Let Go and Haul: one year!
Week 48, 2018 – Brooklyn
Journey: where we’re at
PSA: We’re looking for an intermediate level product designer. (Contract or FT in NYC). It’s a pretty sweet position for a designer that wants to work in a design-led company on some fun stuff. The younger version of myself I would be very excited about this job. Just saying. Please share!
On Friday we had our holiday party and celebrated our one year anniversary since incorporating!
We were all so hungry and tired from the week we forgot to get some really good pictures (oops!) but it went a little something like this…
My first thought is omg one whole year!?!? I’m one to always look first at where I can improve. It’s not in my nature to stop and take in accomplishments, but it’s sooooooo important, and I’m working at getting better at it!
Amidst grinding away at all the usual things this week I stopped to take in what one year actually means and here is a quick list. This time last year it was just me and Anton working together in a studio, working on the early concept for TRASH. We had not:
• done Betaworks vision camp
• joined forces with our third co-founder Gen
• raised capital
• hired an awesome team
• got healthcare (oh geez!)
• got into the NYU Future Labs program with all of it’s financial benefits
• built a creation-only Alpha (never mind dozens of TestFlights in preparation for Beta)
• hadn’t begun organizing and building a video ontology. It was sill a hazy plan
• R&D on how our computer vision was going to work
• begun testing or knowing how people were going to respond to the concept
• figured out our music strategy or signed any deals
• planned and prototyped the network
• …and so much more
A year might seem like a long time, but when you consider the heavy lifts of “getting things going” – the operational and communications overhead that comes with starting something, we actually moved our butts pretty quickly!
Additionally, TRASH is “frontier tech” meaning – we’re making stuff that has never been done before, we’re inventing new technology. Unlike a consumer company built on existing tech (where the first phase of work might be solely finding product market fit) our first phase of work had to be developing the core technology.
Even with that extreme challenge, we’re starting to get messages like this one Kofi screenshotted for us this week which feels so good!!!
I’m so proud of what we’ve accomplished in a year. We’re getting ready to announce and launch some exciting stuff, I’m strategizing for our next raise (if you want to talk about this, I would love to chat – looking at my network of mentors for who to bounce ideas / get feedback from right now), and I’m optimistic about 2019. Idk why, I just have a feeling 🔮
Journal: what I learned
I’ve been thinking a lot about competition and strategy this week. Mostly because it’s starting to happen, which is a good thing, it means there’s definitely a market for what we’re doing, but I know it’s also not something to be ignored. I’ve been digging deep into the back of my brain trying to remember what I learned from all the competition around us – notably at Last.fm and Vine, but other career lessons too. In the former, it was mostly pretty exciting, there was this attitude of “we’re not just playing, we’re playing to win”. There was also a bit of blind boldness though, that attitude came with a side of ego that we were just going to be better, which in hindsight wasn’t healthy. I remember doing a lot of projects that felt questionable, to quickly try to expand into new territory. Like, remember Facebook apps? I think instead of chasing places we thought we needed to be, we should have just been focused on the one thing we were really good at. That “defensible core”. Stripping things back to a defensible core was something I walked into Vine ready to do. There I encountered pockets of a similar attitude of “ah we’re just better than them, it will be okay” That definitely wasn’t the only place where I encountered that, there were other jobs too. I think it’s just a really easy pitfall to succumb to that is not unique to anywhere or anyone. It takes a lot of guts to pull out a flashlight and shine it in the dark corners you don’t particularly want to look at, sit with uncomfortable feelings, plan for a worst-case scenario but believe in yourself enough that you can simultaneously hope for the best. These things take a lot mental strength and preparedness. Anyway, that’s what I’ve been thinking about. What about you? Have you learned some important lessons about competition along the way? If so I’d love to hear them!
Jams: what I’m into
I’ve been working on a _really_weird_playlist but it’s not quite ready yet. Maybe next week. In the meantime: bird sounds! So good! I miss bird sounds (there are pretty much none where I live in New York), and they are so relaxing! Like CBD for your ears. I was reminded of bird sounds this weekend because my friend Arkadiy hosted a weird records party (which is a great idea for a party PS) and I took my Beautiful Bird Songs of the World vinyl.
Pitchfork did their roundup of the best music videos of 2018 so I’m gonna be lazy and just link you there because it’s a really good list and the top 4 are also ones I linked here previously (yesss validation). Alana posted this in our team Telegram this week with the comment “at a glance, i think it's safe to say the era of bright colors and mixed lighting is here” Yup. This #1 vid by Rosalía, damnnnn.