Roman Mittermayr: On My Way: Archive

Career Choices: Corporate vs. Startup

What would you do? Are you thinking about making a career choice? Here’s what I did, being a freelancer/startup enthusiast who went big time corporate for 2 years and then started a company right afterwards: Opportunity Some late winter-day in 2007, I heard about an internship call at Microsoft. I was working for a small company in Vienna, Austria / studying / freelancing on the side at...

Jan 30th

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What we learn from the first 1.000 users

For most startups, getting to a 1.000 users is a serious marathon. People say it gets a lot easier after the first 1.000, and even more so after the first 10.000. I wouldn’t necessarily agree with it, since it really depends on how active these folks are, if they ever return after their first visit and so forth. Anyways, here’s what we learned from our 1.000 users at...

Jan 27th

The Art of Design Validation

These are more or less my private thoughts. If you want to check out my business projects, head on over to twentypeople.com, pareer.com and fruji.com. Questions? Reach out via Twitter, ping me @mittermayr. It is a classic trap for almost any recently-incorporated, hyper-passionate startup: The angst around not entering the market fast enough, the urge to go wild and code like a monkey on speed,...

Jan 12th

Founder's Hell: Competitive Horror

EDIT: This seems to be getting a lot of traction on Hacker News. Just wanted to say, you guys are the opposite of TechCrunch in so many ways. I really like hanging out at Hacker News, you rock. Follow me at @mittermayr - would love to hear about your thoughts and companies. Happy to give feedback! EDIT2: Our website at twentypeople.com has major issues with the sign-up process. This...

Dec 8th

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The Reality of Life, Money and Society

This will be controversial. For you, to enjoy this, I am assuming you have grown to realize atheism is not a trend but merely a step forward to understand why we here. We are going to need your believe in evolution to get you through this. It well help understand why I am writing what I write here. If this is new, give it a try, you might enjoy moving forward in your adventure of finding meaning....

Nov 26th

Real Trading Experiment: Be a Fast Chicken

Now, this post will most likely spur criticism, if not complete denial or hate. What I hope though is that it will share some light onto things a lot of people don’t have access to, knowledge of or experience with. I will be giving you a short overview of how I finance my traveling, gadgets or christmas presents - and more importantly: Make a new investment and have you follow along in...

Nov 16th

The Average Resume

We recently did a little experiment, fine-tuning and testing our API (more here: http://www.twentypeople.com/api/). One of the things we were evaluating was filetypes. What file format is your resume in? We were surprised to see that based on a set of one hundred resumes, Word documents (the older .doc format) were the most prominent format. Average Number of Words Now, the other thing we...

Nov 15th

The Power of MTurk

I still have issues with the fact that Amazon calls one of it’s most fascinating products, “Mechnical Turk”. I get the story of it and stuff, but well, it has its weirdness. More importantly, I think it’s a revolutionary concept, over and over again. Let me illustrate, again, how I saved myself a lot of money, time and work by investing an hour worth of time into this...

Nov 14th

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The Art of Keeping People Busy

As the year 2010 was breathing its last moments, I finalized my resignation letter to Microsoft. It was a tough e-mail to write (yeah, I tend to break up by e-mail) – but, it wasn’t without a new challenge ahead, something that would keep me very, very busy. And that’s good, especially since the trend on my bank account reversed, a pretty depressing fact of being a so-called...

Oct 23rd

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Scammers Ruined Me (socially)

Today, while looking busy at the mall here in Jakarta, I notice a group of 6 or 7 students following me, giggling. It’s one of those weird things here in Jakarta, way waaay more intense than any of the other cities in the past few days, EVERYONE looks at you. They stare you to death. You take one tiny bit of some food, a group of 15 people nearby watch you in super high-tension focus...

Jul 23rd

Weird things about Asia

I am currently spending most of July and a bit of August traveling in Asia, and while I have been in China before (see documentary here), this time, I’ve picked a second round of really special places. The trip started in Singapore, then Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Bali, Gili Islands and finally Singapore again. Every minute, I have a hundred “observational...

Jul 22nd

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Apr 3rd

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Mar 23rd

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Mar 20th

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Feb 25th

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Dec 4th

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Sep 24th

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Sep 24th

My (second) First Day at Microsoft

I’ve spent the past few weeks to say goodbye to all my new and old-time friends, say goodbye to Vienna, a city that I fell in love with just now, this year, after 5 short years of studying, say goodbye to a life that would have waited for me at home, an uncertain future so to say. I’ve travelled over 5.000 miles now and report back to you directly from the United States, the State of...

Sep 21st

Sep 8th

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Aug 31st

What I Learned From Planning "TheViennaProject09"

It was around the 14th of May 2009 when this crazy idea in my head wouldn’t stop bugging me. I must have had a lonely evening or something, as I sat down that day, registered a website and set-up a document on the collaborative writing platform writeboard.com. I basically posted a first brain-dump online, informed a couple of friends about it and received spare feedback. A few little ideas,...

Aug 24th

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Aug 9th

Aug 6th

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Part 2: How to Nail A Job in New York City

So, the other day I wrote about how I got my first job abroad, in London. It was easier than most other countries, first off, it’s within the EU, so I didn’t need a particular work-permit or visa or such. Secondly, it’s an English-speaking country, this makes things a lot easier, compared to France or Spain. But while I fell in love with London, I felt like I should step up a bit...

Aug 5th

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Aug 5th

Part 1: How to Find Work Abroad

Alright, having been asked about three times already this week, I’ve decided to write a little article about how I made it to the United States, from the small agency in New York to the largest software company in the world, from New York to Seattle. I will also explain how I got a job in London first and why this made it all happen afterwards. First off, if going abroad is “just a...

Aug 4th

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Aug 4th

A Word About The Night

Things have changed a lot for me since the beginning of this year. Last year, I had a very nice apartment, a close to 7-year relationship, a nice job in Vienna where I could do what I wanted, regular paychecks, a fresh book on the market, a large bed, time to cook regularly, and an uncertain future. Fast-forward: Today, August 2009, I finally have certainty on what’s going to happen in the...

Aug 3rd

First Days Of Work: Flashback

Apparently, from what I’m reading on Twitter a lot of people are starting work at a new job today, temporary and permanently. I happen to be stranded in the city I started my first internship in now, so why not take this as a reason to write about my experiences back then. It all started out last minute, as always, when I received the short-notice (a few days before it started) that my...

Aug 3rd

Why I play Golf, sometimes

A lot of people have a pretty general idea about golf as a sport, and about those who play it in particular. It’s a sport played by the rich, the douchebags and old people. Oh, and Tiger Woods, but he’s making trillions with it, so that’s fine. Well, not really. I started off with golf two years ago when I thought it’d be worth it to do an introductory course and see if...

Aug 2nd

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Aug 2nd

Moving on with life, literally

September 21st will be my first work-day with my new employer. Not here, in Austria, where I grew up, but at the other end of the world, in Seattle, Washington, United States. I’ve been hired by Microsoft straight out of my internship last summer and they offered me a pretty nice deal. Not only in terms of compensation, which is commonly known to be, let’s say, worth a move around the...

Aug 1st

This might be just what I need

I welcome you, whoever you are. I am not sure if you heard about this yet, but this tumblr thing is about me, not my projects. This will be hardcore emo, hardcore personal, hardcore like/dislike, hardcore intimate. If you can’t handle it, you might want to check out my website instead: http://www.mittermayr.com - a little less intimate. There’s quite a bit of stuff about me and by...

Aug 1st