People are boring

Someone said to me the other day, “Campbell, I hate to tell you, but most of the people working out of Loosecubes are not going to be super interesting people.  Most of them are probably pretty boring.  Especially outside New York and San Francisco.  Perhaps you shouldn’t hinge your business so much on bringing interesting people together.” 

People are boring? 

No, maybe you’re boring.  

There’s always something you can learn from another person, whether it’s your hairdresser, a finance guy, or the guy working in the mailroom.  Most people don’t spend 16 hours a day being boring and 8 hours a day sleeping.   They spend their time doing something.  Maybe they know how to cook Thai food.  Maybe they’ve read every presidential biography.  Maybe they’ve seen every episode of Seinfeld and can retell all the jokes.  You can never tell by looking.  If someone seems boring on the outside, look inside yourself and ask if you’re asking the right questions.  It’s up to you.  Get creative.

Fun is androgenous

I was on a train recently with a fellow member of the new york tech community (who we’ll call Steve to protect the innocent) talking about engineers (as one does).  Several names came up of people that I knew who were close with the other person.

Me: “I love those guys! Please tell them I say hello.”

Steve: “How do you know them?”

Me: “I don’t know, I met them at NY Tech Meetup or something. I was trying to hire one of them. We grab lunch or beers every now and again.”

Steve: “Well, you know the only reason they hang out with you is because you’re a girl.”

Me: shocked (thought: is he fucking serious?)

Me: (politely) “Actually, I’m pretty sure they hang out with me is because I’m fun to hang out with.  And I’d be fun to hang out with if I was a guy too.”

What I should have said: “Hey dude, judging by our conversation, doubt they’re hanging out with you for your personality either!”

Ouch.  Tech sucks like that sometimes.


Chunky startups

Maybe this is a lady thing but I spend far too much time worrying about being fat.  

Then I started an internet company and all of a sudden I’ve got to spend a bunch of time worrying about being “lean.” In case you’ve been in Siberia (no offense) the last couple years, lean means build a minimum viable product (MVP) using as little money as possible, get your product out there, get feedback, iterate, repeat.  Here’s the thing: we started lean, put an MVP out in June, then had a breakdown in our engineering team that led to a regrouping and planned re-release that’s coming in March.  Yes, ten months later.  In my book that’s not a short iteration.  

We had to build the whole backend again from scratch.  Which means, we are building the MVP (again) plus several features I know we need based on months of learning.  See, that’s the awesome thing.  While our site was stalled out, I spent day after day talking to potential customers.  It’s kind of painful not to release the MVP again, but it would further push out our v2 release date. And we know what people think about our current site. This development cycle will be two months long. That’s hardly lean.  But it’s not really fat either.  It’s perhaps a bit chunky.  And I’m OK with that.

Pass the pizza.