Nick Finck

I’ve been trying to meet this guy for years. I was beginning to think that he was my secret identity or that I was his secret identity. That was the only plausible reason that we were never in the SAME ROOM at the SAME TIME. But, luckily, in Austin, through some no doubt VERY CONVINCING special effects, the studio made it appear that we were in deed meeting each other. That should confound the audience for a season or two!

Nick is an intelligent man, and was on a panel that employed one of the smartest Q&A strategies ever of promising a year of hosting to the best question (thus making people think twice before asking a really stupid question). I thought for an entire hour for a question that might be qualified as “best”... but unfortunately didn’t really think of one until the panel was over.

So here’s my question, Nick: Why was the panel called “Starting Small”? Why include this built in bias towards eventually Becoming Big? My favorite companies around these days are the ones that start small and stay small (Panic, Skinny Corp, etc), while managing to build big products and achieve great things. What do you believe are the temptations to not remain small forever?

After living in Seattle for about 2 years now and pretty much meeting almost all of the Robots, Eric seemed to be more of a legend than a real person. Well, I had to make the trek down to Austin to see that Eric was, in fact, a real living breathing person. I am still not sure if he’s mortal, but that’s another story.