I build companies that make the physical world work better.
I've been building companies since I was 14, including Rent the Backyard (YC S19), a backyard home startup that hit a $10m run rate. Before that, I studied Statistics & Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon, where I paid my tuition by arbitraging textbooks.
Enduring businesses, and enduring nations, are built by optimizing the physical world: energy, housing, manufacturing, transportation.
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10 May 2019
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blog
While the usual suspects ended up buying a handful of A380s due to national pressure (Lufthansa, Air France, British Airways), delusions of grandeur (Malaysia, Thai), or me-too syndrome (Asiana, Etihad, Qatar), there was really only one airline that truly loved the airplane. That was Emirates.
- A cool
airplane blog I like to read
Airlines and their routes are fun because the decision to fly a plane from one city to another can be made from more than just an immediate profit seeking perspective.
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16 Mar 2019
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blog
How did all this get financed? Islam doesn’t seem so big on charging interest so bonds wouldn’t be an option.
- me wondering about all the nifty architechture and skyscrapers in (relatively) oil poor Dubai
I just arrived back in Pittsburgh after spending a week at Carnegie Mellon’s campus in Doha, Qatar. My time on Doha was incredible and something I’ll very much be digesting over the coming weeks and may write about soon on this blog. I wanted to thank all of the students at CMU-Q for their hospitality (I had heard much about Arab hospitality and was still blown away by the generosity and kindness I was afforded) and for the administrators at CMU (Kevn D’Arco, Elizabeth Coder, Lenny Chan, and especially Renee Camerlengo) for all the work they did in to make this trip possible. They enabled our two groups and all the others who we interacted with to see the world as a smaller, more similar, place. I also wanted to thank my CMU-Q partner Rameez who got excited when I told him I had a blog and has definitely read more of these posts than my mother :p
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10 Jan 2019
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blog
English please
- A waiter at this really
yummy pub in Bratislava, Slovakia, the other day after I asked if he preferred English or German
I know Slovakians speak Slovak. I just found it really interesting that in Bratislava – less than two miles from the border with Austria that English was the language of choice after Slovak (for both the waiter and the menu). This interest is perhaps misguided and it’s entirely reasonable for former countries of the Eastern Block to speak languages (Czech, Polish, etc) reflective of their history behind the Iron Curtain but it’s been nearly 30 years and Slovakia makes an exceedingly large number of (mainly German) cars.
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10 Oct 2018
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blog
Do you have a view?
- interview the other week
I’ve become convinced British Prime Minister Theresa May is playing chicken.
The other day, the Tories (Conservative) held their party conference where May declared an end to austerity, called for a softer Brexit and declared that “there are better days ahead.” I fundamentally don’t understand how this can be true given the mindset of its leaders across both parties, an ugly superiority complex fundamental to national identity that the country has failed to shake since the dissolution of the Empire, and a general failure to grow.
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05 Sep 2018
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blog
But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.
- New York Times
Anonymous Oped this Week
