Yeah.
I just came up with it 72hrs ago. It was like now, 4AM on a Friday morning. I have fragmented sleeping patterns, by design it seems like at times.
Escape Velocity is that net momentum a startup founder must achieve to leave the orbit of their pending assumptions, delusions and general notions of what could be next.
At some point the product, the team, the company, it achieves unstoppable inertia. Not that I ever took physics in school to know whether or not I got that analogy right. I see time and time again a startup either stuck or seeming at a graceful like pace to realize their escape velocity.
Its a classic notion that cash initiates this gradual or often explosive ride to realization but that is tragically flawed. Money just gives you something else to burn on the fire aside from your own pair of pants. True velocity is built on the people using their will to manifest into thin air what did not exist a moment ago.
a memory opens…
“Why do you work with startups? That seems like a losing game.” a fellow would be tech guy asks me during a networking event.
It’s the tried and true conversation where the like me agency peep grills me on the fact that startups are terrible to work with. Often the best conversation starters are ones where we tear each other down on the norms that don’t fit for ourselves.
I’m leaning against a wall.
My large 6’4 frame of a man is weary.
The cocktail helps but my sciatica is radically switching up my responses. Do I be honest? Agree with a nod and glee of get the frak outa here? Or do I go for conflict, enraging the notions and my sciatica to boot?
“I like crazy people…” I say taking another swig of my drink.
That is kinda true.
Crazy people make tomorrow. I can hear the NPR show in my head.. this just in, yet another crazy person figures out something really cool and now we all use it, thank you crazy America!
“Good luck with that!” the fellow techie laughs and wanders off.
My sciatica thanks me as my partner brings me another drink. A good partner keeps the other intoxicated. It’s like an unwritten rule in networking engagements.
the memory closes…
I’ve actually had astonishing luck in my life. I thought about this the other day- i’ve never looked for a job, its always come to me. I’ve willed into existence what should happen next, thats kinda neat when ya think about it.
Perhaps I’ve achieved my own degree of Escape Velocity. The actual parameters, strategies and tactics to achieve such thing is a bit confused and luckily misunderstood. Anything totally understandable is kind a boring. Maybe thats why I like crazy people. Each one a kind of canvas to work from, an exposed mind filled with ambition and few questionable quirks.
Fringe Finds
4 Short Links is a micro homage to lost wonders of the Whole Earth Catalog and the likes of Mondo 2000. If you don’t know those two things, look them up. This blog is updated daily and encompasses some of the best eclectic fringe based finds out there. Each post is like an episode of Mr. Robot. It’s the stuff of hackers and academics quietly working on teleportation. A must read.
Canva. This past week I completely tossed Keynote out the window and leveraged Canva to crank out 6 decks for a tech summit for one of my clients. I can’t even to give this product enough praise. Its radically re-wired my brain in terms of how I approach conveying information. From presentations to well, you name it, Canva does it all. And as a bonus, its biz model is continually aspiring to me. Is freeium back? Sure feels like it.
Swiss Miss feels like one of the last great blogs left on the planet. Remember when blogs were everywhere and like every day we leaped from blog to blog harvesting a trove of new treasure? I miss those days. RSS died, or graduated to specific obscurity, while curators of the scene of things got gobbled up by corporate interests and the next generation of conglomerate news and new stuff sources took over. The result is less relevant goodness and more controlled, here’s what you should be passionate about. Swiss Miss in that regard is like reading the Rebellion’s daily. Fresh, strange and wonderful. The Friday link packs are the best!
More to come. As always, thank you for taking a chance on me and consuming a bit of my narrative, my observations, isms, stories and curated links.