James Gross' Website

James Gross is an American entrepreneur living in New York City. He is a Co-Founder & Employee @ Percolate var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-18752421-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

[jamesgross]

The passage of time itself is distorted: a couple of long sessions in cold water, hard winds, and big waves can make two days seem like two weeks. Mark has a theory: that the sense-deprivation involved in cold-water surfing can throw the body into a state resembling insulin shock, which causes a similar distortion of time. Mark also has a rule: “For every hour you surf in San Francisco in winter, add one hour of sleep.” The rule has an exception: for Dead Man’s, which has an especially ferocious current, Mark says, “Add two.”

Ocean Beach. The jewel of San Francisco, hiding in plain sight. 

King of Kooks' Missives to His Subjects: Playing Docs Games: The New Yorker 1992

[jamesgross]

For a long time I’ve had this idea running around in my head that truly successful product companies find ways to “productize” everything they do. Products, after all, are far more scalable than process, which requires constant training and reminding (as new people come on board you need to train them on your process). We talk to clients about this idea when it comes to creating social content and using Percolate, and we try to live what we preach as well.

Great post by Noah. 

Tools > Process | Blog @ Percolate

[jamesgross]

Hiring

[jamesgross]

While tomorrow is my first day with Percolate; on reflection Percolate and its amazing people have been intersecting with my life for the past 3 years and what Percolate intends to do has been around my life for the past 10.

Really excited to have Tyler on board. Crazy to think about how Tumblr made it all come together.

The Mind of an Independent - So it begins

[domgoodrum]

Percolate Moving Day Portraits

Today we packed stuff up at Percolate HQ ahead of our move this weekend.

Plenty of good times have gone down since we arrived at 481 Broadway a little over a year ago. For this moving day post, I’ve broken down our time on Broadway by the numbers:

Percolate HQ was based at 481 Broadway for 458 days, that’s a wonderful 659,520 minutes between me and you (March 12th 2012 - June 7th 2013).

We survived 1.5 sweltering summers and one fairly mild winter. The whole gang of us worked remotely after Sandy for about 9 days.

Our team size has grown 490%, from 10 to 49. We’ve been lucky to add some amazing people across design, engineering, talent, communications, brand strategy, account management and sales.

We’ve evolved our software product to help more brands create content at social scale. In software release terms, we’ve gone from version 2.1 to approaching a fine looking 4.0.

We had our second hackday, and launched 6 clubs; Yoga, Running, Space, China, Artz and Cooking. We even started a new monthly happy hour for Community Managers, called Speakeasy.

Our next adventure is a trip round the corner to Percolate’s new home on Grand St. The good news is we’ve got room for you too.

[jamesgross]

Boom. 

[jamesgross]

The shift in marketing approaches can’t compare in historical magnitude to the changes brought about by the automobile and the industrial age, but the analogy provides an instructive framework for thinking about how to solve big questions. While history looks in awe at Ford’s imagination for modernizing transportation, his real innovation came through his use of systems that augmented humans’ ability to produce new goods. Instead of looking to the past for an answer, he created an entirely new system to build the future. If you are a brand thinking about the challenges of the age of social media, start by asking yourself, “What is different now than in the past and what are the tools that we have at our fingertips?” If the answers make you feel as if you are treading into territory never documented before, that’s a good thing. As many have noted, the biggest mistake we make in a new medium is mirroring the process of an old one.

The awkward self-quote from an article I wrote in AdAge. Outside of hiring and meeting clients this is what I spend most of my day thinking about. 

In Order To Build the Future Systems of Content, Forget the Past | - Advertising Age

[jamesgross]

RSS is the file-system of news, in a post-file system world

Google spring cleans Reader out of existence, also trashcans some CalDav, Snapseed for Mac | iMore.com

[jamesgross]

There are too many complaints about society having to move fast to keep up with the machine. There is a great advantage in moving fast if you move completely, if social, educational, and recreational changes keep pace. You must change the whole pattern at once and the whole group together—and the people themselves must decide to move. (Margaret Mead Time Magazine 1954)

I've been thinking about this quote a lot lately. I really like it. More on Margaret Mead here. 

Fast Capitalism

[jamesgross]

A recap from our Community Manager event on Monday. 

(via Recapping Percolate’s #SPEAKEASY #CMAD | Blog @ Percolate)

[jamesgross]

We have officially joined the Twitter Certified Products Program

(via Percolate + Twitter | Blog @ Percolate)

[jamesgross]

Great post by @kunur explaining an important distinction and why the future won't look like the past

[jamesgross]

When I was first at Facebook, a woman named Lori Goler, a 1997 graduate of HBS, was working in marketing at eBay and I knew her kind of socially. And she called me and said, I want to talk with you about coming to work with you at Facebook. So I thought about calling you, she said, and telling you all the things I’m good at and all the things I like to do. But I figured that everyone is doing that. So instead I want to know what’s your biggest problem and how can I solve it. My jaw hit the floor. I’d hired thousands of people up to that point in my career, but no one had ever said anything like that. I had never said anything like that. Job searches are always about the job searcher, but not in Laurie’s case. I said, you’re hired. My biggest problem is recruiting and you can solve it. So Lori changed fields into something she never thought she’d do, went down a level to start in a new field and has since been promoted and runs all of the people operations at Facebook and has done an extraordinary job.

Sheryl Sandberg's Full HBS Speech: Get On A Rocketship Whenever You Get The Chance - Business Insider

[jamesgross]

If you’re not committed to your life’s work in a company and with people you could endure for decades, are you making progress on it?

Your life's work by David of 37signals

[jamesgross]

By constantly questioning, probing and wondering ‘what if’, curiosity becomes the catalyst for change, breaking down otherwise ingrained and embedded constraints. It is the impetus to creativity, innovation and disruption. And this is the value of curiosity. Its potential is vast.

Curiosity Under Constraints | Blog @ Percolate

[jamesgross]

We need to let robots take over. They will do jobs we have been doing, and do them much better than we can. They will do jobs we can’t do at all. They will do jobs we never imagined even needed to be done. And they will help us discover new jobs for ourselves, new tasks that expand who we are. They will let us focus on becoming more human than we were. Let the robots take the jobs, and let them help us dream up new work that matters.

Better Than Human | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

[jamesgross]

The one thing humans can do that robots can’t (at least for a long while) is to decide what it is that humans want to do.

Better Than Human | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

[jamesgross]

The Japanese have an expression, hara hachi bu, which means, roughly speaking, “belly 80 percent full.” Hara hachi bu is shorthand for an ancient injunction to stop eating before feeling full. Nutritionally, the command makes a great deal of sense. When people eat, their stomachs produce peptides that signal fullness to the nervous system. Unfortunately, the mechanism is so slow that eaters frequently perceive satiety only after they have consumed too much—hence the all-too-common condition of feeling bloated or sick from overeating.

State of the Species | Charles C. Mann | Orion Magazine