Jonathan Stark
Who are you, and what do you do?
My name is Jonathan Stark and I’m a mobile strategy consultant who helps consumer brands thrive in the post-PC era. I’ve worked with companies like CVS, Staples, Time, Nokia, and many others on their mobile strategy, tactics, and training.
On the side, I also offer business coaching to software developers to help them increase their profitability without adding headcount, labor intensity, or significant costs. We work on things like ditching hourly billing, creating productized services, attracting better clients, and so on.
What forms of media have influenced you the most?
If I had to pick one form of media that has influenced me the most, I’d have to say books. And by “books” I mean physical books, e-books, and audiobooks. I maintain a “must-read” list of business books here. Every software developer who runs their own business (or is thinking about starting one) should read everything on that list.
What hardware / software do you use?
My main computer is a 13 inch MacBook air. I typically carry two phones, iPhone and Android, and I have another few dozen in my office that I use for testing. I wear a smartwatch, usually the Pebble Steel but lately I’m liking my Samsung Gear Live, which is an Android Wear watch. I have an Apple Watch but I don’t like it much. I take a lot of old-school analog notes using a Dignitary fountain pen and a Levenger Circa notebook.
For software, I use:
-Gmail for email
-Skype and Call Recorder for podcasting and recording coaching calls for students
-Basecamp for all of my project management
-Slack for group communications
-CloudApp and Dropbox for file sharing
-Google Calendar to track all of my appointments and todos that do have a date associated with them
-Remember the Milk to track todos that do not have a date associated with them
-Calendly to let people book time on my calendar
-ScreenFlow for recording screencasts
-SizeUp and Moom for Mac window management
-aText for storing typing shortcuts
-Remarq for converting markdown into PDF reports
-Sublime Text for all my coding and general purpose text editing
-GitHub for storing all my code repositories
-AWS, Digital Ocean, and Heroku for hosting
-Lately I have been using an amazing Gmail plug-in called Inbox Pause which I have set to deliver messages to my inbox in batches once every two hours instead of them trickling in throughout the day. It’s life altering.
What would be your dream creative setup?
I have always loved working in busy public areas like coffee shops and restaurants. Something about the energy keeps me productive.
