Julie Park The Blog

Asana Startup Launches Into the Universe; Uses Pets to Make Money

2011-11-04T14:25:00.000-04:00

Monthly Business Report

Asana Startup Launches Into the Universe

November 2011

What the LA Times knows: Asana is a startup worth covering. Bloomberg Business Week and The New York Times agree.

Asana’s grand plan? To make money off of software that improves work productivity and collaboration.

Created by the co-founder of Facebook, aka the WORLD’S YOUNGEST BILLIONAIRE, Dustin Moskowitz, and his friend Justin Rosenstein (no idea who HE is), this embarrassingly hippie/hipster, Burning Man-loving, ”Om”-murmuring tech startup in San Francisco’s Mission District launched today. While its computer programmers are probably getting high-- picture them sporting Mohawks and henna, giving shout-outs to each other at office meetings (and worse, give one another lots of spontaneous gushy appreciation messages), The Plan To Make Money has officially begun, and only time will tell whether Asana and The World’s Youngest Billionaire will win the race against Google Docs and other collaborative software makers.

Says the LA Times:

“It's an ambitious gambit for a young start-up. Moskovitz and Rosenstein are newcomers to the competitive business of selling business software. Asana is going after the lucrative businesses of technology giants such as Microsoft that have been making productivity and collaboration software for years. Google has also been making inroads in business software with Google Docs. Other upstart rivals include Salesforce.com, Yammer and Jive which have sprung up more recently.

But Moskovitz and Rosenstein say the cumbersome and slow software that most companies produce has not convinced people to stop relying on email and Post It notes to plan tasks and keep up with their colleagues on a project.

"Other people have tried to crack this nut before. All the solutions are fundamentally failing. We know that because no one has adopted them, even companies that pay for fancy collaboration software, it just sits on the shelf," Rosenstein said.

Asana, which has 19 employees in San Francisco's Mission District and has raised $10.2 million from investors including Benchmark Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, has been beta testing the software since last year with thousands of users at hundreds of companies. One of those companies is the sports and entertainment talent agency Wasserman Media Group, which uses it to organize its executive team.

Asana is taking an unconventional approach to promoting its business software. Usually a company's top IT manager buys productivity software. Asana is giving away its software free to groups of up to 30 people in hopes that once employees become enamored with the software, they will persuade their companies to buy a paid version with more features that Asana plans to release down the road.”

And now,

let’s go to the REAL STORY OF THE DAY:

World’s Youngest Billionaire Says, Pets at Work = Secret to Success

Asana’s new proposal for deploying kittens in its office was released on its website today. Written in characteristically dorky engineering speak, the proposal may be a sign that PETS at WORK are a good thing and help even us in The Plans To Make Money. Obviously if the Youngest Billionaire In The WORLD is doing it, we should do—Dogs, at work. YES.

Asana’s Proposal for Office Kittens Deployment

\Go HERE for photos--> http://asana.com/kittens

[DRAFT]

1. Introduction

1.1 Goals

1. Create shareholder value

2. Maximize cuteness

1.2 Non-Goals

1. Reduce server load and data storage requirements

2. Summary

We propose acquiring two small kittens, and installing them in the Asana office. The kittens are expected to frolic, take naps, cuddle with each other and other office occupants. It is also likely that they will engage in various acts of adorableness and displays of affection.

3. Alternative Solutions

A few alternatives were considered, and while they each have compelling benefits, were ultimately dismissed.

3.1 Office Llama

Pros:

· fun to say

· could be used as short-range transportation

Cons:

· spits at people and/or monitors

· may be difficult to bring up the stairs

· may require having office rezoned as a farm

3.2 Office Killer Robot

Pros:

· provides strong security guarantees

Cons:

· will murder us all, possibly reducing shareholder value

· increase our electricity usage

4. Design Considerations

4.1 Age

While younger kittens are cuter, they are also more helpless. We propose a target age of 12 weeks. Seehttp://www.all-about-cute-kittens.com/kitten-growth-chart.html

4.2 Breed

The main consideration for breed is the potential for allergies. As there doesn’t appear to be hypoallergenic breed, we propose any short-haired breed. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_allergy

4.3 Gender

Studies show that female cats are less likely to cause allergies, so we recommend females.

4.4 Count

We recommend exactly two kittens. Since the cats will spend time alone in the office, having two would reduce the anthropomorphically projected boredom they experience. Having more than two risks having Asana be branded as a crazy cat lady, potentially reducing shareholder value.

5. Integration Plan

It’s our belief that the kittens will integrate seamlessly into the existing office infrastructure. Though it’s hard to foresee possible incompatibilities, there are countless examples of kittens being deployed in production. Furthermore, it’s our belief that kittens are specifically well suited to Asana’s existing investments.

5.1 Supporting Infrastructure

In order to support the deployment of Office Kittens, we will also need to deploy automated food and water delivery systems, as well as a waste removal system. These systems are relatively cheap, and several Asana employees have previous experience installing, operating, and maintaining them in production.

6. Internationalization Plan

Dude, they are cats.

7. Monitoring and Logging

There is currently no monitoring or logging plan, but it is possible that in the future we may want to set up video equipment either in the office, or on the cats themselves.

8. Security

It’s our belief that the kittens will provide a sufficient amount of security and no additional provisions will be necessary.

9. Additional Benefits

There is an existing body of evidence that suggests we can expect additional benefits from this deployment. Though it should be noted that most of it is anecdotal, and there have not been any peer-reviewed studies. That said, we might gain significant increases in efficiency across all our departments, from IT to accounting.

10. Authors

David Braginsky
Malcolm Handley

11. Revision History

REVISION	ACTION TAKEN, NOTES	WHEN?	BY WHOM?
0.1	Creation	02/16/2011	David Braginsky

J.Crew Is Cracked Up

2011-11-03T11:10:00.000-04:00

J.Crew is like a drug.
It's crack that's legal.
They made nice clothes before, and they were sort of expensive but not impossibly expensive. I liked the products. Then they began to make nicer clothes and increased the prices somewhat. I was hooked. Then they started making really lovely clothing at yet higher prices, and I admired the clothes and shook my head at the prices. J.Crew continues to make increasingly beautiful garments at increasingly stiff prices once reserved for the likes of labels most people consider to be luxury items. It's become a monster of selling luxury priced clothing to the masses who like me can't really afford it but will still go buy some things from time to time (the fit! the fabric! the colors and fresh designs!)
It's my monster. Yet the clothes are so beautiful and some things come in PETITES which is hugely important when you have shorter legs and getting alterations adds time and money to every pair of regular pants you would otherwise buy.
It's terrible. It's materialism at its worst because it makes me and many other women covet things. I love it, I hate it. We need an episode of the TV show INTERVENTION that is about gross J.Crew addictions.

Green pudding tastes like NOT what I expected

2011-10-27T14:20:00.001-04:00

When I was four and in preschool, my mom let me choose a pudding mix from the Jello section at the Kroger's. The pale pastel green of one pudding looked so pretty to me, I picked it. We took it home and my mom bought a hand mixer, and we made instant pudding together. I had much fun doing that; but the best part was trying the pastel green pudding. YUMMMM...ICK oh no oh noo oh noooo. It wasn't lime pudding at all. It wasn't even fruity. It was strange and I didn't like it. At some point it settled in on my brain that this was pistachio pudding. Tricked. I was tricked.

After all these years I realize the reason I didn't know that the pudding was artificially pistachio flavored rather than fruit flavored was because I hadn't yet learned to read. I hadn't even learned my right from my left.

Big Box Stores Growing, Humans Shrinking...Judgment Day Nearing

2011-10-11T00:41:00.003-04:00

(What should have been two or three blog posts are now smashed into one hodge-podge post about Wall-E, Terminator 2, James Cameron, the 80s, and the creepiness of Big Box Stores. Oops.)

Wall-E: Looks just like T2 Judgment Day minus the guns

Before robots took over the earth in the future, there was something else that took it over: trash. Trash covered Earth and swallowed up humans. Obviously, everyone who has watched Pixar's WALL-E knows this. See above graphic.
And before trash took over the earth, before robots took over the earth in the future, there was something else that took it over: the 80s!!!!!!!!

The 80s were so scary. Man celebs didn't wear makeup.

If you happened to be born in A.D. 1984 in the year of James Cameron's ascent to Hollywood success, born as a younger sister to two older boys, you were forced to watch (at a premature age) many a movie such as Aliens, Enter the Dragon, James Bond, and also, Terminator 2.
That is the movie that eventually led to my brothers and I watching Terminator 1, which was very much a very inappropriate movie for children. I didn't care to see Linda Hamilton naked. Her hair was so bad back then.
Anyway Judgment Day would come not for us with our minor R-rated film-watching transgressions, but for the human race, because robots became sentient and took over the Earth. See top photo.
And before I wanted to talk about Terminator 2, there was something else getting increasingly scary that I wanted to point out. There was something else growing way too big and way too powerful and I'm not talking about James Cameron, or Titanic, or Avatar. I'm not talking about Arnold and his movie career and his Governator history (of scandal). I'm talking about the BIG BOX STORE.
Once limited to Walmart and such, it's now also become the way of life for our grocery stores and even our Michael's Crafts supply store, once friendly locales that now loom like rectangular dead dinosaurs over our heads when we go shopping in suburbia. There was no dinosaur THAT big, yo. Walking up to stores nowadays is almost like an illusion, (except it's real,) a trick of the eye in which you think you are walking closer to the same Walmart you used to go to back in 1999, but *no*. These new stores have the strange ability to not get any closer to human scale as you approach them, but to grow seemingly bigger as you get closer...

A Julie Park Original Doctored Photo

Michael Phelps Is A CETACEAN (a whale, porpoise, or dolphin)

2011-09-28T22:30:00.001-04:00

Dear Michael Phelps,

I am a dinky swimmer. As a child signed up for a swim team called the Blue Dolphins, I began in the beginner's lane, and while other children moved up lanes as they improved, I remained forever in the beginner's lane.

But I enjoyed swimming for fun, and I still do. I am recently learning that with the help of a Speedo nose plug, I can do a dinky flip turn, which I could not do when I was little. That said, I've been watching videos on YouTube on how to do a flip turn, and I saw your video: Michael Phelps Flip Turn-- Cetacean Style. As you push off the wall and swim underwater back up to the surface, all I could think was that you look exactly like a cetacean. Maybe not a whale, but definitely a porpoise or a dolphin-- see? Porpoises looking exactly like Phelps. The resemblance is uncanny. Here you are in the top photo (or is the bottom photo? I can't tell which is the dolphin and which is you):

Well, I just thought you should know that you are a cetacean after all, and the gold medals reflect that.

Your flip turn fan,

Julie Park (Everyone has this name. It's impossible to tell one Julie Park online apart from another. It's amazing to use your real name on the Internet and still be totally anonymous. It's also amazing that you are a cetacean.)

How to Name Your Dog: "Sit, Jason Schwartzman, Sit. GOOD Doggy!"

2011-09-27T09:58:00.008-04:00

One technique of naming your pet dog or cat is to pick a goofy actor you really like, and then give the animal the first name and surname of the actor.
E.g. Jason Schwartzman, actor and musician related to Sofia Coppola but talented in his own right! And not because his mother is Adrienne from ROCKY. (Talia Shire.) see pic here:

Movies he has been in: Rushmore, Marie Antoinette, Shopgirl, the Darjeeling Limited, etc.

His picture is really hard to Google because guess what? That last name is a doozy to type! Don't worry, dogs and cats don't type, so they won't have to worry about that.

"Jason Schwartzman, sit! NO! Bad puppy. Do NOT poop on the carpet."
"Down, Jason Schwartzman, down boy."
& "Jason Schwartzman, you are a good doggy, yes you are!"

HELLO. MY NAME IS: JASON SCHWARTZMAN

Utter lack of transition.

RANDOM QUOTE OF THE DAY by a friend being playful:

" I'm so tolerant, that I'm extremely intolerant of those who aren't tolerant."

Roald Dahl's "Matilda": THE TRUNCHBULL Was Real! A Real B----, That Is

2011-09-26T22:56:00.000-04:00

Roald Dahl didn't really have to invent The Trunchbull, the villainous headmistress in "MATILDA." That torpedo-bosomed bitch is a fictional amalgamation of all the real bastards he endured the "care" of as a 9 to 13 year old boy living at a boarding school for boys in England.

As if George Orwell's essay, "Such, Such Were the Joys" were not a sufficiently damning indictment of the treatment of little boys at English boarding schools during a certain early 20th century time period, the very comical Dahl has proved there are many hilarious and yet sadistic incidents about the wrongs done to children in those schools at that time. Just read the brief, easy-to-read memoir, "Boy: Tales of Childhood" by Roald Dahl. It is very fun, very easy, and also filled with happy fun memories of a sweet family life-- so at home things were very good. This explains the happy sweet fun-ness in all those kids books by Dahl. It all has the same spirit and makes me laugh.

George Orwell's essays


True story

But more about the Trunchbull. In real life there were multiple adults who hated children and treated them as insects. One was the Matron. She was a frighteningly bosomed woman who was in charge of the little boys in teh dormitory. If ever they were sick, they were afraid to tell her. For when one boy of age 9 named Tweedie snored in his sleep, the Matron used scissors on her belt to shave soap into little shards until she had a fistful. She then dribbled into Tweedie's mouth. All the boys in the dormitory lay in their beds frozen in horror and terror watching her out of the corner of their eyes:
"Nothing happened. Tweedie kept right on snoring. Then suddenly he began to gurgle and white bubbles appeared around his lips. The bubbles grew and grew until in the end his whole face seemed to be smothered in a bubble foaming white soapy froth. It was a horrific sight. Then all at once, Tweedie gave a very great cough and a splutter and he sat up very fast and began clawing at his face with his hands. 'Oh!' he stuttered. 'Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh no! Wh-Wh-What's happening? Wh-what's on my face! Somebody help me!'
The Matron threw him a face flannel and said, 'Wipe it off. And don't ever let me hear you snoring again.'"

You couldn't tell your parents what was happening. Every sunday morning at 9 am children went to class to write letters to their parents for 1 hour. The headmaster would patrol the rooms and read over their shoulders.

Also, one woman was named Mrs Pratchett. This old hag sold candy to children in her shop. After a deliciously mischievous prank on deservedly punk'd Mrs Pratchett, Dahl and his friends received bloody bruised cane beatings from their headmaster while Mrs Pratchett sat and said, 'Harder! Sticth em up! Make it sting! Warm his backside for him!"

That night Dahl returned home with red stripes and blue bruises on his butt, discovered by his nanny and mom at bathtime. That night his mom marched over to the school and told the headmaster Roald would not be back for the next semester.

At 5 am in the morning when I couldn't sleep sleep, or at 12 pm in the afternoon when I finally stopped sleeping for today, I really enjoyed this little book. Roald Dahl really remembers the innocence and comradeship of being a kid, only he is far more clever and funny than most.

Hitler's Ultimate Cinematic Moments: Quentin Tarantino, Mel Brooks, & Brad Pitt

2011-09-26T22:34:00.002-04:00

"Springtime for Hitler" by Mel Brooks, click to watch the --> song and dance from The Producers (1968) <--

A farcical Hitler reinvented by Quentin Tarantino: --> the 8 second video from Inglorious Bastards <--

Brad Pitt was in Inglorious Bastards. Which was a movie with Nazis in it. In the movie, Brad Pitt cuts a guy's face. Then, in Legends of the Fall, Brad Pitt cuts a guy's scalp off. So, this is my segue into...

LEGENDS OF THE FALL:
This movie's plot deals with 3 handsome brothers, the youngest of whom is not so handsome but is nevertheless implausibly beloved by his two older brothers. This youngest runt brother somehow manages to get the best fiance ever-- the most gorgeous, intelligent, and ruggedly athletic woman any of the brothers have ever laid eyes on (julia ormond circa 1994).

Then the youngest runt, who is high-strung, overly righteous, and even prudish, decides to go fight the Germans in Europe during World War I. Well, that's perfectly fine for anyone watching the movie, because the youngest brother is annoying and he's holding Julia Ormond back from getting with Brad Pitt. The problem is, the two older brothers say they have to go to war TOO, because they want to protect Youngest Runt Brother. Predictably, Youngest Runt gets killed in the war. He practically asked for it. So did I, except I would never ask for him to get knocked off the big screen in such a graphic, disgusting, torturous "I'm blind from poisonous gas/ stuck on barbed wire/ yelling for my big brother Tristan/ violently riddled with machine guns/ spitting up fake blood" kind of way.

(This is when Crazy Eyes, aka Brad Pitt in Native American warrior mode, goes on a scalping spree of Germans in stupid-looking helmets. He just can't stand that the Germans took away the least likeable character in the whole movie, so this is what he goes and does. Talk about saintly love. Then, when he returns to camp on horseback with a bunch of bloody scalps, this is the only time I know of in cinematic history when an Aryan-looking "Sexiest Man Alive" winner thinks he's an Indian, cuts his own brother's heart out to bury back in like Montana, and of course, gets stared at by a bunch of shocked-looking white dudes playing soldiers fighting the Germans in WWI. )

After Youngest Brother dies, eldest brother returns to Montana or wherever they are from, and then the movie shows the eldest brother with the father, saying to Father, "He was the best of all of us," referring to the beloved Youngest Runt. In reality, the youngest brother was the worst of all of them, the most expendable in the film, and the one you want to go away already so that Brad Pitt can get with Julia Ormond and cause the whole family to rip apart, because in case you don't know already, Eldest Brother loves Julia too. This could get complicated except for one thing. She rejects Eldest Brother.

Julia doesn't like the Eldest brother that way, and she has the hots for Brad. Luckily, the casting agent for the movie succeeded in making another obvious decision, and made sure that the Eldest brother isn't as hot as Brad Pitt circa '94. This is as far as I've gotten in the movie but I already feel satisfied knowing that unbelievable things happen in this mostly-unridiculous movie, and that, finally, the Youngest Brother is officially never going to show his face in the movie again.
......time lapse....
Well now that I am done with the movie, I can say, it kind of has the makings of a disappointing yet not un-entertaining movie.

(yes, this is recycled from an old facebook note. excuse me.)

Our World is weird: Two Strange Ideas that seem to work for some people.

2011-09-26T18:49:00.005-04:00

Counterintuitive idea #1: LET Saudi women have more freedom by allowing them to vote...BUT don't dare allow women to drive a car.
Today, Saudi Arabia now lets women vote, but women still can not drive themselves. This is partly a class issue since the wealthy can afford chauffeurs. The women who would be absolutely apoplectic if they couldn't get driven to a YSL boutique for the latest and the greatest designer duds don't seem to be the ones who are openly rebelling against the decree that no woman can drive herself around town. The rich ladies want to rock one-of-a-kind mini dresses worn by no one else except a Hollywood starlet, underneath their cloak-like Saudi style burqas. Of course, the bad guys here aren't really the rich women, the real fools here are men who think this idea of no driving for women is fine.

Hey here's an idea:
This is about burqa-wearing, which I think women should be allowed to choose to wear if they want to, but not required.
Instead of making a cultural custom into ruling punishable by law, where all women cover themselves in part to be modest, why don't we blindfold the men who deem it mandatory for women to be fully covered in public, and let them deal. They will, no doubt, uphold the modesty of women this way. It's just the reverse of the tailoring done for burqas that cover everything but the eyes. And what's more...So much fabric could be saved.

This becomes this:

Counterintuitive idea #2: Make actual money with a women's clothing store "Dress Barn."
Dress Barn is the a store I just don't understand. I would never expect a store named this way could make money. It's really a dreadful name for a store selling women's fashions. It must not bother other people though, because apparently it all works out for the corporate office of Dress Barn.

We're just surprised, that's all.

from the New York Times: Gov. Perry, Romney Prove: White People All Look Alike

2011-09-25T11:32:00.002-04:00

September 23, 2011, 8:53 AM

Perry’s Image Problem

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Photo by Phelan M. Ebenhack

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, left, and Mitt Romney participated in a debate on Thursday in Orlando, Fla. Mr. Perry’s comments were booed.

ORLANDO, Fla. — In 2007, Senator John McCain of Arizona discovered the hard way that being an older white man was a nonstarter in the presidential contest. “All white people kind of look the same,” said Eugene Lee of Annandale, Virginia. “I can’t tell them apart. That’s why I’m voting for Obama.” John Cho of Torrance, California, and Grace Chung of Rockville, Maryland, expressed similar opinions, raising the question of whether white kids in junior high who said that “Asians all look the same” were remotely aware of the possibility that white people also share a sometimes problematic lack of phenotypic variation.

At every town-hall style meeting that year, voters stood up and assailed Mr. McCain for looking so gosh darn, well, WHITE, from head to toe.

Now, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is facing a similar challenge. His physical resemblance to Mitt Romney has left many minority voters in a state of confusion about which man goes with which name. From Los Angeles to New York, African American, Asian American, and Latino American voters have questioned whether they will be able to remember which guy is Mitt Romney and which one is Rick Perry.

Sources close to both governors say, “They use the same color of Just For Men hair dye, only Romney uses more of it whereas Perry goes light. For television appearances, Romney uses Chanel foundation Vita Lumiere in shade 03, and Perry uses Bobbi Brown oil-free foundation in warm beige. But they are almost the exact same color—Romney likes his foundation just a tad pinker because he thinks it makes him look more alive and fresh.”

If all else fails, voters should inspect the candidates’ coifs. Romney brushes his hair to the right, Perry to the left.

Well, I made this stuff up. The real article is about immigration, and you can read it here: "Perry's Immigration Problem"

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/perrys-immigration-problem/?hp