When I first came in mathura in 2001 just a 7 year old kid after a sudden transfer from KOLKATA, I wanted to get into ST.DOMINIC’S SCHOOL, just because I had already heard about it and the fun they used to have..and K.D, JOHNSON and their FRIENDSHIP ofcourse, from my brother who was a dominican then………. but didn’t get the chance that time……….. and had to wait 8 long years to get into this prestigious school……..

A Dream Come True!

first day in school…. sat with KARAN KARTIK GUPTA who was just an acquaintance before.(is one of my best friends now)……. that day itself I felt the awesomeness of the school coz that day itself I was given a chance of leadership and probably the FIRST responsibility of my life….. to be the GREEN HOUSE CAPTAIN …. and I tried hard to justify their confidence in me. bagging the first position(GREEN HOUSE) that year though by the slimmest of margins…………….

but the time spent wid the friends during those days on the back benches. playing all sorts of games from antakshari to “thief minister police king”…….. every day convincing our C.S. teacher to allow us a games period (which although was a formality, we eventually got the permission that way or the other)…. and once our CS teacher himself came to play….. and returned wid one leg swollen ……..

we did almost every thing, breaking chairs was our favorite pastime in recess……. played cricket wid badminton racket..football(which we just played to irritate our dear friend NAVNEET commenting on him missing every opportunity to score after all the boasting)… still remember ANNANYA’S window breaking hits…..

we enjoyed practically too…. i.e while doing practicals in lab…….. burning all the sodium AFTER STEALING…. doing facebook in computer lab and all sorts of bcd with DHRUV,ANNANYA,KARAN,ARCHIT,SHIVAM,etc…in the physics lab………….

The best use lab instruments were put to.

last few days in the school..it was like posing all day in different moods…… be it BOARD PRACTICAL, FAREWELL

Suit up!!

Hello Monkeys, You got competition!!

or any oter day……… and our favorite place for all those shooting was basketball court………….  and besides this…..
the time off the school was even more refreshing…… with SHIKHAR – ARAT arguably the best pair dominics would have seen……… races on activas..doing all sorts of mischieves with KARAN ,ANNANYA,SHIVAM while driving is still freshin my mind

going place with all the friends( even the principals office for punishment) was fun…… teachers scolding us. telling us to study( which we never did)…. bhattacharya mam(an experience in itself)……

really . DOMINIC’S is not just a school…….. it is a life……………….

REALLY

“ONCE A DOMINICAN….. ALWAYS IS A DOMINICAN”..

Naveen.

I go back to the first two years of my B.Tech in VIT,Vellore. Those two years were the most memorable days of my life with my friends. That was the first time when i had to stay in hostel. I had to describe a particular group of stones here. Are you thinking what are these stones?? HaHa.These are the HILL STONES!!This was the name we gave ourselves to our group of friends. I had to mention the origin of this name and the one one who kept the name.There are some hills and some stones on the hills and we boys named ourselves as   ‘HILL STONE BOYS‘!!!

Each one this stone(friend)left me some memorable experiences to remember. Some were calm like me,some were Aggressive,some were Humorous,some were Crazy.The aggressor of the group,Naveen Raman who is one of the Tamil-Telugu remix of our group. He is such an aggressive person when the discussion comes about one person,SRT. Of course who would not be?? He was also my room mate for these two years.Follows cricket like hell and plays well too.

Next comes is his Goutham who is also one of the devotees of SRT. Such a crazy friend. A true one-side lover One of the guys with whom you cannot get bored. He is sensitive in love matters and has no shame in other matters

Then there is another Aggressor in the group. I know this guy before coming to VIT but these are the two years when we became good friends.Rishi!! A deep follower of football and devotee of Pawan Kalyan. You must have sen this person in the headlines because he is the one who showed the PAWANISM in USA.And he is from my home town.Another important thing. RGV is his Uncle!! He is such a damn person when it comes to sleeping. Can sleep for hours and hours.

And after telling about Rishi,you have to definitely tell about don of Anakapalle, Srujan.He is a true devotee of Rishi. I can say that he became crazy for football only after seeing Rishi talk  about football. A true legend of our group.Always thinks in a different angle and does things in another angle.Xtralu baaga ekkuva edhavaki!!

There is also lover boy in our group,Naveen.Looks like he is silent but when he gets going nobody can stop him. Such an idiot he is. lol.He always stays in his own world. He is a good team man and a so-so wonderful person.

Then comes another Telugu-Tamil re-mix of our group Murali Krishnan.He is  a very hard worker and a nice guy to be with.He tries very hard in whatever work he does. Whether it is studies or learning Telugu or playing cricket. You just cannot bare his Telugu

Next in the list is Raghuram. He is such a crazy guy. He is one guy whose words i find very interesting because he used to talk what i dont know. He is like one of the pillars of our group,when it comes to height A sensitive person from inside and at the same time an Agressive person from outside.Kanabadadu gaani chaala chilipi boy..

Then there is Raghunath in our group whom i dont know that much in the first year. It is only during the second year that i came to know more about him. He is another person who does things very silently. I can say he is the calm guy  of our group.

If there is one one true devotee of cricket it has to be Suraj.  He hails from the state of Dhana-dhan Dhoni but basically a Telugu guy. He is also silent but when it comes to cricket he is the the one who talks a lot. have told very less,infact in one line about all my friends in the group. But if there is one person whom i can speak volumes it has to be Dappu Yogesh. He is one person who can provide continuous entertainment in the group.He always talks something and i bet u, u have to laugh whenever he talks. He is the most active person in the group and a person with whom you can spend time for long hours.I can say he is the stand-out person in our group

Then comes the yo-yo boy of our Group, Hasanth. I can just say that he is good! The hard worker in our group.Then there is Bhargav who is very studious,very big and the odd one among our group because he studies too much Then there is also Yuvraj who is also a very person to be with.Then there is Satish, the psycho of our group Such a deep thinker of anything. There is Thyaga Royal who is another stand-out person in the group. He is a funny guy and one of the best companies of Dappu.Not to forget Dinesh who i came to know only in the final year and then the Hadavidi Abhiram,who is known to the each and every one.

Then the person whom i like that extra percent than the other friends in the group,Sabarinadh. Not that he is better than the other friends, but just because of his madness Nobody understands what he is going to do and he is thinking. He is the Posaani of our Group. He is another nice guy to be with.

There have been some misunderstandings during these two years but all that is negligible when it is compared to the happy times we have spent among ourselves.We had some trips to places,meetings in our rooms and every moment i have spent is memorable. I cannot get this type of friends again and hoping that we keep in touch for the coming 25 years

Thanks a lot for all the memorable memories you gave me and i am just hoping that i see each one of you soon!!

Mridul Kumar Singh (quite a heavy name for a 2^nd standard student) was the guy I sat next to on my first day. He’s still a good friend of mine, although in class IV he moved to Agra, then to Aligarh, then to Bulandshehar, then Meerut and now he is back in Agra. I don’t remember much of my primary school days. Apart from the fact that my first Class Teacher (I don’t remember her name) gave me a book titled “Akbar and Birbal” on my Birthday and I read it twice on that day itself.

In the first two years at school, I used to be too much afraid of my teachers to indulge in any kind of mischievous tasks. The punishments scared me. We had a strict Principal in Fr. Dabre and I was always afraid of him. Most of my encounters with him happened only at prize distribution ceremonies (Yes, I received many prizes) so I don’t exactly remember how he used to punish students. But he punished me once when I teased a classmate of mine for his short height. All I said was “Teri height to zara si hai, tujhe to nursery me hona chahiye”. Clearly not good enough a reason to make a 3^rd class student stand outside the class for 30 mins. Also it was this year that I topped my class for the first time. Sadly, also the last time. After that, there were people like Charul, Janhavi, Lavya, Esha (back in those days, she used to be’ Isha’ ), Surbhi, Sugandha and some other members of the fairer sex who used to occupy the top positions. I still used to be among the top boys.

The next 3-4 years just rushed past and I don’t remember much that is worth a mention here. Though, I did make some great friends and met some great teachers. It is my time in and after Class 9^th that I most clearly remember about. I became the C.C.A Captain of the school (I always wanted to be the Yellow House Captain, but could never be. And that is why I Archit always remained an envy). Since my days in Class 2, I had always wanted to sport a Captain’s badge, for that to me seemed a big thing. Mind you, those were the days when there used to be only 14 captains, so being a captain was considered a big thing. But, as I discovered later, it wasn’t. I didn’t become a school celebrity as I had thought. All I got to do was bunk a few more classes than others, conduct the morning assembly sometimes, pull out students not in proper uniforms make sure that they ran the entire circumference of the playground on Saturdays. Class 10^th was all about the Board Exams. More about it later.

And then, Class 11^th and 12^th. Those were the two years when studies had taken the backseat (actually, the seat behind the backseat, if there is one). Most of the time was spent outside the class, and that inside the class was spent in playing (everything from ‘Cricket with a Badminton racquet’ to ‘Fan breaking Football’, and also the usual boring games on paper), eating, sleeping, breaking chairs and making fun of non-Hindi speaking teachers. And the last few days, school had been reduced to nothing more than a photo studio.

this is what we did in labs….and as you can see it clearly is not performing experiments!!!!!!

this is what we did in labs….and as you can see it clearly is not performing experiments!!!!!!

There are many things I can go on about endlessly. All that my great teachers taught and all that I learnt is too big for just one post. So, I better stop now. And, I’ll write more about the awesome times I had in school later. Sayonara!!

Annanya Johari.                

I was too good an actor you know!!

If you’re a fan of both, I think you’ll appreciate the great lengths this artist went through to draw this up.  Look at their hardened faces, too! Notice the change of the mockingjay icon to something less birdlike and more fairylike.

DeviantArt Artist: blastedgoose
Download the full-sized image by clicking on the artist name.

The artist, blastedgoose, even put in little explanations for why each duo would be in those districts and for the most part, it works.

District 1 (Luxury) – Aladdin & Jasmine I had to choose characters who represented luxury, at the same time intimidating enough to be Careers. With themes like greed & temptation (Cave of Wonders) and Aladdin’s misguided notion that love be won with power and riches, they seemed to be a good fit.

District 2 (Masonry) – Shang & Mulan Shang and Mulan is the only Disney couple who are both military trained, so it makes sense they belong in the District that specializes in weapons and Capitol soldiers. Also, I can def see them as Careers.

District 3 (Technology) – Milo & Kida Who else imagined Beetee to look like Milo in the books? I did! I know Atlantis isn’t one of the more popular movies, but Milo and Kida fit in so well that I couldn’t leave them out! Plus the movie’s steam punk vibe totally fits the HG!

District 4 (Fishing) – Eric & Ariel Need I say more?

District 5 (Power) – Hercules & Meg Power has a triple meaning here. In the books, it refers to electricity, which goes hand in hand with the God of Thunder’s son. The second meaning is physical power, which Hercules possesses. Thirdly, the movie is all about the power of love, which is what drove Meg to sacrifice her life for Herc, and vice versa.

District 6 (Transportation) – Naveen & Tiana I thought of transportation here in an abstract sense. Of the Disney movies, the Princess and the Frog was the one that focused most on the concept of journey: the literal journey from the town to the Bayou and back, the emotional journey from ambition/greed to love, and the transformational journey from frog to human.

District 7 (Lumber) – Tarzan & Jane I know lumber comes from the forest and Tarzan is set in the jungle but SHUSH! It fits okay???

District 8 (Textile) – Charming & Cinderella Cinderella is basically a story about how a maid snagged a prince because she was wearing a nice outfit. Textiles = cloth = outfit. So there.

District 9 (Grain) – Beast & Belle This was the hardest to place. Beast and Belle fit NONE of the Districts, but they fell into the category of “how angry fans would be if I didn’t include him/her.” I tried to justify it by thinking that grain = seed = rose? Contrived but there you go. By the way… in this world, Beast is a muttation. When he was a child, he was affected by some radiation or whatever, but it only affected his physical appearance so he’s still eligible to compete in the HG.

District 10 (Livestock) – Quasimodo & Esmeralda Nothing too deep…I thought of Esmeralda’s goat and that was enough for me. Why not Phoebus? Because I hate him.

District 11 (Agriculture) – John Smith & Pocahontas Corn!

District 12 (Mining) – “The Prince” & Snow White The dwarfs were miners! Close enough! Oh and here’s some trivia for you. People think Cinderella and Snow White’s princes were both named “Charming” but actually, SW’s prince has never been referred to as such. He’s simply “the Prince.”

I’ve decided to take a poll on this then.  Which district would you say the victor would come from?  Vote below!

If you’re a fan of both, I think you’ll appreciate the great lengths this artist went through to draw this up.  Look at their hardened faces, too!  Notice the change of the mockingjay icon to something less birdlike and more fairylike.

DeviantArt Artist: blastedgoose
Download the full-sized image by clicking on the artist name.

The artist, blastedgoose, even put in little explanations for why each duo would be in those districts and for the most part, it works.

District 1 (Luxury) – Aladdin & Jasmine I had to choose characters who represented luxury, at the same time intimidating enough to be Careers. With themes like greed & temptation (Cave of Wonders) and Aladdin’s misguided notion that love be won with power and riches, they seemed to be a good fit.

District 2 (Masonry) – Shang & Mulan Shang and Mulan is the only Disney couple who are both military trained, so it makes sense they belong in the District that specializes in weapons and Capitol soldiers. Also, I can def see them as Careers.

District 3 (Technology) – Milo & Kida Who else imagined Beetee to look like Milo in the books? I did! I know Atlantis isn’t one of the more popular movies, but Milo and Kida fit in so well that I couldn’t leave them out! Plus the movie’s steam punk vibe totally fits the HG!

District 4 (Fishing) – Eric & Ariel Need I say more?

District 5 (Power) – Hercules & Meg Power has a triple meaning here. In the books, it refers to electricity, which goes hand in hand with the God of Thunder’s son. The second meaning is physical power, which Hercules possesses. Thirdly, the movie is all about the power of love, which is what drove Meg to sacrifice her life for Herc, and vice versa.

District 6 (Transportation) – Naveen & Tiana I thought of transportation here in an abstract sense. Of the Disney movies, the Princess and the Frog was the one that focused most on the concept of journey: the literal journey from the town to the Bayou and back, the emotional journey from ambition/greed to love, and the transformational journey from frog to human.

District 7 (Lumber) – Tarzan & Jane I know lumber comes from the forest and Tarzan is set in the jungle but SHUSH! It fits okay???

District 8 (Textile) – Charming & Cinderella Cinderella is basically a story about how a maid snagged a prince because she was wearing a nice outfit. Textiles = cloth = outfit. So there.

District 9 (Grain) – Beast & Belle This was the hardest to place. Beast and Belle fit NONE of the Districts, but they fell into the category of “how angry fans would be if I didn’t include him/her.” I tried to justify it by thinking that grain = seed = rose? Contrived but there you go. By the way… in this world, Beast is a muttation. When he was a child, he was affected by some radiation or whatever, but it only affected his physical appearance so he’s still eligible to compete in the HG.

District 10 (Livestock) – Quasimodo & Esmeralda Nothing too deep…I thought of Esmeralda’s goat and that was enough for me. Why not Phoebus? Because I hate him.

District 11 (Agriculture) – John Smith & Pocahontas Corn!

District 12 (Mining) – “The Prince” & Snow White The dwarfs were miners! Close enough! Oh and here’s some trivia for you. People think Cinderella and Snow White’s princes were both named “Charming” but actually, SW’s prince has never been referred to as such. He’s simply “the Prince.”

I’ve decided to take a poll on this then.  Which district would you say the victor would come from?  Vote below!

my wife’s brother

my wife’s brother

What race is this man?

Does seeing his parents help?

Why didn’t Disney then make him black?  Perhaps they did not want to stretch credibility too far.  He (or another character does in Naveen’s form) have an interracial romance with Charlotte who is desperate to marry him.  This romance is sanctioned and supported by her father, Big Daddy, a top figure in white New Orleans society.  At the time of the movie, New Orleans is segregated (seen in the movie), but moreover there had been earlier Nineteenth Century race riots in New Orleans and there were riots across the country during the Red Summer of 1919.  Thus, having Naveen be clearly black wooing a rich white young woman in 1920s, Jim Crow New Orleans would have been beyond even Disney’s historical logic.  While it is unlikely any dark skinned suitor would be accepted in this time period, Naveen’s royal connections, ambiguous ethnicity, and Charlotte and Big Daddy’s connections across the color line with Tiana and Eudora, provide at least a vaguely plausible explanation.

This analysis is too detailed for a fantastic movie featuring magic, metamorphosing frogs.  Still, when I see the film I can’t help but bemoan this Disney version of  the Jim Crow South.  Since I have students in class whose understanding of China comes from Mulan, I look into the future and see students whose sense of the 1920s American South will come from Tiana, Naveen, and Charlotte.

Charlotte and Big Daddy overjoyed over Naveen's arrival

Naveen Selvadurai from Foursquare dropped by amazing Founders House to have a chat a while back. As you might have guessed, he sure carries a lot of wisdom around. Of the many things he said, one particular almost Hinduistic insight struck home with me.

Naveen views life as a tree growing and trying to strive for the life-giving light. As the tree grows, the branches split up. Some grows to large trunks, and others never reach beyond the twig stage. Naveen point was that you are the tree – or rather your company is. It is your duty to always pick the branch where there is most light and which is likely to give room for more branches – or opportunities – in the future. Interesting! It is kind of like instilling opportunity costs theory with existentialism.

However, it also gives rise to the question, as to when are the tree your life and when is it the company that you have founded or work for? As an entrepreneur, when do your private branches and the company’s branches start and end? I mean everybody has been in this situation, where doing one thing would benefit you or your company, but not both. This is a really interesting thought, and my answer might surprise you…

The founder as entrepreneur

When you establish a company alone or with others, many compare it to give birth to a child you must now nurture and care for. That is not really true when put in the above context. For while you should always think of the child’s best branches, that is not necessarily true for a company, for we must remember what a company is. A company is a legal structure and institution that makes people able to align conflicting goals and utilize resources better over time, while trying to meet a demand for a product. The first part of that definition is like a child. Everybody can found a company and potentially keep it alive forever if they invest enough. But the last part is the important part. It is why companies are such a genius social institution: They breathe demand. So if you have given birth to a company (not a human, mind you) that is unable to breathe demand, it is not a normative responsibility to put its wellbeing in front of yours – you could be damaging the world by wasting your life power on this little twig rather than to go out on a trunk of a branch somewhere else. Twigs are the rarely pretty and can even be annoying, but they are a needed side effect of the tree of life trying to find light, or the humanity trying to find the best possible resource allocation, but they should not be nurtured beyond a certain stage. A surprising task of the entreprenuer is hence to always evaluate the company as a branch.

The employee as entrepreneur

First off, everybody should view themselves and be viewed as an entrepreneur of their own life. My good friend and associate Simon Schock has a really cool girlfriend Maia Mazaurette (read her blog here) who says it well, when on her Linkedin profile, she writes her current position, as “Freelance CEO of my own career”. Great! When you are an employee you spend a lot of time on a job for which you get pay (revenue). I think you as such have an ethical obligation to only think about the wellbeing of the company you work for – it is what you are paid for after all, not your own comfort or career. Great leaders realize this, and motivate employees with a vision to love and fight for the company only. Other leader types do not tap into this extra value pool in their employees, they don’t share and they never care*. Such leaders get lazy employees who only view their job as that, a job, and subsequently will chose only the branches of their private tree, not the company’s. This is really dangerous, as another great thing about companies as a structure is that they  decreases short term resource dependency, which leave mental room for long term strategy planning for secure higher pay out of sunlight – an intelligent tree if you like. Imaging that.

So on what kind of tree are you growing? And what about the people around you?

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and thank you Naveen for inspiration for my rant. Have a nice day y’all!

*) I have had the privilege to work for both types and needless to say, I prefer the visionary who get me to work long hours, by including me and saying a little nice word now and again. But who am I to judge.

3. Malika of Hyatt restaurant. She has the best giggle ever and lights up when I walk into the restaurant. Bless.

4. Mother India Temple in Varanasi. A spectacular structure of marble topography and a must see.

5. Clarks Hotel in Varanasi. Last decorated when Agatha Christie was actively writing novels.

6. Hotel Chandela Khurajaho chefs who taught me how to get local cuisine secrets from experts.

7. Jian monks who never wear clothes because material next to skin may incite desires. This has nothing to do with sex. Jian monks believe that any material possession close to them will disturb their journey towards total freedom from the 180 fixations. They wander around completely naked and no one bats an eyelid. I went to their temple in Khurajaho and saw all their statues of Buddha that strangely had large members of anatomy intact. Whilst there I went to the temple shop and purchased a little antique elephant toy. He is made of metal, is on wonky wheels and comes from the British rule days. The monks are happy to sell antiques they uncover from the temple excavation sites and they give the money to the poor. The monks are so peaceful they only eat in daylight hours lest they accidentally eat a bug in dim light.

8. Everywhere you go in India and Nepal there are book shops. BOOK SHOPS. Love it.

Here’s some photo’s of things that make me smile

Me looking like a grease monkey telly tubby and Vimal laughing hysterically.

The Varanasi Crematorium director’s house. Flashest house in the city.

The street in Kathmandu to score the good shit weed. Known as Hippy Street.

Where you go to smoke the weed.

Where you go when you’re high. Please note that the above three photos are lying down.

Beautiful decorations on buildings. This one is a magnificent peacock in all his glory. If it wasn’t so stunning I would put it in the not so flash list simply because you can’t see it the right way up. Blogspot, O look what you do to my photos!

The money exchange in Kathmandu. Unattended with big fat wads of cash on display. Maybe no one really does want Nepalese Rupees.

My writing table. I love you Nepal.

Not so flash.

1. Tour parties of oldies from Spain. NEVER get on a plane with them. They have no idea of airline safety and complain like crazy. I happened to be seated amongst them and the airline steward assumed I was one of them. She threw my in flight meal at me but the bonus was, it hit the window and bounced back landing upright on my tray table. Thank you God.

2. Indian travel agencies and airlines who do  NOT explain that when a plane lands it’s not at the airport where you are meant to disembark. Getting off at the wrong destination freaks out every airline official and makes the stewards cross.

3. Adaptor plugs that don’t hold the charging device in place. These reduce you to ad hoc interior rearrangement and construction of support structure from chairs, cushions and handy wipes to lever plug into submission.

4. Hotel staff who forget to programme in your wake-up call and you sleep in after long wakeful night of loud hailers celebrating a festival to one of the three million gods. As a result you run late for everything that day and look like shit so some guy in a shop asks if you’re fifty – five fuckin’ years old.

5. Children who beg. Some carry babies in their arms. These are kids no more than five years old carrying newborn infants. My heart breaks and I want to pour out the entire contents of my wallet. I feel this desperate urge to pick these kids up and take care of them. I learned that giving them hugs makes them angry. I’ve also learned that they hunt in packs with scouts. Give one child some money and suddenly 100 more appear and swamp you. The situation can quickly move from charity to danger. The guides all tell you to never give to a begging child. It’s bloody awful in every way imaginable.

6. Sights that aren’t open or don’t perform as they’re supposed to. Arrrrghhhhhhhhh. Here’s a list of photo’s of things I almost saw…

Extremely important temple. Only open on Fridays. I wasn’t there on a Friday.

Window where girl child God walks past to be seen but she never does or you go there on one of the 16 days of the year (like I did) when she’s out,

If the pigeons take off when you walk past, it’s good luck. Not one bloody bird took to the air when I arrived.

Museum opens to foreigners on Tuesdays. It wasn’t Tuesday. Oh, and fucking photos that rotate at will!

Paying to see the temple with silver doors of the greatest Shiva monument (cow). Finding out that it opens between 4am and 9am. It wasn’t between 4am or 9am. Plus, only Hindus are allowed inside. All I saw was a bloody great golden bovine arse. AND the photo rotated!!!!!!!!

1) Keep Great Company

Have great friends. Get brilliant people to bounce ideas off of. The more you talk about ideas, the better feedback you will get.

2) Make something that people want

It can be something people need. It can be something people don’t know they need. Sometimes it’s what you want and that’s important, but unless you make something people want, there’s no point.

3) Build around the idea of an atomic action

Focus around an action. A check-in, a swipe, a connection, a post, a friend. It’s important to focus your team on how you build a product.

4) Seek mentors early

It’s important to have people who have done this in the past help you think about your ideas and problems. Sometimes you won’t get feedback, but talking it through will help

5) At first, go with hunch. Then as you build, go with data

You’re building the product for what you want and what you want people to see. There you need to go with your gut. Once you have users, you can gauge your future decisions on their behavior along with your product behavior.

6) Balance unknowns with knowns

Startup life is unstable. There is no steady. It’s important to balance that with a steady personal life. Exercise, what you eat, your friends. You need to balance yourself with all the things that you can control

7) Always be recruiting

Recruiting could be a third to a half of your job as a founder. There is nothing that moves your company like quality people.

Foursquare is a location-based social networking website available to users with GPS-enabled mobile devices such as smartphones. Users “check-in” at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application by running the application and selecting from a list of venues that the application locates nearby.Each check-in awards the user points and sometimes “badges”. “Foursquare (website).” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 16 Sept. 2011. Web. 19 Sept. 2011.

My Foursquare badge list a.k.a trophy list. I recall it was only available in large market cities at first then it eventually launched in the smaller markets. When I signed up https://foursquare.com/jason_ I was User ID: 161,321. In 2010, the Foursquare user base grew at an exponential rate of 3,400% and they had a total of six million users signed up! The number of users has greatly increased since that blog post.

My first Foursquare check-in. 2,495 check-ins, and 170 badges later, Foursquare has become an integral part of my social media interaction with the world. On my recent vacation at the end of June first part of July, I shared the highlights of my vacation with those who follow me. Foursquare has allowed me to discover different places in cities I would have never seen had it not been for a user’s tip or suggestion. If you frequent a location enough you can eventually become the “mayor” of the venue. Some businesses offer discounts and specials for the mayor. I went to a barbershop this past Saturday and the special there was on your first check-in you receive a t-shirt. I thought it was pretty cool promo, one of the best I’ve seen so far.

Typically your initial check-in at a business location can earn you something like 15% off, or something similar. Usually when I go to check-in I generally see anywhere 29 to 30 specials available in the immediate surrounding vicinity. More and more businesses are seeing the value of having a presence on Foursquare. Previously, a business page had to be created by the Foursquare staff. Recently they started to allow end users to create their own business page on Foursquare. I’ve established a business page for my father’s company on Foursquare and I must say setup was quite easy and user friendly. If you submit at least five tips then your business page will be shuffled in the mix with the featured business pages on Foursquare. I bet they have the algorithm tweaked to look for the businesses who offer the most tips so I’d put as much as possible. In a short amount of time, Foursquare has established itself as the dominate location based check-in application. Other options such as Gowalla, Google Latitude, and the now defunct Facebook Places have not fared as well as some had projected they would. Gowalla for example, actually chose to join forces with Foursquare and are currently in the middle of making big changes to shift their focus from location based check-in to re-focus on travel with guides, and stories. As it stands now, the future of location based check-in appears to solely be in the hands of Foursquare. Businesses always mention Facebook and Twitter as their social media outlets of choice. What they don’t realize, Foursquare can offer them just as much if not more customer interaction and traffic to their brick and mortar store front or even their domain.

Met up with Foursquare CEO, Dennis Crowley

Oh look, and there's Foursquare co-founder Naveen

Our hack crew: @vkinc from DNKY, Jon Gottfried from Twilio, and the greatest designer alive: Freddy L. More on what we made later...

Going back now to complete our hack. Shout out to Nasdaq for sponsoring so many hackathons over last few weeks.