fluxcapacity

Jeff will be giving a tech talk on March 31st at the University of Michigan. Here's a preview of one of the awesome technologies that he'll be showing:

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(Music: L'espoir fait vivre by Bézèd'h, Skyline: Sh0cked on flickr, Beach: tata_aka_T on flickr)

We're looking for a few brilliant and creative minds to interview with us for a summer internship position. If you're interested, come to the talk or email us@fluxcapacity.net.

Here's what's on the agenda:

• Wiimote + Laptop + Projector + Semitransparent Glass = Whiteboard from the Future
• When regular speed just doesn't get you in the mood anymore - Ultra-fast numerical operations in C# using dynamic MSIL (bytecode) generation
• Getting other people's computers to work for you

Here is the info for the tech talk:
When: March 31st at 5:30 pm
Where: 1014 Dow, North Campus, U of M College of Engineering
Food: yes
RSVP: here please, although not required it will help us get enough food

Hope to see you there!

After months of developing in our top secret facility on Beaver Island, we are nearly ready to enter the next phase. On February 1st, we will be moving to New York City!

We are excited to be moving to a place with millions of people from all walks of life, each carving out a unique story throughout the city. In this myriad of crossing paths, we hope to find inspiration, and look forward to bringing others on-board in the city that never sleeps.

You're probably wondering what this has to do with a Spaniard and two nuns.

The story begins with an apartment search. If you've lived in New York City, then you know how crazy the apartment hunting process is, and ours was no exception. The search led us all around Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. We checked out the up and coming Prospect Heights, ate delicious island food in Crown Heights, got stood up in Queens, roamed the ruins of industry in Williamsburg, avoided the clutches of a broker in Astoria, and finally found a place in Washington Heights.

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When we went to see the place in Washington Heights, we were greeted by a talkative Spaniard named Juan. He is from the Basque area of Spain and is a very kind, yet complicated man. We learned about his time in Manhattan, his favorite workout spots, the occasionally loud neighbors, and his entire family's travel itinerary for the next 60 days. The place was beautiful, and after drinking some juice with him we agreed to meet the next day if we were still interested.

After seeing some more places we realized that Juan's apartment was the best and we went to Chelsea to meet him. We met in a McDonald's (one of the few places open on January 1st) and started going over some details. Then Juan suggested that we go to a place to see his friends so that we would all "feel more comfortable."

We walked over to a small building and knocked on the door and we were greeted by Mother Teresa-style nun, right down to the age, skin tone and texture, lively eyes, and tolerant yet mischievous smile. She ushered us into a small meeting room which had a large painting of Jesus and as we sat down to talk some more nuns joined us. The nuns asked us questions and helped us with copies and office supplies as we settled a minor dispute on rent terms, until Juan agreed, "it's good. good for you, good for me."

As we sat there, handwriting the final details of our agreement on convent letterhead, I was struck by the absurdity of the situation. Here we were in Chelsea, the Castro of New York City, making a deal for a sublet with a Basque Spaniard in the presence of South American nuns under the watchful eyes of a large portrait of Jesus.

When we're not working, we're often enjoying home cooked curries, UPS'd cookies, or wild turkey. When we're not doing either of those things, we're usually taking advantage of a snowball fight with the Steves.

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.

Well, it's certainly been a busy two months!  So much so that we got distracted from writing a second monthly update earlier in September.

Recently, we've had some pretty interesting developments:

First, we're incredibly happy to share that our little startup has grown by 50% in size.  Or, in other words, a third person has recently decided to join Jeff and me on our adventure!  I'd better skimp on the details for now and let him post his own introduction and story as soon as he's had the opportunity to wrap things up at his current gig and settle down here.  But suffice it to say, we're all incredibly excited.

Second, we're moving!  The initial plan was to work out of space in my parents' home in Los Angeles for the first six months, but Jeff and I felt that having three of us living and working full-time would be a bit overkill (despite their awesome level of support in offering to make it work).  Luckily, Jeff's family graciously offered us an empty apartment to live and work out of on their property on Beaver Island, Michigan.

So, in a move that has left some of our friends and family scratching their heads, we're taking the show on the road for roughly another three months while we burrow away and continue to develop technology together from the island.

Here are some pictures of Beaver Island in the winter (courtesy of the Beaver Beacon):

If you would like to come visit us, there are daily and charter flights available through Fresh Air Aviation and Island Airways (Jeff developed the flight reservation system), or ferry rides through Beaver Island Boat Co (until the lake freezes over).

Is this startup suicide?  Paul Graham and The New York Times both might have you believe so!  But the argument that all startups must begin in Silicon Valley seems to hinge on "all other things being equal", which they rarely if ever are.  We're hoping that our divergent path will enable us to invest more time early in developing differentiating technology, bootstrapping all-the-while for as long as possible.  And then, eventually, we'll return to a metropolis, rejoin the tech world, and start going to trendy "Lunch 2.0" style events again (if they still exist).

So, with that, we'll be departing LA over the last weekend in October.  Jeff will be driving his car another 2,000 miles back to Michigan.  I'll be sticking around for my Dad's birthday on the 28th, and rendezvousing with Jeff and secret agent #3 at the airport in Flint, Michigan.

Before we go, we'll be hitting up this month's October g33k d1nner, and we're planning a quick visit to the bay area.  If you're up there and know us or wanna meet us, drop us a line!