Brian Alvey

Om Malik died last week.

He liked me — or maybe he tolerated me, but he loved several of my good friends. So my heart goes out to each of them as so many people in our industry celebrate his life and share how amazing and influential Om was in their lives.

The first thing I learned from Om was: document your meetings with photos. He would just suddenly take a picture of me during a coffee or lunch meeting, usually with a ridiculously fancy camera. So I would take one of him with my phone. Like a counterattack. But it really helped me develop a habit to do the same when I’d get a chance to spend time with someone I hadn’t seen in years — and might not see again for years.

The second thing I learned was: never put your own name in your company. He created a company with the clever name GigaOm, but years later when he was no longer involved and they sold it, it was weird. Like what would he call his next company? Do people think he’s still part of his old company? I think about that as I work at Matt’s company Automattic or when I see Craig from Craigslist at the airport. Om and I talked about this once when we both found ourselves no longer in charge of the companies we founded. While it stung, I pointed out that at least mine didn’t have my name on it and that part must be rough. He thanked me for noticing that and added:

“Life and business are hard, startups are harder. But I enjoyed every minute of it. I see this as an opportunity for rebirth. The hurt will some day stop hurting and until then, I will look at our great team and what amazing things they will do.”

Gracious person. Incredible writer.

Matt was the first person I thought of when I saw the news. Matt wrote All Roads Lead to Om and people shared that even from the hospital, Om was still reporting WordPress bugs to Matt.

Stacey Higginbotham worked with Om at GigaOm, her X handle is gigastacey. Om’s death hit her hard. Hunter Walk reminds us to celebrate people like Om Malik and Susan Wojcicki while they’re still alive. Nate Williams said “I don’t think I’ve seen SF Tech shake like this since Blake Krikorian passed away.” There was so much more from Rafat Ali, Marc Benioff, Dave Winer, Jason Calacanis, Tony Conrad, John Gruber, Ashley Mayer, Jim Lanzone and The New York Times. And here is Christopher Michel’s photo collection of Om the Great.

Om had a heart attack nearly 20 years ago and it made a lot of people in the blogosphere who were chasing breaking news around the clock take a step back and think about the sacrifices they were making to their health. I got to see Om in one-on-one meetings and frequently at industry events or holiday gatherings at our friends’ houses and I never forgot to tell him how glad I was that he was still here with us.

My wife is Greek and she visited Greece a lot when she was younger, but hadn’t been there since we met 30 years ago. So we planned an epic two-week family vacation this summer to see seven cities in Greece.

It was incredible and I had a wonderful time — until I got sick with norovirus.

I felt full all day that last Wednesday, even when I didn’t eat. Then came a night of fevers. I took a shower on Thursday morning to bring my temperature down to 101.1° and went to the medical office. I had a lot of firsts that day:

• First time passing out.
• First time a doctor couldn’t find my pulse and got the paddles ready. (I recovered on my own.)
• First ambulance ride — with lights and sirens!
• First CT scan.
• More NSFW firsts.

Thessaloniki was the final city we planned to visit and I saw it from a hospital bed for three days.

Niki took amazing care of me. It really helps that she is a nurse and that Greek was her first language. Once I was cleared to travel again, we had four flights to get home and nearly two weeks later I still feel like I was just hit by a truck.

I’m just glad it was me who got this and not my wife or one of my kids.

On the same day I got sick, one of our close friends back home lost her wonderful 25-year-old daughter with similar symptoms: fevers, intestinal pain and two different ER visits. We were very lucky. Plus my wife’s mother died in similar circumstances years ago — fevers on a cruise ship and her heart stopping in the ship’s medical office, so this whole ordeal was that much more frightening for her.

On our tours of smaller Greek islands like Mykonos and Santorini, our guides had complained that it was hard to get good medical assistance there because there were no good hospitals and frequent blackouts, so the best doctors don’t want to live there and work there. It’s a good thing that this happened as we got to Thessaloniki, the second largest city on mainland Greece and the home of the European Interbalkan Medical Center, which is “the largest, state-of-the-art, comprehensive private hospital in Southeastern Europe.”

They were amazing.

Now it’s time for a nap.

When I was 15, I joined my high school’s horseback riding club. My high school was in Brooklyn, New York. I took two buses from Bay Ridge to Prospect Park. We would saddle up our horses, walk them down the cobblestone road on Caton Place, walk them across the big traffic circle and then hop on and gallop through Prospect Park. It was madness: 100-pound teenagers on 1000-pound death monsters speeding towards joggers and people with strollers. When we were done we would wash them down, put the saddles away and ride home. No one would sit next to us on the bus. Our boots and jeans were filthy.

I loved it.

Last night after working with our exec team in NYC, I visited the stables. They’re still there! I met the owner and he told me how much the place had changed. They fixed the broken skylights that were just covered with tarps to keep the rain out all these years. They fixed the electric. When I was there in the ’80s, they had a long chain of extension cords that led back to one outlet. They raised the ceilings. They cleaned up the ring. They changed from straight stalls where horses can’t turn abound to box stalls. And they changed the name from Kensington Stables to Prospect Park Stable. It was amazing to see it all and talk to JQ, the current owner, and his daughter who has been riding there since she was a kid.

Here’s a fascinating story about Peter Wayne Moe and a team of more than a hundred people preparing the Longbranch Whale to hang at Seattle Pacific University.

I ask Sandilands where he learned to shoot a crossbow. Was he in the army? Was he a sniper? “Of course not,” he says. “I’m Canadian.”

That was one of the coolest things I read in 2022.

“I’m Glad My Mom Died” is an incredible, well-written book — filled with gut punches. Highly recommended.

Early in her book, Jennette McCurdy’s mom flips out because her daughter might want to be a writer instead of an actress. Writers are frumpy and fat. Actresses are pretty and skinny. It’s sad, because by this point in the book it’s obvious that Jennette is an INCREDIBLE writer.

I have so many friends who are authors — journalists, bloggers, marketers, novelists. Jennette describes painful things in a casual, clear way. Several times I was struck by a story, stopped reading and realized my mouth was hanging open.

If I hadn’t known about all the abuse in Niki’s childhood, I’m not sure I could have appreciated what was going on with Jennette. Like how other people’s fertility problems didn’t fully register in my 20s the same way they did after our eight miscarriages.

My respect for the people in Jennette’s life who continue to look out for her is immense.

🙏 🙏 🙏

This was originally a tweet thread here.

[minor spoiler ahead]

My daughter and I watched Tick, Tick… Boom! We loved it. Andrew Garfield can sing. Vanessa Hudgens is a star. So underrated. And the Sunday brunch scene filled with legends from Broadway was a delight.

But one scene hit me hard that I wasn’t expecting.

It’s well known that Jonathan Larson died before getting to see his musical Rent open and go on to win Tonys and make millions of dollars. Before that he wrote Tick, Tick… Boom! Before that he spent eight years working on a futuristic rock musical called Superbia. There’s a scene in the movie where people finally get to see Superbia performed. The crowd loves it. He’s expecting that investors will love it too and write him a check and Superbia will be a career-defining achievement. But no one does. He’s crushed.

He asks his agent for advice. What is he supposed to do now?

You start writing the next one. And after you finish that one, you start the next. And on and on. That’s what it is to be a writer, honey.

It’s time to start writing the next one.

The most popular software for writing fiction isn't Word. It's Excel.

— Brian Alvey (@brianalvey) June 22, 2011

I wrote that in 2011 and it got a bunch of attention. Then every few years someone with a lot of followers would discover it and retweet it and it would get a bunch more attention.

I’ve seen it quoted a bunch, sometimes attributed to “anonymous” but usually tweeted without attribution or rewritten as “More fiction is written in Excel than Word.” I see those because people often tag me in the thread. One guy tweeted it 6 years later and got 8,000 retweets and 25,000 likes.

It’s a good thing I don’t tweet for a living.

I’ve seen it in startup pitch decks. One investor has used it in three posts on his fund’s blog and he always shares it with, “Someone once quipped…” Every single time. And he knows me.

That tweet will be on my tombstone unless I come up with something better.

Wish me luck!

UPDATE: Sonos CEO Patrick Spence sent customers a great reassuring email today. They won’t be bricking older devices and they will make sure mixed networks with old and new devices work. Like I said before, I’m optimistic. I love Sonos.

Oh @Sonos you’ve got about 24 hours to make a huge apology and reverse this decision. I’m not being overly dramatic to say that any other action is the death of your company

— Cass Crockatt (@casscrockatt) January 22, 2020

I have loved Sonos for years. They were one of our advertisers when my friends and I owned Engadget, but I was tens of thousands of dollars in debt working on my first big startup and I couldn’t afford their magical “music for every room” smart speakers. By the time we sold our company, the prices had come way down. How ironic. I could finally afford their fancy gear and now it didn’t cost as much.

Today we have them in every room: a big Playbar on our living room TV, two Play:5s, two Play:3s, a Sonos One in every kid’s room and a Connect:Amp bridge that lets us play music on our backyard speakers. From our phones we can play anything we want anywhere in our house. Our family bounces between Spotify, SiriusXM, Pandora, YouTube Music, SoundCloud, iHeartRadio, podcasts and local radio stations.

Sonos is magical. Their customers rave about them to anyone who’ll listen, the same way people rave about Air Pods, Tesla, In-N-Out, Instant Pot and DisneyWorld.

And right now, they’re screwed.

Continue reading “The Death of Sonos Has Been Delayed”