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Baily Lighthouse,
Howth, Dublin 13,
Ireland

+353 86 328 7563

Contagious enthusiasm to plan, design, and implement really exciting digital media. Robin is CEO of "Decisions [D4H] - Multi-Award Winning Emergency Response Software"

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Creating Contagious Enthusiasm - A discussion by Robin Blandford

Awesome Moments

Robin Blandford

I've kept a list of moments I'd like to savour and replay in my mind as just awesome.  There are some things that can pass you by, that you need to stop for. I've 3 of these so far, and they've all come in the later rather than earlier stages of [D4H] - I always make a note of them when they happen.

They probably don't know I took this :-s but it was an awesome moment.

1. David our lead developer explaining codebase and ethos to our intern at the time, James Eggers. This was the first moment I realised we'd hit 3rd Generation. This was a key moment - David explained the product, the ethos, the concept better than I could as 1st Gen. This has happened lots of times now at this stage, but every-time there's a 2nd Gen / 3rd Gen moment, and it skips you out but does a better job than you could as 1st Gen,  I still get a buzz.

Hi Arni! Thanks for showing me this!

2. There I was on a glacier in a Superjeep in Iceland in the middle of nowhere - I mean nowhere. In the vehicle and on the terrain that I'd be most in awe off, totally spellbound..... and then they go and show me they have a D4H notebook from our very limited 30 print run back in 2009 still used as the vehicle logbook sitting on the dashboard. Memories, awesomeness, totally just cool - felt we'd made an impact.

We're going to set the world on fire.

3. Sitting in a Baltimore outdoor bar (Hard Rock Cafe?) in the sun and deciding "We Are Young" by Fun would be played if we got a lease on the lighthouse we're now in as an office. So after visiting the other company Director to co-sign the lease, and heading down the 1km drive to 'our new office' for the first time as the awesome view opened up - I changed radio station. "We Are Young - And We'll Set The World On Fire" came one. Totally awesome moment. We are young - and we're setting the world on fire.

If only I knew this in college...

Robin Blandford

I like this talk by Zach Holman who discusses how different working in a Start-Up is, how finding "The One" is really hard, and how it's great to feel you own the product and make real impact.

I knew I wanted to work in tech. Looking back, that's really all I knew prior to graduating from university and joining the working world.

Here's the entire presentation, on speakerdeck.

The new office layout at [D4H]

Robin Blandford

Loving our new office layout.

Loving our new office layout.

It's important I believe to shake everything up every now & again. This week we moved all the desk around, did a spring clean, opened out a new segment of the office to another room. Growth is great.

The Types of Emails not to Send Us

Robin Blandford

You see, there is a lot of talk these days about Instagram exiting for a billion, but our product is so brilliantly innovative and will certainly become as ubiquitous (maybe more so) than Facebook within 6 months, that I will probably exit for 10 ...

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Groupon is a ridiculous business

Robin Blandford

Well, for starters, it???s not a coupon company nor a marketing company. At its core, Groupon???s U.S. business is a receivables factoring business, as I wrote last year. They give loans to small businesses at a very steep rate (the price of the disco...

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The Zuckerberg Tax - NYTimes.com

Robin Blandford

But how much income tax will Mr. Zuckerberg pay on the rest of his stock that he won???t immediately sell? He need not pay any. Instead, he can simply use his stock as collateral to borrow against his tremendous wealth and avoid all tax. That???s what...

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Y Combinator: Summer 2012 Funding

Robin Blandford

Y Combinator is now accepting applications for the summer 2012 funding cycle. It will take place in Mountain View, CA from June through August 2012. via ycombinator.com If you're thinking of doing a web start-up, you can't go much wrong here.

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