Hi, I'm Allen Pike. I run Steamclock, where we design and develop nice apps in beautiful Vancouver. At least monthly, I write an article and publish it here.
It Shipped That Way →
Four years ago, I started the Fun Fact podcast with Arik Devens, and we’re still having a lot of fun every month sharing facts about schemes, history, science, and so on. I’ve increasingly felt the itch, though, for a second show. I learn so much talking through product and engineering...
You Should Propose More Things
A habit for getting decisions made.
One of startups’ superpowers is quick decision-making. Early on, this might just mean decisions are made rapidly by one person. Of course, this doesn’t scale. If you don’t find ways to scale up good decision-making, your company will slow down and – eventually – die. There are a lot of...
2022 Vancouver Election Guide
9 parties. 59 candidates. One ballot.
Updated through Oct 12. Sat Oct 15 is the last day to vote! If you’re short on time, I’ve added some sample ballots for housing-focused progressives. Vancouver is cursed with an interesting political scene. We have a relatively engaged electorate compared to other cities, and a disproportionate supply of cranks....
A Password Autofill Surprise
On psychological safety.
A lot of things turn out the way they do because of how we safe we feel. Let me give one example. Some time ago my wife Karen asked me for help with her computer. Ever since she’d migrated to a new Mac, Chrome’s password autofill feature would no longer...
How to Go Over Budget
On working within an estimate.
Assembling a good project estimate can be hard. Unless you’ve shipped something similar before, you’ll probably need to consult experts, investigate risks, do product definition work, and gauge a thoughtful “iteration and surprises” buffer that considers the chance of external surprises, scope grenades, and shark attacks. There’s a reason many...
Setting Two Spies Free →
An update on a beloved side project: In 2019, we launched Two Spies as a little side project with cosmetic-only monetization. It exceeded our wildest dreams, with 800,000 folks trying the game, and rating it more than 4.7 stars on average. Still kind of hard to believe this little game...
Giving a Shit as a Service
A mental model for service businesses.
A few years back, my team decided to get a custom meeting room table. In our search for something great, we were referred to a small studio that does great work: East Vancouver’s Union Wood Co. The team there met with us, showed us various samples, and asked thoughtful questions...
Someone Wants to Learn From You
How writing habits pay odd dividends.
It’s common for people to feel hesitant about writing. Before somebody even types a word, I often hear objections like “I don’t have anything important to say” or “I couldn’t really add anything, I’m not enough of an expert.” If that’s the kind of thing you might say, I have...
How to Buy a Family EV
Doing battle with the global supply chain.
When our second kid was born a couple years back, I started working on getting us a bigger car. This proved… challenging. The requirements My quest had two key requirements that I thought were simple, but weren’t: Big enough to haul around two young kids, plus stuff. Nothing huge; just...
Coda vs. Notion, and Emoji Pickers
On tools for building knowledge together.
At Steamclock, we like to share docs. Guides, notes, plans – writing helps get think and working more asynchronously. Google Docs is okay for this purpose, but by early 2021, we knew we’d outgrown it. We’d seen glimpses of what more modern knowledge base and note-taking apps could do, and...
How Two Spies Closes Cities
A little story about iterative experimentation.
Recently my team has been putting together some case studies. You know, telling the story of things we’ve built in a more timeless way than a 6-year-old blog post exclaiming “this is launching today, check it out!” with a link that has since become a 404. When it came time...
What Doesn't Need to Be Done
Finishing things requires simplification.
Project management is, roughly, the art of ensuring a team gets what needs to be done, done. Given that, a lot of the focus ends up being on those needs. Checklists, breakdowns, schedules, updates – all focused on the things that need to be done. While that’s all very important,...