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Two For The Price Of Two!
Hi! My name’s Al Abut and I’m the other recent hire at isocket. Eston and I are the new design team (my official job title is Startup Action Figure) and I’m excited about the big bet isocket is placing on the power of design to create compelling products. Our investor Dave McClure made waves in the design community recently by writing the article The Value Of Design To Startups in BusinessWeek and I’m pumped to join a team that takes the message to heart.
In fact, I was so excited that I wore a tie to my first day in the office yesterday. Granted, I wore it on my wrist but I’m sure that still counts.
If you see me in person sometime, I’ll tell you all about how John and I met, plus the weird connection to a mutual buddy in Bloomington named Kevin Makice. Let’s just say it’s amazing what a small world it is.
More about my background – I started off my career as a web developer at UC San Diego, working on a range of large websites focusing on science outreach. I launched two redesigns of the UCSD Division of Biology before working as a web developer for an environmental research initiative. I moved to San Francisco in late 2005 as an actionscript programmer making games at Wagerworks.
Startups are where my passion lie though and since 2007, I’ve specialized in designing for a wide range of early stage companies. One of the more interesting projects I’ve done was designing a retirement fund analyzer for Cake Financial. It was featured in the Wall Street Journal and Walt Mossberg commented that “I found the service clear and easy to use” as well as “simple, clear and relatively quick”. Cake was subsequently acquired by E-Trade. Other recent gigs included designing marketing pages for paid premium products, redesigning complex web applications and running user testing sessions.
Ok, enough of the boring stuff! I can’t rap like Eston but I have an awesome new puppy and he’s also an addition to the office ranks, so here’s some pics of Cosmo.
Here he is in my hometown of sunny San Diego.
And ham that he is, here’s Cosmo doing the tourist thing at Pea Soup Anderson’s, complete with closed eyes.
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Congrats, Al and congrats to isocket for having you now. Love the tie and pics of Cosmo. Your fan…
Awww. Thanks Christine, the fanhood is mutual! Sorry I missed you on my last trip to San Diego, we’ll have to line something up in advance next time.
Go Al and Cosmo!
That may be the best job title I’ve seen, although I had a friend who used to be “Brain Power Supervisor”
I wish you guys the best in continuing to build the company.
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