Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
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Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
Subscribe to Brandon Donnelly
>4.2K subscribers
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2003/2004 was roughly the time period when I started to become interested in development as a career. My good friend Rick Sole and I used to talk about it all the time in architecture school. How do we break into this space? There are no formal paths, like law for instance, and so we felt like we had to create our own opportunities.
What I ended up doing was creating a list of every developer that I felt was doing cool and interesting work. I didn’t know enough about the industry at the time to assess other things and so that was really my only criteria. Do they care about design in their projects? I then started cold emailing and cold calling.
Not everyone got back to me, but many did and some agreed to meet with me. This was at a time when I had zero experience and I was frankly not very valuable as a hire. So I am incredibly grateful to all of the people who said yes and took the time to speak and meet with me.
As you go through your career, this curve eventually flips. You go from having no experience and begging people to meet with you to having experience (and other things you can offer people) and people now wanting to meet with you. Generally people want to meet when they think they can gain from you.
But the best way to build a relationship is to start when you don’t need anything. I will never forget the people that met with me when I had nothing to offer them. And you can bet that I will always have all the time in the world for them.
I’m not going to claim that I respond to every one of my cold emails. I definitely do not. But I respond to as many as I can and I try and pay it forward with some time. You could say it’s playing the long game, but it’s probably also the right thing to do.
How do you approach relationship building?
2003/2004 was roughly the time period when I started to become interested in development as a career. My good friend Rick Sole and I used to talk about it all the time in architecture school. How do we break into this space? There are no formal paths, like law for instance, and so we felt like we had to create our own opportunities.
What I ended up doing was creating a list of every developer that I felt was doing cool and interesting work. I didn’t know enough about the industry at the time to assess other things and so that was really my only criteria. Do they care about design in their projects? I then started cold emailing and cold calling.
Not everyone got back to me, but many did and some agreed to meet with me. This was at a time when I had zero experience and I was frankly not very valuable as a hire. So I am incredibly grateful to all of the people who said yes and took the time to speak and meet with me.
As you go through your career, this curve eventually flips. You go from having no experience and begging people to meet with you to having experience (and other things you can offer people) and people now wanting to meet with you. Generally people want to meet when they think they can gain from you.
But the best way to build a relationship is to start when you don’t need anything. I will never forget the people that met with me when I had nothing to offer them. And you can bet that I will always have all the time in the world for them.
I’m not going to claim that I respond to every one of my cold emails. I definitely do not. But I respond to as many as I can and I try and pay it forward with some time. You could say it’s playing the long game, but it’s probably also the right thing to do.
How do you approach relationship building?
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