Techstars: February 22

I don't remember if it's the third or fourth week now. I think the middle of the fourth.

I just finished two days of Ruby on Rails workshop that we were allowed to go to for free. Otherwise it would have been $1099 for two days. It was actually a really useful workshop, and I feel like I learned a lot. The way I learn is to follow examples. And when code is written and put into my computer, I can always return to it. That's the same with xcode projects.

I've been doing some work on the hackstars side for gympact and ubersense. They're mainly small projects that involved getting code down from git or a zip file, and getting them compiled on my mac. It's really interesting to see how other people code because I never really went through any formal training for objective C, so to see code that follows the same convention is a big surprise, but also to see how people approach certain problems differently from me is also very revealing.

I just heard some cheering from the classroom. There's the weekly techstars company standup. I'm sure people are doing great things. Last week there were a ton of changes, with all the companies showing a large amount of redirection. Then Katie made me and will stand up and do a pitch. It surprised me, and i was so nervous that I kept trembling beforehand. But I grabbed a beer, did a bar pitch, and literally talked out of my ass about Stix for the first time in front of a real audience. Of course I much rather do it at bars.

Stix itself is going through a lot of changes. Mainly we've finally discovered (or come to accept) that the interface needs to be simplified, made quicker, and overall needed a facelift. (or heavy operation). We're going to try to do that. And I'll be busy at US Open this weekend so I'm not sure how much i'll actually be able to get done between Stix, some hackstars obligations, and my tkd training. Already, I feel the startup lifestyle is wreaking havoc on my physique. I look like I'm made to do keumgang.

There's a lot of interesting feedback we've gotten from some mentor types. One iphone app guy really made us reevaluate the value of Stix. Another made will think more about the product instead of focusing so much on monetization. And last week I had my "I suck" moment but I think i've gotten over it now. For me it's better to dig into the code and get lost in the programming. I'll think about the bigger vision when we're out at bars.