in a trunk or suitcase. ($1.64)

And there you go. A lightweight, insanely powerful plane that can fold flat in your suitcase and shoot screaming aerial videos for $99.78. You’ll need to do a bit of soldering to put it together, of course. And if you don’t want to destroy your new toy immediately, you’ll want to spend an hour playing with an RC simulator (you can get a joystick here and software here or lots of other places) so you can work out orientation and stick skills in a low-impact environment.

And there you go! You’re ready to fly.

Of course, I also mentioned some more advanced RC flying, like the Techpod that I’m working on right now with reported flight times of 2-3 hours, and the FPV rig that gives you a real-time “pilot’s eye view”. I talked a bit about flying a Hobbyking Mini-Swift over Maui, HI (also a good starter plane, although not quite as crash resistant as the Bonsai and a bit harder to fly) and promised Mark I’d upload the video. Here’s a 1 min supermix of a few flights over Haleakala crater (first half) and over the coast near Kaanapali (second half).   Yeah, that’s my daughter waving at the plane flying overhead. And if you just want to see a single 3 min flight start to finish, here’s me doing a few passes over the beach at sunset.

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