Apparently they are trying to encourage taxis in Los Angeles. But here’s the telling statistic:
Los Angeles has roughly 3,500 licensed taxi drivers for a city of 4 million people. New York has about 47,000 cabbies for a city of 8 million.
If you can’t find one, you ain’t gonna take one…
For a long time I was being secretive about what I was up to. I would tell people that I “had a couple of projects I was working on” or something vague like that. But the truth is I have been very busy working on exactly one thing since about the beginning of December.
A short while after I was let go, I was out in Chicago to see my old friend (and former CS STARS CEO) Bob Petrie. I wanted to catch up and bounce some ideas around, but he had a very specific idea to pitch. Bob had no intention of competing against CS STARS when he was first let go. There were too many friends still there. But after Jeff Markowitz got let go and then the entire NY office (some may not realize, but Bob started the business in NY) Bob’s thinking shifted. Not that we don’t still have friends at CS STARS, we have lots, but it has clearly changed.
Frankly, my first thought after being let go was not, “gee, how can I stay in the insurance risk management industry?”. But Bob’s pitch was compelling. Let’s build a RMIS system that has a subset of the STARS feature set, but the really important US RMIS features. Do them as well or better. Make the implementation/service model simpler and therefore cheaper. Carve out a decent share of the market. Own the business. Make some money. Work for yourself.
So I thought about it for a while. The job market is lame. I have severance pay. But this is a serious v1 software play. Bob’s initial thought was the two of us and some cheap development labor. I realized we needed more than that. We needed partners who knew what they were doing.
As part of my severance deal, I can’t solicit CS STARS employees. But the entire NY office was no longer employed by CS STARS. Including two of the best and two good friends. My pitch back to Bob was simple. Let me talk to Linus and Tim.
It turned out that both were interested. The folks at 37signals have stated that three developers is the optimal number for v1. In this case I think they were absolutely right. But you have to have the right three people.
Linus, Tim and I have probably worked harder in the past four months than ever before. But working together (with Bob, while he isn’t programming, he’s a big part of the project) has been incredibly easy. We all know what we need to do. We discuss, we take on the parts we want to, we go off and we work. We get back together, discuss, rinse, repeat. There is 0% administrative non productive time. Boring conference calls? Stupid paperwork? Mindless time tracking? Non existent.
Did I mention how much fun it has been? First of all, I love to program. But in my role at CS STARS I really hadn’t done real programming in years. And, by the way, it showed for the first couple of months. I was the worst javascript guy ever at first. But use jQuery for a month and suddenly javascript is your friend.
And after a relatively short time, we realized that we could build something pretty cool. Not just something that was ok and cheaper. Linus started with the name Origami and I really liked it because to me it evoked elegant simplicity. That has become our design philosophy.
It’s the 37signals philosophy.
We believe most software is too complex. Too many features, too many promises. Instead, we build simpler web-based software with elegant interfaces and thoughtful features you’ll actually use.
And the classic:
it’s better to make version 1 half a product than a half-assed product
Origami doesn’t do everything. But what it does, it does well. And that is much more fun to work on.
We had the rare opportunity to start from scratch. No legacy issues. SaaS only. Single database. Data model from the ground up with everything we know about what the product needs to do. That last point has been unbelievably huge. Can you imagine running a loss triangle on 2 million claims in less than 30 seconds with no pre-processed data? What else could you do with no legacy constraints?
Who knows where this will take us. At the end of the day, we have to sell it. Can we? We’ll see. But we have a compelling product, a great (if small) team, and we’ve had a lot of fun…
The next chapter has begun…
I’ve mentioned before that my mom has Alzheimer’s. A while back she really started to decline. She was losing weight and my mom is tiny to begin with. They put her on hospice care, which meant that they expected her to last no more than six months.
A little while later, the facility where she is staying decided to raise her fees substantially. They said that she required a lot of extra care (she likes to wander off and she gets belligerent when you try to bring her back).
There was another Alzheimer’s place nearer to my brother. It had a very good reputation, but was very expensive. My mom has a decent pension between her and my dad (who passed away years ago), but she’s not swimming in money either. But with the first place raising their fee, the difference in cost wasn’t as big. And being closer to my brother would make it much more convenient.
So we moved her to the nicer place. Since then she has gained ten pounds. One time she introduced my brother to someone and used his correct name. I can’t remember the last time she did that.
So it clearly matters what kind of care an Alzheimer’s patient gets. They are now saying that they’ll probably take her off of hospice care.
Going to the circus is becoming an annual tradition with Danielle. Ringling Brothers arrived at Madison Square Garden right at the end of her spring break, so we booked the tickets a while back.
The last time we went she noticed that a small group of people got to go onto the floor of the show and sort of participate. She wanted to do that. So this year we got those tickets.
For the most part, they just bring you onto the floor to sit in these mini-bleachers that are just really close. There was one clown standing behind us and he befriended Danielle. They were joking around the whole time. And at one point the ringmaster needed a volunteer from the group and he looked right at Danielle.
“What’s your name?”
“Danielle”
“How old are you?"
“Six and a quarter”
And with that he brought her out into the middle of the show and had her help with a magic trick. So the whole experience made her day.
The obligatory pictures:
Pre show:
Her clown friend:
Helping with the magic trick:
And her friend waving goodbye during the finale:
For the record, I had Memphis to win it all and Duke to the Final Four. So my pool was toast as of Thursday night.
Baseball season…
We’re watching our money (who isn’t?) but with Danielle off for two weeks we wanted to do something. My wife’s brother lives in Orlando so that seemed like the thing to do.
We got cheap flights, planned to stay with my wife’s brother for a few days and at a hotel near Disney for a few days.
Spending a few days with the in-laws was pleasantly relaxing. We didn’t do a lot. They have a pool (not heated, a tad chilly), and a park nearby. They also have a pond in the back where you can fish. That’s about all we needed.
And of course the girls had a blast at Disney. Danielle has hit roller coaster height so she rode Space Mountain at the Magic Kingdom and Tower of Terror and Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster at Disney Hollywood. She loved them. So I’m excited to have someone to ride cool rides with. Victoria was surprisingly timid on the kiddie rides, but she’s only 2 so I’ll cut her some slack.
Her are the obligatory pictures:
This one is out of focus, but I had to include it anyway. Tori with her sister’s iPod shuffle:
Danielle climbing in the park. All she does is climb…
Catching a fish with her uncle:
At the Magic Kingdom with Alice in Wonderland:
With their new tattoos (Danielle has Hannah Montana sunglasses and a Hannah Montana tattoo):
At Mickey’s Toontime playground (Tori is small but tough, she will win this confrontation):
Dan just climbs…
And finally here’s Danielle at the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground:
We did ride rides, honest. But you can’t take good pictures on them…
If anyone didn’t get info on my NCAA pool, here’s the link to sign up:
http://fish2006.mayhem.cbssports.com/e?referrer=MKTG_BM_INVITE Our Group password is: fish
I’ll collect via PayPal later…
Spring is finally arriving so it’s time to get back to the park with the girls. And it’s getting a bit trickier to keep track of both of them.
Danielle, at 6, is still the one who wants me around the most. She doesn’t need me (though she still likes to be pushed on the swings), she just likes me watching her.
Victoria, at 2, is perfectly happy to take off on her own. She’s the boldly independent one. And she likes to climb on the big girl stuff. By herself.
As I watch her climbing up the ten foot tall ladder, I’m reminded that this is the girl who was getting physical therapy a year ago because she was developmentally behind. Hard to believe that now.
So I spend most of my time running back and forth between them, trying to watch Danielle and trying to keep Victoria from killing herself. Still, it’s pretty fun.
Some obligatory pictures:
Danielle hanging from one of those things that Victoria is perfectly happy to climb all by herself…
Hanging seems to be a theme with Danielle, and yes that’s Victoria in the background. Up high all by herself. I’m such a good father…
Finally, Victoria does something safe…
I haven’t posted any pictures in a while. Here are a few pictures of Victoria (2) and Danielle (6).
Honestly, how did people do it? Danielle sees a pinwheel on TV and wants to make one. So I google “make a pinwheel” and the first hit has instructions and a page you can print with all the lines showing where to cut. Ten minutes later we have two pinwheels (one for Victoria – sharing is tricky at 2).
I remember as a kid having a huge set of encyclopedias. We would look things up, but it was useful if you wanted to know about Albania, not important stuff like making a pinwheel…
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