New York City · Likes Dogs · Eternal Dreamer

Brian Kalma

I'm prone to following the shiny thing down a rabbit hole at 1AM.

PLAYER 1INSERT COIN

Hi. I'm Brian. I build little products mostly to see what falls out of them. Before this I had my hands in stuff you've probably clicked on without knowing it — Zappos back when it was a growth rocketship in the early 2000's, then Gilt Groupe, then a couple of companies I started, one of which got bought. I'm not going to make you read the résumé. It's findable. Anyway.

∗ asideMy handle nearly everywhere is @krianbalma. Brian Kalma felt boring, but how fun is saying Krian, or Balma, or Krianbalma!?

These days I run Shots on Goal Studio. The whole philosophy is right there in the name: you don't score by holding the puck and writing a deck about scoring. You take the shot. Then you take another one. I ship fast and learn faster, which is the polite way of saying I've made peace with being wrong in public.

stuff I probably shouldn't say out loud

The Weird Bits

  1. A plan is just a guess in a nicer outfit.
  2. How you work is greater than what you've done at work.
  3. You can't hurry luck, no, you just have to wait… or was that love?
  4. UNpopular opinion, business books usually do you wrong.

I could be wrong about every one of these. See above, re: comfortable being wrong.

∗ how my brain runsI have ADHD. Forty open tabs isn't a problem its the solution. I've learned to leverage my power of creation through short bursts of focus, layered with frequency.
what I'm doing right now

In The Oven

There's a small pile of half-built apps over at the studio at any given moment — some for dogs, some for humans, one or two that exist mostly because they amused me at 1 am. The good ones graduate. The rest teach me something and quietly disappear. Go poke at whatever's live: shotsongoal.studio.

other true things, in no order

Also This

  • I grow vegetables from seed in a south-facing backyard in New York City, which is its own special form of optimism.
  • I will beat you at Scrabble, and I'll feel bad about it for roughly four seconds.
  • Mets fan. We don't have to get into it.
  • I saw Spaceballs probably a hundred times before I ever watched Star Wars.
  • I love laughing and I love dogs. Life's but an improv stage; the only rule is "yes, and."