what happens when life ends and work begins |
Journal -
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About
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...February
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Tough Crowd
01/30/00
Overheard: "The demo is great, but the financials have to be
beefed up a
bit." No one said this would be easy, I should have listened.
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Passed
01/29/00
The demo went well, technically at least. Ben and I had one bug
that reared its head just 20 minutes before the showing and another that
emerged during the showing but both were overcome easily.
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Pie
01/28/00
Deciding initial holding of a company is such an odd thing when
you think about it. Did the founders of Apple decide how much stock each
got or what price they wanted to offer options at? I doubt it...
Tonight we divided up the company and it was relatively painless.
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Voodoo
01/28/00
Lane is using voodoo magic to pop my Knee-Cap out of place.
That's it, I quit! (no, not really.)
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Deadline
01/27/00
Saturday is the first "all-hands" meeting. We're showing a
super-alpha version of the ********* to a couple of investors type and
also
hoping to convince a few stragglers to join us. We have forty eight
hours to pretend the ********* is perfect, this shouldnt be a problem.
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Codebase Principles
01/25/00
There's a certain point, after coding for some time, that you
need a breakthrough, because if you dont have a breakthrough it's
over. We had a breakthrough.
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Sales Report
01/23/00
Lane: "No, we dont sell anything. No it's not done. No, no, look.
It's an internet startup we dont have anything!"
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Compete
01/22/00
Yesterday Lane and Courtney sent off our Executive Summary to a VC
competetion that I cant currently remember the name of. It's connected to
SXSW. The deadline was pushed back a few days which makes me think they
didnt have many entries, which makes me think that's good for us.
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Viva la Morning
01/21/00
All-nighter #1.
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Tight Quarters
01/19/00
Lane and Courtney arrived today with all of their stuff.
Formula for stress: five people living in a two bedroom house with one
bathroom. It will be fine, just like dorm life.
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Caffeine
01/19/00
Having given away my coffee machine to someone in DC, the usual
steady stream of espresso is not an option. It may be the beverage of the
80's computer geek, but I prefer Jolt over Mt. Dew.
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Flow Chart
01/18/00
A couple nights ago I drew up a very brief flow chart for our
site. One of the top level options is "Stuff we forgot," I'm leaving room.
The G3 upgrade card arrived today but it doesn't work. Instead of
tinkering with it, I'm using a crappy machine. No time to waste fixing
machines.
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Package!
01/17/99
The first of our online orders has arrived: ram for Ben's iBook.
Fun thing about startups: If you can somehow forget the fact that
you've paid for the stuff on your credit card, it's fun to get lots of
hardware in the mail! Actually Lane paid for this stuff. There's more
on the way.
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Rooting
01/17/99
I spoke to AJ, an old friend from school today and he mentioned
that some of my classmates are "rooting for [us]." It seemed odd to me at
first, the idea of people who have taken a special sort of interest in
this venture succeeding, but when I thought more about it I realized that
not many people actually do give it a shot. The odds of success
are very slim. It's comforting to know there's people out there who
want to see you succeed just to succeed and not for some gleeming
IPO. It's 5:00am: bedtime.
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Midnight
01/16/00
It's 1:00am and just finished writing out some flowcharts. The
best thing about owning/working for your own company is that you can
work at any hour you want and still take breaks when needed.
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Meeting
01/15/00
We had our first meeting in the new "office." There's now a
whiteboard full of stuff to do in the next 15 days including but not
limited to 1,001 mockups to be done by one Mr. Bryan Boyer. As my old boss
would say, "wheeeeeeeeee."
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Desks & Cable
01/14/00
Today we built the desks, put up two huge white boards, set up a
router (currently only routing a 56k modem [ick!]) and laid some cable
(very poorly). We also ordered lots of computer parts but had quite a hard
time finding wrist guards online. Big whiteboards are good.
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Garage Office
01/13/00
We arrived in Austin on the night of the 12th, as scheduled.
Unpacked the next day (much easier than packing) and went desk, chair, and
computer shopping. Note: cheap computers will do for now.
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Driving
01/11/00
We left at 7:00am, not bad. After having learned hwo to drive
stick just the night before, rush hour traffic was quite... interesting.
15 hours of driving wasnt so bad with a minidisc, NPR, and a microphone.
Talking to myself passed the hours rather quickly.
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Packing
01/09/00
Packed half of my stuff, more packing tomorrow. We're picking up the truck monday morning (Ben's credit permitting) and packing it. The drive to Austin is 28hrs according to mapquest. Leaving: Tuesday morning 6am.
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