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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
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
Why Continuous Learning is Important
I think one of the key indicators of whether you chose the right career is your level of passion to continue to learn and evolve as things change. Case in point, for the past month or two Mike and I have been obsessed with learning CSS3 and HTML5, both of which are becoming more and more usable in more and more browsers (see this nifty little chart for a full breakdown). I find myself getting sidetracked at night, hopping back on my computer to see if anyone has done X, or when it will be possible to do Y. I … Continue reading
The Idea Chart
About once every year I find myself re-reading Getting Real, the first book by 37Signals from 2006 about their software development process. There’s so much good stuff in there. I could probably do multiple posts on each chapter. Anyway, one thing that caught my eye when I was flipping through recently was this “idea chart” in Chapter 6 by Derek Sivers, one of the many “experts” they reference throughout the book: Be An Executioner It’s so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an nda to tell me the simplest idea.) … Continue reading
How Do You Find Good Partners? Try Before You Buy
One of the most frequent questions I get from people is “how did you meet your partners?”, followed by “what is a good way for me to meet partners?” and “how do I avoid picking the partner from hell?” In my What Startups Are Really Like essay I touched on this a bit: How do you find good partners? When I gave my two presentations at James Madison University, I got this question from both groups. My partners and I were lucky. We all went to the same elementary school together. Growing up, we all knew each others’ brothers and … Continue reading
Is This a Smart Way to Get Funding? No. Absolutely Not.
I’ve finally gotten around to reading the May 2010 issue of Inc. Magazine. I couldn’t believe what I was reading the other night when I read the article Is This a Smart Way to Get Funding?. Essentially three kids out of college are selling a percentage of their future earnings for cash now: Erickson and two other young social entrepreneurs recently made the decision to, in effect, take themselves public. Through an online marketplace called the Thrust Fund, the three have offered up a percentage of their future lifetime earnings in exchange for upfront, undesignated venture funding. Erickson is willing … Continue reading
Bon Voyage Mike
(That means “good trip Mike”, for everyone not well versed in Francais) This morning Mike departed with his family for a month-long voyage through China. It will most certainly be one of those “once in a lifetime” experiences for him. I can’t wait to see all of the pictures and hear about everything they did. That said, the reason I’m writing a post about it is that this is a big step for our business. One of our partners will be gone for a month with almost no internet access. It’s an extreme example of what things will be like … Continue reading