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Justin and Jason discuss Justin’s move to Pasadena, whether you can fake being a nice guy, how John Humphrey reserved the domain AnyFoo.com and donated it to J&J, thoughts on the Pluggio pitch deck, an update on AnyFu, selling the Preezo codebase, the Udacity experiment, the apology to Elon Musk, the books A Life Decoded and Turing’s Cathedral, Justin’s tentative workout plan, the money-empathy gap, Jason’s request that Cathal Garvey write a Make style biohacking book and teach a Udacity course on synthetic biology, Jason’s idea for a TV show called Resurrection, Jason’s strategy for teaching Algebra to his his 7-year old son Colby, determining your enthusiasm half-life, planning for a wives “tell-all” interview show, the possibility of fan-funding new and canceled TV shows, and the dream of getting Elon Musk as an interview guest.
What really shows how awesome Elon Musk is: He won the bet, but still donates the million https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/218897974242181121
@Chris Bösing – Good point! I can’t believe I forgot to mention that fact.
@Jason, I haven’t listened to this show yet and I may have missed it from an earlier show, but did you talk about your impression of the Lego course that Colby took?
@Andrea – They built a lot of lego stuff, but I’m not sure it was anything particularly advanced or beyond anything Colby had already done on his own. But since I wasn’t there and since Colby doesn’t always describe his day in the greatest of detail, it’s hard for me to know. I do know that he enjoyed it and made some friends, which checks the box as far as I’m concerned.
Another good listen guys. Have you considered asking for paid sponsors for the show? $50-100 for a couple of seconds at the start, middle and end of the show? You must have the quality of listeners to get someone to pay. What are your thoughts?
@Justin Agreed on your comments about London. Unsure if the phenomenon is London specific or with big cities? You certainly tend to avoid eye contact and conversation – because people think you’re weird, even in your own apartment building. Why? Maybe Jason can test out his extrovert personality in London and feedback?
@Spark – LOL. I may have exaggerated slightly. I’m sure Jason would do very well in London because he’s an American and would be forgiven for being weird 😉
You mentioned in 194 or 195 testing your application. I use seleniumhq.org to create quick and repeatable scripts. I don’t think it will help with your emails but I have found that browser testing is much easier with this. I create the scripts using a Firefox plugin that you can get from the site. The cool thing is that you can modify the scripts easily using the plugin or text editor since the script is plain text. You can use the Selenium server to run your scripts in multiple browsers too.
Hey guys…I agree with @sparknlaunch that you could make a credible pitch for paid sponsorship. Expanding on his comment….perhaps Techzing can “ease” into it by approaching sponsors who pay based on an affiliate/cost per action basis……such that you only get paid if a member of your audience takes a specific action related to the sponsor’s message (e.g. signs up for a 30-day free trial). No upfront cost to the sponsor….and still pretty much nuthin’ but upside for you guys, too. I know that Netflix works within this sort of model for their podcast sponsorships…..and as good or better would be Audible.com (though I don’t know if they offer this type of sponsorship), since Jason has raved about their service on several episodes.
Jason, if you want some discussion of startup dynamics thrown in with your Thrun (Udacity) this episode of ThisWeekInStartups (#271) is worth a watch:
(first few minutes of audio are suboptimal…but all’s good after that)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75TP3hoPA8U
Justin, interesting distinction of yours regarding methods for audience interaction. Do you feel that comments here are made with less intentionality than responses to you by email? As for the latter, I always worry about violating the “you don’t know me” creepiness threshold when I make a private response (email) to a public communication (your podcast). For instance, just because I comment here doesn’t mean you can come to Bangkok and crash on my couch. YOU DON’T KNOW ME! (kidding about the rant 🙂 ……but I worry about making a podcaster such as yourself uncomfortable by invoking too familiar a tone in an email response. Am I off base with this…at least as it pertains to TechZing and your preferred method for audience response?
Jason…..here’s a potential guest that would be great for your continued exploration of the crossroads of education and technology. Why this guy? If his name doesn’t give it away, one of his recent Tweets will:
“Fixing education and fixing the world is the same thing.”
https://twitter.com/NolanBushnell/status/222869084633706498
Here’s a deep link into the education part of an altogether fantastic episode #60 of Triangulation (on @TWiT network) that features him (@NolanBushnell)
http://youtu.be/sktujcVogpk?t=58m7s
Justin….in parts of that same podcast before and after the point that I linked to above for Jason, Mr. Bushnell also discusses, at length, his tips for startups….ranging from templating your initial concepts, to the value of having a team (something you’ve embraced!), to product innovation. Truly worth a listen.
Justin…..If you’ll indulge me, I’m going to unapologetically re-ask a question from the episode 192 comments. I’m just damn curious ’bout it. 🙂
Hey Justin….given that you are a proponent of and case study for what @RobWalling calls “micropreneurialism” I’m curious about your micropreneurial status viz a viz your relationship with Company52. Setting aside your current lack of time to do such a thing, in the future would you still be “allowed” (per any contractual arrangement you have with Company52) to develop another of your own “lifestyle” / micropreneurial applications (i.e. another Pluggio) or does all your future work require their involvement? Just curious.
Jason, given the current (or in the recent past) extraordinary startup valuation environment, and since nobody can predict when today’s tiny (but soon to be funded) startup will blossom into tomorrow’s Instagram/Yammer/etc, and since “the answer’s always no if you *don’t* ask”……to what extent did you consider negotiating for a small equity kicker from the company to whom you sold the Preezo rights? They’d still have clarity and certainty as to the cost, they’d still own the IP, and frankly at the stage they were at (offering 40% interest for a 6-month note on the final $10k of the purchase price) they don’t sound as though they were too stingy (or forward thinking?).
Thank you both again for these “TZ Discussion” episodes. Sure, Nolan Bushnell’s story of his early startup days makes for an awesome listen, but as even he said he’s gotten bored with telling it. You guys are clearly not bored…..nor the least bit boring…..as you recount your own adventures in nearly real time on Techzing. WOOHOO!
CHEERS!
David
@Jason I just remembered what I really liked about maths when I was young and was trying to have fun while learning: graphs, visualisations, any representation of the results, that went beyond just equations. Oh, the great day when I discovered XY plots in excel and that I could get a smiley face as a result of some formulas + drag’n’drop 🙂
I also had lots of fun with AVS in winamp… yeah, a visualisation plugin. It’s like a simple graphing app for kids if you use it the right way: here’s a plot, now it jumps to the music, now it’s changing colours based on this formula, now it’s an isometric projection, now there’s an additional perspective, now there’s another layer which maps the whole view “around a sphere”… you can add complexity to your display layer by layer, but in the end you’re always implementing the main part (transformation / plot / colour mapping) yourself in “real maths”™.
Just by trying to achieve more interesting results, I pretty much came up with isometric projection without knowing the theory behind it. I can’t think of any other program that could offer such simple play area with instant result.
I guess it’s that experience that I would try to replicate if I tried to teach any kids maths. Once you figure out what you can really present using graphs, they can be applied to explain a lot of other concepts in pretty simple ways.
Bah, that comment came out more “you should do this” than I expected. I had a lot of fun doing this when I was young, but I’m sure it’s not for everyone. It came to my mind because of the dragon box game and learning to do things you don’t really understand from the theory side.
@David – I think Company 52 would be more than happy for me to work on a side project as long as it didn’t impact the level of work I put into any projects that we are working on together (ie Pluggio). They are a very forward thinking bunch.
Re your other comments I think the main thing is that I tend to respond to what it would be rude not to, whereas Jason goes out of his way to talk to anyone and everyone and that’s something that is innately part of his personality. It’s an awesome talent to have and I would love to be able to cultivate it. I think I just get to stressed about “all that stuff” I have to get done, and if I engaged as often as he does I fear I would never get anything done… but I’m probably wrong about that.
@Spark n Launch – We have discussed the possibility of paid sponsorship, but we’ve never pursued it. The thing is that our audience just isn’t all that large so I’m not sure the amount we could charge for sponsorship would be worth the time and effort required to secure it. So, we’d probably be open to it if it fell into our lap, but that’s about it. 😉
@David – Wow, that’s a lot to respond to!
– The Thrun (Udacity) episode on ThisWeekInStartups (#271) looks really interesting. Bookmarked!
– Yeah, Nolan Bushnell would make for an interesting interview. Hmm… I might look into that.
– Your idea of negotiating for an equity kicker as part of the Preezo sale is a good one. I wish I had thought of that before we had agreed on terms and written a contract. Oh, well. 😉
Thanks again for another information rich comment and for the positive feedback. It’s very much appreciated. 😉
@Stanislaw Pitucha – No worries. Your comment didn’t come across as “you should do this” at all. I agree that visualization is an incredibly powerful teaching / learning aid.
I am one of those who took, and finished, Norvig and Thrun’s Stanford AI class. I did get an unofficial certificate that simply says that I finished the course and was in the top 25% (unfortunately, I wasn’t one of the few who got job interview emails…that was the top 1000).
Now I’m taking Thrun’s Udacity class on programming the robotic car and having more fun there. You had talked about how many people might drop out or something. Well, one thing they’ve done is to take away the time limit on the class. When I signed up, I quickly fell behind because I got slammed at work. No problem though since I can learn at my own pace and take the final exam the next time it rolls around. Beautiful!
It’s pretty much the same style as the AI class; but they’ve introduced programming in Python. Sebastian is insanely good at teaching concepts; but there isn’t really time to get into the theory or math underneath them, so there is a hole that eventually needs to be filled in for some folks. I will say this though: I already have a Ph.D. in engineering but I understand Kalman filters now better than I ever did before.
I certainly hope that he’s figuring out how to monetize this stuff because he deserves it.