January 2012
11 posts
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Five Sites That Will Double Your Productivity
Being one of three full-time people at a startup is hard. It feels like if you’re not working all the time, then you’re falling behind, which can be really tough on your sanity and social life. There are also those necessary tasks like creating lists, doing online research, or even getting your cleaning done that you feel like you’re wasting your time on. Well, here’s a...
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2011 ended a couple of days ago, and I think it’s been one of my favorite years yet! This year I went all over Spain from quaint towns to big cities, visited the countryside in Portugal, worked on a farm in Costa Rica, lived in New York City during the muggy month of August, snorkeled in Hawaii, and ended the year in rainy Portland. It was a year of risk-taking, perseverance, inspiration,...
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Steve Jobs Biography
I finished the Steve Jobs biography on my flight back from Hawaii but have been procrastinating about writing my thoughts down until now. I’m currently in a cute French patisserie in Portland sipping on a variety of dessert wines. The biography is a great feat, delving into the life of such a colossal figure in business and history, whose impact has shaped the present and future of how we...
December 2011
19 posts
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WatchThe Polynesian Cultural Center is a strange place that is part theme park, part living museum. While I appreciate the idea of preserving local culture, they do it in an inauthentic way that feels exploitative and overly manufactured. I have mixed feelings about it, though, because the center also provides opportunity to those who might otherwise not be able to get an education or travel to the...
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Airbnb: Our First Round of Funding
The other day I spoke with my best friend from college who is thinking about quitting her cushy job and striking out to do what she’s passionate about. “It’s paralyzing,” she said, “I don’t know how you did it.” Maybe it was part of feeling entitled as a millennial, but for me it was a matter of survival. I wanted to feel alive again.
In the beginning,...
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On Selling Out
Him: Well the selling price is the only thing that matters.
(pause)
Him: Unless you really believe that you're like, changing the world.
Me: Isn't that the point of all this?
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“And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn...”
– - Kahlil Gibran
The world with Vayable in five years. People will not be afraid to follow their passions, for passion will be the source of stability in life. There are too many things that are mediocre in this world, in life. Love should not be one of them. Work is love.
November 2011
2 posts
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October 2011
2 posts
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Explorations in Culture: A Monthly Column →
Cross-posed from the Vayable blog!
Over the last couple of weeks, all of us at Vayable talked about starting our own monthly columns in the Vayablog, and I’m kicking mine off with this post! We thought about what personally motivates all of us to work on Vayable, and a common theme was “keeping culture alive.” That is at the heart of Vayable, and everyone had a travel...
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September 2011
1 post
August 2011
5 posts
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WatchThe video that I helped produce! Hiring the camera man, running around with him for all of Saturday directing the shoot, convincing people to love us, and supporting the editing process. In total, I spent about twelve hours on this, and it came out ok after all with a few (maybe major) glitches. Cheers!
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A Few Days in NYC
So I’m spending the humid, mucky month of August launching my startup here in New York City. So far, in four days, I’ve been running around the city producing a video, having meetings up the wazoo, going to parties, prepping for a press release, and attempting to catch up with friends. And in those days I’ve turned into one of those stereotypical New York people – always running to meetings,...
July 2011
5 posts
WatchAnd then this came out on NBC!
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One View of the Homeless Tour →
It’s a pretty bad review, to say the very least, but I’m struggling to understand what’s so bad about a homeless person giving a tour that portrays the social and economic issues related to poverty. Our site is a platform for anyone to share anything compelling that they know with others. This includes wine somaliers, chefs, historians, street artists, entrepreneurs, but it also...
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WatchI recently answered my first non-trolling, vaguely helpful answer on Quora in a long time about what it’s like to be homeless in San Francisco:
I’ve never been homeless, personally, but I do know quite a few homeless people from volunteering and interacting with them extensively through work. A lot of people are homeless for a variety of reasons: mental illness, drug addiction,...
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this side of anguish
This week I had the inspiring, humbling, and heartbreaking opportunity to get to know a side of San Francisco that almost seven thousand people live everyday yet most people never quite take the time to understand. In my search for someone (I thought most likely a social worker or volunteer) to educate travelers and locals about what it’s like to be homeless on Vayable, I found a new friend and...
June 2011
46 posts
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using the cognitive surplus to connect people →
Over the last few days, I was at The Economist’s ideas conference, where a common thread was about utilizing the cognitive surplus to collaborate and change the world. Coined by Clay Shirky, the cognitive surplus is the free time the world has, that they otherwise spend watching television, to contribute to projects, share knowledge, and be creative. In the world, humans watch over one trillion...
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WatchHere is a video I made of the farm for the listings here!
It turns out, unsurprisingly, that I’m a horrible farmer. I get tired easily, need to wait every time I sweat a lot for my sweat to evaporate, think dirt and insects are gross, and sweat a lot (since I’m not used to being in such heat). The waterfalls were beautiful, though, and I had forgotten what genuine fear felt like until I was...
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