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Hi. My name is Adam. I am the co-founder of Pure Adapt, Inc in Albany, NY. We own Detailed Image, LockerPulse, and a bunch of other websites. I write about our company, entrepreneurship in general, work-life balance, and whatever else interests me.
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Category Archives: Entrepreneurship
A Great Memorial Day Video
Earlier today I finished up listening to the podcast of Innovate for America, a Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders talk by America’s first Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra. This was the first I had heard Aneesh speak. It’s a very passionate and motivating talk about how his team is trying to shape the future of healthcare, education, and energy in our country with technology and entrepreneurship. Enjoy!
Jack Dorsey is Really Smart
I’ve always “known of” Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and current CEO of Square. Until recently though I hadn’t heard him speak. A few weeks ago I watched the initial episode of Foundation with Kevin Rose where he interviewed Jack over tea, and then during my commute today I listened to his recent lecture at Stanford as a part of their Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series that I love. He’s just an absolutely fascinating person to listen to. From his youth of creating dispatch systems to entertain himself, to stories about his family and his dad’s pizza shop, his attempts … Continue reading
Looking Back: It’s Been Five Years Since I Left My Job
In the midst of a really busy January and February I sort of forgot that it’s been more than five years since that day that I quit my job back in 2006. You know how people always say “it feels like yesterday”? Well in this case, it feels like a different life to me. It feels like it was much longer than 5 years. In a lot of ways, I feel like I’ve always run Pure Adapt. Anyway, I know there are a lot of people out there who have quit their job recently or are considering doing so. I … Continue reading
Good Web Apps Take Time
Yesterday @DHH wrote a great post on the 37signals blog titled The obsession with next. The basic premise was: Outside of a few breakthroughs here and there, most things that are good are good because they got there slowly. He also linked to the Joel Spolsky article Good Software Takes Ten Years. Get Used To it., which DHH referenced as a classic, but was new to me. I really like Joel and I’ve read a good amount of his posts and articles in Inc. over the years, but I missed this one, since, you know, I was a sophomore in … Continue reading
Unsubscribed From TechCrunch
Mark Cuban professes to read three hours a day. [He points out] that one great idea he gets from a magazine he spends hours reading will pay off a thousand times over for his business. The challenge then is to limit the crap you consume and focus on what’s actually going to help you. You know, so you can actually make progress with your company. I might not spend three hours a day like Mark Cuban, but I’d say I read close to two a day. I stand by that quote I wrote in 2008. Since writing that post about … Continue reading
Pure Adapt in 2011
I realize that this post is a few weeks late, but I wanted to make sure I took a quick look back at our 2010 and a look forward to 2011, which is already off to an adventurous start. 2010 Review I’m really amazed by what we accomplish every year. At times it seems like things are moving slow, but when I take a look back I can’t say I’m disappointed in the least. Some of the highlights: We started the year by closing Tastefully Driven, our Amazon store, and stopped shipping internationally We launched the Ask a Professional Detailer … Continue reading
First Time Naivety
The feature article in the October issue of Inc Magazine was Start-Ups 2010: How to Launch Your Dream Company. One of the interesting things that they did was do sidebars of companies that haven’t met their initial expectations. So while the main focus was on the successes, they didn’t completely ignore the struggles, which is something I like because it’s an accurate portrayal of reality. The one that really caught my attention of course was Finding an Audience Online: Getting attention online is easier said than done, according to start-up founder Greg Stallkamp of Holos Fitness. This was one of … Continue reading
I’m a Writer
You know how I don’t exactly like it when I have to explain to people what I do? Well, this quote from How Nick Kokonas Is Shaking Up Fine Dining in Fast Company Magazine contains the best answer I’ve heard yet: “When people ask me what I do for a living at a cocktail party and I really don’t feel like explaining it, I tell them I’m a writer. They ask me what I write and I say, ‘About 200 emails a day.’ ” Brilliant! I could say: “About 200 lines of code a day”, “About 5 emails a day”, … Continue reading
Our First Full-Time Employee Started Today
Over the years we’ve had numerous part-time workers, both in the warehouse and contracted workers doing various web stuff, but today was the first day that we had a full-time, salaried employee. The position is warehouse manager, and the guy is Charlie, who has been with us on a part-time basis for just about year now. Through his consistent hard work he’s proven beyond a doubt to us that he’s the right person for the job. No one else was even considered. Given that we each only come in two days per week (everyone on Monday, one person each of … Continue reading
What Would You Say You Do Here?
That’s one of my all-time favorite lines from Office Space. Cracks me up every time I see it. John C. McGinley delivers it perfectly. What do I do? I get asked that question by a lot of people. I’ve written before that it’s not exactly my favorite thing to talk about, mostly because so few people understand anything beyond “he works with computers”. However, there are plenty of people I associate with who do understand web business and have a pretty good understanding of our business. Those conversations are my favorite. I have noticed though that one question does come … Continue reading