Listen to this episode on iTunes today! “When asking for help, appeal to self interest over mercy or gratitude” I met Chris Schelzi in early 2015. He was working at Black Rock at the time. Then we poached him to work with us on a startup. Chris helped that startup raise more than a quarter of a million dollars in a crowdfunding campaign. Now, he's …

You know those people that everybody seems to like? They have charisma. They're affable. Like Jeff Daniels on the Newsroom. That's Matt Javitch. Matt has been taking a barbell-approach to investing in Boston real estate and startups. He's my go-to resource for investment advice because, unlike some advisors who try to sell me their advice, he makes…

Sometimes you start a conversation with one intention, and digress into something completely different. This happened to me recently, in a conversation with an old friend and mentor, Johnny Boursiquot. Johnny and I were supposed to do a deep dive into Go Lang and Ruby in this hour long conversation. Instead we spent half an hour talking about Johnn…

Do you know somebody who loves to argue? I'm one of those people. So is Julia Kelly. We're great together. Julia is the most renowned caricature artist west of the Mississippi. She built her business from scratch and is currently starting business #2. I guess I caught her at a good time. When I asked her to do an interview with me. She made an inte…

Building products from scratch is hard. Building a business is at least as difficult. A lot of young founders and entrepreneurs lose their minds trying to grapple with the interwoven complexities of these disciplines. Chris Michaud has figured them both out. Chris is a rising phenom in the world of industrial design and manufacturing. In 2015 he le…

Peter Dunbar is a master conversationalist. I’ve seen him strike up engaging discussions with everyone from valets to Fortune 500 CEOs. That alone would make him impressive, but our guest today is also a hard-core hacker. I first knew him as the head of hardware at a start-up we both worked at. He graduated high school at 16 to pursue a life of eng…

Naf Visser is the CEO of Humans Working, an executive coaching firm that I worked with last year when I was managing the innovation department at Boston’s fastest growing tech agency and trying to get a nut butter company off the ground at the same time. He helped me manage that non-trivial workload through a mindfulness practice that I call the Ar…

David Wang is a genius-level engineer and computer scientist. He got a PhD at MIT focusing on planning for autonomous systems. He also holds degrees in techniques for improving software reliability, Aeronautics & Astronautics, Electrical Engineering, & Computer Science from MIT. His work experience includes time at JPL, Draper Labs, Northrop Grumma…

Diana Yuan is helping to lead the AI revolution. She is the COO of Boston’s scrappiest Machine Learning startup. Her, and her team of Olin Engineering dropouts, are democratizing machine learning tools for hackers all round the world. Startup founders have an earned reputation for nonsensical over-confidence. Often, they're impossible to spend time…

Andrew Dodson is one of the smartest hackers I know. Our conversations typically happen over coffee and Go (the ancient board game). We talk about physics and simulation theory. In fact, he once loaned me Simulation by Jean Baudrillard and I never returned it (sorry!). In episode 5 of Hacker Practice, I get the real scoop from Andrew. I am deeply i…

I met Nari Savanorke-Joyce while living with 20 other people in a double-wide row home in Boston's most elite neighborhood. She had just graduated from Wellesley College (Hilary Clinton's Alma Mater) and was getting started in entry-level corporate America. Within a year she had become one of her company's most valuable data scientists. Nari and I …

Stan Dutton overseeing a small group class at his old gym in Chinatown, Boston, MA. Stan Dutton is the co-owner of UpLifted Inc. in Boston. He was one of the top 20 165-pound powerlifters in the United States in 2014. He completed 300 hours of hands-on training at the American Academy of Personal Training and earned his Training for Warriors Level …

If you’ve ever heard the words “Big Data” and wondered what exactly that means, this is the episode for you. Jesse Anderson is the person Fortune 100’s go to when they realize they are ill-equipped to handle the challenges of big data. He is a totally self-taught genius who is currently defining a new field of computer science call Data Engineering…