My how things change...

I set out to start this company back in the spring and was determined to really make a run at it. Nothing was going to get in my way or knock me off track. Enter thredUP :)

At the end of June, I sat down with a friend from business school and one of his school friends. They were starting a company called thredUP. I had taken part in the pilot they did earlier in the winter/spring and I was pumped about the idea. The entire pilot had been run off of word press and while it worked, the platform didn't provide the scalability necessary.

thredUP is a decentralized peer to peer clothing exchange network. Think netflix but instead of dvds it's clothes and instead of sending back to netflix, we give you an address to send to. Just like netflix, you get envelopes that are prepaid. All you have to do is get the address from our site, put it on the envelope and drop it in the mail!

So when James and Oly asked me to work with them and lead the development of the site as a side project, I figured it would be fun and a good source of survival income...

So I met the developers they already had working (2 college students) and we set a deadline of August 3rd. This turned out to be far too ambitious and I'll get into more detail on the mistakes we (I) made along the way in future posts.

For now, a quick rundown... I was basically working fulltime on thredUP and no time on my own company for most of July. At the end of July James and Oly asked me to come on board full-time as the third founder at the company, which I did.

We officially launched thredUP.com yesterday. The site is in great shape and we are already getting orders for envelopes! We will begin fulfilling these orders on Tuesday and matching users' clothing soon after. So exciting!

Here is a screenshot of the first design for the homepage. You can see how different things are at thredUP.com now! I'll post some more of the original designs later to give you an idea of how far we have come!

Also, take a look at an early version of the value my closet app :)

First Month in the Bag

So month 1 is basically in the can. I don’t have a particular date in mind as to when I started working through some of the administrative tasks associated with setting up the business but officially, I didn’t start work on anything substantial until the 5th of June when my work authorization came through.

I knew from the start that my first month would be difficult to stay productive. I still have so much residual stuff on the go from business school that it is impossible to be at 100%. I had no idea just how difficult it would be to get anything done for days at a time. I have noticed some pretty big challenges that I knew could be an issue but didn’t realize the extent until now.

Business Challenges
First, it has been very difficult to get and stay productive. I still have had a bunch of stuff on my plate – graduation, last-minute networking, personal travel, moving and more. In addition, when I do sit down to do work, I find myself avoiding some of the central tasks and spending time on time wasters like the black hole of e-mail. I also find myself still coming up with new ideas every day. This is great but I need to find a way to shift my focus away from new ideas and onto developing and refining my first product.

Writing up a detailed but lightweight spec has also been a source of procrastination. I keep meaning to really spend some time hashing it out but have continued to push it back. One of the keys to success for me is going to be developing a set of development processes that work for keeping me productive. I have already starting getting personal habits in shape (tomorrow’s post).

Another big issue that keeps cropping up is related to choosing the right platforms. I have been leaning towards Flex from Adobe but I am now considering Silverlight because it would allow me to build both server and clients in Ruby on Rails. This leads to the final big challenge, making decisions focusing on what’s best for the user. I always try to do this but it is so easy to get wrapped up in development and make decisions without really considering the end-user. Everyone talks about listening to and considering the end-user but few actually do a good job of it. I will definitely have to focus on doing a better job of this, especially as I launch products.

Personal Milestones
The last month has been filled with a variety of milestones that I want to put out here. First, I finally graduated from Harvard Business School and have 90% of those things off my plate. It was a great experience and I have gotten a lot from the 2 years (will post on this in the future). But, it is absolutely a relief to no longer be working on non-real things!

I decided that I will be moving to LA in September. No excuses, exceptions or looking back. Along with this, I also bought a car! I had sold my car before business school and have decided that I would need a car for this summer and definitely in LA. I have always wanted a Jeep Wrangler and decided it was time to go for it. It’s a manual transmission (which is all new for me) but I am figuring it out quickly.

I also took a trip to LA last week. My goal was really to just get a feel for the different neighborhoods and decide where I would live. I came back with much more accomplished, having decided on a house where I will live in the Fall. I am very excited for the setup. I basically get my own one bedroom apartment as a part of a four-bedroom house. I have the top floor and it’s common areas include a living room, a bar and a giant rooftop deck with 180 deg views of the ocean! It is also in a great location being 1 block from the beach and 5 blocks from the main strip of bars and restaurants in Manhattan Beach. Here are a few pictures:

Finally, I was contacted by a prominent business publication, the name of which I am not going to disclose yet. They are doing profiles on recent MBA’s and their perspectives on the financial industry among other topics. There is a chance I will be one of the graduates they target as the focus of the project and this will hopefully lead to a tremendous amount of exposure for myself and for the business. Stay tuned for updates on this but for now, I am not going to say any more since it could all easily fall apart!

Business in the Open

Can a business be successfully developing, growing and competing in the open?

Today there are countless examples of companies that shield their plans and strategically release information. From the most closed and secretive like Apple, to Microsoft where developers are informed of plans well in advance (almost to a fault at times). It seems that most businesses choose to hide their plans in an effort to create a buzz and rumors that only serve to increase excitement leading up to new product announcements.

What I am struggling with is the idea of what can I or should I be talking about when it comes to my product plans. Could start talking about all my half-baked ideas and just throw them out there but it just seems a little extreme. On the other hand I could protect everything and try and create a mystique about my future products. It’s likely the optimal solution lies somewhere in between but finding that point is a source of uncertainty for me.

I am definitely leaning toward being more open about where the business is going and about the different products I am working on but I wonder at what point I would be showing my hand. I don’t think there is much harm in being completely open and vocal about the high-level business and personal goals. Where I will probably be a little more selective is at the product level.

Whether or not I share finances beyond some of the basic models I am looking at is definitely a whole other question. If the business is successful and I share the financials, do I run the risk of a user backlash? I would guess that I wouldn’t as long as users felt they were getting the value the expected out of my products and services. However, it does open another can of worms.

The final “openness” question is on the coding and development side. Do I make part or all of the source available to people? Here I will probably be more careful. Some of the security and backend source I will definitely keep tight to the vest. However, it would not bother me at all if someone wants to build apps that plug into my services if it means more subscribers. Maybe I would require some sort of “credit” so the user is aware of what they are using. But overall, there needs to be an element of openness to encourage others to play well with my products.

AtomicVapor Mission & Goals

As I’ve been working on getting AtomicVapor up and running I keep coming back to a central question… What am I trying to accomplish here?

Obviously I can answer this for the individual product ideas I have but for the company as a whole it is a slightly for abstract and difficult question. My goals for AtomicVapor can be categorized as either Personal or Business. The reason I lump these together as goals for the company is because my motivation for starting AtomicVapor really is as much personal as it is profession/career oriented.

My Business goals for AtomicVapor:

• Focus on developing high-quality ideas and find partners to carry products forward after launch
• Design applications that target a specific user
• Allow flexible access to the application & services – desktop, web & mobile
• Develop automated processes for managing outsourced work
  

My Personal goals for AtomicVapor:

• Build a business that provides the lifestyle I want (more detail in a future post)
• Build a business that allows me to focus on coming up with ideas and building the prototypes and getting a first gen product to market
• Outsource as much work as possible
• Automate as much maintenance as possible
  

I am still working on an “official” mission statement for the company but to start, here is what I have come up with so far:

To develop highly focused, easy to use rich Internet applications that allow multi-platform, multi-medium access.

Escaping the walking daze

For years, I lived life in a walking daze

As I sank into the lush leather seats in the back of the stretch limo I couldn’t help but think, “this is how I was meant to travel”. In hindsight, this feeling of entitlement and over-indulgence makes me feel a little sick. It was absurd. I was just a damn student. I was on my way to an interview at a hedge fun in Newport Beach, California and they were pampering the hell out of me. The interview was smooth. It was exactly what I expected. Some finance questions but mostly just fit and finish. It was as if I was pre-qualified for the job simply because of the schools I had gone to. Again, absurd.

“Succeeding” at school is one of those paradoxical things in society. On the one hand working your ass off for good grades means you have learned the material, learned how to take exams, learned how to write and learned how to be liked by professors. On the other hand it may also mean you have not learned how to be socially comfortable. You may not have allowed yourself to emotionally grow. In many cases you have locked yourself up for years to make sure you don’t miss a step. I am not judging anyone here. If you want to get good grades, go for it! I commend your dedication and discipline. But don’t do it because someone else is putting pressure on you. Don’t do it because you’ve come to the conclusion that society demands it. Do it for yourself. Do it because you have decided it is important to YOU. I digress.

For years every academic & career move I made was about keeping doors open. I had closed so few doors in my life. I closed the med school door but that is about it. I have gone from high school to mechanical & aerospace engineering at Princeton to Microsoft to Harvard Business School to Goldman Sachs. The funniest thing I ever heard from a recruiter this fall was when he described my resume as “bullet proof”. HA! Your resume is a reflection of the things you have done. It really speaks little about potential. It may be the best “objective” thing we have but in the end it is simply a painting we put up to put ourselves in the best light we can.

Anyway, I came out of the Newport Beach interview, got back into the limo and something hit me. It came like a blinding light out of nowhere. Like a scream that pierced the black tinted windows - What the fuck am I doing? The last 5 hours weren’t torturous. They weren’t bad in any way. But they sure as hell weren’t fun. The interview didn’t get me excited. When I tried to picture myself getting out of bed in the morning and heading to my job with energy, I couldn’t se it. What I could see is dragging my tired ass across the apartment and slowly making my way to work. That was not how I wanted to live.

The next few weeks, on Christmas vacation, I really thought deeply about what I am looking for. I was pursuing the finance industry because of the potential wealth. That wealth would give me the lifestyle I wanted. At least that was the myth I had bought into. Ok, I can’t really say myth with any authority. After all, I haven’t actually tried the path. All I can base it on is observations of others. The bankers that work night and day, earn lots of money, live comfortable (even luxurious) lives but never really escape until retirement. Same for lawyers, for doctors, and for many other professions. Again, no judgement here. If those things drive you and you are excited by the work you do, Awesome. Go for it. But if the reason you are doing some job is based on some material gain that you are promised in the future, you might want to take a second look.
I found I spent hours thinking about new cool ideas for businesses. Thinking about technologies that would love to build and even beginning to prototype some of them. I found that it was a thrill to just create. To invent.

When I got back to Boston, I told the hedge fund flat out, I am not interested in pursuing the opportunity anymore. Door closed. I still haven’t completely stepped out of the walking daze but it was a start. I was not going to follow the conventional business school route. I had decided to follow my own route, to start a business. This business.