Discussion
Hi, I'm Anil Dash. I'm the CEO of Fog Creek Software, which created Glitch and FogBugz, and I'm an advocate for making the tech industry more ethical and humane. You can check out Glitch at https://glitch.com/ and join our community that'll help you make the app of your dreams.
Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
Hi, Anil! It's been nearly 6 months since you announced your new role as CEO of Fog Creek Software. What's been your biggest surprise since making the leap?
Kiki Schirr / 史秀玉
@kikischirr · Founder, WeKiki Video Chat Platform
What are a few simple things you think the average founder can do to make the world a better place?
(Like, where should we get started?)
Thanks for doing this AMA, Anil!
@kikischirr Oh, this is a great question. One of the biggest things we can do is use our voices and our resources to fight for those who have the least. A simple way is to make sure that anything we create, or that our teams create, is designed to help those who most need opportunity or access. If we help them first, everybody else will be taken care of, too.
Kiki Schirr / 史秀玉
@kikischirr · Founder, WeKiki Video Chat Platform
@anildash ...that honestly just made me realize something I'm doing wrong! Thank you!! haha... off to fix it!
David Spinks
@davidspinks · CEO, CMX Media
Hey Anil, thanks for doing the AMA!
I'm curious on your thoughts on how far an organization, or community, should take inclusivity. Is it possible to reach a point where you're truly, 100% inclusive? If you're a business and you want to be more inclusive, how far do you need to take it to be "diverse enough"? There seems to be a never ending list of attributes you could prioritize. You can be inclusive of gender, race, sexual orientation, location, income, age, etc. Is it possible to ever be totally inclusive of all people? Or do you, at some point, have to make a decision about who belongs and who doesn't?
@davidspinks This is an interesting question! The basic answer is: inclusivity isn't a goal, it's a process and a way of working. I don't think it usually makes sense to decide who belongs or who doesn't, but rather to pursue having as many different perspectives and lived experiences as possible, and that takes the form of not just who you recruit to your team, but who you retain, and how you keep your entire team curious and motivated to keep exploring and learning about new things.
In short, "inclusivity" isn't something that's measured as a percentage. It's just a process we practice every day.
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
What is the most surprising thing you have seen Glitch used for?
@bentossell I don't know if it was surprising, but certainly one of the most inspiring uses has been Tech Forward, at http://tech-forward.com , which is an amazing set of community-submitted resources for civic participation. I loved watching that come together, and seeing it evolve.
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
If you had to trade lives with a Tech CEO for a week, who would it be and why?
Jacqueline von Tesmar
@jacqvon · Community, Product Hunt ✌️😻
How important is company culture to the success of a startup?
@jacqvon To my mind, absolutely essential. But that's probably because of my definition of the word "success", which has to do with whether we're having a positive impact on the world. There are companies (ahem, Uber) which might be generating a ton of money, but whose employees or partners or communities might not feel their impact is positive. And that's attributable to their culture. I think culture is the point from which all success flows, and which defines what success even means.
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
Hi Anil, thanks for joining us today. What are your top tips for creating an engaged online community?
@ems_hodge This is such an important question, though I don't think I could tell Product Hunt anything you don't already know! I think the most fundamental lesson is that communities are things we _design_, that the choices we make to shape them really have huge impact, and that it takes intentional, continuous effort to ensure that we create communities that reflect our values.
Jeremy Burge
@jeremyburge · Founder, Emojipedia
Hey Anil! You must get a lot of emails from people you don't know asking you to do random things. Replying seems the polite thing to do, but would be time consuming to reply to everything. How do you do it?
@jeremyburge The unfortunate but honest answer is I just drop the ball on stuff sometimes. I am not sure how to get over feeling bad about the fact that I can't personally help all the people whom I would like to. If you want to know what keeps me up at night, that's probably it.
@samuelpolat Yes! Glitch (our community for collaboratively creating apps at glitch.com ) is already being used in schools, universities and bootcamps all over the world, and by self-taught learners of all kinds, and we're going to be expanding the set of tools we provide so educators can help even more people learn to create. I'm _very_ excited about this, especially since we have a number of people on our team at Fog Creek who have been educators and care so deeply about this goal for Glitch.