incredible entrepreneurs give us their best advice from lessons learned

the inside scoop on

keep up with your place as well as you do your job

why the inventor of “Flappy Bird” decided to leave it all behind

the music star behind

he

06.15

the boy inside the beat

a-z guide to cleaning almost anything

the flight of the birdman

RULES

SONNY MOORE

SKRILLEX

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Dear Readers,

Welcome to Shark! Consider this magazine your new textbook, except you’ll probably learn more from this magazine than you did your entire college career. Inside you’ll find the tips and tricks that nobody else took the time to teach you, and will help you navigate both your work and personal lives. Inside, you’ll find six columns and four stories that you’ll be hungry to sink your teeth into. Our columns are made to help you deal with different situations at work appropriately. Eat like a local with our column that features the best places to eat in different regions and cities, so no matter where work or pleasure takes you, your taste buds can enjoy the ride as well. Another column includes tips for different situations outside of the office, whether it’s a business confer-ence or you just want to impress your date on your knowledge of wine. Help yourself to advice on how to take control of your life and achieve your personal goals. Our Sink or Swim column features success stories of how people reached their goals, and how they achieved it. Our last column features articles that will help you climb the ladder of hierarchy in your workplace, or even your businesses. This month also features stories that tell the tales of two sharks, Sonny Moore and Dong Nguyen. In The Boy Inside the Beat, Sonny Moore’s path to revolutionizing electronic dance music is revealed. We also have the scoop on why Dong Nguyen pulled the hit Flappy Bird from the online market. We also have all the tips and tricks to easily clean almost anything in your home, so you can finally impress your mom the next time she stops by for a visit. Lastly, we have the best cutting edge advice from eleven successful entrepreneurs. So dive in and enjoy, and become the shark you want to be.

Victoria Dexter, Editor-in-Chief

COLUMNS

STORIEShow-to outings

a-z guide to cleaning almost anything

Get the inside scoop on Sonny Moore, the music star behind Skrillex.

Entrepreneurs give us their best advice from the lessons they learned through their experience.

Learn about the man that invented Flappy Bird, and why he decided to leave it all behind.

Know how clean up your house so well, even your mom will be impressed.

workers in wonderland

eat like a local

help yourself

the flight of the birdman

sink or swim

the rules

climbing the ladder

the boy inside the beat

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Pairing wine with food. It’s a skill that is neces-sary to know, but not something that’s often taught. Luckily, we’re here to rescue you from ordering white wine with your steak.

By Megan Krigbaum

The problem of pairing wine and food seems to be one that bothers many people. It’s never both-ered me, though, as I follow two basic rules. Firstly, it’s far more important to pair wine with people, not food. Secondly, wine and food in general work well together - there are only a few combinations which really do not work. This article describes what I mean by pairing wine with people, and gives some detail about those wine and food matches that are to be avoided, as well as discuss-ing a few of the more classic matches.

I’ve always been a big fan of this approach to serving wine. Many people have their preferred style of wine, and stick to that style re-gardless of the occasion or the food on offer. Whereas this practice might seem an anathema to some people, there’s nothing funda-mentally wrong with it. Serving a fine, elegant Left Bank claret with good steak (whichever cut you prefer) goes down very well in my book, but if a guest drinks only white wine, particularly Mosel Ries-ling (narrow-minded though that may be), is it not somewhat ar-rogant of me to force the red wine upon them, regardless of how agreeable I find the combination?

If, however, you are fortunate enough to have a somewhat more open-minded guest, then the importance of pairing wine and food becomes a little more apparent. I find that many combinations of wine and food, not considered to be ‘classic’ matches, work well, and I therefore intend to approach the matter by discussing those matches which perhaps don’t work so well.

PAIRING WINE WITH PEOPLE

How-To Outings

Photos - Phillip Grange

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This rule isn’t as hard and fast as it seems, but it’s a good starting point. Red wines in general contain tannins, and these tannins, in combina-tion with a fish dish, will impart a metallic taste to the wine which I find quite unpleasant. The same can be said for many red wine and cheese combinations, a match that many find very agreeable, but I rarely enjoy. Consequently, fresh, unoaked and acidic white wines, such as Chablis, Muscadet or Sancerre are good foils for most fish dishes (and cheeses), as these do not have the tannins, and the acidi-ty helps to cut through the sometimes oily richness of the dish. Those reds that do work well are low in tannin, and with some fish dish-es (based around salmon, rainbow trout or similar) I have enjoyed lighter Burgundies, as well as Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley.

I’ve never quite understood how many people seem to contin-ue drinking the table wine, which has accompanied their main course (and perhaps a starter), right through the dessert. The effect of a sweet, heavy pudding is to coat the palate, and over-load it with sugar, completely changing the way a dry wine tastes. Anyone who drinks wine in this way is clearly not thinking about what they are tasting, otherwise they would quickly notice how unpalatable this is. The best solution, other than opening a des-sert wine to accompany the pudding, is leave the wine to one side, only to return to it after coffee has cleansed the palate somewhat.

These are two basic and simple rules which start us on the road to thinking about matching wine with food, and they illustrate quite nicely two simple themes in this art. Combining a fresh and acidic white wine with a rich, oily fish dish is an example of con-trast, where the wine is different in character to the food, yet still complementary. The combination of a sweet wine with pud-ding is an example of food and wine complementing one anoth-er, both working together through their similar trait, sweetness.

RED WINE WITH FISH

DRY WINES WITH SWEET FOODS

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Moving on from combinations that don’t work, at least not for me, there are a few classic food and wine matches that are worth know-ing about. Many of these have sprung from regional combinations, and it’s worth bearing in mind that the foodstuffs of a region or coun-try will often pair well with the local wines, as they have both evolved to complement one another. Simple pasta dishes will usually be a good reason to open any inexpensive Italian red, and in fact these wines, which tend to have higher acidity than many other red wines, will pair well with many foods. Another example is the rich cuisine of Burgundy, which often works very well when combined with the wines of the region, especially when said wines have been used in the preparation of the dish. This is another general rule of thumb when thinking about wine with food - if cooking with wine, using that which is to be served with the dish will help the two marry together.

This is fairly standard stuff, but the combination of different meats with different wines can be a pleasure to try. I find most very pleas-ing, but I have no qualms about serving my guests Mosel Riesling with their beef if I know that is their preferred tipple. For me though, a good and mature Claret, or Rhône, with some well chosen and cor-rectly cooked steak is a joy. Rhône wines also pair well with game, as does Burgundy. It’s worth bearing in mind what else comes with the meat, however, as a sweet yet acidic fruit sauce, such as cranber-ry, could wreak havoc with either of these combinations. Perhaps a Cru Beaujolais would be a better consideration? Also bear in mind that some white meats, roast turkey for example, cope very well in-deed with a red wine, and so this is an option worth considering.

CLASSIC COMBINATIONSWHITE WINE WITH WHITE MEAT,RED WINE WITH RED MEAT

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This is a classic combination, specifically marrying the sweet, botry-tis influenced white wine of Bordeaux, Sauternes, with blue cheese, specifically Roquefort. Many people swear by this pairing, the sweet and luscious nature of the wine working in contrast to the potent, salty nature of the cheese. Personally I don’t enjoy it, nor do I en-joy a more commonly suggested pairing, Port and Stilton, which is based on a very similar premise - savoury cheese with a sweet, this time fortified, wine. Fortunately there are no hard and fast rules, and so I am at little risk of being ostracised for this. Pairing food and wine is all about serving the combinations that work well for you.

Some foods are notoriously difficult to pair with wine. Chocolate is one good example, although why anyone would want to even try is beyond me. If you must serve a chocolate-based dessert, I’d concentrate on combining it with some coffee. Don’t be fooled by certain newspaper wine writers who proclaim ‘even goes well with chocolate’ when puffing their latest recommendation - I’ve never found this to be true. Other problem foods include eggs and egg dominated dishes, where I would recommend a well balanced white wine, neither too acidic nor too rich. Acidic foods, such as toma-toes or vinaigrette dressings, are also problematic. In this situation matching the acidity with a wine which is also acidic is probably the best approach. Finding wines for world cuisine can be a problem, especially for spicy foods, although some matches - wines from Al-sace with many Thai dishes, for example - work very well indeed. ö

SAUTERNES AND BLUE CHEESE

PROBLEM FOODS

Megan Krigbaum is a food connoisseur and is an expert in proper etiquette for all kinds of occa-sions. She hopes to inform readers through her columns about the proper ways to attend different events, especially those in professional settings.

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ost Your waffle maker is crusty; the knives are rusty. It’s

time for an all-around spruce up. Whether you need shortcuts for the regulars (sinks) or how-tos for the rest (air mattress?), this story spells it all out for you.

By Nicole Sforza

Photos - Elena Schweitzer

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CBaking Sheets

Place the gunky baking pan in the sink and top with a Bounce dryer sheet. Fill the pan with warm water and let soak overnight. Rub clean with a sponge, then rinse well. Don’t use steel wool on stainless pans; it will leave scratches.

Baseboards

If you want to skip the bending, employ the Baseboard Buddy ($20, baseboardbuddy.com), a long-handled dusting tool that hugs nooks and crannies. Otherwise use the vacuum’s brush at-tachment and follow with a cloth dampened with diluted dishwash-ing liquid. For extra credit, wipe out scuffs with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser ($3.70 for two, soap.com).

Blinds

Put on a pair of white cotton gloves (Walgreens 100 percent cot-ton gloves, $4.30, drugstore.com) and dip the fingers of one hand into a solution of equal parts warm water and white vinegar. Run your fingers through the slate, redipping into the solution now and then. Use the other hand to wipe dry. Replenish the formula when it looks dirty. When you’re done, swipe the blinds with a dryer sheet (a used one is fine). Its residue will repel dust until the next cleaning.

Camera

Remove dust from the lens, viewfinder, screen, and body---paying special attention to nooks, like the memory-card slot---using a camel-hair brush ($15, bandh.com). A smudge on the lens can become permanent if not tended to, so grab a clean microfiber cloth, breathe on the lens (rubbing a dry lens can grind in dirt), and gently rub in circles. If the smudge is still there, gently rub with a cloth dampened with an alcohol-based lens-cleaning fluid, like ROR Lens Cleaner ($9, adorama.com). Never use a tissue or paper towel; they’re too abrasive. Finish by gently wiping all over with a fresh microfiber cloth.

Ceiling Fan

For safety, first tape down the fan’s switch. Place a drop cloth or an old sheet on the floor, covering an area about twice the span of the blades. Fill a spray bottle with water and 2 tablespoons white vinegar and spritz generously into an old pillowcase. Climb up on a tall stepladder and slide the pillowcase over the blades on by one, rubbing gently to dust. Dirt will fall into the pouch, not your head. For a leaderless method, use the Ceiling Fan Duster ($10; and six-foot telescopic pole, $11: neat-home.com for info). This adjustable tool cups each blade to clean both sides simultaneously. (Be sure to cover your hair, though!)

Air Conditioners

When you’re A/Cs are in use (say, from May through September), it’s smart to clean them monthly so they don’t get listless (or conk out completely) on the hottest days of summer. First turn off the power and pop off the front panel. Remove the spongy filter and soak it in the sink in equal parts warm water and white vinegar for about an hour. Use the vacuum’s crevice attachment on the coils. After you’ve replaced the filter (wait until it’s dry) and the front panel, dust the exterior and the control buttons with a disinfecting wipe. Have central air? Once a season, unscrew the vent covers and clean the slats on both sides with a damp cloth.

Air Mattress

For an item that’s used only occasionally, an air mattress accumu-lates a surprising amount of dirt and dust. Next time you inflate yours for use, give every side of it a once-over with the vacuum’s upholstery attachment or a handheld vac. Then wipe the mattress top (getting into all those little grooves) with a chemical-free wipe (Seventh Generation Disinfecting Wipes, $3, target.com) and air-dry.

Apron

If machine washing hasn’t conquered those greasy food stains, try a presoak treatment that uses an oxygen-based stain remover, such as OxiClean Versatile Stain Remover ($9.50, walmart.com). Let the apron soak for up to 6 hours in 2 to 4 scoops of powder with 1 gallon water, then machine wash as normal, using detergent and more OxiClean. (Follow the package directions.)

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Doorknobs

Fast, weekly cleanings with antibacterial wipes are the best way to degerm knobs. Stash canisters around the house, and stick to one wipe per room to prevent the spread of bacteria.

Eyeglasses

Dip specs in a drop of dishwashing liquid and swirl for a few seconds. Wipe dry with a soft cotton cloth or, for a lint-free finish, a coffee filter.

Food Processor

If your machine is in need of a deep cleaning, soak and removable parts (blade, bowl) in warm water and dishwashing liquid and use a fresh toothbrush on crevices; rinse well and dry blades before replacing. After every use, do this quick wash to prevent the ma-chine from getting crusty: Fill the processor halfway with water and a couple of drops of dishwashing liquid. Run it for a few seconds, then rinse and wipe dry.

Garbage Disposal

Pour 3 tablespoons Borax into the chamber, let sit for 1 hour, then flush with hot water. To combat lingering odors and keep blades sharp, freeze ½ cup white vinegar mixed with water in an ice-cube tray, toss in a few cubes, and run the disposal. And to break up grease deposits that could collect, feed the disposal a small fruit pit or a chicken bone every now and then (nom nom).

Garden Tools

Tap to remove dirt clumps, wipe clean with a cloth, and follow with a gentle exfoliation treatment: Fill a 5-gallon bucket with builder’s sand (sold at hardware stores), then pour in 3 cups mineral oil to make the sand damp. Insert the metal blades or tines of tools, plunging them in and out a few times. The sand will act as an abra-sive, and the oil will condition the metal. To prevent rust during the off-season, store tools in a bucket of fresh sand and oil.

Gutters

You’ll need a ladder; heavy work gloves, plus latex or rubber gloves to wear underneath; and two buckets for this twice-yearly task (spring and fall). Put a trowel and a scrub brush in one bucket and climb the ladder. (For safety, the top of the ladder should be no lower than your waist as you work; have a helper hold the ladder steady if possible.) Hook a bucket to each side of the ladder. Starting near a downspout, use the trowel to move leaves, twigs, and other debris into the empty bucket. Have your helper hand you the hose to flush out finer material. Use the scrub brush to dislodge stuck-on dirt as the water flows. Clogged downspouts? Loosen debris by poking the hose up through the blockage. (No need to turn on the water.)

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Hardwood Floors

A once-a-week treatment picks up dirt that can otherwise get ground in and cause scratches. First dust with a dry mop. Then, if your floors are polyurethaned (most are), slightly dampen and mop with a mixture of 1 cup white vinegar and 1 gallon water and swipe the surface, going with the grain. Shine by buffing with a soft cloth. (Cloth diapers work well.) If your floors are waxed rather than polyurethaned, skip the damp mop (these floors are not watertight) and just vacuum.

Ice Maker

Over time ice can absorb odors, so empty the bin monthly to prompt the appliance to make a new batch. And every few days, give the cubes a stir with a long wooden spoon to keep them from clumping.

Kettle

Those bluish green flecks you sometimes see inside? They’re mineral deposits that can build up, especially if you have hard water---harmless, but not so nice to look at. To remove them, fill the kettle with equal parts white vinegar and water, bring to a boil, and let stand overnight. Rinse, then heat plain water to get rid of the traces of vinegar.

Jewelry

Generally you don’t need to clean jewelry unless you see dirt spots, tarnish, or dust. But if you notice earrings getting a little funky, clean posts and backs with a cotton ball dipped in rubbing alcohol. Diamond ring looking dingy? Soak it for 20 minutes in a solution of 1 cup warm water and a 1/4 cup ammonia, then swirl it around in another bowl of warm water and a few drops of dishwashing liquid; scrub gently with a clean soft toothbrush, rinse with fresh warm water, and air-dry. If your pearls are dusty, rub each gently with a cotton cloth dipped (not soaked) in a solution of 1 cup warm water and a drop of mild dishwashing liquid. (Don’t submerge pearls--- the string could stretch.) Let dry. To remove tarnish from a silver piece, wipe with a silver polishing cloth.

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Knives

Good ones (you know, the kind you bother putting in the knife block) should never go in the dishwasher, because harsh deter-gents can pit the blades and high heat can damage the handles. Instead, hand wash with hot, soapy water and towel-dry. Never soak knives; this can cause handles to shrink and blades to rust. To remove stains on blades, dip a clean wine cork in mild dishwash-ing liquid and rub. For rust marks, use Bar Keepers Friend ($5, Williams-sonoma.com). Another all-natural (if slightly aggressive) alternative: Stab a large onion a few times; the onion’s acid will remove the rust.

Lampshades

Run a lint roller over the inner and outer surfaces, then blow dust from seams with a hair dryer or a can of compressed air.

Litter Box

Every few weeks, place the whole kit and caboodle inside a garbage bag and shake to dump out every bit of old litter. To clean the box, cut down on the ick factor by wearing rubber gloves and scrubbing with disposable heavy-duty textured wipes (Litter Box Wipes, $10, naturesbestsolution.com). Never use bleach. It can react with the ammonia that naturally occurs in urine and potentially create toxic fumes.

Mirrors

To make them shine, dip a lint-free cloth in a pot of strongly brewed black tea (like Lipton); the tannic acid works magic. Rub in circles and follow with a fresh cloth to dry. Be careful not to saturate the mirror. If liquid seeps into the silver coating, it can leave behind black tarnish marks.

Napkins...and other table linens

For all materials---linen, cotton, synthetics, blends--- wash right after use in warm water (hot can cause shrinkage) aand oxygen bleach if the care label allows; dry on low. Skip fabric softenenr, which can make table linens less absorbent. Fold and store right out of the dryer to prevent wrinkles. Got stubborn stains? Find easy fixes at realsimple.com/stainremoval.

Outdoor Upholstery

When the weather warms up and your yard is back in use, give pillows and cushions a monthly scrubbing (Unless the fabric is dry- clean only; check the labels.) Combine 1 quart warm water, 1 teaspoon dishwashing detergent, and 1 tablespoon Borax in a bucket. Dip a sponge in and scrub all sides of the cushion. Let sit for 15 minutes, then rinse with a hose and air-dry. If you see mildew, add 2 tablespoons bleach (again, check the labels first) to 1 gallon water and scrub with a soft brush. Patio umbrellas can also get mildew. Open them up after rainstorms so moisture isn’t trapped in the folds. For a super-thorough cleaning, remove the canopy from the frame if you can, then sweep it, hose it down, and wash with a solution of water and mild soap (Dr. Bronner’s pure Castile liquid soap, $10.50, drbronner.com) using a sponge. Rinse, put back on the frame, and leave open to air-dry.

Paintbrushes

Synthetic brushes (recommended for water-based paint) are easy--- just rinse each brush in hot water, squeezing the bristles with your hand until the water runs clear. For a natural-bristle brush (used for oil paint), take a deep breath: Fill a small metal container, like a coffee can, with mineral spirits (sold at hardware stores) and swish the brush around; let sit for 5 minutes. Then wrap the brush in newspaper and squeeze to release excess paint; repeat a few times. Dip in a fresh container of mineral spirits to rinse. Then gently roll the brush between your hands a few times to dry, using paper towels to press out any remaining moisture. Mold the bristles back into place and slip the brush into its package or tuck it into folded newspaper to maintain the shape. To keep brushes pliable, soak them for a few minutes in a coffee can filled with water plus a drop of liquid fabric softener; rinse, dry completely with paper towels, and store as usual.

Pillows

Twice a year, wash down and synthetic pillows in the washing machine (in pairs, to keep the machine balanced) with mild liquid detergent (Powder can leave residue.) Dry on low instead of high heat, which can cause clumping.

Quilts

Those that are silk, antique, and/or hand stitched should be dry-cleaned, but you can wash others at home. (Read the care label.) For cotton or poly quilts, use the gentle cycle and a mild detergent and hang to dry. For wool, do the same, but use a detergent made for wool and add 1 cup white vinegar to the final rinse cycle to clear any residue.

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Refrigerator Drawers

Remove them and soak for 15 minutes in hot, soapy water in the sink. Drain, sprinkle the insides with baking soda, and wipe clean with a sponge. Still smell something? Use this age-old trick: Wipe down drawers with a cloth dipped in undiluted tomato juice, rinse with warm water, and dry.

Tabletop FanTwice a year, unplug the fan and, if the grille is removable, use a scrub brush to eliminate dirt; rinse with warm water. Otherwise use a can of compressed air to dust the blades and the interior; wipe with a cotton cloth sprayed with all-purpose cleaner.

Toothbrushes

Every other week, swirl each toothbrush in ¼ cup warm water and ¼ cup baking soda. Let soak overnight, then rinse. Toss and replace every three months. (Yep, it’s time.)

TV Screens

Make sure that the TV is off and cool; a warm screen can result in streaks. Because everyday cleaning products can damage delicate LCD and plasma screens, a specialized kit is best (HD Singles Kit, $13, klearscreen.com). Apply the pretreated polishing cloth in a light, circular motion. Don’t use a vacuum cleaner to dust the TV; it can create static and affect the picture.

Sinks

Swipe the basin daily with a soft rag dampened with warm water and dishwashing liquid, and scour weekly with a mild abrasive cleanser, For soap scum on stainless steel or porcelain, use white vinegar. (On marble or limestone, use stone cleaner instead; the acid in vinegar can erode stone.) After cleaning faucets with a microfiber cloth dampened with warm water and dishwashing liquid, buff dry.

Sliding-Door Tracks

Spritz tracks generously with all-purpose cleaner and let sit for a few minutes, then wipe up loosened grime with paper towels. To get into crevices, cover a flat screwdriver with a rag dampened with all-purpose cleaner. Finish with a few squirts of WD-40 for a smoother glide.

Speakers

To clean the exterior and erase any marks, use wipes meant for electronics (Endust Antistatic Wipes, $9.50, staples.com). If the speakers have cloth coverings, pop them off and rinse in the sink. (Just confirm with the manual; you can find the manual online if it’s been tossed.) Then set them aside to air-dry. Before replacing the coverings, gently dust the mesh grille with a microfiber cloth. (Make sure it’s dry---no moisture allowed here!)

Underarm Stains

For fresh, day-old stains, dab a little shampoo on the spots before washing as usual. (Leave silk or wool to the pros.) If the stains are older and machine washing hasn’t removed them, create an enzyme paste. (Enzymes break down food proteins and help to remove stains caused by sweat.) Grind up 4 digestive-enzyme tab-lets (Nature’s Plus Digestive Enzyme, $14 for 90, vitaminshoppe.com), add 1 tablespoon water, and stir. Apply to stains with a soft cloth and let sit for an hour before washing as usual.

Utensil Drawers

Monthly, clear out the contents and run the tray in the dishwasher (top rack), provided it’s plastic. For wooden, metal, or bamboo utensil organizers, wipe down with a damp, soapy cloth instead. Swipe the interior of the drawer, then cover a ruler with a damp paper towel to get those corner crumbs before reloading.

Vacuum

To freshen the room while vacuuming, put a few drops of vanilla extract on a paper towel, rip it into tiny pieces, and vacuum up. Use the crevice tool to vacuum dust from the bristles of the brush attachment, then empty the bin and wipe it clean. Last, wipe the casing, hoses, and attachments with a clean, dry cloth.

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Xylophones...rubber duckies, and other toys

Once a month, sanitize small plastic toys by placing them in a mesh bag on the top rack of the dishwasher. (It’s fine to run dishes in the same cycle.) Mild, kid-friendly wipes (Dreft Multi Surface Wipes, $4, toysrus.com) are great for all other paraphernalia; use weekly or whenever those action figures seem to need a power shower.

Yoga Mat

Most yoga mats can go right into the washing machine on the gentle cycle. (If in doubt, check with the manufacturer first.) Once a month, toss in your mat and use mild detergent and cold water. But to maintain the tacky finish, remove the mat before the spin cycle starts, roll it up in a towel to absorb some moisture, and hang it over the shower rod to dry fully. For a quick refresher after each class, swipe with a Josha yoga-mat wipe ($20 for 20, amazon.com). Give the mat a minute to dry, then roll it up.

Zebra Rug...and other animal skins

Regular-strength vacuuming can be harsh on hides. Instead, give these rugs a hearty shake outside. If the rug is too large to lug, dust it with a soft upholstery brush (Economy horsehair upholstery brush, $9, jondon.com). To brighten the fur, sprinkle cornmeal over the surface and let sit for a couple of hours. Then vacuum on low using the upholstery attachment with a piece of panty hose over the nozzle. ö

Waffle Iron

To dislodge baked-on batter that you’ve been ignoring, cover the square end of a chopstick or the unbristled end of a toothbrush with a dishcloth and gently rub between the grooves. If the iron has metal plates, place a wet, soapy paper towel between the grids and let sit overnight Then scrub with a soft toothbrush and rinse well. Ongoing maintenance is easy: A waffle iron is one of the only places where an oily residue is a good thing (yay!). It keeps waffles from sticking, so a quick swipe with a dry cloth after each use is generally all you need. Clean the exterior with a soft, damp cloth, not an abrasive sponge.

Watering Can

Every spring, at the start of gardening season, fill the watering can with a solution of 1 part white vinegar and 2 parts water; soak the removable nozzle in the same solution and let sit for 1 hour. Scrub the inside of the can and the spout with a flexible bottle brush; rinse with clean water. After every use, store upside down to drain the water.

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Workers in

WONDERLAND

Ready to collapse under your workload? Consid-er it a form of flattery: With companies today de-manding that employees work faster while tackling more complex tasks, the nimble professionals who “get it” have been deluged, says Anat Lechner, associate professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business. “When you’re that kind of person, every-one knows who you are.” Lucky you. Here’s how to speak up if you’re maxed out, without sabotag-ing your next promotion.

Managing a too-heavy to-do list? The right approach can help you persuade the boss to lighten your load. Imagine having time to eat lunch!

Your manager probably hasn’t thought about what else is on your plate when she asks you, in passing, to take on a new proposal. It’s up to you to speak up if you don’t have bandwidth. “But you have to be able to react within seconds,” says New York City career coach Caroline Ceniza-Levine. Keep a running tally of all your projects, so you’ll be ready to respond. Then, rather than whining to the boss that you already do the job of five people, you can explain how taking a new project will prevent you from achieving some other equally important task, says Atlanta executive communica-tions coach Darlene Price. You might say: “Jim, the client in New York needs my attention this week so I can close the deal, which is worth $1 million. What should we do?” Of course, the right approach depends on your manager’s personality and the security of your job. You may find it safer to agree to a task but ask for the resources you need to do it. “Say, ‘Yes, but to do that, I need x, y, or z,’” suggests Lechner.

SPEAK TO THE FIRMS INTERESTS

By Elaine Pofeldt

Photo - Nancy Keller

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Aim to hold on to high-profile jobs and offload work that won’t help you advance. Instead of letting the duties fall upon your peers, who may not be pleased to pick up your discards, suggest that a junior colleague take an unwanted project as a stretch role. “Something you don’t want to do can be useful to someone else,” says Ceni-za-Levine.

If a manager essentially tells you to suck it up, you may be part of a workaholic culture or chronically understaffed department where the only way to scale back is to leave, says Price. Once you have a “walkaway” strategy, consider making a final attempt with your boss. One executive Price coached---who traveled so often her 6-year-old asked her where she lived---tried repeatedly to get her manager to reduce her business trips. Finally she told him she couldn’t accept the working conditions and asked if he’d write her a letter of recommendation. “That called his bluff,” says Price. With this tactic, you’ve got to be ready to hear “buh-bye”---but you may be better off in a new job anyway. ö

NAME THE RIGHT RECIPIENT

DRAW THE LINE IN THE SAND

Elaine Pofeldt is an expert in time and stress management. Specializing in workplace relations, Pofeldt writes her columns specifically to help people deal with different workplace situations.

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NYCLOCAL

Heading to the Big Apple soon? Here we have a list of the best authentic New York City pizza your money can buy. We even had the locals choose their favorite, and have mapped out the results. Then from there it’s up to you: stay safe and go with the local’s most popular pick, or try them all and decide for yourself.

By Devorah Klein

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Lay of the Land:

Overall Vibe:

Square or Round:

Good to Know:

You do not go to Di Fara for ambiance or speedy service. You go because it’s an institution. Beret-clad pie-master Dom DeMarco has been obsessively manning the oven for 40 years, and he’s the only one who touches the pie — hence the sometimes excruciating wait. Go as a party of two so that you can keep each other compa-ny and split a whole, drizzled with top-notch olive oil and finished with fresh basil. You can order slices, but they cost five bucks these days, and, trust me, you’re going to want one more than one.

Trying to narrow down the best pizza in NYC is like trying to select the best apples from an orchard during U-pick season. The options are limitless. That said, I have sampled my fair share of NYC slices and have come to a few conclusions. There’s a different pizza for every mood and ap-petite. If you’re visiting the city and don’t have time to sample around, we have the best of the best mapped out for you. But if you happen to have the time to sample every kind, it’ll be worth every cheesy bite.

Wood paneling, bare tables, and oven smoke clog the small room, but you can entertain yourself by reading the articles plastering the walls.

It’s a draw. Both are excellent, although the square tends to come out with a blacker crust.

It’s cash only.

1424 Avenue J, Brooklyn, NY 11230, +1-718-258-1367DI FARA

Lay of the Land:

Overall Vibe:

Square or Round:

Good to Know:

This is a 72-year-old classic neighborhood joint in residential Gra-vesend, Brooklyn, close to Coney Island. It’s packed most evenings and epecially Sunday nights when Italian families are supping with nonna. The real charm is inside, but on nice nights you can grab a slice and catch the patio action. Aside from the addictive Sicilian pies (in which sauce is ladled over the cheese), roasted artichokes and garlic bread make great sides.

This is a classic red-sauce Italian joint, so bring the attitude and your Jersey Shore-loving friends.

Square Sicilian is their specialty.

The only way to finish the night is with a spumoni ice.

2725 86th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11223, +1-718-449-1230L&B SPUMONI GARDENS

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Lay of the Land:

Overall Vibe:

Square or Round:

Good to Know:

This spot won the hearts and taste buds of many, including The New York Times’ Sam Sifton, who declared it to be the city’s very best pizza. It is perfectly cooked and perfectly proportioned (the crust to sauce to cheese ratio is flawless), and they’ve got a host of inventive toppings (from Brussels sprouts to clams). They inherited Una Pizza Napolitana’s famous oven, which seems to be working out beautifully.

Clean, East Village cool.

You’ll only find round.

Motorino is open for brunch, and the fantastic pizza al’uovo — with eggs, pancetta, pecorino, fior di latte, basil, and chili oil — is sure to cure any hangover. Also, the tiramisu is pretty damn authentic.

349 East 12th Street, New York, NY 10003, +1-212-777-2644MOTORINO

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Rober

ta’s

LOCAL PREFERENCE

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Lay of the Land:

Overall Vibe:

Square or Round:

Good to Know:

The funkiest of the bunch, Roberta’s has been making waves since it opened in 2008. It has become a Bushwick destination, the anchor of the neighborhood. There’s a DIY feeling in the air, from the homemade charcuterie to the on-site bakery to Heritage Radio Network, the pirate radio station run out of a shipping container on the patio. Settle in for thin-crust pies with creative toppings often pulled from the greenhouse garden. Did I mention foie gras and tongue are also on the menu?

Laid-back, creative, tattooed, and eccentric, this is the perfect place to take skeptical out-of-towners and actually impress them.

Only round at the restaurant, but I hear they do Sicilian slices at their booth in Madison Square Park (spring and fall only).

Roberta’s switches up the menu for brunch, lunch, and dinner. They have a killer wine selection and a list of add-ons that goes for miles.

261 Moore Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206, +1-718-417-1118ROBERTA’S

Lay of the Land:

Overall Vibe:

Square or Round:

Good to Know:

It’s packed. The good news is a host will take your phone number and call when your table’s ready. Inspired by Di Fara, Lucali’s pies are meticulously made using the freshest ingredients.

Unlike Di Fara, this place has farmhouse coziness — you can watch the wood-burning oven from the open kitchen. You’d never believe all those mafia rumors by the looks of the place, but it does add another layer of authenticity.

There is not a square in sight, but they do have out-of-this-world calzones.

Call ahead to save a place in line. Just be nearby with a bottle of wine — it’s BYOB — when your table is ready.

575 Henry Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231, +1-718-858-4086LUCALI

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Lay of the Land:

Overall Vibe:

Square or Round:

Good to Know:

It’s a simple shop with a focus on inventive pies and super-fresh ingredients. Pies are crazy thin and oozing with goodness. Pickled vegetables and caramelized onions are only the tip of the toppings iceberg. Let them shine.

Williamsburgish. The walls are covered with customer-decorated paper plates and hip-hop or indie rock blares from the speakers. Servers are friendly with an occasional touch of attitude, and the counter-service is laid back and easy.

The grandma slice (technically square) is a winner.

They also make a mean meatball sub. And truly terrific garlic knots.

33 Havemeyer Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211, +1-718-599-2210BEST PIZZA

Lay of the Land:

Overall Vibe:

Square or Round:

Good to Know:

The funkiest of the bunch, Roberta’s has been making waves since it opened in 2008. It has become a Bushwick destination, the anchor of the neighborhood. There’s a DIY feeling in the air, from the homemade charcuterie to the on-site bakery to Heritage Radio Network, the pirate radio station run out of a shipping container on the patio. Settle in for thin-crust pies with creative toppings often pulled from the greenhouse garden. Did I mention foie gras and tongue are also on the menu?

Laid-back, creative, tattooed, and eccentric, this is the perfect place to take skeptical out-of-towners and actually impress them.

Only round at the restaurant, but I hear they do Sicilian slices at their booth in Madison Square Park (spring and fall only).

Roberta’s switches up the menu for brunch, lunch, and dinner. They have a killer wine selection and a list of add-ons that goes for miles. ö

261 Moore Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206, +1-718-417-1118TOTONNO’S PIZZERIA NAPOLITANO

Devorah Klein Lev-Tov is a food critic and travel enthusiast. She travels throughout the United States and internationally to find the best dishes that the culinary world has to offer.

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How to Get Out of Your Own Way on the Path to Success

Are you the biggest obstacle to your success? Here are five tops on how to stop the self-sabotage.

Over the years, I have heard many excuses for people not getting the success they want or believe they deserve from an opportunity. I have been known to use a few myself here and there.

It’s not that the excuses weren’t ever valid. It’s just sometimes the excuses come whether or not they are valid. Many people start excusing themselves from incredible opportunities before they have the chance to fully explore the possibilities.

When you find the right opportunity, the one that can take you to a whole other level of success, you want to be able to grab it and run. The last thing you want is to trip on your own feet and let it get away or worse, be the immovable object in the path to success. Here are five tips for getting out of your own way on the road to success.

“The opportunity wasn’t really there.” “The timing wasn’t right.”“I just didn’t fit with those people.”“I’m just not lucky.”

By Kevin Daum

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Be disciplined.

Be confident.

Be bold.

If you truly want to win the big game, you can’t be sloppy. You are competing against people who train and learn and practice. You need to be in control of your own destiny and that means being in control of your daily activity. Have your priorities figured out. If you don’t know them, you’ll be prone to distraction. If they’re wrong, you’ll get off track. Be able to focus the right amount of thought, en-ergy, and activity on the actions that will get you close to your goal. Learn to focus and dismiss distraction when it’s time to get to work.And most importantly, learn how to rest. No one can work all the time without being exhausted. You need time to recharge if you are going to play at your best. Burn out is a poor excuse for failure.

I have battled my own share of insecurities. When you are blazing new trails, it’s hard to be 100 percent assured, but you have the control. I was whining to a friend when I was younger that I wished I were more confident. He looked at me and said: “Kevin why don’t you just decide to be confident.” I did and have not looked back since. Confidence comes from preparation and a decisive state of mind. When I am speaking and presenting, I feel most confident when I have done my research and have practiced my speech at least a dozen times in front of people. Give yourself what you know you need. Whether it is practice, prep time, food, sleep, or funds take away the material excuses so you can move forward without

Many people just stare on the sidelines waiting for an opportunity to drag them into success. Being timid brings very little value when chasing your dreams. You need to take action and jump two feet in. Be bold.

However, this does not mean be careless. You have to do your homework and analysis. The most successful people have shown their boldness by waiting while everyone rushes an opportunity too early. Study, prepare and assess, but know when it is time to stop analyzing, theorizing, practicing. Then make the decision to jump in or launch and just do it and do it big.

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Be gracious.

Be grateful.

Graciousness is not just about being nice. It’s also about be-ing humble. True success and best served among friends and teammates who share in the glory and accomplishment. Start getting out of your own way by admitting when you’re lost, behind, or overwhelmed. Accept the greatest achievements come from the combined work and thought of many. Invite smart, energetic people into your journey and share the wealth and the credit along the way. Revel in their growth happiness and success, and they will celebrate yours.

Every day, I feel blessed. I have had my share of challenges and difficulties throughout my life, more than some, fewer than others. But with those turbulent times came growth and opportunity. I al-ways seem to find myself further down the success path. Even after complete loss and reinvention I still managed to find opportunities that made it worth getting out of bed and smiling.Those times of loss make me more sensitive and grateful for the blessings in my life. Be it people who love me, good health, positive cash flow or just the chance to laugh daily, I never forget to share my appreciation with those who support me along the way. ö

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An Inc. 500 entrepreneur with a more than $1 billion sales and marketing track record, Kevin Daum helps companies communicate in strategic and compelling ways.

Photo - inc.com

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The Flight of the

How did a chain-smoking geek from Hanoi design the viral hit Flappy Bird - and why did he walk away?

By David Kushner

BIRDMAN

The game went live on the iOS App Store on May 24th. Instead of charging for Flappy Bird, Nguyen made it avail-able for free, and hoped to get a few hundred dollars a month from in-game ads.

But with about 25,000 new apps going online every month, Flappy Bird was lost in the mix and seemed like a bust – until, eight months later, something crazy happened. The game went viral. By February, it was topping the charts in more than 100

countries and had been downloaded more than 50 million times. Nguyen was earning an estimated $50,000 a day. Not even Mark Zuckerberg became rich so fast.

Yet as Flappymania peaked, Nguyen remained a mystery. Aside from the occasional tweet, he had little to say about his incredible story. He ducked the press and refused to be photographed. He was called a fraud, a con man and a thief. Bloggers accused him of

stealing art from Nintendo. The popular gaming site Kotaku wrote in a widely clucked headline, “Flappy Bird is a making $50,000 a day off ripped art.”

On February 9th, at 2:02 a.m. Hanoi time, a message appeared on Nguyen’s Twitter account. “I am sorry ‘Flappy Bird’ users,” it read. “22 hours from now, I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down. I cannot take this anymore.” The message was retweeted more than 145,000 times by the disbelieving

masses. How could someone who hit the online jackpot suddenly pull the plug? But when the clock struck midnight the next evening, the story came to an end. Nguyen, as promised, took Flappy Bird offline. In his wake, he left millions of jilted gamers, and one big question: Who was this dude, and WTF had he done?

Last April, Dong Nguyen, a quiet 28-year-old who lived with his parents in Hanoi, Vietnam, and had a day job programming location

devices fro taxis, spent a holiday weekend making a mobile game. He wanted it to be simple but challenging, in the spirit fo the Nintendo games

he grew up playing. The object was to fly a bug-eyed, big-lipped, bloated bird between a series of green vertical pipes. The quicker a player tapped the

screen, the higher the bird would flap. He called it Flappy Bird.

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Two weeks after the demise of Flappy, I’m taxiing past pagodas and motorbikes to the outskirts of Hanoi, a crowded, run-down me-tropolis filled with street vendors selling pirated goods, to meet with Nguyen, who has agreed to share with Rolling Stone his whole story for the first time. With the international press and local paparazzi searching for him, Nguyen has been in hiding – fleeing from his par-ents’ house to stay at a friend’s apartment, where he now remains. Although dot-com millionaires have become familiar in the U.S., in Vietnam’s fledgling tech community they’re all but unheard of. When the country’s first celebrity geek, a boyish, slight guy in jeans and a gray sweater, walks hesitantly up and introduces himself, he measures his words and thoughts carefully, like placing pixels on a screen. “I was just making something fun to share with other people,” he says with the help of a translator. “I couldn’t predict the success of Flappy Bird.”

Growing up in Van Phuc, a village outside of Hanoi famous for silk-making, Nguyen (pronounced nwin) never imagine being a world-famous game designer. Though his father owned a hard-ware store and his mother worked for the govern-ment, his family couldn’t afford Game Boys for him or his younger brother. But eventually, they were able to purchase a Nintendo, which, like most electronics in Vietnam, was available only in cloned form. Marveling at the power of con-trolling a character onscreen, Nguyen spent his free time obsessively playing Super Mario Bros.

By 16, Nguyen had learned to code his own computer chess game. Three years later, while studying computer science at a uni-versity in Hanoi, he placed in the top 20 of a programming competi-tion and got an internship with one of Hanoi’s only game companies at the time, Punch Entertainment, which made cellphone games. Son Bui Truong, Nguyen’s former boss, says the young program-mer stood out for his speed, skills and fierce independent streak. “Dong didn’t need a supervisor,” Truong says. “He wasn’t com-fortable with it. So we said he did not have to report to anyone.”

Nguyen soon tired of churning out the company’s sports games. When he later got his hands on an iPhone, he became fascinated by the possibilities of the touch screen. Few games, however, captured the simple power of the Nintendo games of his youth. Angry Birds was too busy, he thought. “I don’t like the graphics,” he says. “It looked too crowded.” Nguyen wanted to make games for people like him-self: busy, harried, always on the move. “I pictured how people play,” he says, as he taps his iPhone and reaches his other hand in the air. “One hand holding the train strap.” He’d make a game for them.

As we talk into the night, hordes of agile pedestrians deftly dodge the Hanoi traffic, screens flickering in their hands like fireflies. It’s no wonder the world’s hottest game came from here. “When you play game on a smartphone,” he says, with an ever-present cigarette dangling from his lip, “the simplest way is just tapping.”

Last April, Nguyen was tapping his iPhone at home while the rest of Hanoi was celebrating Reunification Day, the annual holiday marking the end of the Vietnam War. Instead of joining the throngs outside, he spent the weekend in his bedroom at his parents’ house creating a lit-tle game for fun, as a poster he’d drawn of Mario gazed down on him.

Nguyen had already made and released a mobile game, Shuriken Block, earlier that month. The object was to stop a cascade of ninja stars from impaling five little men on the screen. This seemed simple enough – the one-word instruction read “tap”. Tap the falling star at the right moment, and it would bounce away. But Nguyen understood the mantra of game design that Nolan Bushnell, creator of Pong and founder of Atari, described as “easy to learn and difficult to master.” More recently, indie game makers had taken this to speed-met-al extremes with the so-called masocore genre – games that are masochistically hard. Shuriken Block was deceptively ruthless. Even

the nimblest player would have trouble lasting a minute before the men were spurting pixelated blood. Nguyen was pleased with

the results, but the game languished in the iOS store.

For his new game, Nguyen realized a way to go even simpler:

Let the player tap anywhere. All he need-ed was an idea to build it around. The year

before, he’d drawn a pixelated bird on his com-puter that riffed on Nintendo fish, called Cheep

Cheeps. He drew green pipes – a homage to Super Mario Bros. – that the bird would have to navigate.

He modeled the game on one of the most masocore analog creations ever: paddleball. The toy was a simple design – just a wooden paddle with a string attached to a rubber ball. But players would be lucky to bounce the ball more than a few times in a row.

Like paddleball, he limited his game to just a couple of elements – the bird and the pipes – and resisted the usual urge to lard the action with new elements as the player progressed. He tuned the physics so that the bird was fighting gravity so strong, even the slightest wrong tap would kill it. Since the deaths would be so frequent, Nguyen wanted to make them entertaining. He tried having the bird explode in a bloody pulp, or bounce back across the ground, before settling on a faceplant. He then sifted through hundreds of sounds before settling on a kung-fu-style thwack to make the bird’s demise even funnier. (The first question he asks me about the game is if it made me laugh.) “The bird is flying along peacefully,” he says with a chuckle, “and all of a sudden you die!”

Before the last flag waved on Reunification Day, Nguyen had gone on Twitter and posted a screen shot of his “new simple game.” Other than a couple of tweets, Nguyen says he put no market-ing behind the launch. And, like so many games released into the flood, Flappy Bird flopped. The first mention of the game on Twit-ter didn’t come until five months later, on November 4th, when someone posted a three-word review. “Fuck Flappy Bird,” it read.

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“I was just making something fun to share with other

people.”

Trying to divine why stuff goes viral is like trying to fly the bird: You end up ass-up on the ground. But “Fuck Flappy Bird” captured the essence of the appeal. The highly addictive Flappy Bird was like a snot-nosed kid paddleballing you in the face. It was beg-ging to be spanked. And you couldn’t resist or stop playing.

By the end of December, players swarmed social media to commiserate, compete and bitch about breaking their phones in frustration. Twitter erupted with Flappy Bird testimonials, eventually hitting more than 16 million messages. One called it “the most annoying game yet I can’t stop,” and another said it was “slowly consuming my life.” As word spread from Reddit to YouTube, playgrounds to office parks, Flappy Bird rose to the Top 10 of the U.S. charts by early January. Finally, with no promotion, no plan, no logic, on January 17th, Flappy Bird hit Number One. A week or two later, it topped the Google Play store, too.

“Seeing the game on top, I felt amaz-ing,” Nguyen recalls. Like everyone else, he was shocked by its meteoric rise – and the av-alanche of money that would be wired into his bank account. Even with Apple and Google’s 30 percent take, Nguyen estimated he was clearing $50,000 a day. Before long, Shuriken Block and a new game he had submitted called Super Ball Juggling joined Flap-py Bird in the Top 10. But other than buying a new Mac, and taking his buddies out for rice wine and chicken hot pot, Nguyen wasn’t much for indulging. “I couldn’t be too happy,” he says quietly. “I don’t know why.” Remarkably, he hadn’t even bothered to tell his parents, with who, he lived. “My parents don’t understand games,” he explains.

As news hit of how much money Nguyen was making, his face appeared in the Vietnamese papers and on TV, which was how his mom and dad first learned their son had made the game. The local paparazzi soon besieged his parents’ house, and he couldn’t go out unnoticed. While this might seem like a small price to pay for such fame and fortune, for Nguyen the attention felt suffocating. “It is something I never want,” he tweeted. “Please give me peace.”

But the hardest thing of all, he says, was something else entirely. He hands me his iPhone so that I can scroll through some of the messages he’s saved. One is from a woman chastising him for “distracting the children of the world.” Another laments that “13 kids at my school broke their phones because of your game, and they still play it cause it’s addicting like crack.” Nguyen tells me of e-mails from workers who had lost their jobs, a mother who had stopped talking to her kids. “At first I thought they were just jok-ing,” he says, “but I realize they really hurt themselves.” Nguy-en – who says he botched tests in high school because he was playing too much Counter-Strike – genuinely took them to heart.

By early February, the weight of everything – the scrutiny, the

relentless criticism and accusations – felt crushing. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t focus, didn’t want to go outdoors. His parents, he says, “worried about my well-being.” His tweets became darker and more cryptic. “I can call ‘Flappy Bird’ is a success of mine,” read one. “But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it.” He realized there was one thing to do: Pull the game. After tweeting that he was taking it down, 10 million people downloaded it in 22 hours. Then he hit a button, and Flappy Bird disappeared. When I ask him why he did it, he answers with the same conviction that led him to create the game. “I’m master of my own fate,” he says. “Independent thinker.”

In the wake of Flappy Bird’s demise, rumors spread. Nguyen had committed suicide. Nintendo was suing him. He’d received death threats. His refusal to speak fueled the speculation even more. To fill the massive hole left by Flappy Bird, imitators rushed to cash in. By the time I visit, the top three free iPhone apps are Flappy rip-offs – Flappy Winds, Splashy Fish, even a game based on Miley Cyrus. AS of this writing, a Drake game called Tiny Flying Drizzy is Number One at the App Store, and, according to one study, a new Flappy clone pops up every 24 minutes. “People can clone the app be-cause of its simplicity,” Nguyen says, “but they will never make anoth-er Flappy Bird.” Indeed, for those who crave the real thing, phones with Flappy Bird installed have been listed for thousands on eBay.

But the absence has also spawned a reappraisal. Kotaku apologized for its allegations of plagiarism. John Romero, co-creator of the game Doom, says Flappy Bird is “a reac-tion against prevailing design the way grunge was a reaction to metal.” The godfather of gaming, Bushnell, compares it to his own hit, Pong. “Simple games are more satisfying,” he says.

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As for Nguyen, the millions of people who downloaded Flappy Bird are still generating tens of thousands of dollars for him. He’s finally quit his job and says he’s thinking of buying a Mini Cooper and an apartment. He just got his first passport. For now, though, he’s busy doing what he loves most: making games. Over tea, he shows me the three he’s working on simultaneously: an untitled cowboy-themed shooter, a vertical flying game called Kitty Jet-pack and an “action chess game,” as he puts it, called Checkonaut, one of which he’ll release this month. Each sports his now-fa-miliar style: simple play, retro graphics and hardcore difficulty.

Since taking Flappy Bird down, he says he’s felt “relief. I can’t go back to my life before, but I’m good now.” As for the fu-ture of his flapper, he’s still turning down offers to purchase the game. Nguyen refuses to compromise his independence. But will Flappy Bird ever fly again? I’m considering it,” Nguyen says. He’s not working on a new version, but if he ever releases one it will come with a “warning.” He says: “Please take a break.” ö

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or SWIMSI The secret is out: student entrepreneurs are capable of

solving billion-dollar problems.

We’ve seen students under the legal drinking age pursue

their dream careers, sign distribution deals with Fortune

500 companies, and sell their ventures. We’ve also seen

students drop out of school prematurely, burn through

millions of dollars of investors’ money, and lose friendships

along the way. Here are eight lessons we’ve learned from

the latest batch of innovative student entrepreneurs.

By Alex Fiance

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways

it won’t work.”-Thomas Edison

Alex Fiance is the CEO of the Kairos Society, working to solve high-impact problems. He writes about how the next generation of entrepreneurs are defying the odds to bring innovative ideas to market out of university labs and dorm rooms around the world.

Photo - Amanda Means

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As a founder, you will need to master the art of storytelling in order to convince team members, customers, and investors to buy into your vision. Tell a story that you’re proud of, and leverage this to create something that will actually improve people’s lives.

Cortex Composites’ founders Curren Krasnoff and Daniel Rudyak are disrupting the construction world by developing concrete you can carry in a backpack. Roll it out, pour water on it, and watch it turn into roads, dams and other forms of vital infrastructure. Their business is much bigger than the composite itself. It is substan-tially cheaper and more eco-friendly than alternatives, and the cement’s potential impact is what makes Cortex a story that the everyday person cares about.

It’s one thing to successfully crowdfund your first product line. It’s an entirely separate undertaking to fulfill your orders. After developing the prototype of their police-grade smartphone breathalyzer, Alcohoot founders Jonathan Ofir and Ben Biron had to turn themselves into manufacturing experts, spending months in China to bring their vision to life.

College is filled with distractions, and seasoned entrepreneurs know that focus is critical to building a business.

Merrill Lutsky founded Posmetrics dropped out of school to join world-class accelerator Y Combinator, and he says it best: “Don’t drop out (until you have to).” Understand that the best-case scenario (rapid growth) will require a huge shift in your time and focus.

Prepare to obsess over the same industries that you are trying to disrupt. Great entrepreneurs do not make excuses; they fill knowledge gaps and break down barriers.

Be your company’s chief storyteller.

Obsess over your industry.

Embrace the unexpected.

Establish your priorities.

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While raising a round of funding is often glamorized, the process itself is far from glamorous.

The founders of VIRES Aeronautics--Harshil Goel, Zach Hargreaves, and Jordan Greene--focused on the product, and the fundraising traction followed. By partnering with the government-sponsored Laurence Livermore Labs, the team quickly built and tested their new airplane wing designs. They collected wind tunnel data to prove that their design increased lift, extended range and reduced fuel consumption. Then, VIRES approached Tim Draper and Lemnos Labs, who led their financing round to build out their product line.

Fundraising takes valuable time away from building your core product, and increases your accountability to new set of stakeholders. Therefore, you should use fundraising as an opportunity to get great people invested in your success.

Especially at the student level, very few people understand the loneliness and pressure of starting a company. Start by surrounding yourself with a community of people who share your values and ambition.

Riley Ennis is on a mission to revolutionize healthcare diagnostics so that one day you can detect diseases like cancer with your own cell phone. He met Dr. Charles Roberts at our annual Summit and the two have since teamed up to launch Free-nome, which won a Verizon Powerful Answers grant. Together, they are one step closer to their mission of increasing the efficiency of healthcare worldwide.

The point is, you never know when an opportunity is coming, but it often stems from real relationships.

Seek out expertise and give back to other founders and organizations. Serendipity is, by definition, hard to scale, but you can create your own luck by getting in the trenches and keeping your eyes open to recognize opportunities. ö

You have to manage two growth trajectories: your personal life and your company. You want to believe that you can do everything at once--balancing school, social life, and your business--but eventually you will be forced to prioritize.

Be honest with yourself, and do so very early in the lifecycle of your company- be-fore you raise money and before you start building a team. If you’re a founder of a real startup, there is a possibility of failure, but there is definitely no quitting. Come to terms with the implications of being “all-in.”

Recognize the tradeoffs.

Fundraising shouldn’t be your only goal.

Don’t overlook the value of a community.

Network with a purpose.

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heRULES4

That’s what you’ll find here: eleven nuggets of hard-earned wisdom and meticulously researched insight.

As told to Adam Bluestein, Leigh Buchanan, Issie Lapowsky, and Eric Schurenberg

Embrace Accidents

DO LESS

Choose Your Playing Field

FailLet Others LeadSlow Down

Emphasize Steady Progress

No Tricks

ST

OP

TH

INK

ING

AB

OU

T Y

OU

RS

ELF

Don’t Discount the Role of Luck

Don’t

Be I

mmun

e to N

ew Id

eas

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Anything I’ve done that really worked happened because, either by sheer will or a lack of options I was incredibly focused on one problem. Blogger started as a side project of my first company, Pyra Labs. Initially, we were trying to do both, but it became im-possible. We ran out of money, had to let everybody go, and I just did whatever was necessary to keep Blogger running. If I had been more aware back then of the importance of focus, I would have killed the original project way sooner.

With my next company, Odeo, we thought we were going to be the podcasting company. We would do it all: make software to create podcasts, a directory for discovering them, software to download them. But none of these solutions were great. We should have started with a specific product that did one thing better than anyone else. Instead, when iTunes introduced its podcasting platform, it obliterated the value we had created.

With Twitter, which was a side project of Odeo, it wasn’t clear at first what it was. Initially, we described Twitter as a social utility for posting status updates, but the insight we eventually came to was Twitter was really more of an information nextwork than a social network. That influenced all kinds of decisions, like the creatoion of search and the retweet function. And all of that happened because we were thinking deeply about a very specific product.

When you’re obsessing about one thing, you can reach insights about how to solve hard problems. If you have too many things to think about, you’ll get to the superficial solution, not the brilliant one. The irony, of course, is that both Blogger and Twitter started as side projects. If I had been absolutely focused on the main project, they might never have happened. So, there is something to be said for knowing when you’re locked in to the right problem. To me, that comes down to the gut. The things that keep nagging at you are the ones worth exploring.

When I meet with the founders of a new company, my advice is almost always, “Do fewer things.” It’s true of partnerships, marketing opportunities, anything that’s taking up your time. The vast majority of things are distractions, and very few really matter to your success.

1 Do Less

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Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger, Twitter, and most recently, the blogging platform Medium.

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At Zappos, we do a lot to get people running into each other. At our office, for example, there are exits on all four sides of the build-ing. We’ve locked them all except one. It’s more inconvenient but we prioritixe collisions over convenience. The Downtown Project, our drive to revitalixe downtown Las Vegas, does the same thing, but on a much bigger scale. WE thought, How can we get people in the city to run into each other more often? So we’re moving our office into the old city-hall building, and we’ve already got 10 tech start-ups to set up nearby. It’s all about maximizing collisions and accelerating serendipity.

Even the idea of starting the Fowntown Projet came from luck. It happened at a bar. I just happened to become friendly with the owner of the place, and he’d been in Vegas for much longer than I had. I randomly mentioned that we might buy a plot of land and build our own Zappos campus, like Google or Apple. He was the one who said, “No, you guys should think about moving down-town and working with the community here.” It was something we hadn’t even considered before, but that one conversation in a bar changed everything.

I think you can create your own luck. The key is to meet as many people as you can and really get to know them. If you’re in an environment where you’re always running into people, the chances of one of those collisions being meaningful is maybe 1 in 1,000. But if you do it 100 times more, your odds go up. My advice is: Meet lots of different people without trying to extract value from them. You don’t need to connect the dots right away. But if you think about each person as a new dot on your canvas, over time, you’ll see the full picture.

My fascination with serendipity started in college. I think for most people. College was the last time it was normal to just randomly run into people all the time. As you get older, you drive to work, see the same people every day, then go home, But the best things happen when people are running into each other and sharing ideas.

Embrace Accidents

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Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos and co-founder of the Downtown Project.

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3My fascination with serendipity started in college. I think for most people. College was the last time it was normal to just randomly run into people all the time. As you get older, you drive to work, see the same people every day, then go home, But the best things happen when people are running into each other and sharing ideas.

Choose Your Playing FieldRoger L. Martin is dean of the Rotman School of Management and co-author, with former Procter & Gamble chief A. G. Lafley, of Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works.

What do company leaders get wrong about strategy?

They think that if they have a vision or aspirations, that’s enough. Years ago, I met with the CEO of a large U.S. company, the son of the founder. I asked him to send me the strategies for the five busi-nesses it was in. There were binders and binders and binders. I had dinner with him, and I told him, “All you have are aspirations. These documents say, ‘We are going to be great at this, awesome at that.’ There is no identifiable strategy that will make that a reality.” He said, “How long will it take to fix it?” I said, “A few years.” He called me back a week later and told me he’d decided to resign. When he understood the difference between strategy and aspiration, he realized how daunting it was.

What would have made all those aspirations into a strategy?

The heart of strategy is defining where you’re going to play and how you’re going to win. A lot of companies don’t consciously choose where not to play.

What are some how-to-win considerations?

How can we meet customers’ needs like nobody else, so they will pay a premium? Do we have a superior user experience? A great technology? The other way is to have a distinctly lower cost. You may be more efficient. Southwest Airlines has one kind of jet. It flies between smaller airports. It doesn’t have preassigned seating or interline baggage checking. And that decision about how to win affected its decision where to play: only in the continental U.S. Otherwise, the system didn’t work.

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4My mother used to call failure a stepping-stone to success, as opposed to the opposite of suc-cess. When you frame failure that way, it changes dramatically what you’re willing to do, how you’re willing to invent, and the risks you’ll take.

FailArianna Huffington, co-founder and editor in chief of The Huffington Post.

I don’t mean you have to try to fail. That will take care of itself. But in my own life, a key component of whatever successes I’ve had, has been what I’ve learned from my failures. When I ran for governor of California in 2003, it was a failure--- but I learned a tremendous amount about the power of the Internet. I also learned a lot about myself, about communicating, being able to touch people’s hearts and minds, and listening. All the things that were ingrained in me during the campaign definitely had an impact in forming Huffington Post.

Reading biographies of successful people you admire is a great way to put failure in perspective. There’s absolutely no one who’s succeeded who has not failed along the way. Steve Jobs said that being fired from Apple was the best thing that ever happened to him. He said, “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.” Very often, success stops people, because they’re afraid of taking a step that leads to failure. Success generates fear.

Now that Huffington Post is successful, we try not to let that stop us. We constantly iterate. Not everything that we try succeeds by any means, but that’s the spirit with which we approach every day.

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5 Let Others LeadMichael Useem is a professor at the Wharton School and author, must recently, of The Leader’s Checklist.

Leadership is a team sport. You need to build leadership through the ranks, by empowering people to independently make good de-cisions. You can’t do that if you don’t make clear what your vision is.

Military history offers some good examples: During the Normandy invasion, the German local commanding officers were given little discretion by German central command. As a result, they respond-ed inflexibly to what the circumstance required, based on the false premise that the Big General can make the big decisions for the frontline. In business, you can look to the famous Tylenol recall by Johnson & Johnson. It wasn’t just the CEO but the people all up and down the ranks who independently made good decisions that led the com[any to take everything off the shelves nationally.

With unpredictable markets, shorter time cycles, and an increasingly complex business environment, I would say resilience, the ability to come back from crisis.

What is the single most important quality a leader needs to possess?

How can leaders make their organizations more resilient?

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I’ll never forget sitting in the living room with my brother, sister, and mom as my dad tearfully told us his travel company was not going to make it. As a 14-year-old, I’d never heard the word bankruptcy before. After that, I always associated his bank-ruptcy overexpansion. I think that’s why after my first restaurant, Union Square Café, opened, it took me 10 years to open a second one. Now I realize, despite whatever emotional issues led me to go slowly, I gave myself a real gift. I was able to take a deep dive into the skills of being a restaurateur in a way that I never would have done had I lacked that patience.

It’s easy to think running a business has to be a sprint. If I’ve learned anything at all, it’s that if you’re lucky enough to lead a healthy, long life, there’s time. During those first 10 years, I learned the value of allowing a busi-ness to develop its soul. Soul happens almost as slowly as it takes for a baseball glove to break in; you have to play catch for a really long time. Time helped Union Square Café achieve something very few businesses do, which is essentially, the sense that it mattered in people’s lives. The shelf life of innovation is about two seconds today. Even if you have the best idea, it’s going to get copied. The thing that cannot be copied is how I made you feel.

So for years and years, we did one restaurant at a time. There were 10 years between No.1 and No.2, four years between No.2 and No.3, and to this day we can really do a one-of-a-kind restaurant only every three years or so. It’s like writing a novel. You need to really take time to research and plan it.

One thing I’m really excited about now is expanding two of our restaurants, Shake Shack and Blue Smoke. It’s definitely possible to scale patiently. It just means the way we go about it is going to be slower. If I could wait 10 years to open a second restaurant after Union Square Café, I don’t really care if this year we’re going to open only six restaurants, even if another chain is going to open 26. What we’re going for are excellence and authenticity.

6 Slow DownDanny Meyer, founder and CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group.

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7 Emphasize Steady ProgressHarvard Business School Professor Teresa M. Amabile and co-author Steven Kramer detail their findings from a study in The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, En-gagement, and Creativity at Work.

What is “inner work life,” and why is it so important?

What affects the quality of inner work life?

Are managers aware of this?

What should managers do?

When we looked at the diary entries---and we had more than 12,000--- what stood out above everything else on people’s best days was that they were able to move forward in their work, even if it was just an incremental step forward. That had a huge positive impact on their motivation.

After we did this study, we surveyed nearly 700 managers, asking them to rank five employee motivators, including recognition and incentives. Progress came in dead last.

Managers have to pay attention to whether employees are making steady progress, and if not, why not. Do they have clear goals and autonomy about how to pursue those goals? Do they have sufficient resources? There’s a big payoff to spending a few minutes a day studying what is going on.

Inner work life is the combination of emotions, perceptions, and motivations that people experience during their workdays. We dis-covered that on those days when people had positive inner work lives, they were more likely to be creative and productive.

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At one time, I thought if I ever wrote a business book, it might be called, All I Know About Busi-ness, I learned Doing Magic. But I got over it. And I know this sounds funny, but I’m serious. Rejecting the idea behind that “book” was a big evolution for me.

Let me explain: When I was younger, I was really into magic. I hung out in local magic shops. I made friends with magicians. Even today, my home office is lined with books on magic.

When I started launching companies, I realized that what I knew about magic could give me a real edge in certain business situa-tions. Here’s a simple example: One basic technique all magicians know is the false choice. You give your audience theimpression that it decided something, but you control the things so that in fact you decided.

When I was pitching investors on my second company, Core-Street, my presentation had two parts: the product part and the business part. The product was strong, but the business side frankly wasn’t that good. So, I’d present the product part first. I’d had it all staged for maximum effect, but the investors would always want to jump ahead to the business part. I hated that. It ruined my presentation.

So I gave them a false choice. I’d say, “There are two parts to this presentation, product and business. Which matters more to you?” If they said, “business,” I’d say, “Good. I’ll save that for last.” If they said, “product,” I’d say, “Good. Let’s start there.”

It worked precisely as planned. The only problem was, it was crap. I realized I don’t want to trick the people I do business with.

Just about every business book ever written is about how to beat the other guy. And that’s what I was doing: The investors thought they were in control of the presentation, but I was, really, so I won.

Well I refuse to play the zero-sum game anymore. It’s better to find a way to make everyone happy: no tricks, no gimmicks, no grabbing a short-term advantage at someone else’s expense.

I’ve been practicing this “no-tricks” business style for five or six years now, and it’s better. You build more durable relationships.

If I had that presentation to do today, I’d say: “There are two parts to this. To be honest, the business part is weaker, so I’d like to start with product, just to get you in a good mood.” And if I really wanted to be creative, I’d add: “You know, if this were 10 years ago, I’d pull this little douchebag trick…”

8 No TricksPhil Libin, founder of Evernote.

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9 Stop Thinking About YourselfJohn Mackey, co-founder and co-CEO of Whole Foods

Business schools don’t teach SyQ; they teach analytical intelli-gence. In my experience, that breeds arrogance. Remember when auto-industry executives wanted to get loans from Washington and flew there on their private jets? They never considered how that would look to voters--- who just happen to be key stakeholders when you want a government loan. That’s a systems-intelligence failure.

SyQ is something you have to learn, usually the hard way. Twelve years ago, for example, I got caught up in the dot-com manie and created a website called WholePeople.com. It collapsed, of course, and dragged our stock down with it. But I didn’t have the systems intelligence to see how the site’s failure would affect Whole Foods’ board--- and my own job security. I thought: Hey, I founded the company. I never saw the board as a stakeholder, even though members have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. Let me tell you: Almost getting fired from Whole Foods was a big wake-up call.

So my advice to entrepreneurs is to think about your business and all the relationships it has. You have to develop a feeling for who your stakeholders are and figure out how to make them all winners. At Whole Foods, whenever we make a decision, we want it to work for all stakeholders---employees, customers, investors, suppliers, the community, the environment. If it doesn’t, we go back to the drawing board.

There are all kinds of intelligence, but the one that helped me most is systems intelligence, what I call SyQ. It refers to the ability to see the big picture, how different parts of a system interconnect. With a high SyQ, you can see the impact that a decision has on all stakeholders.

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10 Don’t Discount the Role of LuckMichael Mauboussin is an investment strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management and author of The Success Equation.

You’ve pointed out problems with the way we typically study successful businesses. What are we doing wrong?

How do you pick models to emulate?

That sounds pessimistic. The premise is, if you want to succeed in the future, you identify companies that were successful in the past and look for attributes you can emulate. But people attempt to extract lessons from what is mostly a random process. Part of that is creeping determin-ism---once something has been successful, we start to believe it was the only thing that could have happened. We also under sample failure. By extracting attributes from winners only, we miss the companies that chose the same strategies and failed.

There is a skill-luck continuum in business. In manufacturing, for example, there are certain skills and processes that are repeatable and transferable. But in other areas, like in entertainment or with startups, there’s a higher level of uncertainty. It was impossible to predict that “Gangnam Style” would be so poplar. In that world, you want to bet on as many artists as you can to increase your probability of success.

There’s a lot of work in psychology suggesting that we’re a little delusional and too optimistic. As a CEO, you have to be optimistic, but depressed people are actually more accurate in predicting the world. Recognizing alternative outcomes---and the role of luck--- keeps your mind open to other possibilities. So you can manage or mitigate them.

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Most of us don’t spend every day innovating---we’re executing and implementing. IF you have an ongoing business, it’s hard to inno-

vate, because innovation likely threatens what you have. It’s a survival instinct; it’s like your business’ immune system is

trying to kill innovation.

11 Don’t Be Immune to New IdeasBob Metcalfe, founder of 3Com and a VC at PolarisVenture Partners, is now a professor of innovation at the University of Texas, Austin.

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What’s the secret to maintaining a culture of innovation?

How do you override that immune system?

Does a business really need to be innovative to be successful?

There are various mechanisms for isolating innovation from the immune system, such as skunk-works or spinoffs or spin-ins, in which you bring something in from the outside. Big Pharma is very good at this. Even though the innovation is coming from the outside---often a university or start-up---your company completes the experience, through refinements to the product or the scale-up of manufacturing. Start-ups also are a solution, since they don’t have any immune system.

There are all kinds of innovation. Doing old things well requires small, incremental innovation---and we need a better vocabulary for talking about this. But if we want to have freedom and pros-perity, we need innovation, because that’s what creates economic growth and jobs. ö

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ADDERPitching to Investors? Prepare for these 5 Tough Questions

By Madelyn Young

The “elevator pitch” experience is never the same twice. No matter how many times you’ve deliv-ered your pitch, the outcome will differ on each occasion – whether you give your pitch in person or online (via general solicitation).

Every investor approaches your investment opportunity with his own biases, expectations and concerns. No matter how prepared you are ahead of time, you can never have a canned answer for every investor question… but having a canned answer is never the point.

No matter how you pitch your business, you need to be able to present your company candidly to savvy investors – which means handling even the most off-the-wall queries in stride. Being as prepared as possible requires anticipating tough questions, formu-lating your responses, and pivoting to adapt your answers to your particular circumstances.

So what are some of the most challenging questions entrepreneurs face? In the context of an elevator pitch, even the most innocu-ous-seeming questions can be perilous for an under-prepared entrepreneur. Here are five of the biggest toughies you should be braced for.

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Who believes in you?

“Mom” isn’t the right answer here. Who in your network has already indicated that they don’t just support you – they’d vouch for you? Who has already gained a vested interest in your success – be they investors, partners, subscription customers, or evangelists of your business? If you don’t have an answer, you might not be ready for investor financing.

The follow-up question to this one might be “How do I get in touch with them?” Walk into any pitch prepared to share information on your high-level network with potential investors.

When was the last time you failed?

Many investors swear by the startup mantra of “fail fast, fail often.” If you haven’t experienced failure as an entrepreneur, the logic goes, you may not be ready for success.

This doesn’t mean you have to have a collapsed business in your background. But it does mean that you have to be ready to present yourself as human and flawed to investors; you may have to drudge up an unpleasant professional memory – a lost job, a misconceived product, a poor hiring decision – to prove that you can admit your mistakes and learn from them. Spend some time thinking about your failures before walking into a pitch.

Have you heard of __________________?

Fill in the blank with a competitor company you’ve never heard of, a prominent venture capitalist who said businesses in your sector are bad investments, or an entrepreneur whose company like yours flamed out spectacularly.

Try as you might to know everyone in your industry and competitive landscape, there will always be a person, event or company that has slipped past your entrepreneurial radar. Don’t dig a hole for yourself by pretending to know things you don’t. Respond honestly that you haven’t heard of __________________, but that you’re planning to learn more as soon as your meeting ends.

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So… who are you?

What makes this one tough is that it isn’t about your company. Pitching your business to investors also means selling them on your passion for making your company succeed. If an investor doesn’t know you, they won’t know why you’re the right person to drive your business to success.

Deliver a response that incorporates your experience but isn’t just a recitation of your resume. Communicate what drew you to entrepreneurship, what made you feel connected to your current business concept, and why you believe in yourself.

Why hasn’t a big company already done this?

Your business provides a unique and one-of-a-kind product or service (or an improved alternative to those of the competition). So why isn’t it being provided by someone bigger and better than your little company – and how long until it will be?

Walk into your pitch with enough education on your industry to know the history of your product or service and be capable of discussing who has attempted something similar and either failed, provided it with middling success, or executed it successfully. Make sure you have the means to protect your idea from getting eaten up by the big guys.

Madelyn Young is the Content Development Manager for EarlyShares, and writes about her experiences from her position.

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the boy inside the

beatHow a scruffy California kid gave up on rock, unlocked the science of the low-end frequency and took over the world.

By Jonah Weiner

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One loft, his home, lies toward the far end of an interior courtyard decorated with bamboo plantings and burbling fountains; the other, next door, is his studio, meaning that his commute to work takes about eight footsteps. On a chilly December evening, just hours, as it turns out, before Beyoncé unveils her top-secret self-titled album, Moore is at the studio loft, hard at work on a secret album of his own.

Moore – who transforms into the dance-music superstar Skrillex when he puts on his thick black eyeglasses and steps into a DJ booth – sits in a swivel chair before a long, lacquered mixing con-sole. At five feet four, he’s wee enough that his right foot dangles a couple of inches above the floor; his other foot is tucked beneath his right thigh. On the console sit five laptops, a drained iced-coffee cup and an ashtray overflowing with stubbed-out Camels; below this is a mini-fridge stocked with energy drinks. His stringy hair drapes over a rumpled black T-shirt, and the left side of his skull, typically shaved clean in what has become his iconic look, has grown wooly with neglect. Within this tableau, Moore resembles a coder deep into a marathon programming binge. Which he kind of is. The album’s due in just a few days, and before I’m ushered into the room, a handler asks that I keep my questions to a minimum: Moore needs to focus.

His focus right now is directed toward the audio program Ableton Live, where a new song is under construction on one of his computers. It sounds like the soundtrack to some frenetic, futuristic car chase, packed with synthesized growls and zaps. “I want my songs to be like movie trailers,” he says. The basic composition is complete, and Moore is tweaking details. He taps at his keyboard and works the trackpad, finessing “the drop”: the part in many dance tracks where the tension, having been ratcheted up high, dramatically evaporates. And listeners plunge headlong into an orgiastically quaking, vertiginous valley of bass. If dance music were a theme-park ride – and in Skrillex’s hands, the comparison isn’t so far off – the drop would be the moment when you get your picture taken: face howling with delight, stomach in the soles of your feet.

Moore says there’s something universal about what makes a drop connect. “If you want to get simple, it’s the subtraction and addition of subfrequencies that do something to you on a visceral level – the kick drum is around 100Hz, and everything from, like, 50Hz and below is that sub shit,” he says. “Those feelings you get in your intestines? They may start as physical, but it creates an emotion, because you feel something in you.”

Moore’s proficiency at engineering that feeling has made him EDM’s only American superstar, in a dance-music world domi-nated mostly by Northern Europeans like Calvin Harris, Avicii and Tiësto. Skrillex’s various videos have earned a billion views on You-Tube; last year, Forbes estimated that he earned around $16 million from his shows and digital downloads – a figure he calls “accurate.”

Between his hairdo, his all-black wardrobe and his plugged ears, the 26-year-old Moore could pass for a Scandinavian death-metal bassist, but in conversation his California roots show through: Born in L.A. and raised between there and the Bay Area, he potholes nearly every utterance with a “dude” or a “sick.” His vibe can be jittery, but his affect is relentlessly upbeat. Discussing his music, he presents himself with a wide-eyed, unflagging earnestness, as a sort of EDM Peter Pan: “Young kids really identify with my songs, shit that older people – danceheads or purists – are like, ‘This isn’t dance music.’ My friends send me videos of their kids dancing to my songs, and that’s what I go back to when I make records: youth. That time when you still feel like being Superman, or going to space and being an astronaut. You need that as an adult sometimes.” Skrillex has recorded five EPs and won six Grammys, but this is his first full-length album; it will be called Recess.

With the deadline looming, the studio is in factory mode. To Moore’s left is a graphic designer called Roboto, wearing a kaffiyeh and a fitted baseball cap, who calls Moore “Mr. Sonny.” Roboto is busy on his own laptop, drawing album art. “This is what we have right now” Roboto says, tilting his screen to show Moore a smiling alien framed against a cosmic backdrop. The inspiration is the alien-head iPhone emoji, which Moore likes to sprinkle across text messages. “If you look at my ‘recently used’ emojis, it’s like, heart, alien, poop, kiss, smile, pizza, rainbow,” Moore says. “Those are the ones I always use.”

Slouched on a leather couch nearby, beside a skateboard and an acoustic guitar, is Blaise DeAngelo, the label manager for OWSLA, Moore’s imprint. Like several OWSLA staffers, DeAngelo wears fitted black clothing and finely groomed, close-cut hair; during business discussions, he says the word “money” so frequently that he sometimes uses the abbreviation “muh” instead, saving a syllable. Word has arrived, DeAngelo says, that Kim Dotcom, the flamboyant entrepreneur behind the FBI-shuttered file-sharing site MegaUpload, “wants to fund Skrillex’s next album and have him play at the launch party for Baboom” – Dotcom’s next venture, a legitimate music site. “That could be some nice muh,” DeAngelo says.

Before the actual album goes on sale, Recess will come out as part of an app that Moore’s team has been developing. Fans will download a Skrillex-branded video game that will eventually reveal itself as a Trojan horse for new music. Time Smith, Moore’s longtime manager, says that the earliest inspiration for the Recess rollout was that of Nine Inch Nails’ Year Zero, which involved clues scattered online and thumb drives “misplaced” in public spaces. “We were

Sonny Moore owns two lofts in downtown Los Angeles, in a luxury-condo building east of skid row.

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thinking of doing a sort of Easter-egg thing,” says Smith, “but Sonny’s more direct than that.” Moore says. “I didn’t wanna confuse people or put them on a scavenger hunt.” The thinking is that, this way, the arrival of the album will feel thrillingly private and partici-patory. “We’ll probably make less money doing it this way,” Moore says. “It’s more about the fans.”

Moore can’t think about things like profitability just this moment, though, because the music isn’t where he needs to be. He zooms out to take in the whole song, then zeroes in on a bright riff made from serrated 16th notes. He squints, then an idea occurs to him. He distorts the fifth note, then the ninth, then the 10th, until it sounds like some rabid digital animal is gnawing on hard candy.

“That sounds like a dinosaur,” Moore says, grinning as he spins to get the room’s reaction. “That sounds like Jurassic Park!” His stress dissipates, a little – maybe he can get this thing done in time after all.

He misses the deadline. “Recess” gets pushed back, then back some more. It’s early February now, and Moore is in San Francisco. “It’s not the way I planned it,” he says. “I haven’t been able to work on the album for more than a couple hours a day – phones keep ringing; OWSLA takes up a lot of time. It’s been hard.”

He’s in town to perform a series of relatively tiny club shows at different venues throughout the Bay Area. Next week he’ll do the same thing in Brooklyn. He’s named these single-city runs, which will also unfold in Amsterdam and Barcelona, “Takeovers.” If Recess had come out as planned, the Takeovers would have helped heighten the album’s aura of intimacy. As it stands, these shows are more random buzz-builders, or, seen another way, unfortu-nately timed obligations that he’s got to meet in between yet more frenzied studio sessions.

For those, Moore has rented himself a vast live-in studio in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood for the week; it boasts a chef’s kitchen, a lofted sleeping area and a plush living room outfitted with a roaring fireplace and a hidden chamber behind a fake bookshelf. “Place is sick, right?” Moore says. He’s dressed in the same all-black uniform he wore in Los Angeles, except now there’s a pair of alligators humping on his T-shirt, parodying the Lacoste logo, and his sneakers are filthy white Vans instead of filthy black ones.

At about 10 p.m., a car arrives to take him to tonight’s venue, the Warfield, a 2,250-seat former vaudeville theater. When Moore gets there, his opener, house-music DJ Claude VonStroke, is in the middle of his set. “You know his shit?” Moore yells over the stage. “He’s fucking awesome.” Each Takeover show features a different group of support acts, handpicked by Moore and intended to help break down what he sees as asinine boundaries between dance subgenres. “There’s so many stupid stereotypes in dance music,” he says. “These bills are about getting past that.”

Moore is wholeheartedly opposed to snobbish distinctions in electronic music because he is one of the genre’s most successful stylistic interlopers. The foundation of the Skrillex sound is dubstep, a style hatched in London clubs at the turn of the century. Dubstep started as vibe music – a dank patchwork of grayscale tonalities, dub-reggae reverb and kilo-ton-heavy bass drops, perfect for (mostly) men to appreciate while standing around amid powerful sound systems. Following in the footsteps of pop-minded produc-ers such as Rusko, Skrillex heightened dubstep’s dynamic shifts, maximizing the wow factor of the drop, and crafting a cartoonishly ferocious sound showcased on “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites,” his breakthrough 2010 single. “My version was more anime, and way more melodic,” Moore says.

Some dance critics and other DJs dubbed this strain of dubstep “brostep,” a derogatory term signifying agro party music for ignoramuses to chug beer to. Moore turned the slur into a badge of honor for Recess’ opening track, naming it “All Is Fair in Love and Brostep.” “It’s the hardest, most over-the-top, dope fucking brostep song ever,” he says proudly.

The criticism still makes him angry, though. “Man, dance music is for fun,” Moore says. “It’s not something to fucking raise an eyebrow at. Stop taking yourself so seriously. People who stereotype genres, who say, ‘If you’re into this, you’re this kind of person’ – it’s almost racist. You know how much negativity is in the world People are dying and getting raped right now. You’re an artist – you might as well give something good.”

At 11:45, Skrillex takes the stage. On his last tour, he DJ’d from within a custom-built, transformable spaceship. Tonight the setup is comparatively stripped down: a curtain composed of thousands of tiny LEDs hangs behind his booth, upon which videos and ani-mations alternate; mounted elsewhere are floodlights, strobes and lasers. Moore has a dedicated technician at his shows who triggers these visuals, so that Moore isn’t locked into preprogrammed cues. He takes tremendous care, he says, in pacing performances. “The way I usually see my set,” he says, “it goes: boom, it ramps up, whoo!, comes back down, goes up really high, comes back way fucking down – ‘What the fuck happened?’ – and then comes back up: Euphoric!”

The Warfield audience is young, buff and mostly white, full of shirtless boys and pantsless girls. (A member of Moore’s entourage keeps a running collection on his phone of photos, snapped at shows, of girl’s underdressed bottoms, or as he phrases it, “rave-butt.”) Skrillex’s set is wide-ranging, his own eruptive tracks giving way to hard-edged electronic flash-backs (the Prodigy), slick pop detours (Justin Timberlake) and raucous cross-over hip-hop (Missy Elliott, Beastie Boys). When Skrillex plays, he likes to hype up the crowd through a microphone, but he tempers impulses toward total abandon with endearingly sincere pleas for civility. He’s been known to tell boys at his shows, “If there’s a girl behind you, see if you’re in her way, and if you are ask respectfully if she wants you to

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3

“Why not look to the stars?

Look beyond this, accept

that there’s so much we don’t know and a lot of it could be

up there.”

3

put her on your shoulders for a better view!” (Things don’t always run smoothly: One woman is currently suing Skrillex for injuries she allegedly incurred after he landed on her during a stage-dive.)

Moore keeps calling the fans tonight his “friends” and his “homeys.” At one point, introducing a particularly anthemic turn in the set, he instructs the crowd to “Hold up anything that glows: your phone! Your lighter!” Clusters of kids raise their arms to flaunt another option: gloves fitted with flashing lights in the palms and fingertips.

Spotting these, Moore cries out approvingly: “Your rave-gloves!”

Moore was born in Mount Washington, in northeast Los Angeles, the son of an insurance-claims-investigator dad and a stay-at-home mom. At 16, he learned that he had been adopted, and that a woman he’d known as a “family friend” was in fact his biological mother. He keeps the precise details surrounding the adoption to himself, but says that when he first learned about it, he felt shocked and betrayed. “Whether my parents forgot to tell me, or didn’t know what the right time was, I didn’t find out till I found out randomly,” he says. “And I was angry. Who wouldn’t be?”

Today, he describes his parents as “fucking dope.” They are both Scientologists, and they enrolled Moore, in his adolescence, at a Los Angeles school called the Academy of Literacy and the Arts, which employed “Study Technology,” a pedagogical system developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Moore does not identify outright as a Scientologist, explaining that his parents “let me do my own journey” rather than forcing their beliefs on him. In addition to his encounter at school with Study Tech, though, he says he took Scientology courses years ago, and that “there’s some fundamentals that were really positive that will always stick with me.”

Scientology has been a target of both ridicule and serious investigative journalism, in which apostates have accused the church of abusive practices, and Hubbard’s credibility has been undermined. In the face of such attention, Moore feels a kinship, and a protectiveness, toward the church. “It’s, like, Tom Cruise jumps on a couch, says some shit – I feel there are so many other actors and figureheads, whether they’re into drugs or whatever, that are doing a lot more negative things, that don’t get as much flak,” he says. “The one thing about Scientology is, the people that are in it, that are doing it, are people of good will, man. Those are my homeys. Those are people I grew up with.” He dismisses criticisms of Scientology as “negativity,” and says it “bums me out” to see the church “attacked in the press” (including, he says,, by Rolling Stone, which published a lengthy investigation in 2006).

Moore calls his relationship with Scientology “nuanced”; he is guided, more broadly, by what he characterizes as a “searching nature.” He adores Ancient Aliens, the History Channel program that hypothesizes about bygone cases of human-extraterrestrial contact. “I think it’s a fun approach to say, ‘Maybe “God” was aliens, and they put us here and we learned technology from them,’”

Moore says. “The whole thing is really fascinating. Why not look to the stars? Look beyond this, accept that there’s so much we don’t know and a lot of it could be up there. We’re gonna have this technology in our lifetime. It’s cool to think about. Why not? There’s a ton of astronauts and people at NASA who have spoken about alien existence for years – you don’t see it publicized.” I ask if he believes there’s a conspiracy to suppress extraterrestrial existence. “There’s a possibility of that, for sure. On a real level, until I see it, I’m not making any claims. But on a fun level? Hell fucking yes!”

During what he calls “YouTube dark-hole nights,” spent following link after link, Moore has pondered other conspiracy theories that circulate online. He was intrigued, for instance, by Loose Change, a documentary beloved among those who suspect that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job. “I fuck with that, sure,” Moore says. “Building 7 is very interesting. It’s just unexplained, and I’m not saying anything happened, but it fell like a demolition, perfectly. The 9/11 stuff is so gnarly, though: If you even question it, you’re an America-hater. I don’t take it too seriously – I’m not standing for something unless I know it’s true. But there’s a lot of dope informa-tion out there that could lead to more things.”

When Moore was 16, in a decision that his parents supported, he left home. He’s gotten heavily into punk music during high school and, after corresponding on MySpace with a Georgia-based musician called Matt Good, he headed south to join Good’s band, From First to Last, as its new lead singer. His timing was perfect: From First to Last, an emo outfit that tempered pretty melodies with histrionic shrieks, were borne aloft by the same good fortune that turned many Warped Tour acts into major-label comers. After a bidding war, Capitol signed From First to Last to a deal worth $3.5 million in all. “That was if we completed the record, and that included videos – that’s worth everything,” Moore says. “I think the actual advance was, like, 60 grand for each of us, and that wasn’t even after taxes.”

Moore says that big-label money helped to kill the scene he loved. “The Used, My Chemical Romance, Atreyu, Thursday, us – all these bands were either breaking up or they were signing big deals. And some of them, honestly, were making some pussy-ass records. I mean that in the most loving way. We were guilty of it, too. But there had been a real underground scene, and you could feel all these people sounding like butt rock. Everybody tried so hard to abandon their roots and become the Foo Fighters.”

Moore made two albums with From First to Last, then left the group. “It was one of those situations where people didn’t get along,” he says. “I think part of it was that I was the youngest one, the last to join. Bands are great, but I couldn’t express myself in that band.” (Good didn’t respond to an interview request.) Back in Los Angeles, Moore began fooling around on Ableton, making his own tracks and DJ’ing at parties. For inspiration, he went back to his love for Aphex Twin, and got heavily into the French house-music revival spear-headed by acts like Justice and Sebastian before discovering

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dubstep. “It was me, doing whatever, plugging a guitar into my laptop, making shit by myself,” he says. “That’s what Skrillex was: Now I can express myself.”

Down in Moore’s dressing room at the Warfield, nerarly every-one is dressed in black. The air is thick with cigarette smoke; a videographer walks around gathering footage for yet-unknown purposes, shooting on an old VHS camcorder because Moore prefers that look. Moore sits on an armchair, fidgeting with his plugged earlobes and receiving well-wishers. His girlfriend, and Oakland artist named Charmaine Olivia, balances herself on his knee. Heavily tattooed, with a nose ring, Olivia met Moore through Instagram – he got in touch asking to buy some of her work. “She’s beautiful and a strong personality, making shit in this big-ass loft, painting all day,” Moore says. “I fall in love with artists, because I admire them before I ever meet them.” (His last long-term girlfriend was the singer Ellie Goulding.)

As a gift, the show promoter tonight has given Moore a stack of paperback books about aliens. Someone else gave him a bottle of fancy-looking vodka. “You want some?” Moore asks me. “I feel guilty, because I’m not a big vodka drinker, and this is, like, the most expensive vodka in the world.”

Two SUVs roll up to the theater’s back entrance, and Moore invites a dozen or so hangers-on back to the SoMa studio to hear Recess. In the studio’s main control room, a dozen-odd people mill around. “I gotta know what you think,” Moore tells Claude VonStroke, the opening DJ, who’s sitting a few feet away. Moore’s assistant, Bree, hands out frothy glasses of Delirium Tremens, a potent Belgian beer that Moore likes. Olivia and a friend sit in a corner with a stack of printer paper, doodling with markers and keeping to themselves. Manning the console, Moore decides to try some of the gift vodka after all. He cracks the top and takes a swig. “That’s sick – it doesn’t even taste like alcohol,” he says. “It’s more like spicy water!” (The bottle costs only $45, too, which I discover Googling it later.) Moore cranks up the volume on a track called “Ragga Bomb,” featuring old-school jungle-music gods the Ragga Twins. Everyone in the studio whoops and hollers. “That’s crazy,” VonStroke says, shaking his head.

“I want people who hear my music to feel like they’re on all these drugs, but they’re not on any drugs,” Moore tells me later. He gen-erally abstains from any intoxicant harder than booze, and “even with alcohol, you have to be careful – I can’t get as much done if I’m fucked up.”

At the studio, someone rolls a joint and passes it to Moore. In what he characterizes as a rare allowance, he takes a puff. Another guy raises is phone to take a picture. “Uh, not with the weed in the frame, dude,” Moore says. Two guys who seem to be VonStroke’s guests are cuddling with each other on a couch. One points at the shutterbug and starts yelling, “Narc! Narc!”

A week later, on the night of Valentine’s Day, Moore is hop-scotch-ing across rivers of slush in Brooklyn, which has just been hit with its umpteenth blizzard of the winter. “I got another extension for the album – three more days,” Moore says, crunching dirty snow as he walks up Bedford Avenue, in Williamsburg, in search of coffee. His haircut has been freshly buzzed, and he’s underdressed for the cold, wearing just a T-shirt under a black satin bomber. The jack-end of a power cable dangles from one of his pockets, like he’s a droid someone forgot to plug in.

We find a café, where Moore requests a large Red Eye to go. “I’ve got so many friends out here, and no time to see them,” he says. In San Francisco, his daily schedule was “wake up, go to the studio, play that night’s show, go back to the studio,” he says. “It’s been even more intense out here.” The Brooklyn gigs have been fun, though. Last night Skrillex played Output, a club known for its state-of-the-art sound system. “Girls never care about sound,” he says. “If you want to clear all the girls from a room, start talking about sound. But this place, even girls afterward were going” – he adopts a high-pitched voice – “’The audio was incredible!’”

Recess is almost done. “There are two songs left,” he says. “I’m having trouble mixing them. With a genre like techno or house, the music’s so minimal you can play it really loud and it sounds good. But my music is so hyped-up and energetic that it’s an art getting it to where you can play it loud and it still sounds warm and nice and digestible.” Tonight’s show is a semisecret warehouse party. We make our way back down Bedford toward a restaurant in Moore’s hotel to grab a bite beforehand. The menu turns out to be a Valentine’s Day-themed prix fixe. “If I get the foie gras, will you have some?” Moore asks. He goes for it, gets a glass of Bordeaux, too, and raises it for a celebratory toast. With the completion of Recess in sight, his gaze is shifting further forward. “This entire next year is booked solid,” he says. “I just saw the schedule today: It’s got all the touring, everything, laid out through the top of 2015.” I ask how it feels to see his life mapped out in such detail, over so long a period. “It’s pretty sick, dude,” he says. “Like – I know exactly what my future looks like.” ö

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