Need someone to lead product management at your software company? I build high-craft software and the teams that build it. I'm looking for my next opportunity. Check out my resume and get in touch.

This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

Introducing SacStarts

Freshness Warning
This blog post is over 17 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current and the links no longer work.

The dinners that Scott and I have been organizing have been growing. We’ve met a pretty amazing group of people and the dinners have resulted in good business connections for a number of participants.

As Scott and I looked at what we wanted to get out of the dinners, the idea of building a startup community started to grow. We realized that all the entrepreneurs, small tech companies, and great tech folks in the area didn’t have anywhere to go to connect with each other. There’s events and organizations for larger companies and even a big-ass $150/year professional organization for entrepreneur types. There’s nothing wrong with those organizations and some of our participants are members of them as well. But they don’t fit the informal feel that we’ve come to admire from groups like Stirr and the Barcamp movement.

So we decided to do something about it and SacStarts was born.

We’ll be continuing to run the dinners (the next one is January 17, RSVP on the site) and we’ll be adding on. A common complaint among people at the dinners is finding high-quality people to work with, so we’ll be launching a job board. The web site has a simple social networking component to it that will grow. There’s a couple of blogs that will focus on local tech startup news. And look for some larger events in the future.

If your business is looking to reach local startups and engineers, we also have sponsorship opportunities available. Just ask me about them.

I’m excited about the future growth of the Sacramento startup community and I’m hoping that SacStarts can help foster that growth.

Recently Written

Think Systems, not Symptoms
Dec 15: Piecemeal process creation frustrates teams and slows work. Stop patching problems and start solving systems. Adopting a systems thinking approach helps you design processes that are efficient, aligned with goals, and truly add value.
Your Policies Aren’t Your Culture
Dec 13: Policies guide behavior, but culture is the lived norms and values of your team. Policies reflect culture -- they don’t define it. Netflix’s parental leave shift didn’t change its culture of freedom and responsibility. It clarified how to live it.
Lighten Your Process Burden
Dec 7: Everyone hates oppressive processes, but somehow we keep managing to create them.
Product Add-Ons Are An Expansion Myth
Dec 1: Add-ons can enhance your product’s appeal but won’t drive significant market growth. To expand your customer base, focus on developing standalone products.
Protecting your Product Soul when the Same Product meets New People.
Nov 23: Expand into new markets while preserving your product’s core value. Discover how to adapt and grow without losing your product’s soul.
Building the Next Big Thing: A Framework for Your Second Product
Nov 19: You need a first product sooner than you think. Here's a framework for helping you identify a winner.
A Framework for Scaling product teams
Oct 9: The people, processes, and systems that make up a product organization change radically as you go through the stages of a company. This framework will guide that scaling.
My Networked Webcam Setup
Sep 25: A writeup of my network-powered conference call camera setup.

Older...

What I'm Reading