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I built Dodgeball as a grad school thesis. I never thought Google would buy it. But when they did, I assumed that meant it was going to grow. I was wrong about that.
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Google bought Dodgeball and then did nothing with it. That was painful. But it also proved the idea was right — and that we should build it ourselves.
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The check-in was never the point. The point was understanding where people go and why — and turning that into something useful.
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New York has a real startup community. It is not Silicon Valley, and that is actually a strength.
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The hardest part of any pivot is convincing your team that the old version of the company is not the same as giving up.