- The year began in Koh Phangan, Thailand with my friend Chris Lea. We spent a month laying on beaches, swinging in hammocks, and drinking booze out of buckets.
- While in Thailand I got some more bamboo work done on my left arm.
- In February I went down to Miami for Future of Web Apps to talk about scaling your tech teams.
- Around my birthday I was able to score a copy of Netscape Navigator 2.0, still in the box, signed by Marc Andreessen.
- March brought the usual trip down to Austin, TX for SXSW. I spoke on a panel titled, “Designers and Developers: Why can’t we all just get along?”
- In April I attended the Social Foo Camp, which is an invite-only nerdfest put on by O’Reilly.
- May was an insane month of travel in a year of insane travel. I spent a week in Michigan, a week in Prague, a day in Phoenix, and a few days in Boulder, CO.
- While I was in Michigan, Jonathan and I got our pictures taken by my high school sweetheart, Erica, for our mom for Mother’s Day.
- When I returned from Prague I’d made the big decision to leave Digg and build a startup with Matt Galligan. Matt and I created a company called Crash Corp. that was going to build augmented reality and location-based games.
- In June I got a new face.
- Matt and I agreed to each take a month off to clear our heads before jumping into startup mode. For unknown reasons he decided to spend his month in the Midwest. I, on the other hand, chose to go to Amsterdam, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, and London. This marked my second month off for the year, which was awesome.
- I spent about ten days in Norway with my buddy Arne Fismen (Side note: His last name means “fart man” in Norwegian, which is definitely worse than my last name) and was able to fulfill a childhood dream of mine by visiting the world famous fjords of Norway. I can’t express my appreciation enough for what Arne and his family did for me. It was truly a magical experience.
- When I returned from Europe I spent a few days in San Francisco before heading down to San Diego for my buddy Dana’s bachelor party.
- After Dana’s bachelor party I moved to Boulder, CO to get to work on Matt and I’s company.
- Soon after getting on the ground and starting to work through things Matt and I realized we needed to change direction. As a result SimpleGeo was born, which provides location services to developers.
- While building SimpleGeo I decided to, after 11 years, switch from PHP to Python as my language of choice.
- The change of direction was a watershed moment for the company. Things crystallized for both us and the investors we were pitching. It wasn’t long after this that First Round Capital agreed to be our lead investor.
- October was mostly sent flying around to New York City and San Francisco pitching investors, VC’s, etc.
- In November we closed a $1.5m round of financing from some of tech’s most well-known investors. I consider this to be the greatest achievement of my career so far.
- Over Thanksgiving I spent a few days down in Tulum, Mexico.
- In December I flew up to Seattle, WA for a quick visit. It’s still home to me and I can’t wait to move back.
According to TripIt and Dopplr I spent 142 days traveling this year. I don’t have complete numbers, but I’m guessing I logged over 80,000 miles this year on various airlines. As in the tradition of last year, I think it’s only appropriate that I create a list of my year in cities.
- Koh Samui, Thailand
- Koh Phangan, Thailand
- Bangkok, Thailand
- Seattle, Washington
- Miami, Florida
- Austin, Texas
- Sebastopol, California
- Ypsiltanti, Michigan
- Ann Arbor, Michigan
- East Jordan, Michigan
- San Francisco, California
- Prague, Czech Republic
- Phoenix, Arizona
- Boulder, Colorado
- Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Roskilde, Denmark
- Oslo, Norway
- Bergen, Norway
- Askvoll, Norway
- Dublin, Ireland
- Cork, Ireland
- London, United Kingdom
- New York City, New York
- San Diego, California
- Minneapolis, Minnesota
- Ashland, Wisconsin