Alex Rainert

(originally posted on Medium) Note: This post originally aired in February 2014 on Tumblr but was moved to Medium in October 2014. Over the past few months I’ve gotten to slow down a bit, spend some more time with my kids and enjoy a lot of coffees with a wide variety of people here in the city. The range of interesting new people I got to meet and projects I got to learn about was inspiring, particularly as lifelong New Yorker who cares deeply about continuing to grow the consumer product pre

(originally posted on Medium) Good post outlining some of the hurdles Twitter faces and touches on something I’ve felt for a long time. While there are certainly services that benefit from pure network effects (where more connections directly translate to a better experience), I’d argue that many of the most popular feed-based products (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) walk a thin line between “enough varied content to be interesting and something you want to check regularly” and “so much con

(originally posted on Medium) People who are negative tend to want to demean people’s ideas. They say what they don’t like, but they don’t really say what they want to do. And it’s very hard to have ideas. It’s very hard to put yourself out there. It’s very hard to be vulnerable. But those people are the dreamers and the thinkers and the creators. They’re the magic people of the world. So strive to be one of those. Today I learned that Amy Poehler has a YouTube series called Smart Girls(descri

(originally posted on Medium) The importance of defining your company’s values early on “If there’s one piece of advice I can give early stage founders, it is to take the time to write down who you are, and who you want to be.” This quote is from a good post from Reece Pacheco (Shelby.tv) on “Surviving the [startup] climb.” One part that resonated with me is the importance of defining your company’s culture and values early on. Shelby’s can be found here. Some good examples from some other

(originally posted on Medium) How I’ve learned to rely on (and love) Waze During the month of December my wife and I made our regular trips to and from family members’ houses to celebrate the various holidays. Over the past year (especially since we moved outside of the city) Waze has become a part of all our trips, even when we know exactly where we’re going because you never know when there might be an even better way to get there, but Waze does. Thanks to all the Waze users out there, Waz

Getting excited about the unknown 2013 was as eventful a year as I can remember. We sold our apartment in Brooklyn and bought a house in Westchester. We added a new member to our family, Oliver, in June and moved the whole family up north 3 weeks later to the first house I’ve ever lived in. In November, I left Foursquare after 4 years and spent the last month and a half of the year hanging with the kids and having a wide variety of conversations with people exploring different possibilities for