Yohei Nakajima

Month: March 2011

  • #LAFI Chapter 4: Skipping Ahead, Prototype Done!

    Between my work, some recent travels and the Founder Institute, it’s been a little hectic and I haven’t had a chance to update my progress. Hopefully, I’ll get back to recapping it later. Tonight, I finished my first functioning prototype! After receiving some feedback during last night’s session, I realized my next step was to […]

  • Santa Monica Open Data Initiative

      Update (9/21/2011) – Unexpectedly,I’ve recently joined a group to work on this open data project. Read the next blog post here. A Mashable article from this past February titled How Open Data Initiatives Can Improve City Life discusses how some major city governments in America that have opened up public data as an API […]

  • Japan, Day 1

    I flew into Tokyo today, because my brother’s getting married on Sunday. It’s a 16 hour difference from Los Angeles, and a 12 hour flight, meaning I arrived at the place my parent’s are staying at 30 hours after I left Los Angeles. Even crazier, I’ll arrive in LA a few hours before I leave […]

  • #LAFI Chapter 5: You Can’t Afford the Luxury of Depression

    Tonight’s class was about legal and IP, but what stood out to me most from today’s class was a lesson that only received a quick mention before the session topic began. A man I can’t give enough credit to as an the amazing organizer of the Los Angeles chapter of the Founder Institute, Ken Rutkowski, […]

  • #LAFI Chapter 6: You’ll Like This Product Development Process

    Today, we were lucky to have Robert Tercek talk to us about creativity in the work place. I was very happy to hear him talk about the importance of having a creative process. I once interned at a creative agency that had a 300+ index card deck of brainstorming processes for company use only; I […]

  • Speed-to-cool

    Your speed-to-cool is basically your personal elevator pitch. It should do is make the person listening think your cool/special, very quickly. For people who’ve accomplished something significant, this is easy. For the rest of us, we have to get creative. We have to identify the one thing about ourself that makes us different, and try […]

  • Tracking Your Friend’s Flight From Anywhere

    My friend happened to lose his cell phone on the beach this weekend, we’re assuming it’s buried in the sand. He’s flying home to LA today and asked me to pick him up. As far as I can remember, I’ve never had to pick up a friend from the airport who didn’t have a cell […]

  • A Billion Dollar Idea: Gaming Merchandise

    This elevator pitch is repeated below during the article:   A website that allows developers to order custom merchandise for their games to be resold through in-app purchases with an iOS shopping API built into a print, merchandise, and fulfillment infrastructure. —– Game Merchandise? Sounds pretty boring. What’s my billion dollar idea? Let’s start with […]

  • How I Found Bánh Mì at Mendocino Farms Using Food Spotting

    Mendocino Farms. Sounds like a place with roaming cows and grassy fields, right? Wrong, it’s an awesome sandwich place in Marina Del Rey. We’re talking animals, long dead. I’ve been to the shopping center in Marina Del Rey a countless number of times. I’ve actually stood outside this sandwich shops a few times, but I […]

  • #LAFI Chapter 1: How I Heard About It

    Some people say everything happens for a reason. I think it’s a great way to start a story. Six months ago, I was feeling defeated from not meeting a major milestone I’d set for my business. I was reading multiple books a month, putting all of my energy into one business, and for some reason, […]