At a hackfest in 2006

From 2006 to 2009 Jason Seifer was a close friend, and as of last Saturday he is no longer with us. I’m really sad about this.  We made an amazing team those few years, co-founding a blog & business (Rails Envy), educating people on Ruby on Rails, and creating a bunch of funny videos.  In early 2009 we had a falling out and because we didn’t account for what would happen if we hit a crossroads in our business.  We had to shut down the blog and company we both had worked so hard to create.  It sucked.

I regret the way things went down, which is part of the reason I was driven to create some videos on how to deal with equity more fairly.  It might have saved our friendship.  The following years I reached out to try to repair things, but he never was interested.  I wish I would have tried harder.  It sucks not having any more chances to repair the friendship, or at least an opportunity to say thank you.

I owe a lot to Jason.  He gave me the push I needed to start blogging, podcasting, and get more creative with video production.  With his support I began to discover just how much I loved teaching technology.

We did a lot of co-working at Austin’s Coffee House. That’s me, Tyler Hunt, Jason Seifer, and Thomas Meeks.

I always admired how easily he could be silly and make people laugh.  As we grow up we often lose touch with that playful and silly side of our personalities, and it’s unfortunate.  Even though we weren’t close these last few years, I miss you Jason, and I’ll forever be appreciative of the impact you had on my life.

Here are some videos we created together, showing how amazing he was at making people laugh: