All of the things that you experience start to mean something if you can sustain the hope that there is a meaning behind things. Pulling it together suddenly is the most fun part of all. It’s *almost* effortless. You become known by your works, which give you leverage, that you don’t even need because you are now better by practice.
Feels like magic when you can pull it together.
I’ve been in Boston for 8 months now. Not full time, more like 15 days a month. The culture, social circles and most importantly weather have all been challenging to acclimate to. But that probably would be true anywhere, especially when you have spent the last decade in a city as embracing as Nashville.
But it’s spring now, the bitter winter is starting to break, I’m figuring my way around, and I’m starting to meet people who have heard of me through their own network. Boston is not yet home, but it’s certainly no longer foreign.
And frankly, Boston is an amazing city full of amazing people. One of the most genuine, endearing and capable places I’ve ever lived.
Not quite sowing seeds, but certainly preparing soil, and grateful for the magic carpet that brought me here, and the mighty rock in Nashville that has my back during this journey.
Todays lesson comes from my youngest son, who agonized over coming off a ramp on his skateboard for an hour, but after trying (and falling) now can’t get enough of it and is trying to jump off of every ramp at Rocketown.
Try it because you’re afraid… thats the stuff you’ll love the most.
I’m at the roller skating rink with my oldest, and he’s amazing. The kid can do anything he puts his mind to. He is flying around the rink, doing tricks, making it all look really easy.
He also loves to skate, and does it every chance he gets.
Seems simple… Do what you love, and do it a lot. Chances are, if you have talent to go along with that love, you’ll become pretty good at it.
Thanks for the little lesson, kid.
Pretty excited to meet all of NYC’s tech community and the founders from Techstars at TechCocktail NYC on Friday. I’ll be there representing both my startup Moontoast and my microfund Jumpstart Foundry. If you are gonna be there, please find me and say hi!
I was having a beer with my good friend Clint Smith, co-founder and CEO of Emma, the other day and we were discussing team dynamics and what really makes a team work. Clint is one of the best team builders that I know. I was proud to be part of the team that he and Will Weaver assembled at Emma, and I have to attribute much of who I am today to the time I spent working alongside them. However this conversation over beers was not just him mentoring me. This time we were comparing notes. Discussing areas where we, as leaders, could improve in building our teams for the benefit of those committed souls on board. And at one point, I shared with him what I loved most about Emma and what I seek most in the people that I work with now. I said:
Nothing was better than the times early on when we faced really big problems that could only be solved at the product level, and Will would come to me with the problem and a call to action to solve it and I’d say to him “No worries man, I got this.” And then, I’d survey the problem, design a solution, and implement it.
After I said that, Clint smiled, paused, and said… “You need to share that with your team.”
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This is one of the best presentations I’ve seen in a very long time on Lean Startups and being Data Driven. David Cancel is good. Enjoy.
A quick message about entrepreneurs and their brilliant ideas… and the “dumb” investors who don’t get their brilliant ideas.
For anyone who knows me as a technology guy, you know that I have always been a fan of Open Source Software (OSS). When I first started using OSS professionally at Anode, I fell in love with the idea of having free access to all of the LAMP software I needed, and being able to lean on a community for assistance. From the code, to the forums, to the free tutorials, all of it was open and extremely progressive because of that. That year, I became aware of the power that the Web possesses. The Web was the conduit by which the open source world had connected and advanced their movement, and the freedom it offered to collaborate and exchange was incredibly powerful to me.
That love extended from open source and the Web to social networking when I attended my first SXSW in 2007. I was there when Twitter first took off, allowing all of the attendees to update their new found friends with their location and a status update. It was amazing. I’d meet someone (eg. @baratunde), we’d exchange twitter handles, and then I’d know what that person was doing for the rest of the time I was there. And even better, I’d know what they were doing when I left SXSW. And it didn’t matter if you had a smart phone, or an old school phone, or a browser. Twitter was truly open, and worked with you where you were. Everyone got to play.
As amazing as these two experiences were, I had one experience before either of them that was more profound and retrospectively much more disturbing. It was the transition of Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. At first, I recognized OS X as a wonderful improvement that immediately made both OS 9 and Windows feel decrepit. Smooth transitions, beautiful windows, big bright icons. It was just gorgeous. Then, I learned that it was based on Open Source Software! OS X was actually a port of the Darwin operating system, a variant of BSD/Unix. In that one moment when I understood what that meant, I pledged allegiance to Apple and didn’t look back. Until now.
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I’ve been threatening to return to social media in a meaningful way (ie. with a blog) for two years. Since leaving Emma in search of, well, myself, I’ve had so many life changing events take place that if it weren’t for the pictures I have with my two amazing kids, I would hardly recognize myself in 2007. Most of those changes were difficult, but have resulted in a better, wiser me, and I’m now ready to share again.
A blog is a personal thing. To me, much more personal than a Facebook page, because it’s not cluttered with anyone else’s influence. All that you see here is driven by the author.
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Moontoast
Jumpstart Foundry
SouthernAlpha
Entrepreneur Center