(1/25) Story Hour: Haym before @ethereum
A story from 2010 of entrepreneurship, and some of the things I was up to before I found the World Computer.
It's funny, when life is happening it feels so chaotic; when you look back, things tend to make a lot of sense.
(2/25) Summer 2009 was the summer before university. John, one of my best friends, had gotten into the same school.
He KNEW he was going to study computer science. I had no idea, but if you'd asked I would have non-confidently said I was going to study math or physics.
(3/25) At the end of the first trimester, John MADE me take intro to comp-sci. It was the first time that I wanted MORE than what a class required; I looked forward to getting homework!
I never really decided to major in comp-sci... I just kept signing up for more classes.
(4/25) But we are still in freshman year, 2009 - 2010. Our school is/was one of those "epicenters of innovation," a place where every student gets sucked into technology hype cycles.
Both John and I, and most of our peers, threw ourselves into the early/middle days of web 2.0.
(5/25) As the academic year is came to an end (~May 2010), we both thought long and hard about what we could build.
Our first serious idea: programatic trading. We spec'ed it all our before we realized just how dangerous the waters we were testing were.
(6/25) Our next idea was... ok. We were going to organize student programmers and use our AbiLiTy tO TaLK to non-tech savy business people to build an empire.
A little exploitative, but honestly it's a good timeless idea for those in university looking for startup experience.
(7/25) The issue we ran into is normal: kickstarting business. Easy to talk a big game, but once you stop selling and start building, you quickly find out what's realistic.
The reality: businesses wanted to work with other business. Especially in 2010.
(8/25) But there was one component that we REALLY liked from that early draft: this whole idea around building templates and deploying custom integrations.
That became the seed of our next idea... the BIG idea...
(9/25) June 2010; this was long before Doordash or Uber Eats (or Uber), but it was long enough after the release of the iPhone that the vision was possible.
I mean, some restaurants had website ordering for pickup... what if we just generalized it?
(10/25) You play the hand that you're dealt, and John and I did exactly that. First, we built a tech stack with the tools available:
- Django application on Google Cloud
- Adjustable templating using Twitter Bootstrap
- Twilio for phone line integration
- Orders sent via FAX
(11/25) Side note: that's my favorite part of this whole thing. Freaking faxing.
But again, you have to build with what you have. And we thought "worst case we can just buy restaurants fax machines."
At the time, the iPad was more a joke than a realistic solution
(12/25) Summer 2010 John and I not only built out the whole thing, we spent months walking into restaurants in our home town trying to sell them on tech that we could barely demo.
Our first experience in true entrepreneurship: the high stakes game of "fake-it-till-you-make-it."
(13/25) Finally we found someone willing to give us a shot. Full disclosure, the owner was a family friend.
And it worked out pretty well, with some orders flowing through. Again, in all honestly, mostly friends and family.
Turns out that's how most of entrepreneurship works.
(14/25) This was exactly what we were looking for: we'd proven that there was a customer. Now, it was time to build a business.
I got started on all the administrative work. I went down to city hall and registered us as a business, opened us a bank account, etc.
(15/25) John was already more plugged into the venture world and so he started putting feelers out -- don't worry this isn't an Eduardo situation.
Eventually he found our Sean Parker... or at least the guy who was going to put us on our hockey stick-curve.
(16/25) Tl;dr this guy took one look at us and (I assume) thought "these guys are sharp but this 'company' is a disaster."
And so, instead of investing in our company he invested in us; he offered us both full time positions at his venture capital firm.
(17/25) The firm was actually part of the family office of one of the FAANG CEOs, and we were hired to be a two-man team building a new campus-focused branch of the venture strategy.
I ended up holding that job for almost a year (while continuing to study), John a little longer.
(18/25) My time at this firm was incredible; I learned so much about the nitty-gritty of entrepreneurship.
Even better, I got to experience this in parallel with my entrepreneurship-crazy university. My classes with either advanced comp sci or lessons in being a founder.
(19/25) John and I continued to build together, using the entity I had created when we were going to build Doordash.
We did a significant number of projects for the university, gaining experience in project management and earning enough to keep those years FUN.
(20/25) By senior year in 2012, a lot of my priorities had changed. A huge amount of the shine of Web 2.0 startups and entrepreneurship had worn off. I found I was sick of talking about big ideas... I wanted to actually do big things.
And so I went to the career fair.
(21/25) I ended up taking a job at one of the worlds largest companies, in the tech innovation group. It was my job to work with VCs, universities, accelerators and any other builders to find promising new technologies that could be used to give a 150+ year old company an edge.
(22/25) For ~2.5 years I sat at the intersection of Silicon Valley and the inner circle of a global conglomerate. I was so fortunate to work with managing partners at firms like A16Z and the CTO of a Fortune 100 company, learning how entrepreneurship works in the real world.
(23/25) In 2015 I was put on a project regarding our sales rep's cash collection process; it took ~2 months for me to move over to treasury full time
I did that for 2 years, then FP&A for 6 months before life threw me a curve ball. I left in 2018 to deal with some family issues
(24/25) So that's the story, filled with countless lessons; many I've learned over the last 13 years, many I was too dense to see.
But really the most important thing I've come to take away: the only path to success is humility and treating those around you with respect.
(25/25) These days I find myself back in the startup world, and while it feels very new, I find myself realizing that most of this has already happened before.
I feel so incredibly grateful to have experienced version 2.0, and I am so excited and honored help build version 3!