Zinch

Inside Zinch China

I wish I had more time to write this. I gotta head to work. But here is just a glimpse inside Zinch China. So cool. What started in a dorm room is now global. Humbling to say the least. Great to meet the folks that work so hard day in and day out to make this company great. Great to see the Zinch culture abroad. Hasn’t changed. What’s doctrine is doctrine. A playful culture of fun, yet one of ‘ get ‘r done’, hard work and intensity. No suits or ties, but plenty of sweat (not sweatshop) and grit. More coming later i’m sure…

Tom giving a little intro. He’s probably talking smack about us. :)

We had lunch with the team at this place. So delicious.
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Al brought some “grills.”
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“Grills.” You know, like Lil Wayne. Mouth Gold.
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Barack Obama tweets

The man actually cares about me. I’m almost a democrat.

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New CEO at Zinch

As many of you have already heard, we have a new CEO at Zinch. Her name is Anne Dwane and she is a rock star.  Harvard b-school.  Cofounder of Military.com.  Sold it to Monster.  Has been with Monster for years as a General Manager.  Now joining us.  We’ve known Anne for about 9 months now; the more we get to know her, the more we like her.  You can check out her bio, her LinkedIn profile, and her Facebook Profile to better understand what she’s all about.  We are excited to have her and we think she compliments our team well.

Everyone who knows her would agree that she is fun to be around, easy to work with, and very thoughtful in her approach.  She’s a proven leader, a seasoned entrepreneur, tough when she needs to be tough, and an all-around talented individual.

We believe Zinch has an enormous amount of potential.  Our team is full of young, hard working, scrappy entrepreneurs.  Much of our talent is raw –ready to be enhanced, enabled, and amplified.  We believe that Anne has exactly what it takes to achieve just that and to help our team stay focused and disciplined as we scale.

This is a huge step for us.  Huge.  We didn’t take this decision lightly.

Nonetheless, we know this is the right step for Zinch.  We want Zinch to succeed more than anything.  We want it to reach its full potential and to really make the impact on education that it can.  To do that, we need to surround ourselves with people who are better, stronger, and smarter than us (especially our leader).  Anne certainly is.  We are happy to have Anne join our team and we are excited to embrace the challenges ahead. We trust her and believe in her.  She is the new captain of our ship.

As Obama says, this is change we can believe in.

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Slow Motion

Sometimes i’ll get these dreams at night where i’m involved with some sort of activity that requires running. Sometimes i’m playing basketball or soccer; sometimes i’m being chased by bad guys; sometimes I find myself running for reasons I can’t remember.

Whenever I’m running in a dream, I feel like i’m going sooooo freeeeaaakin’ slow. It’s frustrating. I can never quite understand why my feet are so heavy.

Anyway, this same feeling is exactly how I feel with work right now. I know where we’re going. I know what it’s gonna take. And I know we are on the right path. However, I just wish we could move quicker.

It’s funny though because by any measure, we are moving quickly. We are. I’m always tweeting about that and we are constantly launching new tools and features, innovating, and being nimble. We are definitely movin’ and groovin.’

But still…I wanna go go go! I can feel it. I see it. I know it. The rocket is on the launchpad and just rumbling, grumbling, and getting ready to go. It’s close though. It’s very close.  I just really, really, really wanna get there today.  Not tomorrow.

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NACAC

I’m at NACAC right now in Seattle.  It’s the biggest conference of the year surrounding college admissions, guidance counselors, admissions officers, etc.  I’m looking forward to these next few days.  They are extremely important for us.  Word.

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40 under 40

Utah Valley BusinessQ recently came out with their Top 40 Under 40. They selected me to be on there. I’m not sure why/how they selected me and not Brad, Sid or any of the other guys (they deserved it just as much if not more than I did). But I certainly appreciate the honor and will try to represent well :). Here’s the article and i’m on this page.

The whole theme around it is “school” and I think it’s funny cuz I dropped out of school and the business we run is all about helping kids get into school. I love the irony in it all.

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Surya and co

This is a shout out to all our offshore developers in India.  You guys seriously dominate.

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Raising Capital

An interview I did with Silicon Slopes here. Word.

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Simple

When Zinch goes big and i’ve hopefully made a few dollars, I wanna spend an entire summer in Europe living exactly like the picture below.

We might have a little one (or two) by then…and that’ll make it even more adventurous. The only disturbing thing about the image is that freaky doll in the car. I hope i’m not the only one that sees it.

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What some people will do….

…to get attention and perhaps a viral video.

On another note….more success with the biz….
Here’s the press release.

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