EP 340 · 47 min · 21 May 2018
Kurt Mackey - Improvising Opportunity
Kurt Mackey talks with Dave Rael about Fly, family, software, business, and improv
Kurt Mackey ran tech for Ars Technica, then left to build compose.io (prev. MongoHQ, YC S11), which was sold to IBM. Now, he's a cofounder of Fly.io. He also does a little improv at Second City in Chicago to keep things interesting.
Chapters:
- - Dave introduces the show and Kurt Mackey
- - The context, history, opportunity, and status of fly.io
- - Surprising user behavior
- - The reasons for open sourcing fly.io
- - Kurt's experiences with Ars Technica
- - The similarities and differences between building systems and building teams
- - Humility, business, improv, and technical talks
- - The tendencies of developers to undervalue themselves and Fly's equity grants to open source developers
- - Kurt's story of failure - family difficulties with Kurt's travel, spending time and money of distractions
- - Kurt's book recommendation
- - Kurt's top 3 tips for delivering more value
- - Keeping up with Kurt
Resources:
Kurt's book recommendation:
Kurt's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
- Get over your pride and get something out there
- Optimize for success, don't try to prevent failure
- Build real friendships with people who have common interests