At the culminaton of NUvention:Web, a two part course that teaches the fundamentals of building a web startup, our team is putting the final touches on our product: MassiveStart.

The core problem we try to solve is making iteration of film projects easier by making it simple to conduct ad-hoc surveys of films. We do this by giving each film project its own page, and allow the film maker to define various features their audience can then rate after watching a version of the film. Then, we display some plots about the collected data.

originally published in North by Northwestern

During that mystifying, exhilarating event known by us as the Big Bang, when matter and energy exploded into existence, the evolution of that pregnant chemical soup into Max Powers, a prime specimen of the highest and obviously most evolved form of intelligent life, was all but assured to be true.

In fact, considering the odds of his existence, he was essentially the required product, the precipitate of the grandest chemical reaction of the cosmos.

When your body is black and blue
And your mind is a hot snafu,
Remember the tale, mind it well,
Of the clumsy giraffe who in a ditch he fell.

“Aw shucks!” he cried, in a stupor,
“Not again! What am I good for?”
He slumped to his side, ruminating,
A sea of sadness upon him descending.

“Every morning I wake to try and find leaves,
“Only to stumble, fall, and hurt my knees.
“If only I weren’t ever so clumsy,
“so stupid, and so very forgetsy!”