The Matthew Goldman Blog (Page 3)

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Disrupting the Male-Dominated Startup Culture

Disrupting the Male-Dominated Startup Culture

There is probably no way that this post comes off well, but I’m going to try it anyway. Credit first to the anonymous author ofWhat It’s Like Raising Money As A Woman In Silicon Valley [http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/07/what-its-like-raising-money-as-a-woman-in-tech/] that was published

Who is a Founder?

Who is a Founder?

There has been a lot of talk lately about the definition of founders and co-founders. I think that the recent Tindr fiasco has spurred this round, but lawsuits and arguments are frequent issues from Snapchat to Facebook to Apple. I think most startups want to have a nice clean founding

Why My Team Doesn't Look Great on Paper

Why My Team Doesn't Look Great on Paper

Left, Ashvin, CEO of Themer [http://themerapp.com/]. Right, Me. Claremont McKenna Graduation, May 16th, 2004. There is a really interesting article today in TechCrunch today about credentials and Silicon Valley [http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/13/silicon-valleys-dilemma-over-credentials/]. Great work byDanny Crichton [http://techcrunch.com/author/danny-crichton/]that hits it

Why Wallaby Hires Slowly

Why Wallaby Hires Slowly

There’s a lot of advice out there about how startups and entrepreneurs should hire fast and fire fast. Fundamentally, I think this is backwards. I am not surprised by this advice for a few different reasons. First, the very nature of startups, as many in the industry define them,

Who Gets to Graduate?

Who Gets to Graduate? [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-graduate.html] Who Gets to Graduate? One if the most important things I’ve read this year. Education changes everything.

Why Your "Team" Page Should Actually Be About Your Team

Why Your "Team" Page Should Actually Be About Your Team

Most company websites have an “About Us” section describing the company. Most of those sections include a “Team” page, but it seems only a few actually tell you about the team. I think this is one of the most important pages on a site, especially for a startup, and it

For Tech Interviews, Research Means Trying the App

For Tech Interviews, Research Means Trying the App

Every time we’re doing some hiring, I get inspired to help candidates present themselves better. I learned a lot from both Career Services in college, as well as from employers who ran workshops, so I’d like to give back. Last time, I wrote 10 tips on how to

Content Owners: Get it Together

Content Owners: Get it Together

This is how I feel about content owners. GET IT TOGETHER. I pay a ton of money each month for my TV. Yet, I can’t get what now should be simple. I’ll try to write something useful here, but The Oatmeal [http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones]

It's All A Matter of Perspective

It's All A Matter of Perspective

TL;DR If you think something is shit, you’re probably wrong. Running a startup often leaves me thrilled, optimistic, confused, frustrated, and angry, all within a few hours. It’s not a job for the faint of heart nor the faint of will. I’m not complaining–I chose

Why Manufactured Spend is a Problem for Retailers

Why Manufactured Spend is a Problem for Retailers

> @OneMileataTime [https://twitter.com/OneMileataTime] @thepointsguy [https://twitter.com/thepointsguy] @PointChaser [https://twitter.com/PointChaser] @PointsToPointB [https://twitter.com/PointsToPointB] Handed this at CVS today. Is it over for Ice Cream? pic.twitter.com/9UMNJxpsMj [http://t.co/9UMNJxpsMj] — Tim Pressman (@Ringsthecaddy) March 29, 2014 [https://twitter.com/Ringsthecaddy/

Will Banks Wake Up to the Competitive Threat of Bitcoin?

Will Banks Wake Up to the Competitive Threat of Bitcoin?

Banks can help prevent disintermediation by digital currencies by providing faster payments. To hear its proponents, Bitcoin is the biggest thing since the World Wide Web, and 2014 is the year the digital cryptocurrency will break into the mainstream. Bitcoin’s supporters emphasize its three core features: anonymity, safety from

Pre-Approved Pre-Paid

Pre-Approved Pre-Paid

The Truth in Lending Act of 1968 effectively prohibits credit card issuers from sending you a real credit card that you did not apply for. While court cases and general regulatory pressure have greatly lessened the various scammy tactics some issuers took to get around these restrictions. It appears, however,

Payments and the Postal Service

Payments and the Postal Service

The Inspector General of the United States Postal Service recently released a paper [PDF [http://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/document-library-files/2014/rarc-wp-14-007.pdf] ] suggesting that the USPS should get into banking, like post office in many other countries. In 2008 (2007?), the team at Green Dot (including myself)

The Double-Standard of Women at Work

There is essentially endless writing about the role of gender in the home, workplace and politics. I’m not going to try to summarize this all together, but pick on a particular phenomenon that stuck out to me watching TV that I think is a real issue. This issue is

Product Management

Why PMs Should Know How to Code

I’m not much of a programmer. That said, I do know how to code and I have written apps in Perl, PHP, and ASP. I used to be a systems administrator and had a lot of fun with shell scripting (sed and awk, FTW!). For the past 10 years,

Why I Started Wallaby

About one-and-a-half months ago, I wrote a blog post entitled “Don’t Start a Company to Be Your Own Boss [http://blog.matthewgoldman.com/post/64805179325/dont-start-a-company-to-be-your-own-boss] ” It had better coverage than I expected, gaining some noticed on HackerNews [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6595153]. Because that post focussed

Top of Hacker News

Top of Hacker News [http://news.ycombinator.com]

What Should You Write When You Haven't Posted in Three Weeks?

What Should You Write When You Haven't Posted in Three Weeks?

Last time I wrote a blog post [https://matthewgoldman.com/dont-start-a-company-to-be-your-own-boss/], it go some good coverage on Hacker News [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6595153]. Since the post was about what starting a company, someone asked why I started Wallaby. I did write about this [https://matthewgoldman.com/obligatory-why-i-left-my-job-to-start-a-blog-post/

Don't Start A Company to Be Your Own Boss

Don't Start A Company to Be Your Own Boss

TL;DR: Everyone is your boss. When I worked at Green Dot [http://www.greendot.com/] and people asked me at a party or get together what I did for a living, I would say that I worked in financial services. This ended the conversation pretty quickly. Now I say

Reckless Startup Spending

Reckless Startup Spending

When a startup is having trouble its spending is reckless (see BeachMint article at Pando [http://pandodaily.com/2013/10/11/we-know-we-have-a-good-business-an-exclusive-interview-with-beachmints-founders/] ). When it’s doing well, that same spending is fun and culture building. Nobody knows for sure the right path. I think Google’s continued belief that they

PSA: Wear Your Helmet

PSA: Wear Your Helmet

Unfortunately, the corner of Green and Raymond [https://goo.gl/maps/juYtpsNknaw] in Old Pasadena, next to Wallaby’s headquarters, is not very safe. Every week I see at least one car driving the wrong way on Green, which is a one way street. In the past few weeks, we’

Ready for Money2020

Ready for Money2020

I’m headed out this weekend for Las Vegas (or bright and early Monday morning anyway). This conference, in its second year, is huge now, with 4,200 attendees in financial services and payments descending on the Aria in Las Vegas for the week. Last year, we were over-run at

How To Land an Internship at a Start-up

How To Land an Internship at a Start-up

TL;DR Like any other job, do your homework and choose carefully At Wallaby Financial, [https://www.walla.by] we like to have a product management intern on hand at all times. First, it’s a great source of inexpensive labor (more on why we pay in a later post)

Why You Should Use Tickets for Everything

Why You Should Use Tickets for Everything

When I first started Wallaby Financial [http://www.walla.by], I spent a lot of time thinking about what the work environment and processes should look like. We didn’t set out do things differently than other businesses, or to innovate on culture and product. My initial reaction to this

Is Starbucks a Bank or an MSB?

Is Starbucks a Bank or an MSB?

5,000 community banks in the US with less than $1B in assets. Starbucks took $2.2B in deposits for gift cards and mobile payments. Is your Starbucks account a DDA? Is Starbucks a bank? Should Starbucks be an MSB or a Money Transmitter (I can send you a gift