All posts by

Michael Berhane

   COO: Messiah Jacobs & CEO: Savalas Colbert www.entercharge.com Tell us a bit about yourselves. Messiah: Yeah for sure. We have a start-up that we’ve been pushing forward for the last year called entercharge. entercharge’s focus is on creating additional services in the restaurant space. We created a hardware device that sits on top of tables and allows people to charge the battery in their cell phone. We’re also allowing people to do other things right from the table, such as paying for their bill or requesting additional services. This is something

Software Engineer Intern at Microsoft   What made you decide to work in tech? Growing up, I played video games non-stop with my brothers and it always fascinated me how reality could be recreated virtually. As a kid, I remember telling myself that if I did not make the NBA as a pro athlete I wanted to be a programmer and be around computers and/or video game production. Nonetheless, I unexpectedly ended up in the tech field late in my college career. As I was going into my junior year as

    iOS Software Development, Training, and Coaching   So, what made you decide to work with technology? Well, I got interested in computer graphics. If it weren’t for computer graphics I probably wouldn’t be doing anything with computers. I’m one of these hybrid design/tech type people, and it all came together with computer graphics. It’s programming, it’s visual, you have to think about a range of things and they all have to come together otherwise you don’t really have a solution. How was your time at Apple? Apple was amazing.

Silly question to start off with, but what exactly is a data journalist and how does that differ from a normal journalist? I think that’s a really good question, as I hate it when people take things for granted. A data journalist is one who uses data as much as they possibly can in their work–which I know sounds really really silly, but it means I can write on any subject whatsoever; the only criterion is that data has to be available.Some of the pieces we write are about how

How did you become involved in tech? I got involved in technology accidentally. I was at Stanford studying philosophy and a friend of mine at the graduate school of business was working on an app. I was one of the people who was helping him out and over the course of the process I found myself enjoying the energy and dynamism of the work. I ultimately ended up leaving school to go work with him. How did you become a VC afterwards? I actually ended up doing a couple of

‘Just saw POCIT on product hunt, this is getting out of hand…’ A friend from university texted me. POCIT had previously been featured in a few other tech publications, but there’s something about being featured in Product Hunt’s top 10 that gives legitimacy to your project/business/venture that’s hard to replicate. Hence the flabbergasted text from a friend shocked to see POCIT catapulted to the top 10 of Product Hunt’s daily list. We stayed in the top 10 all day, gaining hundreds of votes, a massive surge of interest, and an outpouring of valuable

What made you decide to work in tech? My mom was super controlling when it came to going on the internet. She used to set this AOL feature where it limited the time the child account was allowed to use the internet each day. My two other siblings and I had to share one hour of internet per day and it was horrible. My childhood consisted of modding the Sims, customizing my Myspace page, and figuring out how my older brother always bypassed the internet timer and parental controls. I played

This is a special episode of POCIT featuring former Twitter Engineer Leslie Miley. Please read his enlightening essay on Medium regarding Twitter’s lack of diversity, and how it informed his decision to leave a senior engineering position at the company. What made you decide to work in tech? I have what I call home field advantage. I was born and raised in Silicon Valley {laughs}. You couldn’t walk out the door without getting hit by a computer. It always fascinated me, I watched Steve Jobs as a kid, and witnessed

What made you decide to work in tech? I had no exposure to tech growing up. The only exposure I had was the tech I was consuming. I always loved tech and games, and I was a very early adopter of Facebook and MySpace. I always loved technology, but I had no idea I could be a developer; I didn’t even know what that was! Over a college winter break I came across two different videos: one was a TED talk by Kimberly Bryant of Black Girls Code, and [the

What made you decide to work in tech? Before I even knew what I was getting into, I picked up on some knowledge during middle school that engineers make a lot of money! {laughs} I was always good at math and science, but before it was a desire it was: What do my skills tell me I should do? As I got into high school, I think I had a soft pulse on the evolution of technology, and where it would be by the time I was a young adult. I

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