How I Turned Down $300,000 from Microsoft to go Full-Time on GitHub
Loved Tom's social hack for finding cofounders, from Startups Open Sourced. He also has a really good outlook on the role of design in startups.Q: So, the best way to get to know somebody is to go drink with them?A: That is absolutely the best way to really get to know a person and what they really like and are interested in because if they are interested in technology, then they will have no problem geeking out with you about Ruby or Node or something for three hours, over drinks; that’s when you know that you found someone that could be a really successful cofounder. I think there really is something to doing business in bars. In the early days when there were four of us—we had hired Scott Chacon—we would go to this bar called O’Reilly’s, up in North beach. We went there almost every week and that’s where we would talk about what we had done. This is after we had started full time and it was where all the decisions were made. A couple of drinks in, you start to just say what you mean instead of thinking so much about whose feelings you are going to hurt or whatever, you say things very bluntly, like, “I think we should do this, and I think you are wrong for saying we should do it a different way,” and now you can have an honest argument about what needs to get done and what the concerns are about the company or how it’s structured or how the stock is going to be split. All this stuff will come up over drinks and as long as you are not too drunk, it can be helpful.