Most recent blog posts
19 Things That Should Be Fixed
I don’t normally do list posts, but I thought this might be a fun departure from my usual 2,000 words. Maybe you’ll find your next startup idea in here. Feel free to add your own to the comments section. 1. When they bring you bread and butter and the butter is too hard to spread [...] Continue Reading →
How To Figure Out What You’re Good At
This post was republished on Lifehacker. A lot of success advice centers around the idea of “being honest with yourself about the things you’re good at, and pursuing those things relentlessly.” We’re told that all successful people can be boiled down to a paragraph which states their chosen field and the personal style they brought [...] Continue Reading →
How To Make A Million Dollars
Some people know how to quiet a crowd. Conrad looked at the floor. He crossed his arms, standing lazily in the center of the stage. Subtle murmurs from the audience gradually died down. Slowly they focused their attention on him, waiting. As he stood there, they looked more closely, drawing in their breath. Perhaps they [...] Continue Reading →
Here’s what I learned hanging out with Jason Fried
Discuss on Hacker News. I went to meet Jason Fried so I could learn how to stop selling software by accident. Since I started programming 10 years ago, I’ve made a fair amount of money online. But those sales were mostly coincidental. By that I mean, I never thought deeply about how and why products [...] Continue Reading →
The choices are fake and the truth is all made up
This post was republished on PandoDaily. You can find it here. I like the holidays because they’re a chance to take my foot off the gas a little bit, get out of the car and reset the engine. They’re a chance to take a look at the map and make sure I’m headed in the [...] Continue Reading →
I Am A Terrible Programmer
I recently got this from the co-founder of Artsicle, a startup I interned for over the summer after my freshman year: From: Scott Carleton Subject: just refactored your find_art.js that you did over a year ago Part of me is thinking: in some ways, you were a terrible programmer Other part is, well shit, it’s worked perfectly [...] Continue Reading →
Taking Off The Rose Colored Glasses
On Danielle Morrill’s suggestion I’ve been reading a book called The Happiness Hypothesis. The author, Jonathan Haidt combines ancient philosophy (including my personal favorite, Stoicism) with modern social and psychological research to paint a picture of a happy life that I find really compelling. What struck me however is how applicable a lot of what [...] Continue Reading →
Selling Umbrellas in a Synagogue
A few months ago, Twitter invited me to participate in their advertising program. Basically what they do is allow you to purchase follows via a Promoted Account and purchase clicks, favorites and retweets via Promoted Tweets. I poked around the interface for a little while and ultimately decided not to try it out. To me, [...] Continue Reading →
How To Build a Blog Readership
Discuss this post on Hacker News Despite the recent success of this blog over the past year (250,000 uniques, hundreds of new subscribers, republished in Lifehacker and others) the truth is that I’ve been a failed blogger for far more time than I’ve been a successful one. The other day I got curious and went [...] Continue Reading →
The Regret Fallacy
This was republished on Lifehacker. Even though I’m in college I still take a class with my old high school history teacher. No grades are given, and class takes place sporadically on the weeks when I’m back home in Princeton. Many teachers dislike when students bring food to their classrooms and eat while they lecture. [...] Continue Reading →
Your Goals Are Holding You Back
This post was republished on Lifehacker. I just started my junior year at Penn. Aside from a newly developed disdain for the freshmen I see bumbling their away around campus that is both terrifying and yet somehow familiar, there are a few things I’m bringing with me this September that I haven’t had in years [...] Continue Reading →
The Now Syndrome
Discuss this post on Hacker News The news that Twitter is taking further steps to push 3rd party developers off their platform is sending a clear message: we need to make money now. Lots of it. Millions are not enough, billions of dollars is the only thing worth our time. And so in their effort [...] Continue Reading →
B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It
Discuss this post on Hacker News. When I tell people I do B2B software I get some very interesting reactions. “Why do B2B? It’s so unsexy.” And that’s true. B2B is unsexy in that I don’t build things that my college friends want to use. But that doesn’t mean it’s unsatisfying, or somehow inherently less [...] Continue Reading →
Why I’m Doing It All Wrong
Discuss this post on Hacker News. Conventional wisdom for doing a startup as a young entrepreneur these days is something like the following: 1. Drop out of school 2. Raise money A year ago that’s the route that I wanted to pursue. Freshman year of college I interviewed at Y Combinator with two of my [...] Continue Reading →
Showing Up Is Not Enough
This post was republished on LifeHacker. You can read it here. There’s a Woody Allen quote that goes: “ninety percent of success is just showing up.” Despite the title of this blog post my experience learning about and talking to successful people leads me to agree with him. But it does raise the question: what [...] Continue Reading →
Stop Taking Yourself So Seriously
Discuss this post on Hacker News. My workout plan this summer would make any fitness guru shudder. I try to go to the gym once or twice a week. I spend 25 minutes there. I run for a mile, do some curls and then finish off with a dumbbell bench press. It’s an admittedly ridiculous [...] Continue Reading →
Success is in NP
One of the most interesting parts of theoretical computer science is complexity theory. At its core complexity theory attempts to answer this question: what kinds of problems are easy and what kinds of problems are hard for a computer to solve? Problems are divided up into two classes: P and NP.* A problem in P [...] Continue Reading →
You Have To Get Good Before You Get Better
Discuss this post on Hacker News here. I talk to a lot of people these days who ask me how to get started learning to code. I try my best to give advice: read books, try Code Academy, do a lot of Googling, check out Stack Overflow. Usually I try to check in with these people [...] Continue Reading →
This Is 2016 Not 2012
Her eyebrows knot themselves. A pencil grates back and forth on her legal pad. Scratch. Scratch. My back itches; a tiny incessant itch that demands more attention with each passing second. Should I itch it? Better wait. I can hear the sound of a clock ticking somewhere else in the office. Tick. Tick. Tick. I’m [...] Continue Reading →
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Dan Shipper (danshipper)
UPenn junior. Co-Founder at @UseFirefly. Jets fan.
Philadelphia, PA
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