DROdio - DROdio - Chairman & Founding CEO of Armory | Advisor at FounderCulture | Husband & Father

Going All-In on an Off Grid Workspace

I recently wrote about creating a WFH workspace for under $5k using a Costco shed. In that post I shared how I could boost the internet connection's speed & reliability. I've not only done that, but I also went all-in on a robust solar generator setup powered by InergyTek. Powered

vanlife

Inc. Magazine #Vanlife

When we passed through NYC on our summer work+play roadtrip, one of Armory's clients put me in touch with an editor at Inc. Magazine, which turned into this story. Here's the video: Here's an in-depth interview: Here are screenshots from the article:

Why I Sign My Emails with #Velocity

If I've emailed you in the past five years, you've probably noticed that I sign off in my emails with #velocity, instead of Regards, or similar. Here's why: Speed is a SkillI do this for a few specific reasons. The top reason is that, as Patrick Collins of Stripe points

Welcoming Armory's Next CEO

I'd like to welcome Jim Douglas as Armory's next CEO as I transition to Chairman of the Board on September 1st. When we started Armory in my garage and went through Y Combinator almost exactly five years ago, I knew we were building a very special company due to the

Create Your Own WFH Workspace for Under $5k

There's something absolutely magical about walking out of your house, across your lawn, and into a dedicated workspace. I've written in the past about doing the best work of your career in remote locations. The flip side is figuring out how to create your best remote workspace at home. For

Finding Dispersed Campsites To Work (and Play!) From

I just had someone named Robert email me: I've followed your blog for a while and got inspired to start incorporating elements of van life into my day to day. Haven't took the full plunge yet, but I bought a portable power station/solar panel/hotspot with the hope of

Do an Energy Audit

One thing Anu taught me in the Y Combinator growth program is the importance of doing an "energy audit" on oneself. Founders and CEOs are pulled in many directions and often need to focus in areas that may reduce vs. increase their energy. Much of this analysis lies in really

Using Technology to Support a Small Town Fire Department

TL;DR: We set up a Patreon page for the Squires Volunteer Fire Department. Donate to it if you can – even just $10/month goes a long way to serve this poor, rural community in Missouri. http://www.Patreon.com/SquiresVFDMy family and I recently visited Michael Schiff, a BizOps

photography

Creating an "Instagram Life" Living Picture Frame

I've taken 105,038 photos in the past decade or so, and they're all tucked away in my Photos app. I wanted to find ways to liberate them from the archives to actually enjoy them, so over the past year I've been experimenting with ways to have those photos automagically

vanlife

Adapting to Extreme Climate Events

If someone had told me a decade ago that it would be a smart idea to figure out how to create and maintain my own power grid, I would've thought that was nuts. But as the wildfires in California and the freezing weather in Texas have shown us, our climate

Culture

Distributed Work: Do the best work of your career

I'm working this week from the side of a volcano in Arenal, Costa Rica, as an experiment to push the boundaries of distributed work. I'll be working from various spots in Costa Rica for several weeks. This is the future of work, and here's why: Being able to work productively

founders

Is Y Combinator worth it?

Back in late 2016, I started Armory in my garage (pictured above) with my two co-founders. We also applied to Y Combinator. I often have founders ask me if YC is worth it right around now, during YC application season. The short answer is Yes, you should at least apply

founders

How I prioritize my time

One of our Armory crew just asked me: At some point, I’d LOVE to hear how you prioritize your tasks and manage your time. I’ve tried a lot of different methods, but nothing has completely stuck… I've tried many approaches: Zero Inbox. GTD. Workflowy. Sublime/text editors. Personal

founders

Tech CEOs: Become a DEIB Accomplice, Not Just an Ally

The term "DEIB" (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging) has become a hot phrase in Silicon Valley, as companies strive to create a workforce that's a better reflection of our communities. However, I find that Diversity and Inclusion tend to get lumped together as one thing, when in fact they're quite

founders

My INROADS story

I've recently become an advisor to INROADS, a program I went through twenty years ago, to help people from disadvantaged backgrounds succeed in the business world. Here's my INROADS story – if you're also an alum, I'd love for you to post a comment and share yours as well. What is

founders

Understanding and Living Empathy

For the past 15 years, I've been really focused on deepening my personal toolbelt when it comes to understanding and de-escalating highly charged personal interactions, and generally how to improve my own personal ability to understand and live with empathy for the incredible people in my life. Fifteen years might

Calculating COVID-19’s Possible Impact in The SF Bay Area (and Your Region)

There's a great NYTimes interactive graphic w/ a slider you can use to model out various assumptions around when social distancing measures are put into place, and how strong they are. That interactive graphic goes hand-in-hand with this FB Post by Jason Warner, below. He does the best job I've

founders

Still Betting on Elon

Back in 2012, when TSLA was $32/share, I wrote this blog titled “I’m Betting on Elon,” and I considered TSLA to be a $1,000/share stock within a decade. Now, just 8 years later, it’s trading above $900 a share, valuing Tesla above VW as the

Hyper Efficiency

Rip through books in 8 mins

Product Market Fit is a really funny thing. Products with great PMF seem obvious in hindsight, and yet even once I experience strong PMF, if I were to imagine it not existing, it's still not obvious to me that I would be feeling this way. A great example is Blinkist,

founders

It's Not All About You: Truly Empowering Your People

The deeper Armory goes on our journey to help the world innovate faster by creating an Open Source Culture that empowers our tribe with Roundabouts, not Stoplights so we can productize our cultural values into Armory's software delivery platform, the more people (especially other founders) look at me wondering what

founders

What is Your Leadership Brand?

Armory has more than tripled in size over the past year, and as we've grown, I and my executive team and managers – and indeed the entire company– have been doing a lot of thinking and evolving on what it means to be a leader within a hypergrowth environment while building

DevOps and Big Data are Flipsides of The Same Coin

Tesla today became more valuable than Ford and GM combined, which as ArsTechnica writes is "remarkable because GM sold around 20 times as many cars as Tesla in 2019, while Ford sold more than six times as many." What's driving the vastly greater multiples for TSLA? Data, and specifically Tesla's

founders

How Much Do Relationships, Trust, & Fulfillment Matter in the Workplace?

Evolving relationship norms and expectations around trust and fulfillment are the underlying forces motivating us to create an Open Source Culture at Armory. I was reminded of this slide when I saw Esther Perel's Summit talk. She is a psychotherapist who comes from a couples therapy background. Esther has more

founders

Creating an Open Source Culture

Armory is commercializing the open source project Spinnaker, making it a "COSS" company. As Joseph Jacks puts it: COSS companies are fundamentally different from all other kinds of companies. Why? They create value differently. They capture value differently. COSS companies fundamentally do not exist without their core OSS projects _also_

founders

Counteracting the HiPPO problem with a Roundabout culture.

There's a really interesting comment thread happening over in Hacker News right now, about a decision Gitlab made (and then reversed) to require users to accept telemetry in their offering without any option to turn it off. One commenter referred to the issue as being caused by "the HiPPO problem,