matthew yazzie

Create New Emotions

sfmatt — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 20:01:00 -0800

I do not consider myself a “foodie.” I love good food, but what really makes me excited about any great restaurant is the experience.

Ferran Adrià is considered one of the top chefs in the world and was the head chef of an outstanding restaurant called El Bulli in Spain. A documentary was created about his creative process before he announced he was closing his restaurant.

The documentary moves a little slowly and it’s entirely subtitled, but it’s one of the most fantastic views into how this restaurant continued to push culinary boundaries.

As I was watching, I jotted down three general good life things that I took away from the film.

Consistently challenge your own work. One great quote he has is “Don’t give me anything that isn’t good.”
Create new emotions. Fundamental to his success is his ability to emotionally connect people to food.
Don’t just change. Redefine. In order to create new emotions, he consistently pushes to redefine cooking and food itself.

Good stuff.

Busy at Incredible Labs

sfmatt — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:22:04 -0700

Busy at Incredible Labs:

You can check out what our team has been up to!

It’s been an amazing time. Difficult to believe that I’ve only been here for a little more than a month.

I think Time answered their own question on the same page! Good...

sfmatt — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:56:41 -0700

I think Time answered their own question on the same page!

Good job Time!

An Open Letter to Open Letters

sfmatt — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 05:29:39 -0700

Hi Future Open Letter Person,

If you’ve been working in Silicon Valley long enough and NOT been screwed over, then you’re obviously doing it wrong.

I’m all for venting, but that’s why you should really have close friends. If some were your colleagues, even better! They can relate and they’ll also probably buy you a beer when you leave. Win-win!

However, if you’re mad set on publicly doing it, go vent to a journalist. This way you can at least blame him or her if you come off sounding bitter. The journalist (if he or she is good) will ask your former company for a comment. If said company is in the wrong (and I’ll just assume they are), they won’t comment. You sound like the winner. Go you!

Just don’t go breaking your confidentiality stuff.

And seriously… look into having one or two close friends. They’re (usually) cheaper than venting to a therapist.

-m@

Yazzie's Veruca Salt Moment and @Postmates to the Rescue

sfmatt — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 02:14:00 -0700

“I want my cinnamon gummy bears and I WANT IT NOW!!!” - Matthew Yazzie at ~8PM

That was my Veruca Salt moment on Saturday night right before heading out for a weekend trip. I wanted two Coke Zeros and three bags of cinnamon gummy bears. Nearest store that carries these is a 25 minute one-way walk and I still had to shower and pack.

Option 1 - Taskrabbit

Sorry buds. My past experience had indicated that you’re a little too slow for quick jobs like these, but you’re awesome at random larger items and tasks. Also, I have had several “rabbits” not stick to the exact instructions when I’ve been super explicit. I usually end up with something in the ballpark of original order, but not exact.

Option 2 - TCB Courier

Cool bike dudes. I’m just outside the delivery zone, so my delivery fee alone is $13.

Price of bears, $0.85 x 3 = $2.55
Price of sodas, $1.75 x 2 = $3.50

Total for snacks = $6.05 < Half of delivery fee = ($13/2)
My items are less than half the delivery fee. Nope.

Option 3 - Postmates

Beta testing a “Get it now” feature this past weekend, PLUS they have March Madness promotion of $4.99 per delivery. Score!

I submitted my order along with a photo I took of the Amazon screen where they had the exact gummy bears I wanted.

The first time around, I got this message.

‘Doh! Almost. Tried a couple more times, but no dice.

So, I Tweeted this:

All @Postmates couriers are too busy to pick up my cinnamon gummy bears & Coke Zero. Forced to call an actual courier. twitter.com/mjyazzie/statu…
— m@ (@mjyazzie) March 11, 2012

Then, I immediately got a response back from Postmates CEO with this:

@mjyazzie Matthew, I’m sorry but it looks as if we underestimated the demand. Will send you a promo code to make up for it.
— Bastian Lehmann (@Basti) March 11, 2012

Wow! You go Postmates. You go Bastian! So great!

At this point, it was too late and I had to go, but I thanked him.

The next night, I thought I would try again.

Success!!!

I was enjoying my candy one hour later. Bastian the CEO also generously sent me a code to use for a future delivery. Way cool guy.

I used Postmates once before when I needed a table delivered from Stuff on Valencia. $15 for a two-hour delivery. I had a discount for being a new user, so it was only $10 to have a table picked up, brought to my building, up the stairs, and right into my living room.

Couple thoughts

1. Unlike Uber, it’s not clear if we should tip or if the drivers/couriers are paid high enough to cover tips. Clarify this?
2. Currently, there’s no website to do the service. As far as I know, you have to download the app.
3. The Postmates app is far better than the Taskrabbit one. Way less involved.

Love them. Try them out if you have a chance.

Postmates

Didn't Work

sfmatt — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 07:42:18 -0800

I did a Google search for “Google Analytics” and got this as the result.

WTF Google?!?! I don’t want your silly Google+ results ruining my actual search results.

So, I went to my search settings and blocked all results from the following:

Then, I searched again on Google and got the following results:

Why did I think that would actually work?

Why I ♥ Branch

sfmatt — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 05:06:00 -0800

For the past year, I’ve had an amazing opportunity to work and engage with some pretty talented individuals.

One group in particular were the co-founders from Branch (formerly Roundtable). I had the honor of working with Josh, Cemre, and Hursh for a few weeks and they’ve stood out as really humble and talented entrepreneurs.

Their product impressed me for three reasons:

Places a tremendous value in actual dialogue.
Focuses on quality of content.
Potential for broader vertical reach.

I’ve witnessed that half the battle of running a successful company or team is finding the right people to work with. Already, with just their founding team alone, they’re off to a good start. Also, it’s exciting to see their partnership with The Obvious Corporation.

I foresee a few problems creeping up that will need solving:

People love to hear themselves talk.
Dialogue isn’t always linear.
Value to “important” dialogue changes per user.

Something tells me they’ll find a way to figure this out.

You’ll be able to find @branchinc at SXSW.

Branch’s official announcement