To the three of you who still read this blog, sorry for the neglect. I’ve been in the post-honeymoon phase of blogging - the equivalent of the trough of sorrow for start-ups. To be honest, I’ve been focusing on the ever-changing product that is Skim.Me to the point where I’ve put everything else on hold. Life’s a series of trade-offs right?
We put out what we had of our product a month ago and got some great feedback from friends. The gist was that we had created something visually appealing but not anything that added enough value to keep a user coming back. I’ve adopted the analogy that we were working on the car’s outer body but had no engine. Well, we’re now working on the engine and are excited to have a potential third team member. More on how that happened later but keep an eye out for some magic in the new year…..
So back to the title of this blog post. “What do You Do All Day?” Nothing. I get asked this question a lot. “What’s your day to day like?” “What do you do all day since you’re non-technical?” Good questions. In my mind, I immediately take the defensive stance that I have to prove my worth. That I’m actually doing something other than ordering chinese or buying sandwiches. It’s tough but I’ll try to give you a peek into my daily life as a business co-founder with no business yet.
“How’s the company going?” My usual response to that is that we’re not a company yet - though we are incorporated (+1 for the business guy). In my mind, a company has found product/market fit and is either generating revenue or has that goal in the near-term horizon. We’re just not there yet. So when the technical team is developing the product it leaves you time to dabble in anything you think will add value. That’s constantly changing based on objectives you set out but I’m currently focused on hiring talented technical folks with no money and on building relationships with potential investors, who will invest in our team pre-product/market fit. Piece of cake.
Much of my day to day involves trying to get out of the building. Anything good that’s ever happened to us so far has been linked with this notion. I get out of the building to talk to potential users, investors, customers, and employees. I get out of the building to reenergize with coffee, by working out, or just to take a walk when I’m approaching burnout. Yes, stuff has to be built and happen inside the building but even technical folks benefit from getting out. That’s why Daren comes with me to 80% of the meetings I have.
So to answer the question more specifically on WTF do I do everyday, let’s take today as an example. Let’s approach the too much info (TMI) barrier. I woke up, checked Twitter in bed starting from Seth Godin’s post (I start there every morning), checked e-mail, got out of bed, made green tea, ate blackberries, made toast with peanut butter honey and cream cheese, sat down at computer, read more stuff, got dressed (didn’t shower this morning but I did last night!), and kissed Megan goodbye.
Then off to meet with an associate at a seed stage investment firm this morning. Nice first meeting. Came into our office dungeon with Daren. On the walk to the office, talked some about product, some about competitors. Sat down, read more (big believer in knowledge building and domain expertise). Some people say I read too much of what’s out there but I think it allows me to connect with people and recognize patterns better. Spoke to a friend on gchat who’s going to try to introduce me to Founder’s Fund. Now I’m writing this blog post.
In about an hour, we have a NYU Poly student coming in who responded to a job posting for Employee #3 that I submitted to the whole NYU ecosystem. After that, we’re speaking with the CTO of another start-up that started out personalizing news content before pivoting to a B2B model. That intro came from a meeting we had from Ohours with an angel investor and founder, who recently was funded by Union Square Ventures. We drove two hours to meet with him for 28 minutes.
After that, I probably really will go buy us sandwiches. We usually eat at Subway because we can split a footlong for a total of $5.44, so $2.72 each. We used to also buy nutrition bars, like Balance or Clif, from stores when we got hungry. Well, to save $1 per bar, I now order them in bulk and bring them into our office. Yes, this again is part of the non-technical co-founder’s job. After eating and post carb fucking around (thanks Facebook), maybe I’ll go stand outside of computer science classes and pass out recruiting flyers with $1 lottery tickets stapled to them.
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Yes, they suck and they’re ghetto. But they did help us find some people to speak with and potentially our third employee. After that, it’s looking forward to tomorrow, next week, and next month. Who else can I meet while I’m in CA for Xmas break? What other events can we go to? Should we be speaking with potential strategic partners right now? Who have I forgotten to follow up with? How do Mailchimp and Kissmetrics work? I really should be answering more Quora questions. Am I going to get in trouble for not doing anything for my wedding?
This is all the stuff that’s constantly floating in and out of my mind. This is also why this blog post has only taken me 22 minutes to write so far. I’m blabbering but I’m blabbering from my experiences. All this is without mentioning that my mind is constantly thinking about our product - a product that I can’t build. Is my current vision of the product feasible? Is it something I’d even use? It better be but it isn’t now. What else can we do? How do we make it simple? What features can we add? Is it now a feature blob? What’s the roadmap look like?
The worst part about being non-technical is that people like us have no clue about how long or what it truly takes to build a compelling, fast, beautiful, and functional product that customers want. One of the best things a business person can do is not constantly ask the technical team if it’s done yet. I suffer from that affliction but am in rehab. If you want more insight into someone else’s day to day, check out Jack Dorsey’s. He works 16 hours per day, in two 8 hour blocks, for two amazing companies. Machine. I could do that but then I’d probably be fat, have my fiancee divorce/break up/leave me and have canker sores from lack of sleep. I’ll settle for 12-13 work/1 gym/2 Megan/1 misc and the rest burnout preventing sleep. Sorry friends, maybe once in a while. Tradeoffs, right?
