Writing

Welcome to the new AVC. This is the third “iteration” of this blog. The first iteration (AVC 1.0) was the Typepad era during which I redesigned AVC a number of times using Typepad’s tools. That lasted from September 2003 to [...]  Read more

A few years ago I wrote about one of my favorite product sayings: “Half, Not Half-Assed “, which comes from my favorite book on product development & teamwork, Getting Real (from the team behind Basecamp ). I actually first got [...]  Read more

I have received a bunch of questions from AVC regulars about this temporary design and what is going on with AVC. As I wrote in the first post in this series :), a couple of files in my WordPress configuration [...]  Read more

This is the sixth winter we have spent in Los Angeles. One of the things I have had the hardest time getting used to about life in LA is all of the driving. But starting last year, I found myself [...]  Read more

Today is one of those days when everyone gets back to work after a time off. This holiday break was a particularly long one given that Christmas and New Years came in the middle of the week. So many of [...]  Read more

Today I’m finally switching off of Capital One because of their broken integration with Plaid . For those who don’t know, Plaid is a service that makes it easy for apps to connect to your bank account. So, if you [...]  Read more

Setting annual mantras Every year around this time, I think it’s important to take a beat and reflect back on all of the areas of my life. At work, we have “offsites,” rife with annual planning and progress checks on our [...]  Read more

My partner Brad likes to ask about the distinction between doing things right and doing the right thing. His observation, which I totally agree with, is that many people and companies do things right but don’t do the right thing. [...]  Read more