Z E N B A C H » News

YCombinator – Rejection! let’s parrty with Ibizaah!

Z E N B A C H — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:49:59 +0000

When you startup gets rejected by YCombinator you get this email:

We’re sorry to say we couldn’t accept your proposal for funding.
Please don’t take it personally. The quality of the applications
continues to increase with each cycle, and since there’s a limit
on the number of interviews we can do, we had to turn away a lot
of genuinely promising groups.

Another reason you shouldn’t take this personally is that we know
we make lots of mistakes. It’s alarming how often the last group
to make it over the threshold for interviews ends up being one that
we fund. That means there are surely other good groups that fall
just below the threshold and that we miss even interviewing.

We’re trying to get better at this, but it’s practically certain
that groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups.
If you do, we’d appreciate it if you’d send us an email telling us
about it; we want to learn from our mistakes.

Y Combinator Staff

Then you cry a little and then you celebrate by throwing a party with Ibizaah!

Congrats to the selected ones and to the rest (most of the applicants I suppose) join me at Ibizaah! and get some tunes going on!.

Fedor – Lethal, Humble, Great

Z E N B A C H — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:53:24 +0000

Back 2006, when I was shooting for now extinct BodogFight I had the chance to meet the now considered best MMA fighter in the world in person. Back then I had no idea nor interest in MMA fighting or any martial arts for that matter. I still don’t care much for it but after meeting several fighters and interview them my opinion towards these violent sports has changed a lot. Most of the fighters I met were quite nice people, very focused and loving for their sport. I never understood why anyone would like to make a career out of beating people up, but we are all different and some people love the one on one physical challenge so much they are willing to surrender their lives to what they love the most, beating people up.

We were sent to Atlantic City to film an MMA tournament and it just happened that Fedor was giving a seminar there during our visit. We filmed the whole seminar and interviewed Fedor for our records. Later on, Fedor was signed up by Bodog to fight Matt Lindland. The first thing that struck me about Fedor is that he did not look like a fighter at all, I saw this solid but rather chubby looking balding man on his early 30′s giving instructions to a group of about 50 fighters. They all listened to his tips through his Russian translator.
I did not know who Fedor was but I did notice all the fighters there seemed to be very excited to be there. Later on, a few months after the filming I decided to check up on Fedor and was surprised to find out he was considered one of the best fighters in the world. I could not believe it, that chubby smiley humble guy? he looked like a friendly next door guy. I could totally picture him selling me a couple of chicken breasts at the local meat market. Well, looks deceive, who could convince me I was standing next to the most lethal human obliterating machine in recent history, no one, until I saw him fight.
What I remember most about Fedor was his humble nature, he gave this aura of being a really nice person, someone calm, not intimidating, and sincere. Precisely, he had a lot of the traits that you would never expect to see on a fighter of his level and that is what makes him so especial and what made me look at the sport with different eyes.
I still don’t care for the violence and blood and I have been there, filming fights on the ring, getting splashed with sweat and blood, hearing bones and flesh crunching and I don’t like it. The only reason I check back on MMA is because Fedor, because I met him and because I liked him as a person. I am glad that he is successful doing what he loves and one day he will lose and get old and stop fighting perhaps, but I am sure something will remain, to me the most important, Fedor will still be a nice guy, humble, calm and I like that.

Here is Fedor wrongly tagged as the baddest man on the planet, yes inside the ring but not outside:

This is a small clip of the seminar where I first met Feodor:

Bif Naked wants to F@#k you Too!

Z E N B A C H — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:22:24 +0000

I had the priviledge to meet Bif Naked a while ago working at now extinct Bodog Music. She was a very loving happy woman and hugged everyone.
Back in 2004 I was given the task to edit her “Nothing Else Matters” music video which I started to edit and mid way into the edit I gave it to my friend Eduardo who at that time badly needed some work. What happened the 2 years after that is quite an amazing story.. Eduardo was hired full time at Bodog as an Editor.
Bif Naked’s record label Her Royal Majesty Records signed a deal with Bodog to provide them with all their roster of artists with the intention to promote the entertaining division at Bodog, which was called Bodog Music.
Soon after Eduardo got hired, I was hired as well and in not time Bodog poured millions of dollars into the Music and Entertaining ventures to build a full fledged in-house record label and tv production house. The TV department was in charge of shooting all the music videos and also producing Battle of the Bands and BodogFIGHT. Anyway, eventually the investment did not pay off and they closed the whole thing, but what a ride! I made tons of awesome contacts, traveled a lot and gained invaluable experience in TV production.
When they closed Bodog Music, all the artists when back to HRM records as before the Bodog adventure.

Here is the lates Bif Music video directed by my friend and Editor Extraordinare Kirk Karasin:

And here the Bif Naked video “Nothing Else Matters” edited by me and Eduardo Cristo which was the video that started us all in the crazy roller coaster at Bodog:

Travel and Dance! Like Matt Harding!

Z E N B A C H — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:04:58 +0000

This video brought tears to my eyes, in a few minuted Matt takes us around the world (sponsored by SlideGum), about 42 countries and really exotic places to show us his super dorky lame dancing skills.. and by doing so, how dancing, even bad dancing, is so universal!
I am a terrible dancer and Matt makes people like me look good.. thanks Matt. Now I want to go to all those places and do something cool too!

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Matts website -> http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/.

Mike Row TED Talk – He can Talk

Z E N B A C H — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:19:10 +0000

Mike Row has become quite famous with his hit series “Dirty Jobs“. There, he goes around the world, mostly US, and spends a day learning and doing all kinds jobs (over 200 episodes/jobs already). The show is called Dirty Jobs because he chooses non glamorous blue collar jobs most of the time.
At any rate, Mike is no doubt a great host and an amazing speaker. He has a very nice deep modulated voice which he has exploited immensely along his career. You may or may not agree with his message, but I would think it would be hard to find anyone that would not consider his delivery, poise, eloquence and poignant humor simply superb.

I haven’t given any speeches in my life yet but I aspire to one day have something interesting enough to share to seek the opportunity, and may be even have my go at a TED like event. Mike is an inspiration for me. Now there are things that most of us will never have, and that is the voice, that perfect confident sales like timber he has. Yeah, may be it is so perfect that when he talks it is hard not to think he is selling you something.. but the truth is that that is how he started on TV, on a crappy late night show called QVC where he sold useless things.
Here is a clip of him at QVC selling the most useless cat toy in the world:

And here is the TED talk:

Back In – Blocked out of my own blog!

Z E N B A C H — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:57:15 +0000

well.. the Bad-Behaviour plug in locked me out of my own blog for months until I hacked into the daatabase and disabled the plugin.

So, we are back in business and I got some cool videos and news to share.

Stay tunes!

Stivito y Migs chorring at Japanase Festival

Z E N B A C H — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 23:46:55 +0000

For a few moments we were transported to Japan during this summer’s Japasese celebration day in Vancouver.Â We didn’t understand anything that was going on. However, we managed to enjoy ourselves by doing a few culture integration moves.

Japanese traditional crazy thing

Â Steve jumping with joy

Â Steve greeting people his own way

Â Miguelon posing quickly before being run over the parade

Miguel Simpson

Z E N B A C H — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 02:04:32 +0000

Estamos como cabras… hoy me he pasado todo el dia haciendo un diagrama de mi departamento con versiones simpsonizadas de cada empleado. Las jefecillas se lo han pasado bomba con la aplicacion de Flash en http://www.simpsonsmovie.com y a mi me han puesto asi:

Buahh! Spain loses in Edmonton

Z E N B A C H — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:31:55 +0000

This time the best team did not make it through. Spain was beat in the penalty shoot-out after having dominated the entire game. Spain became too good of a friend with the Czech’s goal posts and paid the price for it.
Other than that, the trip was a fun escape from Vancouver, we got to finally see my bro’s new place, the niece and family.
It was hot and sticky even at nite.
Here is an image that explains it all.

Capel crying after an unfair defeat. This kid rocked!

Miguelon remata de cabeza!

Stivito, Julito y Miguelon con el balon

Â Dani y Miguel con un balon de verdad?

Back from Torbeland

Z E N B A C H — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 20:47:56 +0000

I just came back from my one month experience in Torbeland. It has been quite a ride, lots of experiences, fun times and relax times.
A lot of the original projects for the month did not happen, however, the foundation for them and new ones was established.
My mission to help as a technical adviser and systems optimizer has been accomplished perfectly. I have enjoyed immersing myself in a totally unknown environment and quickly adapt to it, understand it and use my abilities to create an infrastructure and improvement plan.

I like challenges like that, unique, original and surrounded by colorful and wonderful characters. Meeting new people and finding about them is an invaluable experience. I got to know all the components of putalocura’s emporium. I found out how they felt, what they wanted and what was necessary to improve their situation. Most importantly I helped to reestablish and open communication environment among all the members of the clan.
This was the most important since, interestingly enough, once communication begins, a lot of the issues seem to resolve themselves really quickly.