Matt Bernier

Last night I was at the House Of Genius Boulder Neighborhood event at the Bing offices in Boulder, CO.  I went expecting something way different than what we did. Normally, House of Genius is an event where you go and listen to 3 startups pitch their ideas and then you give them feedback. Last night, it was all about the Boulder Community Foundation a not-for-profit organization that busts its ass every day to make Boulder a better place for everyone who lives there by providing help and grants to community focused organizations who are doing good. I hope I got that right… The big question of the night was basically posed as How do we get politicians to keep their… » Read More

We all, OK many of us, remember the movie Pay it Forward.  Some people knew it as a book first of course. Many of us have also watched on the news about how some person at a coffee shop or fast good joint will buy the meal for the “next guy” with the hopes that it will keep going.   This is great! I love this idea, but for all the times that I have attempted to start something like this or seen it get started, or just generally seen someone be nice – I have almost never seen it keep going. This of course makes me wonder, is it the method of delivery, the situation, or maybe the people involved?… » Read More

I previously wrote an article about how much a pound of 50s would be worth, and for some reason I think it’s fun to put money into terms of weight. So, when I saw the visualization of what a stack of 1.14 trillion dollars would look like my first though of course was, “How much would that weigh?” Quick Math: 1 bill = ~1 gram (assume $100 bill like the infographic) 1.14 trillion dollars in debt divided by $100 =11.4 billion $100 bills 11.4 billion $100 bills at one gram each = 11.4 billion grams or 11,400 metric tons To put that into perspective my favorite math site in the world, Wolfram Alpha, gave me some numbers: This is pretty… » Read More

In the last month, I have not been sleeping well at all. With everything that has been going on, it has been a little tough.  This last weekend, I thought I had been catching up. Then I woke up this morning feeling like I never wanted to leave my bed, I have been up for 2 hours and I am still foggy. My coffee is helping a bit, getting a few tasks done has helped, but the fog lingers. My wife is awesome, this morning she heard me complaining, “I just can’t convince myself to wake up” twice this morning, then finally told me to go turn off the fan.  She knew I would just keep sleeping, but that I… » Read More

And while planning is vital, expectations are brutal. Ain’t it a bitch to never get where you’re going because you never sit down and accept where you are and how you got there? – Erika “The Redhead” Oh man, I spend most of my days jealous. I planned to be a millionaire by 25 (yeah, everyone else too). I’m jealous of all those guys who have built something, stuck with it and ran all the way to the bank with it. Instead of building my project and really pursuing it, I was sitting at a job I thought I was happy at. When we got bought and everything went to shit. My world fell apart. I started being unhappy on… » Read More

It seems like about once a week I stop and think about what I am missing that is keeping me from doing that one thing that will change everything.   I have worked on great projects in the past that I know could be huge, that could be made into something amazing and I feel like I am blind to what to do past the initial product development stage. I worked on a great project that should have changed an entire industry.  I had high hopes of making a difference and making some money while I did it.  I just couldn’t quite get to the next step with the project. I ran into a wall.  Everyone who worked on the project… » Read More

My Grandma is an amazing lady who I am able to have some amazing conversations with.  I look forward to times when we get to chat, whether in person, on the phone or even over email.  BTW, my Grandma was the first person I knew to own a Mac and who, even though she pretends to not know, I think secretly knows more about Macs than me. Recently, she asked me a question which I figured I would pose to you, Have you ever been overwhelmed with life & going through a time of extreme distress when getting engaged in a book was the only time you could get your mind off of what was traumatizing you? I would love… » Read More

I was recently chatting with a friend about how some very topically slanted groups have been advertising on one of his favorite websites which actually leans the opposite way as the advertisements.  I realized something very interesting, we talked about it, and I figured I would share it here. First, a little background on how Google Ads work. Whenever an advertisement is clicked, the site that provides the link gets paid a small amount of money and the person who posted the advertisement is charged some amount of money. Also, most people who post advertisements set a specific daily budget for their ads because otherwise it is possible that through Google that advertisement could be seen by millions of people… » Read More

“… You are a scholar and a gentleman, and there are damn few of us left.” I often hear this saying from a friend who uses it to say thank you in a kitschy way.  I believe that he is trying to let me know that he truly means thank you, but to me it seems like overkill and drastically demeans the value of these words. Let me explain. Normally, when people say things, I ignore the fact that they are just using a phrase because they “heard it once” and think its cool to say.  This happens every day, and in a commercial advertising driven society, things get brought into common parlance where all meaning and value is completely… » Read More

Tony and I often chat on IM, email, phone, and now Twitter.  Usually, we are joking around or talking about some crazy idea we have.  Every once in a while we will chat about more serious topics.  This is a good example of one of those times. Tony Kimberly: Can I ask you a weird question? Matt Bernier: sure Tony Kimberly: What’s important to you? Matt Bernier: What do you mean by that? Tony Kimberly: Uhh, in the long run, in life.  What’s important to you. Tony Kimberly: I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching and deciding what I want out of life and what I want to do/accomplish Matt Bernier: To be happy, around the people I love,… » Read More