chris muir

fred-wilson: The Weight - Mavis Staples, Nick Lowe, Jeff Tweedy...

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:11:49 -0500

The Weight - Mavis Staples, Nick Lowe, Jeff Tweedy & Wilco

in the dressing room backstage at the Civic Opera House in Chicago in Dec 2011

youtube video is here

happy friday cover day

Love the top comment: “Mavis puts more heart and soul into this little dressing room rehearsal than most current artists do on stage.”

"I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone..."

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 19:08:39 -0500

““I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea.””

- Solitude and Leadership by William Deresiewicz

12/22: Scenes from New York

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:59:00 -0500

Walked west on 10th Street this morning and caught lots of beautiful little NYC moments:

Hip NYU kids with no shoes on sitting outside their dining hall looking rebellious but decidedly well-off enough to afford shoes.

Laborers in faded white merchant vans inching past parked cars and moving trucks on their way from one job to another.

Turning the corner and heading north on 6th Ave and catching a glimpse of the dim skyline through gaps in the buildings, wondering what New York would look like without all the steel and glass and whether we’d even notice the skyline then.

A daydreaming commuter brought back to reality by three or four short muted beeps from a taxi driver.

A stranger eyeing me warily when I hold open for her the door to the blue mailbox on the corner, waiting until the last possible minute to grace me with a smile.

Turning the corner again and simultaneously taking in the Hudson, New Jersey, the High Line, and all the old packing plants south of 14th street.

I like NYC a lot more when I keep my head up.

Happy holidays from @hyperpublic. We celebrated last...

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:21:56 -0500

Happy holidays from @hyperpublic. We celebrated last night…no lights allowed today.

Watching old Kennedy/Nixon debates. Kennedy is unstoppable once...

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:24:23 -0400

Watching old Kennedy/Nixon debates. Kennedy is unstoppable once he warms up. Nixon sweats his way from opening statement to closing remarks.

Experimenting with Spotify

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 19:32:05 -0400

I’ve been using Spotify Premium and nothing else to play music on my phone for the last three weeks. It’s great having unlimited access to such a comprehensive catalogue of music, but there’s something psychologically meaningful about actually purchasing music that I miss. It puts a stake in the ground that reminds you and anyone else that this band or this album means something to you. I felt the same way when iTunes replaced physical albums; the act of buying music felt less meaningful with mp3s than it did with CDs.

With Spotify, part of the problem lies in the UI/UX of the mobile app: if it functioned less like a buggy music search engine and more like a slick music player, I’d probably feel more connected to the music catalogue I had created. Hopefully the next version of the app addresses this; if it doesn’t, I’ll gladly be the lame dude who switches back to the old-fashioned iPod app.

The Culture and the Problem

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 15:58:00 -0400

Until recently, I didn’t realize how much time the founders of growing startups spend on recruiting. Talented Google-caliber engineers are few and far between, even in a city like NYC that’s admittedly crushing it of late. I’ve sat in on a number of interviews at Hyperpublic over the past few weeks and the two topics that come up most in initial conversations with engineers are Hyperpublic’s culture and the problem that we’re working to solve.

Culture is very much a catch-all and sometimes can be hard to pin down. One test that works is to ask, “what would our employees be doing if they weren’t working?” Playing foosball? Reading up on a new programming language? Drinking? The recurring answers to this question can tell you a lot about your startup’s culture. For the crew at HP, the vibe is loosely academic. The office is generally quiet, with music playing in headphones and phone calls kept to a minimum. I’d be surprised if more than 15 internal e-mails are sent in a given week. We spend plenty of time hanging out and bonding over beers and ping pong at the Standard Biergarten, but our focus is squarely on building something great and making ourselves better programmers, designers, businesspeople, etc. Engineers who don’t share the same ambitions probably won’t be happy here. In that way, it’s great to see the topic of culture come up in early recruiting conversations (and before some of the more quantifiable incentives like salary, equity, etc.).

The importance of the “problem” that a startup is working on is easier to understand when it comes to recruiting. Above all else, it needs to be complex enough to challenge a potential technical hire. I’ve seen engineers turn down paying gigs because the problem wasn’t difficult enough. The reverse is also true: the thrill of the challenge can be enough to attract really talented programmers. That’s exciting news for Hyperpublic; we are working on something big. If you’re up for the challenge and adept at holding a pint glass in one hand and a ping pong racquet in the other, we’d love to talk to you.

Even more reasons to start using Path to share intimate moments...

Mon, 23 May 2011 18:44:26 -0400

Even more reasons to start using Path to share intimate moments with family and close friends. The new stacks feature gives users a cool data-driven way to interact with their lives via photos.

First week at Hyperpublic and Lerer Ventures

Mon, 23 May 2011 11:59:00 -0400

…or “My Internship Pt. 1 — I have some idea what I’m doing.”

Last week was my first as a summer associate with Hyperpublic, a startup that’s building an open platform of rich local data, and Lerer Ventures, a venture capital fund that’s investing primarily in consumer web and media startups. I’ll be with HP and LV for the better part of the next three months.

I’ve had some really cool jobs in the last few years, but I don’t remember ever being quite as excited about one. There’s a contagious energy at HP borne out of a small group of really smart people working hard to solve a difficult problem. My favorite moments from the week all had to do with people: meeting new ones, finding out how they think, and shutting up long enough to learn from them. If last week was any indication, it looks like I’ll be shutting up a lot this summer. Jordan and Doug have put together a really awesome (and growing) team.

In typical startup fashion, every day was different. A lot of work went into preparing for the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon (we presented on Saturday). I also put together a capitalization table and a financial model, worked with lawyers to issue stock options to employees, interviewed engineers and data experts, met with the founders of a few companies that are seeking financing, and tried my hand at interior decorating (I’m hopeless).

If all goes to plan, I’ll end the summer with a broad understanding of how to run a startup. This is exactly what I was hoping for when I decided to work here. Hyperpublic and Lerer Ventures are up to awesome things and I’m ecstatic that I’ll be playing a small part in their evolution over the next few months.

"Good luck, have a good life, and if you run across a sure fire deal with a post-money of less than..."

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 16:07:20 -0400

“Good luck, have a good life, and if you run across a sure fire deal with a post-money of less than $2M, let me know.”

- Final exam instructions from a UNC professor/VC.

Guard dog (Taken with Instagram at Blue Hill at Stone Barns)

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:16:06 -0500

Guard dog (Taken with Instagram at Blue Hill at Stone Barns)

Herbs (Taken with Instagram at Blue Hill at Stone Barns)

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:06:29 -0500

Herbs (Taken with Instagram at Blue Hill at Stone Barns)

New Orleans at Night (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 06:37:04 -0500

New Orleans at Night (Taken with instagram)

zachklein: soxiam: Uncontacted Amazon Tribe: First ever aerial...

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 21:07:00 -0500

zachklein:

soxiam:

Uncontacted Amazon Tribe: First ever aerial footage (by Survival International)

Vimeo is so rewarding!!!

It’s amazing that there are “uncontacted” people living less than 4,000 miles away from NYC.

Girl Talk was insane in a “when did I get too old to go to...

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 10:31:00 -0500

Girl Talk was insane in a “when did I get too old to go to concerts?” kind of way.

Less can be more in online networks

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 12:03:00 -0500

Sam Lessin (founder of drop.io; now with Facebook) described traditional social media sites as “uploading something and then pushing it across a network or making it searchable.” With drop.io, Lessin created a service that did the opposite; instead of making things public, individuals and businesses used drop.io to pull information online, secure it in a private place, and share that “exact location with exactly who [they] wanted.” *

The idea of private networks is fascinating, in part because it runs counter to how most people that I know use social sites like Facebook and Twitter. The goal is to accumulate as many friends as possible, safe in the knowledge that we can un-friend people later. But as we increase the number of online relationships that we have, the intimacy of what we share and the connection that we have with our networks decline. MySpace lost its credibility as a social site because users hyperactively expanded their reach to the point that an overload of porn and spam devalued real online connections.

Instead of half-sharing with lots of people, I would rather share lots of things with the handful of people that mean the most to me. At least a few media startups (including Path) are exploring this concept, but I’d love to see companies apply this theory to other spaces that would benefit from fewer, higher-quality interactions (e-commerce and online dating come to mind).

*Source: VatorTV Interview

Hiring a Virtual Assistant

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 00:22:00 -0500

Everyone I know is busy. Whether it’s work or school or an overbooked personal life, no one has the time to accomplish everything that he or she wants to.

I spent the long weekend in NYC and got back to Chapel Hill last night. As I unpacked, I realized I had no idea what was going on this week. I hate not being organized, but I also hate wasting time leafing through class syllabi and undigested e-mail. Even if it only takes an hour to get organized, that’s time I could have spent doing something I value more.

So, I created an oDesk account and posted a job opening for a virtual assistant to aggregate my class assignments for the quarter into an Excel spreadsheet. It took 20 minutes to create an account and post the job listing. The results were immediate; within 45 minutes, I had:

Received 41 job applications with an average salary offer of $3.44/hour;
Hired a contractor from India to put together the spreadsheet for $3.33/hour (with a cap at 3 hours); and
E-mailed the contractor the relevant files to complete the work.

Sixteen hours later, the contractor sent me the completed spreadsheet in near-perfect condition. He had spent two hours working on it, meaning the final cost to me was $6.66, which I’ll charge to my credit card at the end of the week.

I’m amazed at how smoothly the engagement went and how quickly the contractor was able to turn the product around (I was asleep for part of the 16 hours). Granted, I spent extra time—including a 15-minute Skype chat—making sure he understood the job clearly, but I did that out of a genuine interest in the process. I don’t think I’ll use virtual assistants very frequently (I can’t think of any recurring projects that someone would be able to help me with), but I’ll definitely pay up to use one when the opportunity presents itself again.

Kira (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 21:16:50 -0500

Kira (Taken with instagram)

Williams College — View of Chapin Hall (Taken with...

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 17:48:00 -0500

Williams College — View of Chapin Hall (Taken with instagram at Paresky Center)

"To succeed in a spectacular fashion you have to be spectacularly unusual."

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 10:05:54 -0400

“To succeed in a spectacular fashion you have to be spectacularly unusual.”

- Michael Lewis; The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine