Nathan Sterner

Last night I went to the Basilica Block Party featuring Death Cab for Cutie, American Authors, X Ambassadors, and other bands across multiple stages.  With my work in the start-up community, I can’t help but think of the similarities between a start-up and a band. For a band, it works like this… You get your […]

I recently read the book Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh.  I thought it was an excellent read that touched upon many of his businesses and ways of thinking about things. Here are 10 lessons I learned from the book… Do things that you enjoy doing– this sometimes takes time to figure out, but when you […]

Earlier this year, I read the book Creativity Inc, by Ed Catmull, the President of Pixar and it was a fantastic book about how to nurture creativity in organizations. Pixar optimizes collaborative creativity and allows people to bring their whole selves to work and do outstanding creative work. Pixar further amplifies this creativity by mastering […]

This week, a new class came into Tradecraft and I was assigned to one of the new students as a mentor.  My mentee has lived in Dubai for 11 years and we shared stories about our experiences there.  For me, I visited Dubai on my travel sabbatical.  Being in Dubai, really blew me away on multiple […]

                    This week, I was fortunate enough to attend the Apple Event to release the new products.  I had been wanting to attend this event for a while and I was so excited to actually be there in person.  It did not disappoint.  Actually, I was […]

Last week, we had Bob Baxley come into Tradecraft to talk.  He is the Head of Product Design at Pinterest and formerly had senior level leadership roles for Apple’s retail and e-commerce design teams.  He had a lot of unique insights to share about how to be creative, manage the creative process, and enable a […]

Recently, I started a program called Tradecraft.  It is a 3 month, in-residence program that trains people to work at start-ups.  The program consists of curriculum, start-up consulting projects, career development, and personal development and has tracks for engineering, product, growth, and sales/BD.  I am in the growth track and it has been an excellent […]

I want to talk a bit today about how to accomplish something difficult.  For most people and me included, it is quite difficult to deal with a large task and know exactly how to pull it off.  The secret that I’ve found is in these 3 steps. 1) Identify and write down what goal you hope […]

This will be my blog with my thoughts / observations on tech, business, creativity, and life.