Crash Dev is created by Chris DeVore. Seattle-based startup guy + seed-stage investor at Founders' Co-op, Managing Director at Techstars Seattle, Stanford GSB, Yale / Y150
Regular readers know that I’m obsessed with the Future of Work — a catch-all phrase for the many ways in which the global labor markets are being reshaped by technology. One visible element of this trend is the acute scarcity of digital creative talent, creating what I call “The Maker Moment“– the current golden opportunity continue…
The crew at GeekWire — Seattle’s leading tech media + events platform — invited me to keynote this year’s Seattle Startup Awards. My notes for the speech are reproduced below (the picture is by Adam Loving) — the same content, plus a video of the speech, can be found on GeekWire: I want to talk to continue…
Marc Andreesen’s battle cry — software is eating the world — is true at both the macro and the micro level. As organizations become increasingly software- and data-powered, software development practices have escaped from IT to become organization- and process-design principles for the entire enterprise. This point was driven home for me this week by continue…
I was chatting with a startup lawyer here in Seattle the other day about California’s recent income tax changes and their potential impact — both real and psychological — on how high-performing startup founders think about where to build their next company. I’m mostly a tax policy skeptic when it comes to entrepreneurial decision-making; in continue…
This post first appeared on Medium.com Startup culture fetishizes simplicity. In products, business models and founder narratives, points are given for clean lines and beveled edges, and deducted for rough spots, long explanations and run-on sentences. Blame Steve Jobs, or @ev, for that matter — for creating this beautiful lie. Just don’t let their considerable continue…
For the past week or so I’ve been devouring — and hugely enjoying — Daniel Yergin’s comprehensive survey of the energy business, from the first oil strike in Pennsylvania, through the energy crises of the ’70’s and ’90’s up to the present era of fracking and (once again) abundant fossil fuels (natural gas this time continue…
We all want to believe that our work matters — that the 50 or 60 or 100 hours a week we spend away from our families actually makes a difference in our professional community and, if we’re lucky, in the wider world. As a self-taught venture investor — Andy and I started Founders’ Co-op five continue…
We just opened the application floodgates for our next TechStars Seattle class and I wanted to be sure that anyone who reads this blog got the word. For those who aren’t familiar with TechStars, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version (if you already know the deal, apply now!): What: TechStars is a three-month founder boot camp. continue…
I’m still not quite sure how this all came to pass, but I just trooped down to City Hall to be confirmed by the Seattle City Council as one of 15 members of a new City of Seattle Economic Development Commission. It’s an amazing group of people, including UW President Michael Young; Port of Seattle continue…
Everybody knows that Amazon.com is an amazing business (or collection of businesses): the global leader in online retail; innovator and front-runner in cloud infrastructure; emerging digital advertising juggernaut; and much more besides. But seen up close — my office is located in the middle of the company’s South Lake Union campus and I interact with continue…