Forget Halloween – here comes NaNoWriMo!
For thousands of people tonight is not about the terror of Halloween… it is about the terror that tomorrow NaNoWriMo starts. For those of you too lazy to click the link, let me tell you a little about NaNoWriMo. This bizarre words stands for ‘National Novel Writing Month’. The national is not really applicable as…
Choose your partners carefully
When I say choose your partners carefully I am talking about in business. I think it is maybe more important in business than in your personal life! Rarely in your personal life is there a contract to think about. Each partner, no matter how big or small, has a role to play in a business.…
Person as Icon: Goodbye, Steve Jobs
Millions of words will be written about Steve Jobs today. The fact that a large portion of those will be written on devices that sprang from his imagination is fitting tribute enough. From my first Macintosh, back in the 80s, to my news MacBook Air, I’ve been a fan of the company and its products.…
7 steps to a pleasing personality
I said before how I am reading (well, listening actually) to Napoleon Hill’s seminal ‘Laws of Success’. The book truly is amazing. Right now I am on the chapter about developing a pleasing personality. So, to remember the seven steps to doing this I am going to write a sarcastic blog posting, which, while it…
Napoleon Hill and the 17 principles of success
I am listening to the amazing audio book version of the update revision to this timeless masterpiece. True, it clocks in at around 20 hours, but it is time well worth spent (and you can’t / shouldn’t listen to too much at a time, you should let it percolate). If you don’t know who Napoleon…
So much going on… so little blogging
I have been horribly remiss at this blog. Not that anyone cares, but, it seems hard for me to keep this going. Despite my busy life – work is insanely busy… recession, what recession? – and my various personal pursuits I just can’t keep it going. Some would say ‘who cares’. Or ‘why bother’. Both…
Very Handy Site for the Cross Time-Zone Worker!
I was looking today to figure out how to schedule work time for California (Toygaroo) while I am in Kyoto (Japan). I stumbled across this site. There are probably others like it, but this is the one I found. TravelMath lets you pick two places (very nice that you can just enter airport codes) and…
Toygaroo in TechCrunch – and growing up
TechCrunch did a nice article about Toygaroo and the Shark Tank appearance… and the resulting investment from Mark Cuban and Kevin O’Leary. It looks like the company and the site are starting to get some traction and we are still getting some great traffic – even after the ridiculous original spike from being on the…
The word is out about Toygaroo and Shark Tank!
So, now that the show has aired, and most people have watched it either live or via DVR, we can start talking about it! If you want some details on what transpired you can read: this article. Basically, we took $200k from Kevin O’Leary and Mark Cuban in exchange for 40% of the company. These…
The immediate aftermath of a Shark Tank appearance
Last night my company, Toygaroo, was on Shark Tank (America’s version of Dragon’s Den). Our segment was around 8 minutes long. Let me say that we hadn’t really done any advertising before and our pageviews, pre-sharktank, were pretty close to 0, once you factor out employees and testing. Yesterday we had 70,000 page views. All…