Mark Geller

What I learned at Google

Mark Geller — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:36:29 +0000

It has been almost a year since I left Google, yet I am struck how often I refer to lessons I learned there as I make daily decisions for KlickFu. I thought it might be helpful to summarize some of the most important things I learned at Google, some of which may be fairly obvious, [...]

KlickFu, Bruin edition

Mark Geller — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:06:13 +0000

Last week, we filed the provisional patent for the technology in KlickFu, so now we can gradually start coming out of stealth mode (finally!). One of the ways we are doing that is by running a KlickFu development contest with the UCLA ACM computer science student group. Last night was the kick-off meeting for the [...]

Founder Institute coming to Los Angeles!

Mark Geller — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:55:19 +0000

Last Thursday night I went to the info meeting for the upcoming Founder Institute session in Los Angeles. Founder Institute (FII) is the entrepreneur training and mentoring program started and run by Adeo Ressi, in which I participated last fall. After the initial session in Silicon Valley, FII started additional sessions in NYC, Seattle, Washington [...]

Will you Blippy?

Mark Geller — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:18:45 +0000

Blippy.com is the new social media site where users can automatically publish feeds of everything they buy. Unlike Beacon, the unsuccessful shopping news feed launched by Facebook and then scuttled due to negative user feedback, Blippy is entirely opt-in, and purchase notifications can be limited to specific vendors (Amazon, iTunes) or credit cards. After using the [...]

Bye-bye point-and-shoot

Mark Geller — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 06:38:12 +0000

Happy new year, I hope everyone had a great holiday. I am getting back into the swing of things after returning from a week in Colombia and a brief Disney Cruise to the Bahamas with my family–as well as recovering from the various illnesses one might associate with: a) a trip to South America; and [...]

Developers wanted… in Los Angeles, U.S.A.

Mark Geller — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:48:29 +0000

Last night, I went to the Jobnob Docstoc Happy Hour at Air Conditioned in Venice. The event was co-hosted by Julie Greenberg and Jason Nazar of Jobnob and Docstoc respectively. The idea behind the meetup is to connect technology startups with prospective hires who may be interested to work for “alternative compensation”–e.g., reduced salary, partial [...]

5 Unconventional business books for the holidays

Mark Geller — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:24:46 +0000

The holidays are coming up, which means many of us will be spending a lot of time on airplanes and other places where we might have some free time. So I thought it might be helpful to post suggestions for some good books to read while you are getting where you are going, or maybe [...]

You and your research

Mark Geller — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:58:59 +0000

In an interview with Joe Armstrong in “Coders At Work,” the excellent book I described in a recent post, the author Peter Seibel refers to a famous talk by Richard Hamming entitled “You and Your Research” in which Hamming advises young scientists on how to do great work, make significant contributions to their fields, and achieve [...]

Connecting the SoCal Tech dots

Mark Geller — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:13:14 +0000

Today I wanted to give a shout-out to Dr. Tony Karrer, creator of the Southern California Tech Central (SCTC) web site, which aggregates blogs from various folks working in technology throughout SoCal. As of this week, Tony started including this blog on the site, as you can see from the new banner on the right side [...]

Read this book: Coders At Work

Mark Geller — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:23:15 +0000

Recently I began reading “Coders At Work, Reflections on the craft of programming,” by Peter Seibel. The format of the book is based on the earlier work by Jessica Livingston, “Founders at Work,” in which Ms. Livingston interviewed founders from a dozen or so successful startups on the details of their approach to starting companies. In [...]