Title: Partner
Joined Arc90 in: May 2006
Most people don’t know that: I’m colorblind.
If some of Chris LoSacco’s co-workers are still trying to figure out why he only keeps a stack of Starbucks napkins on his desk, he has a valid explanation.
“I like things to be minimal,” he said. “In college, my desk was very organized; I only had a Post-it dispenser. My roommate would throw a single Post-it into the garbage just to get to me.”
Keeping things simple is a running theme in Chris’ work life, stemming back to his first encounter with Arc90. He first heard of Arc90 during his senior year at New York University. The Downingtown, PA native decided to attend the school’s job fair, but he did his research first.
“I got the list of the companies that were going to be at the job fair,” he recalled. “I went through the list to figure out who I wanted to talk to. Out of 100 companies, there were two that were remotely worth talking to.”
After searching the Web for Arc90 and its founder, Chris discovered Information Objects, Rich Ziade’s paper about interaction design and how software should model the real world. Chris realized that Arc90 was a company worth talking to.
“The things that I was interested in and what Arc90 is all about were exactly the same,” he said.
At the job fair, Chris had the opportunity to talk with Rich and discussed Alan Cooper’s Inmates Are Running the Asylum, a book that both respected. He left a lasting impression with the people he met.
“Chris was a full-blown technologist who was interested in design and usability,” Rich recalled. “He didn’t give his resume to everybody. He knew what he wanted to do and where he wanted to work. That’s great advice for anybody looking for a job.”
Chris was hired as an Interactive Designer in the spring of 2006. He wasn’t confined to the role and used the flexibility within the company to contribute to various projects.
“I wasn’t tasked to write code but I did,” he said. “Everybody was doing everything and there was the opportunity to pitch in wherever you could help.”
Chris and Rama Poola, another graduate of NYU’s Computer Science program, started at Arc90 around the same time. The company had just relocated to its Third Avenue office and the new hires used the extra space to their advantage.
“There was the junk room with a white board,” Chris recalled. “Rama and I would have an idea about something and we would IM each other ‘Junk room?’ and start sharing. A lot of good stuff came out of the impromptu sessions.”
Technology had been part of Chris’ life since childhood. He was raised around computers- his dad works for a company that builds software for nursing homes-and started tinkering with the Web at an early age.
“I was growing up just as the Internet was taking off,” the 25-year-old said. “I remember dial-up connections and when Web pages were just text. I was making my own sites at 14 just to play with the technology.”
But the Internet wasn’t Chris’ only passion. He attended NYU to focus on acting and majored in Drama. Once there, he realized he couldn’t see himself leaving New York; during his junior year, Chris added Computer Science as a double major to secure his future in the city.
“I knew I wanted to stay in New York and I wanted to be able to pay for that,” he said. “There was a strong possibility that I would become an actor and work hard but you can’t pick and choose your work. I didn’t want the ‘I’ll take anything’ lifestyle.”
After graduation, Chris acted in student films; he intended to keep movie shoots in his schedule until he realized that technology held an important role in his life.
“I was figuring I could do it on nights and weekends,” he said. “When I became more involved at Arc90, it naturally became that this was more of my life.”
Chris is the mastermind behind SVN Notifier, an Apple Dashboard widget for collaborative version control. He envisioned the tool for the Arc90 lab after finding flaws with other Subversion software.
“It’s useful because it stays out of your way until it has something meaningful to say,” Chris commented. “I wanted to be notified when other people working on the same stuff as me made a change to something. SVN Notifier seemed like an easy, unobtrusive way to do that.”
In the fall of 2007, when he was 24-years-old, Chris was promoted to the partner position at Arc90. The title came with more responsibilities, but some things stayed the same.
“Everybody asked if I was going to get a new business card,” he noted. “I still don’t have one!”
The new role also changed his perspective about work and interactions at Arc90.
“There is a different approach of looking at it,” Chris said. “It becomes a longer view, such as how does this fit into the picture of where we’re going in a year or four years. I started to think about the things I was doing and the things I was enabling the people around me to do-how they were beneficial to the company and not just to me.”
During his time at Arc90, particularly since becoming a partner, Chris has learned that discussion is an important problem-solving tool.
“Disagreement and being critical of ideas is a good thing,” Chris said. “There are very few people who will try to force things down people’s throats ‘just because.’ There is a mutual respect that just because you don’t agree on something there can be a healthy process to come up with the best idea.”