8 tips for a kickass Saturday at work
I’m just going to come out and say it - I love working on the weekend. Maybe it’s because I was trained for it growing up in the restaurant business (weekends = $). Maybe it’s because my high school had Saturday classes or because weekends meant game-day in college. Or maybe it’s just because weekends generally mean no meetings, no phone calls, no interruptions. Yeah… that might have something to do with it…
But not everyone’s wired like me and it’s sometimes hard to motivate to work on a Saturday, so here are some pro tips for having a productive day at work on the weekend.
1. REST
Get sleep on Friday night. For me, that means 8 hours. I function fine on 6, but 8 really has me rested and ready to charge hard. Doesn’t hurt to take it easy on the booze Friday night, too.
2. REFLECT
Take some time to get inspired with some reading, reflection etc to get your brain warmed up and ready to go. It’s just good for you. I started today with an interview of Jack Dorsey.
3. FUEL UP
Get a good healthy meal in you so you won’t get hungry easily later. Bring dinner/next meal with you. Get a giant jug of water so you don’t have to get up for a drink.
4. CAFFEINATE
I know everyone has their struggles with caffeine. I generally stay away from it, but if you don’t consume it daily, it is a great way to supercharge when you want to crank.
5. CHANGE YOUR SEAT
I love our office and my usual standing desk, but today I opted to sit in the engineering room (thanks Henry). If you don’t have that option, then hit a coffee shop or something. The change of setting is fun and pulls you away from the crap at your desk that can distract.
6. IGNORE
Your phone. IM. Etc. Duh.
7. EXERCISE
Get some. Sometimes I get this done in the morning, though I prefer later in the day as a way to get me up and out of my seat and get the blood flowing for a second wind.
8. TIMING IS EVERYTHING
Answering email on weekends is awesome because almost no one responds right away and usually by Monday the email doesn’t need a response. I also like to do big whiteboarding exercises on the weekend when no one can interrupt and influence.
—
None of this is rocket science and none of these will fix a job that you hate, but most of us startup people love what we do already, so this stuff should be fun, exciting, challenging, hawtsome anyway. And despite my lack of a degree in rocket science, I think these tips will probably work any day of the week (except maybe changing your seat… I dunno if Henry would like me stealing his seat during the week).
Yours in productivity,
reece
“Welcome to your life/ there’s no turning back… everybody wants to rule the world.”
Seem like appropriate lyrics since it’s TechStars For A Day - in which every entrep is vying for a spot in TechStars, and all of them want to change the world.
I remember being so excited when we went as applicants, but as an alum it is very different. While I love the energy in the room and all the new ideas, I sometimes get tired of being hardcore pitched or pinned into a corner for too long.
So here are some tips for everyone who will be there and entreps who attend events like this in general.
I recently challenged one of my teammates to get something done on a short deadline. They responded by sending me this image.
I love Bruce Lee and the stories surrounding him are legendary, but this story in particular, hits home as I think back to a year ago this week, when we started TechStars and started doing more faster.
Sure - we’d been hustling for years at that point. Selling customers, building product, pitching investors, but we didn’t truly start doing more faster until we were dropped into TechStars with 10 other killer teams who were all sprinting like hell, 90 mentors who had an exponential number of data points around tech startups from which to draw and the pressure of the 579 other applicants who didn’t get in, watching our potential success or failure with a critical eye.
Looking back on that experience, I am extremely proud of the way in which we, as a team, came into TechStars ready for whatever was thrown at us, and came out with a beautiful product and the vision to match, in just a few short months.
We’ve been building and growing ever since, and while not all of our team members (9 now!) went through TechStars, “do more faster” is a mantra that we want to practice for the lifetime of the company.
So to TechStars - fellow founders from our class, from programs past and present, the mentors, the Davids… thank you for teaching us what it really means to do more faster.
Respect all. Fear none.
This bracelet is from my local gym in my hometown and was given to me by the owner’s nephew (who was hustling everyone in the place one $2 sale at a time. Love it).
The phrase itself isn’t that original, but it stuck with me as we (Shelby.tv) are generally in the midst of a competitive space AND this week in particular we are at the Consumer Electronics Showcase alongside thousands of other companies all vying for the world’s attention.
The message - “Respect all. Fear none.” is clear. Common sense even… but often forgotten. Let’s break it down…
Respect all.
This really is common sense, but it’s easy to forget. It usually happens one of a few ways.
- The competition is bigger than you and you say “they’re big and slow and can’t innovate and we’re going to f*ck them up.”
- The competition is smaller than you and you say “ha! yeah right… they’ll never catch us.”
- The competition is the same size as you and you say “so what if they have feature X… we’ve got a better team anyway…”
Justify it any way you want, all of these ways of thinking are stupid and lazy. When it comes to competition, the best way to approach it is as if you’re losing, regardless of whether you actually are. Treat every competitor with tons of respect and realize that it really is Any Given Sunday out there.
Fear none.
But! When competitor A launches X feature, hires Y engineer or gets Z press hit… all you need to do is see it, understand it, say “GAME ON” and then… GET. BACK. TO. THE GAME. To be clear, I’m not saying to blindly ignore it, and I’m certainly not saying to obsess about it. Just know what it is and then forget about it and build your vision.
Getting caught up in the tit-for-tat game of competition is a surefire way to build crap and it’s really just not worth your mental bandwidth to think about the bad guys.
So believe in yourself, while being realistic and get back to kicking ass.
4 Years Ago Today…
I was standing in my parents’ basement a.k.a. my bedroom with Dan and Joe and we were huddled around my laptop trying to figure out if we should incorporate as a C-corp or an LLC, if our corporate entity should be Overtime Media Inc. or just Overtime Media… if we needed a registered agent or a… ? Wait… what is a registered agent anyway?
We’d been toying around with our idea for months… years, really, but that was the official start… totally unsexy. Totally anti-climactic. Just the click of a mouse and we were “a company.”
I started crashing with Dan and Joe on their couch in NYC. Joe and I took a trip to a customer convention and started pitching our product… of course, we didn’t have a product. Hell, we didn’t even have a single line of code written. We just told everyone about it and did what we now know as “customer development.” A month later I was living in NYC, Dan and Joe quit their jobs and a year later we had real users and paying customers.
Fast forward through the hardships of boot-strapping in NYC, tons of learning and lots of laughs and our first business is still growing today. It’s not our day to day focus as Dan and I have moved onto Shelby while Joe takes Overtime Media in a new direction, but I think we’re all very grateful for the experience of our first business. It wasn’t always easy, but we had each other and that made all the difference.
Together, we learned. We grew. We met amazing people. We got more hands-on experience in a couple years than we would have anywhere else. Dan, Joe - thanks for that experience.
And, thank you Overtime Media, Inc., for employing me, for teaching me, for bringing me into this crazy world of entrepreneurship. I’m hooked for life and I’m ruined for any other “job.”
And I’m pretty happy about that.
P.S. - For old time’s sake… here’s some comic gold from a couple years ago.
Who won? Won won?! ;)
Episode 5 was actually kind of a let-down. Demo Day was so intense and we worked so hard leading up to it, it was a bummer to see such condensed footage and not enough coverage of how supportive all the teams were of each other. I loved how we were hootin’ and hollering for one another. Such a great group of people… Anywho, here goes…
- Was that me breakdancing before a pitch?
- Ask Lee about how we all broke him of his habit of slapping his thighs…
- @InternZero gets some love from the camera!!
- Love Brad Feld just calling it like it is…
- Yes… Joe and I were dancing. Just staying loose baby. Yes I really did pushups when I woke up. I was wound up as hell.
- Eli - “I eat pressure for breakfast.” I FUCKING LOVE IT. ELI IS THE MAN.
- So awesome to see Crowdtwist get some love from the camera, but for the record they didn’t “show up out of nowhere.” They were there the whole time and they dominated. Another win for the Brown/TechStars mafia, too. [But what’s with the weird shots of Caren and me waiting in the wings as Irving pitched? I was up in the rafters watching… This whole episode was way out of order in terms of demo day pitches.]
- Red Rover is also freaking awesome. Kevin’s great - best pitch man ever. And yeah… they’ve got legit revenues. Awesome to see them on camera.
- Yup… I had a diva moment and told the cameras to go away. There was so much going on with demo day, I just wanted to be alone for a bit to mentally prep.
- Caren was actually the leadoff for demo day. She did awesome and it really set the tone for the whole day. Thanks Caren! Look at our epic hug!
- For the record, I actually pitched next to last. See that freshly shaved face? I think that was the last day I used a real razor… #notkidding
- The team really did support me a ton on demo day. They were so supportive in getting me in the right frame of mind.
- Yet another sports analogy, but a good one. See… I always loved to play sports, but really, I like any experience when I’m completely immersed in what I’m doing… in flow, if you will. So that really was what sports were like for me in college… I never really remembered the details of the game or all the stats and whatnot, I just liked the all-consuming feeling of throwing myself at something. That was demo-day and that’s entrepreneurship.
- I hate that the narrator says Shelby’s a much bigger vision than HomeField. HomeField is a HUGE vision, it was questionably a small market (and not necessarily given the chance to prove itself).
- “Astonishing.” Thanks Tisch. He really was doubting us for a while and when we finally got the product out the door, he was impressed and he let us know. Appreciate him being hard on us when we needed it and supporting us once we got on the right track.
- “These are people I want to bet on.” - from Brad Feld! Biggest compliment ever? Thanks Brad.
- “Practicing 1000 times…” you bet your ass I did. The clip of practice they show has to be from at least a few days prior to demo day. But we really did work our asses off. By demo day, Joe knew every fucking click in our presentation deck without looking at any notes - just by my speech. We’d ride the subway home and I’d just say the pitch out loud while Joe said “click… click.”
- Btw… the part that I screwed up here just kept getting me. It was my Achilles Heel and I was so relieved to get through it on Demo Day… of course, Dan later told me that as I approached that line he was warning Nevin “this is where Reece better not f*** up!”
- Another F - bomb. More money to Charity : Water.
- Note: Yes, my t-shirt is kinda tight. We ordered the wrong sizes and Henry was left with a medium that looked ridiculous on him, so I swapped and it looked only slightly less ridiculous on me. You’re welcome, Henry.
- How could they not show even a little of Fred Wilson intro’ing us?!
- 8 minute pitch condensed into 20 seconds… haha. So incoherent…
- Playoffs! Sports analogy!
- Awesome how Immersive stuck it out for Demo Day. They’ve had it tough, but they’re all good guys at heart.
- I used to play against/with one of the greatest lacrosse players ever. He allegedly never trained and was just really gifted, but the truth was he trained off campus, by himself and apparently worked harder than everyone. I feel like that’s Jason Baptiste. He seemed like a slacker before demo day, but I bet he had his pitch down well before, behind closed doors.
- Veri - love them. Lee nailed it.
- Post-pitch… that was nuts. So many people and it was crazy talking to that many investors that quickly. It is impossible to replicate that kind of heat as an entrepreneur. When I raised money for HomeField, it took me over a year. Shelby - less than two months from demo day to close. Insane. Thank you TechStars.
- Micah - great comment re: personalized channels and the future of TV. Smart dude.
- Katie Rae’s comment about our team sticking together… means so much to me. Katie’s great. So is our team.
- I really was so sweaty.
- No joke - we had an email from an investor as soon as we walked off stage that said “I’m in.” It was amazing.
- I can only imagine what Tobal was thinking while speaking with investors… but you did do your mom proud, Tobal. I promise.
- Stylman! Dude’s awesome…
- Cohen “this was the easy part.” It wasn’t easy, but it certainly was structured and is only just a step on the path to building a real company.
So that’s it! The last recorded episode before tonight’s live show. I honestly have no idea what to expect tonight, other than it’s live TV, I’ll probably be sweating and will be thinking “don’t swear on live TV, don’t swear on live TV, don’t swear…”
I’m at Demo Day now for the new class of NYC TechStars, but I’ll see y’all live tonight at 9.
Guess who has two thumbs and made an accurate prediction about the TechStars TV show last week?
That’s right… it’s THIS guy.
When Mark Suster said “this team has gone backwards,” he was talking about us. Let’s see how much further back we can go…
- Nice haircut, Tisch.
- Pitch practice was great. I mean… I dreaded it early-on when our product wasn’t fully baked and I was pitching vaporware, but once things came together, it was a blast. Really fun to see all of my friends get better every week, too, which made us all step our game up. That being said, I hate that they show Eli and Eduardo being crapped on by Mark. Those guys are great entrepreneurs.
- Mark Suster - I’m lucky to have known Mark for a while now and he’s been supportive of us, particularly when it came to getting into TechStars. To hear him say we’re succumbing to “group think” is tough to swallow… worse to have Cohen nodding in agreement. And not great to suggest that we’d only get funded by dumb-money. “I live in LA, I see these every ******* month.” Well… clearly there’s a problem and no one’s solved it. As Mark himself encouraged me to say in my pitch, we’ve been working in web video for “over 3 years,” so you can call it group-think, but this is a trend we’d been considering for a while and we’re leaders in the space. At the end of the day, Mark comes off as the Simon Cowell character this week. Was he a harsh critic? You bet. Does he do it because he cares? Definitely. Hell… he even emailed me after this episode aired to more or less say ‘sorry I come off so harsh… I love you and your team… but I still think I’m right. hope you prove me wrong.’ We’ll see, Mark. We’ll see… ;)
- Tisch - ‘hit the lottery and Shelby is a Twitter.’ Appreciate that, but aren’t all of us startups supposed to go for high risk, high reward, binary outcomes like that anyway?
- “I loved their first business. It was a great idea. There’s a huge market.” Thanks Mark, though it was a bit late at that point and there are a lot of people who disagree.
- EPIC DISASTER DEMO FAIL - I hadn’t used notes once throughout TechStars… the one day I planned to use them… #fail. haha. Had nothing to do with the notes. I built a brand new deck and Joe and I were out of sync. It looks like Joe’s fault the way they edit it, but it was probably mine. Love the shot of Henry watching me fuck up. No pressure from my team or anything…
- SPORTS ANALOGY + FORESHADOWING! Maybe we’ll win the next game?
- Veri - “deprioritizing everything and working on the pitch,” that’s exactly what happens at the end of TechStars. You want to work on your business, but demo day is too important. It’s the beauty and the beast of the program and if you play your cards right, you’ll end up with great investors. Anyway, Veri killed it and I’m psyched for those guys.
- Ha… “$200k already raised” - [notice the red cut on my nose? That’s from Joe and I trying to kill each other wrestling in a conference room one night just for fun. Good times.] More importantly, you really should try to get as much investor traction going into a fundraising event. Good advice from Tisch.
- “Building a luxury retail company is fucking hard.” No Melanie, “Building any company is fucking hard.” ;)
- Hiring advice from Tisch to OnSwipe. Serious wisdom there. Be honest when recruiting and ‘scare away’ the people who aren’t right for your team.
- I have no idea what Baptiste is talking about… buying Facebook buildings…
- Sosa and his family… so tough. I know Jason went through a lot of stress during TechStars, but I didn’t know about any of this going down at the time, which says a lot about the professionalism of that team. Alessio and Chris are great guys and it’s impressive how they tried to work through all this. Sosa’s right about the pressure you feel as the CEO raising money with demo day approaching. The teams’ counting on you. So intense…
- I swore again. That’s another $25 to Charity:Water.
- A comment from a friend re: OnSwipe and Tim Armstrong, “did those guys really plop their ipads down on Tim Armstrong’s desk?!” Haha… yes. Yes they did.
- Subtitling Andreas.. ha. So silly.
- Brad Feld! I love the guy. Seriously… I always feel better after hanging with him.
- Another F-bomb, another $25 to Charity:Water. I think I screwed up in the first 3 words that time.
- Caren got so much better throughout pitch practice. It was awesome to see.
- Suster’s acting lesson… so dramatic, but he’s absolutely right.
- Is that knock-off music from Mission Impossible in the background? Don’t think I didn’t notice, Bloomberg…
- DEAR BLOOMBERG, THERE WAS NO FUCKING COMPETITION. THEY ARE NOT NEW ENTRANTS. THEY ARE OUR FELLOW TECHSTARS - CROWDTWIST AND RED ROVER, THEY ARE AWESOME AND THEY WENT THROUGH EVERYTHING WE DID AT THE SAME TIME AND NONE OF US COMPETED FOR A $5M CHECK. STOP MAKING IT LOOK LIKE A FUCKING CONTEST. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK.***
Ok… I vented. I’ve said before, overall, I think the show is solid, but the “competition” theme Bloomberg has run through it is overblown and as a result, 99% of the show is about us CEO’s and our fundraising process. But we wouldn’t be anywhere without our teams. If we - Dan, Joe, Henry and Myles - hadn’t worked well together, I’d have nothing to pitch. And towards the end of the program, everyone stepped up big time to help me practice again and again and again before demo day.
Well… let’s see who “wins” in episode 5 tonight @ 10:30pm.
*** - I don’t usually swear this badly on my blog. Certainly not in caps-lock. I’ll fine myself another $25 donation to Charity:Water.
Steve Jobs was known as an amazing inventor, visionary and speaker. I’ve seen almost all of the videos there are, but I’m suddenly compelled to watch these videos again in memoriam.
So here is Jobs’ masterful presentation of the iPhone in 2007. Arguably, the greatest product innovation of his career.
Jobs was a producer of the greatest kind and I miss him already. I’d ask “who will be the next Steve Jobs?” but I know we’ll never see another Jobs in our lifetime… only those inspired to follow in his footsteps.
There are many great quotes from Jobs, one of which, that is not actually an original from the man, is “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” but my favorite is…
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
I’m getting some good feedback about the wrap-ups, so I’m keeping them going, even though this one is largely me defending us as we get punched in the teeth. Here goes…
1. Fred!
2. Vin Vacanti is awesome. Glad to see him get some air time.
3. Love seeing Caren & Nestio do their thing. Such a great team. To have Cohen & Tisch behind Caren like that is such a strong signal. So proud of my ‘work-wife.’
4. OnSwipe… haha. All I can do is laugh… who knows what’s going to happen to OnSwipe in the long run, but they’ve been on a roll so far…
5. Were we really sick of HomeField? No. We were sick of not getting the traction we thought we should. HomeField, by nature, has a slow sales cycle, because it is seasonal and there are budget approvals involved for many of the teams. Waiting out weeks and months to test new features on users was frustrating as hell and we wanted to move faster. Eventually, we started to hit our stride, and that’s why we kept HomeField alive after all.
6. “Doesn’t surprise me that they’re using TechStars as an opportunity to pivot.” I’ll explain. We incorporated HomeField (actually the parent company was Overtime Media Inc) in November 2007. We bootstrapped and clawed and scratched our way to a product that people paid for and fast-forward through a lot of struggles, we’re in 2010 and investors like us, but keep asking “how does this get big?” Well, when we incorporated back in ’07 we said three things to ourselves. I. We’re probably going to fail. II. We’re probably going to change what we’re doing. III. We’re going to learn a ton along the way, so let’s go for it. That’s what we told ourselves to quell the nervousness we felt deep down and it worked.
So when a lot of smart people ask you “how else can we apply the tech you’ve built?” you start to consider it. That started back in 2008 or ’09, but we just weren’t listening. By 2010, we started to listen and started to look at the changing landscape of web video and thought “hey… I want X for video. I want Y for video. Well… HomeField is kind of Z for video…” And in the process of applying to TechStars, we started to synthesize some of these ideas because they were going to burn holes in our heads if we didn’t do something with them soon.
Alas, when we started TechStars, Shelby was a stowaway in our pocket and we started pitching it very soon.
Was TechStars the catalyst for this? Pretty much. Did TechStars the program or Fred or other mentors and VC’s tell us to build Shelby? No. Hell… none of them had faith in us at the time, but they let us make our decisions and were a sounding board throughout the process and for that I’m extremely grateful.
7. “It’s the 9th inning…” Athletes! Everyone drink!
8. ESPN sale… haha… Apparently Henry’s mom called him after this to ask him if he’d been holding out on the news. Practice (pitching) like you play (sports analogy - drink!), and at the time I was hoping we could move HomeField before demo day.
9. “We really believe in the humanization and the curation of this content… and that’s Shelby.tv.” Fuckin A we do. Welcome lil’ baby, Shelby!
10. But it’s not that easy… let’s see what our judges had to say first…
Tisch: “not the right team.” doh!
Fred: “other, better teams further along.” doh!
Cohen: “false passion.” doh!
Fred: “another pivot and they’ll fail.” maybe. doh!
Tisch: “hustler not business builder.” We heard you the first time. Apparently, I’m a hustler.
Some tough criticism from people I really respect. I’ll quickly respond that I. Tisch didn’t know us that well at the time so, his bad. He’s since apologized for the way this is shown here and I know he was just being hard on us so we’d perform. Still, during TechStars him and I didn’t get along for a few weeks because I think he was frustrated with us not listening to him… and maybe writing a blog post that basically said “f*** off.” II. Other better teams… yeah there is always competition out there. So what? No one had figured out the space and after all we’re ATHLETES (drink!). We like to compete. ;) III. False passion - negatory here, Cohen. Cohen knew us as the jocks of the crew and that consequently has stuck with us. I don’t blame him for that, but what he didn’t realized is we’re also really goofy dudes who love web video and not just game film. I think he gets it now. IV. Another pivot and we’ll fail. Possibly… at one point Tisch yelled at all the teams and said “no more pivoting!” haha. V. “hustler not a business builder” This I don’t really get, since I thought I had to hustle to build my business. ;) Whatever… that hustle has gotten me everywhere.
11. Glad to see Charles from exfm get some screen time while we hung at SXSW!
12. I have no idea what my making fun of Joe about getting a girl’s number has to do with anything… but Joe - whatever happened to that girl?
13. “that’s not the type of entrepreneur I want to invest in…” All right Tisch, we get it. Damn. haha.
14. What the hell am I doing in a tie?! Formal Fridays, that’s right.
15. Love seeing Quinten get some screen time! Dude dropped out of school to be an associate for TechStars. Now he’s killing it with OnSwipe… but hey Q - are you 21 yet? ;)
16. Alessio is a straight-up genius. Huge compliment from, Fred and well deserved.
17. Tobal!!! So f***ing funny in the background as Lee is talking. Hilarious compliment to his rather serious co-founder, Lee.
18. Veri = best domain ever. Well played, Lee. And yes, they deserved the trip to Twitter.
19. Jason and his “world domination.” Yeah… that’s Jason. I wonder what he’d do once he dominates the world. Would we all have to wear pink? Drink Red Bull non-stop? Any hints, Jason? ;)
20. “Vetted and vettedness…” And we wonder why fashion + tech don’t understand each other…
21. Tobal “you’ll do all the talking…” Never gets old… more Tobal!
22. Advice from Dick Costolo - GOLD. Don’t chase the easy custom-build cash. Build value. That being said… figure out revenue sooner than Twitter does.
“These guys came into TechStars and moved backwards…” I can almost guarantee Suster is talking about us… find out tonight at 9pm on Bloomberg.
p.s. - you guys know the show streams live on the web, too, right?
Ok here’s episode 2 from last week. We got a little more meat as the show starts digging into the teams… let’s just get into it…
- The weekly 10:10’s were definitely a lot of fun. Was awesome to have that as a way of checking up on everyone. Amazingly, despite the fact that we were all stacked on top of each other in the office, there was so much going on with every company it was hard to keep up.
- What internet legend would we want to meet? Dan: “I said, Al Gore… because he invented the thing.” Classic.
- Jason/OnSwipe saying “hide your developers, hide your designers, ‘cause we’re hiring everybody.” I think Tisch was over-sensitive there. I didn’t think for a second that they were coming after my team… and even if they did, my guys wouldn’t jump ship. We’re too tight and we love the stuff we’re building. Sorry Jason. ;)
- “We ARE awesome.” Ahhh Joe… simultaneously a really humble, hard working guy and yet here he is quoted as his alter ego, Bro-voli. Too funny. Were we cocky going into TechStars? Not at all. Every team was SO stacked - how the hell did we get in? Furthermore, one of the best pieces of advice we got before starting was from a good friend and mentor, Mike Duda, who said “don’t try to win TechStars.” He knew how competitive we are and it was the right advice for us to go in with open arms, not a cocky “we’re-here-to-win” attitude. Thanks Mike.
- Were we sure that HomeField itself is a winner? No. But were we the right team to attack the problem? Absolutely. Did we “know exactly what we’re doing?” Ehhhh… ;)
- “Athletes. Athletes. Athletes.” Nice editing, Bloomberg.
- That panel with Howard Lindzon, Howard Morgan and Roger Ehrenberg was awesome! Those guys really are ballers. Roger’s points about relationships are so dead on. That is huge advice for young entreps.
- “That’s super-fucking nerd.” Gotta love Gary V soundbites. For the record, while they did pick a great quote, they neglected to show the part where Gary touched Henry’s leg. #truestory
- Those walking interviews are so weird.
- Tisch’s comment - “Reece - definite leader… I don’t know that he’s an internet visionary.” According to Tisch, he went on to say that what I am is a hustler etc, but it got cut out. I’m not insulted by it anyway - I know Tisch was speaking from a caring, if concerned, position and not maliciously. And at that point in TechStars, we were admittedly struggling a bit - did we figure it out? Yep… and that’s all that matters.
- I’m on a bike!
- Roger - WTF? I thought you said I was “laser-focused?” Haha… such is mentor whiplash. We were groping around a bit. We had one 3/4 baked product that had evolved over a couple years and we had a 2nd idea for which we hadn’t figured out the recipe yet. Such is the life of product development.
- Pitching to Jeff Clavier… tough criticism, but it was great to hear it. Tisch.. thanks for acting out Jeff’s point about investors turning to their phones. Jerk. ;)
- “The Hurricane.” Amazing nickname.
- Speaking of nicknames. We started calling Cohen “The Oracle,” because his advice and feedback was amazing. He never told us what to do, just told us what we needed to hear.
- Were we all really that arrogant? WTF Bloomberg… I mean, yeah we were excited and optimistic, but I think deep down we all stayed pretty grounded.
- Even the announcer is swearing now!
- Me: “It’s a constant rollercoaster.” Fucking A it is… I think that word still pops in my head every 6 hours.
- Ok.. we saw a bit more Veri, but no Tobal?! And where’s Raoul?
- Gary V’s lying about not liking to learn, but talk about really, really, really, really, really, really driving home a point… annnnnd “I”m completely right.” Love it.
- “OnSwipe says fuck all these meetings.” Who knows if Jason was kidding when he said that or not, but the sad part is there are a lot of teams/entrepreneurs out there (578 teams to be exact) who would’ve killed for some of the meetings they skipped.
- Melanie’s line about investors investing in an entrepreneur with a failed startup. Yes, true, but don’t forget kids - getting an investment is not a measure of success, it’s just another step on the road to success.
- Wiji’s epic Times Square hero shots! haha… so staged, so funny.
- We need a “tech superhero?” But we’ve got Dan!
- I swore. Sorry mom (and sorry to my mom’s friends who emailed her about me swearing… yes, really)! In apology, I am going to donate $25 to Charity : Water for every time I swear on the show… but I still really fucking hated being on the fence.**
- Fred Wilson! He’s the man. I’m very lucky to have known Fred for a few years prior to TechStars and he was supportive of us getting into the program. To then formalize our friendship with him as our mentor was phenomenal for us. He encouraged us to chase some of our bigger ideas that we were maybe wary of pursuing given our current path with HomeField.
- Pivot! Everyone drink!
- I hope we don’t go “splat.”
So that was episode 2. Seems the show is catching on, as I keep getting messages saying “I saw you on TV!” Pretty fun to see the reaction as most people didn’t even know about the show… hell most of my friends don’t even know what TechStars is or what the hell Dan and I do on a day to day basis. Guess it takes a TV show to get through. ;)
Episode 3 tonight @9pm on Bloomberg, or online sometime tomorrow…
**Swearing on my blog is still permitted. ;)
