Let Go & Haul: wisdom from Scott Belsky & Chamillionaire
Week 17, 2018 – Brooklyn
Journey: where we’re at
This week was three big things: the three of us working together as a team in NYC, fundraising (and learning even more about that), and getting a TestFlight ready! Shout out to Matt Nishi-Broach for helping us with a detail of getting the app out on a weekend! The first of our invites will start rolling out slowly next week to a limited set of testers and VCs. This newsletter is the best place to make sure you’re on the list for an invite over the coming months :)
I also had the pleasure of talking to some people I deeply respect, and I’m sharing those insights:
Journal: what I learned
Our bank (which is a pretty cool bank), put on a dinner with Scott Belsky this week. Scott is one of the smartest, kindest humans I've had the pleasure of being in a room with; here are a few bits of his wisdom:
On winning by ‘not going away’: often teams that can simply stick together long enough, make it. Sometimes this is easier to do in a non Bay Area place, where you’re less subject to press, competition. Sometimes these teams that stick together for the long haul are the ones who really need each other / don’t have other options.
On taking feedback: always be doing it (obviously!) At Behance he would ask cofounders after each meeting, “what are three things I could have done better?”
On parsing what feedback to take: (this is the question I asked). Learn the difference between cynicism and criticism. You will need to go against the grain to build big, and you will have to say “fuck it”. How do you know when to say fuck it? Be in touch with your intuition. This is the relationship you need to continually nurture and develop.
On on-boarding: teams by nature, will reject the new person. We’re hardwired to do this. This means we need to cultivate the path for the new person to come in. People he hired that were disliked at first by the team turned out to be the best hires they made later. Give it time.
On the managing expectations about the journey: entrepreneurship being like a mountain range. You get to the top of a peak, it’s great! Then you have to go through a valley to get to the next peak. Let them know there is always another valley and don’t try to hide it. Be real. “we’re hitting this target, this project is going well. But, we’re not moving fast enough, our internal comms suck, we need to fix that.” This reminds me a lot of Jack’s style of leadership at Twitter, which I deeply appreciate, and it’s what I strive for too.
I also had the amazing opportunity to briefly chat with Chamillionaire. We’re both building video platforms that have collaboration and co-creation built in, which I find interesting as a potential zeitgeist moment for video. We jammed on a bunch of subjects, but the most interesting to me was when he asked “how do people like you and I find each other?”, referring to the fact we’re both not a typical pattern match for tech. I think this is a fascinating question, and it speaks volumes to the backchannel in tech right now, which is that increasingly I get linked with what I hope and believe will be a new and more diverse wave of humans leading the way in technology. One of the bits of wisdom Cham shared with me is how he always focused on access to information and relationships throughout his career. I think this is dead on, and a mistake that I made early on in my career as a designer. I was so focused on the craft of making, I failed to realize how important these other two things are. Yep, you need to be good, but knowledge and relationships are power.
Jams: what I’m into
April S*STERS playlist is here!
And of course, I gotta include Ridin’ (fun fact: my sister Monika and I had this on a biking playlist for riding through the spring puddles being very silly because obviously that is not what the lyrics are about but I have every intent of doing this again soon because biking season here is finally here in NYC!)