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
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,
founders Tech CEOs: Become a D&I Accomplice, Not Just an Ally The term "D&I" 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
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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
founders Creating Magical Human Experiences, with Magic I was recently introduced to Magic, a virtual personal assistant, by Mike Chen, the CEO at a recent founder retreat. I'd signed up for Magic a month before on the recommendation of a
B2B Execs and Managers: An Engineer's perspective on Roundabout Culture Last night, I was in a Lyft with Brandon, one of Armory's engineers. For the past few months, Armory has had a very strong focus on creating a "Roundabout" vs. "Stoplight" culture. I
finance Should I take seed money from a large VC fund? A founder recently emailed me: Would love to pick your brain about this if you have a few minutes to spare. Let me know if you have 15 minutes to chat on the
founders Creating a Roundabout Culture As Armory continues to scale, we're crafting a "Roundabout, not Stoplight" culture because of Conway's law: I spend my days interacting with Global 2,000 CIOs who are trying to figure out how
Self DROdio .Readme Here's a primer on how to work with me effectively. Reading this will help you ramp up on my work style faster. I'd also very much like to read your "ReadMe" if we
B2B Powering the Third Industrial Revolution (aka Why I Go to Work Every Day) The benefit of being a founder is that you can dream outlandish things, and nobody's around to stop you. Now that Armory has grown up a bit, I'd like to share the outlandish
founders How Many Golf Balls Fit in a Bath Tub? I like to do a little exercise when I give a talk (like the one above), which is to ask the room how many golf balls fit in a bath tub. Not because
founders How I like to do intros I like to make introductions to someone in my network in a specific way. If you've recently asked me for an intro, I may have sent you to this page. Here's the I'd
founders A great way to interview consumers I've never tried this myself, but I've heard it works extremely well -- and in fact, I'd love for someone to try this and then post a comment on this blog (ideally w/
founders Instrumenting a Startup: The Tools & Services We're Using to Start Armory When Isaac, Ben and I started Armory late last year, I found a lot has changed since starting my last startup, Socialize, in 2008. There's a suite of new tools available to instrument
founders The Forest vs. The Trees: A Story About Focus I'm going to share a story about the forest vs. the trees. But it's not the story you're expecting to hear. My last blog post was about Doing Less, Better, which is my
founders Do Less, Better There's a great article in the NYTimes about Slack, a new startup that the Valley is buzzing about. Slack is a business messaging & collaboration app, and it's really, really good. The reporter
founders Marketing Your Startup by Giving Out Stock Options This new startup, Jet.com, is looking to be the Costco of the web, and to undercut Amazon's prices by an average of 10%. They won't focus on speedy 2 day "prime" delivery.
founders Need vs. Want Just a quick post to share a decision making pro-tip that I shared with a few people this week. Anytime I need to consider a number of criteria to make a decision on
