fluxcapacity

Twelve days ago I was living in New York City. I was working at Xanga.com a blogging,social networking, and interactive TV site. I had an awesome group of friends which included people at work (employee count 18, average age 26). I was working on cool and challenging web applications that are used by millions of people. I loved the people I worked with. We had beer in the fridge and a ping pong table. The experience was a lot like being in college but getting paid for it. I got to explore a city so alive with millions of fascinating and different people that it is not possible to be bored unless you are trying.

Then on October 25th, I quit my job and moved from NYC, population of around 19,000,000, to an island of roughly the same size, Beaver Island with a population of 600 to join Jeff and Adam in the founding of a new company.

Why would I leave a job, city, and people I love to come to Beaver Island? Now I will admit that I'm the kind of person that likes rocking the boat just to see what will happen, but that's not really why. I want to be part of bringing an intelligent internet into the real world experience of the average person, and I think that we have an opportunity to do that. I also love working on really hard and interesting problems, especially when nobody else has really solved them. Computers can do much more interesting and exciting things than they are doing now, and I think that our company can help make this happen.

I met Jeff back in sophomore year of college at a Tau Beta Pi/ Eta Kappa Nu (both are engineering honor societies) bowling party. I remember trading him some candy for chicken wings. In fact here's an article that I wrote about him back in the day (go to page 2).

As for Adam, I actually met him when me and one of my best friends Greg were biking from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Me, Greg, and my friend Jodi (who lives near LA) got to see the LA office of Adam and Jeff. We also all went out later to a karaoke place where Adam's sweet voice removed any doubts I had in my mind about joining him and Jeff.

We've hit the ground running on Beaver Island, and I've started adding to our growing pile of code!

Vikas

My one-way ticket to Beaver Island.

Fun Beaver Island Facts:

• If you're running around town, everyone waves at you from their cars.
• Turkeys are plentiful on the island and apparently pretty tame. Jeff's dad knows how to turn a wild turkey running around in the yard into a turkey ready to eat using only a rifle and an oven. It was delicious!
• The only other Indian people on this island are American Indians.
• The runway at the airport is made of grass.