Wendy's

How Wendy's Harnesses the Power of Social Advertising

I just attended a fantastic, standing room only SXSW panel titled "Why Social Ads Work. Ignore Facebook Naysayers [http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP14803]" with Kurt Abrahamson, the CEO of ShareThis [http://www.sharethis.com/], and Brandon Rhoten, the Director of Digital Marketing for the Wendy&

Code

Managers: Learn To Code

I used to push production code -- back in '99 when I worked at GE, my buddy Jason taught me how to code, and I was fascinated by it. I spent much of the early 2000's building dynamically driven websites with mySQL back-ends for several startups, including

Tesla

I'm Betting on Elon

Tesla stock is down almost 10% today, after its 2012 earnings report became public. Tesla missed its projections and investors hammered the stock in response. So what did I just do? I just bought a lot of TSLA. Why did I do it? Because I'm betting on Elon.

iPad

iPad Mini Keyboard Shootout

Last year I did a keyboard shootout on the fullsize iPad Keyboard [http://danielodio.com/ipad-keyboard]. The winner was a ZAGG keyboard (rebadged by Logitech). That keyboard has been fantastic -- I can type on it just as quickly as I can on my laptop, allowing me to bring my

Invites

I've Got 10 Invites for SETT. Who Wants One?

I moved my blog over from Wordpress to SETT a bit over 6 months ago [http://danielodio.com/moving-from-wordpress-to-sett-a-social-blogging-platform] , and I've been absolutely loving it. @Tynan, the creator of SETT, has given me ten invite codes for SETT [http://www.sett.com/], good for either a FREE personal

Fortune 1000

A Warning to Fortune 1000 CEOs: The Mobile Crush Cometh

CEOs are busy. It's easy to be distracted with competing priorities coming from all directions. But there's one darkhorse mega-trend that I believe will catch many CEOs by surprise, and even cause some of them be fired by their boards for missing it: The Mobile Crush.

Hyper Efficiency

Hyper Efficiency 2.0: Updated Lifehacker Tips

2017 Update: I've created a "living document" version of these hacks so you can share your pro-tips, too. Head on over here [https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/Play-A-Computer-Like-An-Instrument-LGsudpYDsTsBBOO02z6fL] to see the latest! ================= Three years ago, I wrote a blog post on being hyper-efficient [http://danielodio.com/

OlarkSocialize

Keep Your Enemies Close... Keep Your Customers Closer

great service from Olark [https://www.olark.com/?r=u4dj80xu]Socialize [http://www.getsocialize.com/] The service integrates seamlessly into my workflow: When I'm online on my laptop (well technically, when I'm online with Gtalk), then Olark shows the "Chat with the CEO" tab

Software Patents

What are the Deadliest Sins of Software Patents?

On Tuesday Feb 12th, the US Patent Office is holding a roundtable [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/patent-office-seeks-feedback-about-reforming-software-patents/] in Silicon Valley to discuss issues surrounding the patenting of software, and I have an opportunity to get a seat at the table. I'll attend if I get some

Extortion

How I Handled Extortion by a Recruiter

The recruiter business is broken -- at least in San Francisco. I get multiple calls each day from recruiters and they're all pitching the same "exceptional candidate" that's perfect for our company's needs. I always politely tell them to take me off

SOMACentral

First Look at the New SOMAcentral Startup Space in San Francisco

> UPDATE: We're all moved in! You can see a gallery of pics of the new (finished) space right here [http://drodio.smugmug.com/ShareThis/ShareThis-San-Francisco-Office], and a video in the comments below. As you've probably figured out, I do what I can to help entrepreneurs

Morning

Make every morning a deadline, and achieve more

I come from a world of project deadlines. Until two years ago, I swore by them. When you're in business school, you're taught that every project needs a deadline to even have a chance of being successful. But what I've learned in my time

Email

Get rid of your crushing email overload, once and for all

I recently got an email from a friend that said simply "I am getting too many e-mails. How do I organize them? Sometimes I need to research an answer, but then forget for whom it was and I totally forget about it as they get buried. How do you

Neolithic

Mind blown: What will the next Neolithic Revolution look like?

2009 Nat Geo article about The Hadza [http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/12/hadza/finkel-text] The article provides an amazing contrast between that lifestyle and the "modern" lifestyle the rest of us lead. One passage got me really interested in how the change happened. The author wrote about

Stanford MBA

Dissecting what went wrong: a Stanford MBA's startup fails

There's a great article by Robert Strauss [http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=41260] in Stanford magazine describing how his startup failed. Kudos to him for writing the article. It's a golden opportunity for us to highlight some of the things he

Hotel California

The Hotel California of cancellations: Audible tries everything to keep me

Audible.com has a very mature customer acquisition and retention strategy. I originally signed up for Audible after they sponsored of one of my favorite podcasts, This American Life [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/]. Audible was offering a free audio book, just to try the service. I decided to try it.

Tip

My top tips for foreign entrepreneurs

Recently, one of our investors asked me to make a short video & screencast introducing myself and my company to a group of foreign entrepreneurs that wanted to peek under the covers and see what the life of a US startup CEO is like. Since I believe in capturing content

Negotiation

GREAT negotiating techniques from NPR: How a hostage negotiator buys a car & others

Here's a great 16 minute audio clip [http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=167802325&m=167805240] from NPR's Planet Money blog [http://www.autoblog.com/2012/12/30/how-a-hostage-negotiator-buys-a-car/] around negotiating techniques the

Prop 30

Shame on me for voting for a retroactive tax in Prop 30

this post about what I know to be true [http://go.danielodio.com/truth] In this past election, I did something I now really regret: I voted 'yes' to Proposition 30. As this article by Ethan Anderson lays out [http://allthingsd.com/20121204/what-proposition-30-means-for-californias-entrepreneurs/] , Prop 30 is very,

uber

Introducing Price-Gouging's Uglier Side: Time-Gouging

Uber, a San Francisco startup, is ruffling lots of regulatory feathers, as reported recently [https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/technology/app-maker-uber-hits-regulatory-snarl.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121203] in the New York Times.  I also wrote about my experience with Uber [http://danielodio.com/me-and-my-driver-ish] back in

Future

I have seen the future, and it's mobile. Just one little problem: Engagement.

Henry Blodget of BusinessInsider gave an excellent presentation titled The Future of Digital [http://www.businessinsider.com/future-of-digital-slides-2012-11#-1] at a recent Ignition conference. As you can see from the trendlines in the graphs below, the promise of smartphones is rapidly coming to fruition, with over 50% penetration in the

BigDripper

Piloting a new Email "BigDripper" sales tool

As CEO of my startup, I sometimes have to be in sales mode. (Well, every owner of a company is always in some sort of sales mode, but in this case I mean prospecting for customers of new product offerings). I recently wrote about what it takes to create an

Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos was a Nastyass Honey Badger at fundraising

If you haven't seen the hilarious viral honey badger youtube video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg], check it out before you read this. I just read this awesome passage from TheNextWeb [http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/11/29/in-the-early-days-amazon-founder-jeff-bezos-attended-60-investor-meetings-to-raise-1m-from-22-people/] from Jeff Bezos when he was starting

Instacart

Get Rid of Grocery Shopping Once and For All, with Instacart

I just ordered Advil and yogurt for our office using Instacart [https://www.instacart.com/], an incredibly awesome new service that delivers groceries to your door in under three hours. Instacart has been in the news [http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/11/15/grocery-delivery-service-instacart-takes-its-service-to-the-web/] a lot lately, and is billing

vanlife

Tour of Four Wheel Camper Facility

Sue and I went to visit the Four Wheel Camper [http://www.fourwheelcampers.com/] facility in California recently, a few months after visiting Sportsmobile [https://lifewetravel.com/tour-of-sportsmobile-west-facility-in-fresno-ca]. We walked away with mixed emotions. It’s obvious that FWC has been in the business for a long time, with a