AaronKlein.com

Livestream for "Hacking PR for Tech Startups"

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:51:45 -0700

It’s great to be a part of Sacramento Tech Week. Join us on the livestream if you want to watch.

Sierra College @ Work: May 14, 2013 Board Meeting

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:23:44 -0700

Board Meeting Details:

April 23, 2013
Sierra College Nevada County Campus, Room N6-101
Closed session at 3:00PM, open session at 4:00PM
Meeting Agenda
Contracts (General / Capital Projects)
Warrants

This month, we’re visiting our Nevada County Campus and will be getting an update on the growth of that facility. We’ll also be updating on accreditation yet again, as well as making some important facilities planning decisions for land in Lincoln, and our science center in Rocklin.

If you’re in the 530/916, I hope you’ll join us to share your perspective. Or you can comment here and I’ll do my best to carry your input into the meeting.

Sierra College @ Work: April 23, 2013 Board Meeting

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 09:37:16 -0700

Board Meeting Details:

April 23, 2013
Sierra College Nevada County Campus, Room N6-101
Closed session at 3:00PM, open session at 4:00PM
Meeting Agenda
Contracts (General / Capital Projects)
Warrants

If you’re in the 530/916, I hope you’ll join us to share your perspective. Or you can comment here and I’ll do my best to carry your input into the meeting.

This week, we’re launching the campaign to get every...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:08:51 -0700

This week, we’re launching the campaign to get every single child at our school project in Ethiopia — all 830 of them — matched with a sponsor like you, willing to commit just $19/month for their education.

Thanks to your generosity, several hundred of them were sponsored in our test run last year. There are about 587 to go.

You’ve heard the story and you know how this works.

By feeding these kids twice a day, we’re keeping their families together and preventing them from becoming orphans.

By giving them an amazing education, we’re helping them break the cycle of poverty, and build a future of self-sufficiency.

And that means that for every sponsor like you, that’s one less child without an education. One less child without a family. One less child who goes hungry.

We know that the United States can’t “fix Africa.” We’re settling for nothing less than building a transformation factory that will produce 140 new leaders every year, to renew and rebuild their own country and continent from the inside out.

Every dime of that $19 gets on the ground in Ethiopia. Not a penny gets used for US administration or overhead.

Will you stand alongside us and partner with one of these awesome kids? Your generosity will literally change lives, and we’re talking about an amount that will be really hard to miss in your bank account.

I hope you’ll sponsor one of these kids today. You’ll literally be the difference in one less child becoming a statistic.

A Man for All Seasons

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 11:08:00 -0700

Last night, Cacey and I went to see “A Man for All Seasons,” a theater production at Sierra College telling the story of Sir Thomas More’s “courageous silence” in support of his beliefs in 16th century England.

Now, the best part of the production are the amazing costumes. Of course, we’re a little biased since the master costumer is Cacey’s Aunt Gina. She literally reproduced the period costumes from the era’s oil paintings of the characters.

You’ve got a few more chances to catch a showing of the production at Sierra College’s Dietrich Theater. Tickets are just $10 ($8 for seniors and $5 for students). Showtimes and other details are here.

Enjoy!

Taste of Excellence

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 10:40:00 -0700

One of our favorite events of the year is coming up…the Sierra College Foundation’s Taste of Excellence is always a not-to-be-missed extravaganza of food, wine and fun for the entire community.

(Of course, this year our travel schedule changed and is forcing us to miss the event. You can’t imagine how disappointed my wife was when we found out!)

This year’s theme is Noble, and trust me, it’s going to be an amazingly noble event! Check out the 26 A-List restaurants and chefs who are serving up a sampling of amazing food and desserts, not to mention the 30 wineries you’ll be drinking from.

The event is Saturday, April 27 at 6:30PM at the Sierra College Rocklin Campus. You can reserve your tickets for Taste of Excellence online, or just call the Foundation Office at 916-660-7020.

And as if that’s not enough, there’s also a great online auction event going on right now. You can check out the items by clicking here.

This is exactly how we’ve built Riskalyze.

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 20:47:52 -0700

This is exactly how we’ve built Riskalyze.

Today marks a dozen years since I married my best friend....

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 09:28:33 -0700

Today marks a dozen years since I married my best friend.

Navigating the adventure of life with Cacey Nichole Steward Klein has been the best twelve years of my life.

We’ve had a few tough years challenge us, but two things happened: those challenges brought us closer together, and the “moving average” kept going up. (Sorry, when you work in financial tech, that’s the analogy that works.)

I love doing life with you, sweetheart. Can I have four dozen more?

Guerrilla PR Strategies for Tech Startups

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 08:20:51 -0700

The first annual Sacramento Tech Week is coming up, and I’m honored to join a few fellow Sactown CEOs on a panel called “Guerrilla PR Strategies for Startups” on May 15th at 6:30PM.

This event will be held at The Urban Hive at 1931 H Street in Sacramento (corner of H & 20th). There will also be a live stream of the discussion, which I’ll try and tweet before the event.

Registration is free, or you can donate a few bucks to the Sac Social Media Club to help them keep producing great events. You can register to attend here. I hope to see you there!

Stuck

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 09:40:00 -0700

More than 10 million children around the world are stuck in orphanages.

The typical international adoption process takes three years and costs $28,000. And over the past five years, the number of children adopted in the US has dropped by 50%.

Stuck is an amazing new documentary film that tells the stories of four children desperately waiting for forever families. And it’s a call to action that will give you the drive and the tools to be a part of desperately needed change.

Stuck is coming to Sacramento on this Monday evening April 1, at 7:00PM at the Tower Theatre, and there are many other cities on the itinerary. Tickets are available online.

I hope to see you there.

How to Get Started on Twitter

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 04:00:11 -0700

Twitter is a network that is a little tough to get into. But once you dive in and really connect with it, it often becomes your favorite network for its simplicity, speed and ease of engagement.

Here are a few tips that I’ve developed for friends to help them get going on Twitter.

Start by following 40-50 people who are active tweeters. That will help you understand the unique rhythm of Twitter and how it works.
Less is more. On a heavy day, tweet 8-10 times. Most days, tweet once or twice. Spread them out across the day. The people who tweet 25-50 times a day and retweet everything they agree with have their place, but most people don’t want that much noise.
What to share? Focus your tweets on sharing ideas, quotes, jokes or links that are likely interesting to whatever audience you want to build.
Figure out the hashtag. Don’t be one of those people who hashtag every word, but do figure out how to join a discussion in progress. The Rand Paul filibuster quickly coalesced around #StandWithRand. One of my tweets about that got picked up by someone famous, ended up getting about 250 retweets and I picked up 30-40 new followers.
Engage with people. If you start a tweet with someone’s user name (@aaronklein, for example), only they and people who follow both of you will see it in the stream. Respond to people in your stream, and respond back to people who respond to you. It’s short, sweet, personal and doesn’t take much time.

If you do 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 well, you’ll gradually build a nice audience that starts thinking of you first whenever they need whatever it is that you do.

Doing it VC Style

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 12:11:26 -0700

My brother-in-law emailed a group of groomsmen, including me, a bill of $48 for clothes for my sister’s wedding.

My response: let’s do this VC style.

I’ve recently become aware of some new approaches to transactions such as this from friends of mine who are venture capitalists.

I’m going to sell a partial interest in all six pairs of pants to an offshore fund located in the Bahamas, and then use that as collateral to get a letter of credit from a Greek bank to finance the purchase of 24 pairs of pants. Every one of those pairs will do a leveraged debt offering and issue dividends back to their owners, who can then do a secondary offering to take out the original investors.

The net result is that we should each end up with $48, and you should end up with $248, and we all have a borrowed pair of pants to wear for the wedding, which by the way, do need to be mailed back to the Bahamas after the event.

You’re welcome.

I Love Email

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 06:27:59 -0700

I know, it’s not cool to say that. I’m supposed to complain about my overloaded inbox, and the concept of a “never ending to-do list created by others.”

Yes, my inbox gets out of control from time to time. I’ve simply created two rules that have made email work.

1. If I don’t HAVE to read it, unsubscribe and don’t get it via email.
2. Respond to non-critical messages when possible, and don’t let them stress you out.

By restricting the flow and removing the stress of email, I’ve come to love it.

Why? Because many of the best things happen via email.

New customer signups? Email.
My daily alert on the corps of advisors using Riskalyze Pro? Email.
A big industry player pings me about a new partnership? Email.
Dead prospects wake up and realize it’s time to jump on board? Email.
A mid-day note from my sweetheart? Email.
Seeing the first photos of my son, who was born in South Korea? Email.
Seeing the first photos of my daughter, who was born in Ethiopia? Email.

If you don’t love email, here’s a thought: change what you have coming into it, and you may start feeling differently.

Solar Students Lighten Sierra College's Budget

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 03:00:20 -0700

Great piece in the Placer Herald about how students in Sierra College’s photovoltaic program are gaining critical job skills while generating savings in our operating budget to boot.

One of those students, Meleah Cordero, of Newcastle, credited the course with giving her a broad base of real-world knowledge that changed her life.

In 2009, she was a preschool teacher looking for a change, and since completing the program in 2010, she has worked in installation, marketing, sales and design departments at local solar companies.

Cordero now works in project management at ES Electrical Construction, Inc. in Penryn and attributes “all of it” to her educational experience.

I hope you’ll give it a read.

Dynamic Notifications

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 04:00:20 -0700

I love getting notifications on my devices. The key to loving them is to filter them very carefully and make sure that you’re only getting notifications for things that are really important to you.

But when you’ve got that fine tuned, it’s an amazing convenience.

Android pioneered the notifications center, which the iPhone copied a while back. And now notifications are spreading everywhere: I get many of the same notifications on the iPad, and now on the Mac too.

I don’t mind getting the same notification on different devices, but you know what is a little tiresome? Having to clear them out. For example, if I get a text on Google Voice, I’ll often answer it on my Mac. But I have to open the app to get rid of the “1” badge.

On the other hand, if someone sends me an iMessage, and I read it on the Mac, the notification instantly disappears on the iPhone and iPad. Magical.

I used to think this was one of those dumb limitations that Apple put on third party apps. Until Asana pushed their most recent update with notifications. And magically, if I clear out my Asana inbox on the web app, the notifications instantly clear on the iPhone.

Thanks, Asana. It’s a silly, small thing. But it makes using your app a wonderful experience as a result.

If you’re building an app, keep in mind that this is the kind of craftsmanship that will really delight your users.

Saturday morning, she knows what that means…a new episode...

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 10:40:26 -0700

Saturday morning, she knows what that means…a new episode of Sofia the First on our DVR!

Sierra College @ Work: March 19, 2013 Board Meeting

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:51:42 -0700

Board Meeting Details:

March 19, 2013
Sierra College Rocklin Campus, Rooms LR-133 and A-104
Closed session at 3:00PM, open session at 4:00PM, public comment for items not on the agenda at approximately 5:40PM
Meeting Agenda
Contracts (General / Capital Projects)
Warrants

This month, we’ll be updating on accreditation and on statewide policy changes for enrollment priorities. That’s of particular interest as we try to maximize the students we can serve with the resources that we have.

If you’re in the 530/916, I hope you’ll join us to share your perspective. Or you can comment here and I’ll do my best to carry your input into the meeting.

Thanks again to Wells Fargo for investing $100K into expanded...

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 04:00:05 -0700

Thanks again to Wells Fargo for investing $100K into expanded opportunity for our students at Sierra College! We appreciate you.

Riskalyze Blog: Barry Ritholtz Joins Riskalyze Advisory Board

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:06:20 -0700

Riskalyze Blog: Barry Ritholtz Joins Riskalyze Advisory Board:

Excited to share this news from the Riskalyze Blog.

riskalyze:

We’re excited to announce that Barry Ritholtz has joined Riskalyze as a member of our advisory board.

Barry is CEO and Director of Equity Research at Fusion Analytics Investment Partners in New York City, a firm that uses Riskalyze Pro to serve clients as a fee-only registered investment…

Thanks to YOUR generosity, the new walls continue to rise at our...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 04:00:10 -0700

Thanks to YOUR generosity, the new walls continue to rise at our school campuses in Ethiopia! These photos are at Adami Tulu School.