I just read the book Atomic Habits and really enjoyed it. Specifically, there was one part that really called out to me and it was about how to accomplish your goals.
As the author James Clear says, there are really mainly 3 ways to change
Continue reading “Changing Identity to Achieve Goals”
This cover is from the new NY Times Magazine cover article “What is life like right now on the life-and-death shift?” showing photographed workers on the front lines of Covid-19 in northern Italy.
I’ve been working from home for the past year. One thing I noticed recently is that lots of other companies aren’t doing it very well. Over the past years, I’ve learned some modern work-from-home concepts. Specifically, there are 5 levels of remote work. The levels are:
Companies that truly practice asynchronous communication have stepped out of the industrial revolution, and no longer conflate presence with productivity, or hours with output, as one might on the factory floor.
The analogy I loved is that the Japanese 4×100 track team in the 2016 Olympics. They were massive underdogs. In fact, nobody bet on them to medal. Not one runner could run under 10 seconds:
But because they mastered the baton handoff, they shaved seconds off their race and came in 2nd. That’s right, the Japanese got the silver medal because they were better and the handoff.
The idea here is that, as a company, you can master how work and ideas are handed off between employees your company can be much faster, more efficient, and a better place to work than others.
True asynchronous working is the place you need to get to. We’re working on it at Onward and so far it’s been great. Using the tool Notion is a big piece of it. I love Notion and the fact that it’s worth $2 Billion with only 40 employees should indicate this is a popular trend. I could talk about this for hours, but here’s a good place to start: a good post that goes into this.
At my house it’s Spring Break which means there are no lesson plans coming from school. Instead, our current project is for Hunter and Sasha to make 7 really nice cards to send to their grandparents and cousins.
Speaking of Sports (from yesterday’s email), the Rakuten Monkeys of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (which is Taiwan) will play games in front of 500 robot mannequins dressed up as fans.
Also, the second episode of Some Good News by John Krasinski landed yesterday. Pretty funny and good:
The virus is starting to get out more and more in the US. I thought it was interesting to see that only 1 or 2 out of 10 know someone who has it. I know a few people.
New daily cases are shown below.
Food and grocery deliveries. My company, Onward, offers rides to seniors and those who needed extra assistance. Now, because getting older adults out of the house is a terrible idea, we are also offering food and grocery deliveries. I am surprised how popular this is. Literally everybody is trying to get the food from the grocery store to their house without them having to do it. It’s been interesting to see the requests we’ve been receiving.
It’s so popular that Instacart, the app that partners with grocery stores to deliver food to you announced they are looking to hire 300,000 new people. Three hundred thousand. This is a unique time in history when we all need the exact same thing.
Instacart plans to hire 300,000 more shoppers https://t.co/da3wv9gi7x
— Dan Primack (@danprimack) March 23, 2020
Yesterday, I wrote about asymptomatic people and how bizarre it is. I read this feed from an ICU doctor who, over 7 days, treated 50 COVID patients. Her patterns about what patients look like is interesting.
In my 7 days on one of our (now 12!) non ICU #COVID19 units, I admitted 58 patients for COVID rule out, of whom 50 tested positive. Two died (DNR), 2 went to hospice, and 5 went to the ICU. That is… not my typical gen med service week. Following, some clinical observations.
— Leora Horwitz (@leorahorwitzmd) March 31, 2020
A Tale of Two Americas. I work from home every day. When I look down my street, I see construction workers still working on homes. It does seem like the better-off are getting sheltered but the rest are getting shafted as it’s harder for some people to “go virtual.”
We’re powering through. Diane has taken the lead on home schooling and, in good Diane fashion, it making it super fun for the kids. There’s an amazing amount of playing, building and laughter coming from the house and yard.
Hunter has a lego Millennium Falcon that he just started yesterday:
Sasha has taken to FaceTiming her friends and showing them everything in our house. Yesterday her friend showed her how to do Memoji’s in FaceTime. I’m amazed that my 5-year old is now more savvy than I am with my phone. #DigitalNative
this is my favorite thing on the internet pic.twitter.com/RQtGIHRjfg
— Anne Wheaton (@AnneWheaton) April 1, 2020
Respect 👏👏👏👏
A 12-year old girl was having difficulty with her math homework during the lockdown.
So she emailed her teacher for help.
He came over, brought his whiteboard, and taught her through the window. pic.twitter.com/ubSbtobjOj
— Akki (@akkitwts) March 31, 2020
We all dress like Adam Sandler now.
— Jason Zinoman (@zinoman) April 1, 2020
On Wednesday, Trump said that we should expect 100,000-200,000 deaths in the USA. Wow.
Under the best-case scenario, Trump will see more Americans die from the coronavirus in the weeks to come than Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard M. Nixon saw die in the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined. https://t.co/M41bUpIyH4
— Michael Barbaro (@mikiebarb) April 1, 2020
Where my head is:
I’m mostly thinking about all the businesses that will go under and fighting to keep Onward from doing so as well. I had a part-time Onward reach out last night that her other work has all disappeared. I read an interview of some bar and restaurant owners who talked about only being able to survive for a month or two. The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits jumped to its highest level in two years. I don’t see how most businesses can survive for more than a few months. I keep thinking of the forest fire metaphor. It is a terrible and destructive thing but it clears out old brush and allows for new growth. There will be many new businesses that emerge from this and lots of entrenched businesses who go down. It might be a good thing in the long term, but when the fire is raging, it’s very painful and scary.
Physically, I’m a bit worn down. I’m used to moving around more and staying confined to my house isn’t great for me. I need to prioritize walks/runs out the house more.
No major news out of the rest of the world. The USA is getting more serious about the lockdowns with all of California and PA issuing lockdowns, meaning you can’t leave your house except for food and medicine. The rate of deaths in the world and US is increasing – up 36% day-over-day.
Cases:
At Onward, we are building a fully remote company. We now have 5 employees that are scattered throughout the country and we’ll be fully remote forever.
Why Remote?
There are lots of benefits to working remote. You can read all about it all over the web and on the Twitter-verse. I’ve now been doing this over a year and the reasons that resonate with me the most are:
The Challenges
It’s not all fun and roses though. It took me 4-6 months to get used to working out of my house. It takes discipline to focus on the tasks and not be distracted by an empty messy house. Also, there’s a solitude that took some getting used to. Now that i’m in the groove, I do think it’s a better way to work.
Asynchronous is Key
One of the keys to successfully working with my remote colleagues is to be able to work without communicating in real-time. Because my colleague isn’t right next to me, I have no idea if they are working right now or planning on coming online later. This has lead us to use some new tools that are pretty cool.
Notion
The first, and by far my favorite. This is a combination of Google Docs, Asana and a wiki. Before we had Notion, we had a problem where we didn’t know where to post a home page of operations for our company or a division, or where to post decisions and goals for everyone to see and access easily. We tried Google Docs and also tied making an intranet on Google Sites. Both sucked. This is exactly what Notion solves.
We now have home pages for the company which has a general company handbook, lists all the tools we use, policies and other generic info. We also have a home page for each group which houses the processes, goals, OKR’s, meeting notes, and more. There’s a good overview of how another business is using Notion here which will give you the idea.
Notion in generally is pretty sweet. As a product, it’s incredibly slick. There is so much complexity that’s displayed so elegantly and simply – it’s really beautiful. It’s clearly seems to be working. In fact, talk about a fundraise that showcases your awesomeness. They raised $10 million on an $800 million valuation. That’s 1% dilution. A good interview with the founder is here too.
I sent this email out to people following the company. If you’d like to sign up for email updates, click below. I send them out every 3-5 months.
Hello!
It’s been a few months since my last update. Here’s what we’re up to over here at Onward…
A reminder of what we’re doing
We started Onward earlier this year. We’re a new company focused on transportation for older adults or those who need extra assistance. Ever since our families started aging and needing more help, we realized there’s a huge need to have great services available to serve them.
About half of our riders are older adults over the age of 75. The other half are those who have a medical condition and need help getting to and from their appointments.
How are we different from Uber/Lyft?
They provide “curb-to-curb” rides whereas our service conducts “door-to-door” or “door-through-door” service. On pickup, our drivers come to the door and help the rider to the car, take them to their appointments, wait for them and then bring them home.
We also charge by the hour – $35/hour – which allows for us to make multiple stops and get out of the car and help.
What’s our plan?
2019 is a foundational year for us where we want to build out the marketplace of drivers and riders in the Bay Area. We also want to build out the technology platform needed to automate and maintain our service. We are measuring our progress by rides per week and have a goal of 120 rides per week by the end of the year.
How’s it going?
We’ve been busy. We’ve expanded our team to 4 people by hiring two others who focus on our operations and our supply. They are Sarah Pontier and Ben Estevez and both kick serious ass.
We’ve also started doing rides. Our first ride happened in April. Now that we’re in Q3, we’ve done over 900 rides!
Our main channels for finding rides is to partner with assisted living facilities and hospitals, and also many find us via Google and Yelp when looking for transportation.
To make these rides happen, we’ve signed on lots of drivers. Our typical driver persona is a retiree who is very compassionate, looking to help others in their neighborhood and looking for part-time work. They all have CPR certifications and drive their own car.
We’ve built and released our initial version of both the Driver App and the Rider App. These apps help automate our entire ordering and matching process. Rides come in via our Rider app (or website or phone) and then get exposed to our drivers via the Driver App. Drivers can accept or decline any ride they see. In theory, rides will then occur without our team touching them.
How can you help?
We’d also love your help getting the word out to people in the SF Bay Area who have parents or friends who are unable to drive or need a little extra help getting to their appointments.
We also are digging more deeply into the healthcare industry and how we can help out there. If you are knowledgeable about insurance carriers or healthcare providers or know anyone who is, please reach out to me.
Thanks for your support –
Mike
It’s an interesting thing.
First, the timing on an acquisition is nuts. It takes forever. The process looked like this:
We first found Buzznet. We talk back and forth with Buzznet for months about price and process. Eventually we got an offer. That was a good offer but wasn’t a huge amount. We couldn’t accept until we talked to investors. The investors weren’t happy about it but we convinced them. Then 4 weeks of diligence. Then 3 weeks where Buzznet was squeezing us by not communicating with us at all. We thought the deal was dead. Then we ran out of money, so we got a bridge loan. Then the deal is back on. Before we close I move out to LA and start working there to show good faith. We close but put a good chunk of the money into escrow to protect Buzznet from lawsuits to Qloud. Then the deal closes on and money hits my account. From the day when they inquired to acquire us to the money in the account is almost 5 months.
The entire process was months. There’s not one specific time to celebrate. By the time it finishes, you’re more relieved than ecstatic.
In truth, there wasn’t much celebrating. A dinner with the investors was it. While it looks great on paper, the deal wasn’t that great for the team and Buzznet shut Qloud down anyway so it wasn’t good for the company.
Financially, it was good for me as it gave me a nestegg and compensated me for a few years of not making any money. I bought a condo in Santa Monica, but my life didn’t change.
However, it was an experience I’ll remember forever. The things that stick out in my mind were:
One of my new favorite podcasts is How I Built This on NPR. It’s a tightly edited 20-30 minutes each week with an entrepreneur about how they built their business. They done stories with the founders of Patagonia, Zumbra, Crate & Barrel and more. All of them are great.
The latest one I’ve heard is that of 5-Hour Energy Drink with founder Manoj Bhargava. I’ve never had the product and frankly have always looked down on it, but the story was fascinating and I found a few great nuggets in the episode. My favorite nuggets are:
The three best characteristics, according to Manoj, for someone wanting to start a business are (a) Common sense. Don’t get caught up in MBA-Speak. If it makes sense, do it. If not, don’t do it. (b) Determination. Don’t confuse passion with determination. Passion goes away but to be succussful you have to show up every single day. (c) Urgency. Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today. Don’t wait.
I’ve been a co-founder in three VC-backed startups:
From these experiences I have pitched (with Toby on the first two) to hundreds of VC firms and learned some non-obvious lessons. These only really apply to Pre-Seed, Seed and Series A.
Here we go: Continue reading “Non-Obvious Fundraising Learnings”
This is post #10 about the Qloud experience. The previous post was about about how we used got into the Facebook Platform program. You can read that here.
We decided to pivot the product to become a full-fledged music service. We also decided to launch our new music service on Facebook before we took it to the main public.
Both decisions were correct and produced great results. Continue reading “Launching Qloud (Part 10 of 14)”