THE DREAM IN ACTION

I’ve really stopped blogging here, go read ryangraves.org

Last week TechCrunch ran an article leaking the news that UberCab had closed our Seed round of funding. Our initial hope was to hold that news off until we could launch a new site (coming soon) along with the funding announcement. We had hoped to completely own the telling of that story, but as we [...]

This is as much of a post about sharing Evernote with you as it is an apology to Evernote for not giving you a chance until now. My mistake and my loss, learn from me and your gain. The simplest way to explain Evernote to those of you who don’t know is that it’s a [...]

I figure identifying and sharing my weaknesses here on this blog are one of the best way to overcome them. Both from understanding them better myself and benefiting from your feedback and “sage wisdom”. Thank you o’ commenters of the blog, I do sincerely appreciate you wasting your life on my writings. So here it [...]

Above is my SXSW Foursquare scoreboard. Foursquare had a mini game within the app four SXSW participants to checking w/ as many different friends as possible, checkin at as many places as possible, had a collection of SXSW specific badges to acquire, etc. This actually made checking in really fun aside from it’s obvious utility. Another big [...]

…we seems to have a lot in common. In this short interview of Jeff Bezos, now CEO/Founder of Amazon.com, he talks about how he decided to leave his safe cushy job for a startup, Amazon.com. I’ve shared many of his exact thoughts in the process to leaving my safe cushy job at GE to join a [...]

With a lifetime of knowing that entrepreneurship is at my core and now 4 years of studying the web startup world, I’ve finally made the jump from ‘Office Space’ corporate America into the infinite abyss of the startup adventure. I’ve had a great taste of the startup world, but this is something entirely different. In [...]

My blogging has slowed down recently for one reason, I’ve being doing more. That’s not to say that doing is the opposite of blogging, but doing is the opposite of talking in many respects. So that’s what I’ve been focusing on, doing. I read this post from @Micah today and it pretty much summed up [...]

Back in October I wrote a post about wanting more feedback on this blog. I vowed that if you gave me feedback, I’d listen and sculpt the content of this blog in such a way that it was valuable for you, the reader. I’ve often struggled with the question, should I write for the audience? [...]

Here in Chicago we’ve been building a really solid group of users who are excited enough about Foursquare to tell their friends and the venues that they frequent. Last night we all met up at Lincoln Station in Lincoln Park and chatted about our experiences sharing foursquare and some of the challenges we’ve faced in [...]

I was very motivated after reading Fred Wilson’s post on tenacity this morning. The long hour, late night, double time, alarm clock, graveyard, bloodshot eye, 3 coffee, 0 inbox, crush it, hustle, grind it out, and rock, bullshit…is totally worth it, and I love it. Not to mention it’s exactly what will, eventually, get me [...]

I’ve been pondering, in great detail, the challenges of getting “old school” brick and mortar business to better understand, then implement the enormous value that certain web based tools could provide for them. My first observation is that it must happen in that order, understand, then implement. My second observation is that it must be [...]

For a while now I’ve been writing about Foursquare customer development, sales, and business development. I’ve written about my experience as a foursquare sales rep and the challenges of selling to local venues. Now, I’d like to share some of the details of my newest project and what we’re going to accomplish. I’m extremely excited [...]

Hey have you checked out Foursquare? Is that the Twitter thing? You can use Twitter to tell people where you are, via Foursquare. So not really a Twitter thing… Go on… I recently had this conversation with a non techy friend of mine and it made me think about how quickly things are moving on [...]

I’ve been thinking a lot about customer development over the past few months. It’s a new way of thinking as a company, it’s a new way of approaching marketing, product building, and customer service. It’s changing, or maybe already has changed, the way companies think about the relationships with their customers, and it’s never been [...]