I am totally stealing an idea from my great friend Joel Goyette and decided to start a weekly review. Hopefully, this will be a habit that I’ll keep. It helps to put things in perspective. Since the holidays, I've started doing the 5-minute journal every day. It has been incredibly helpful and fun to slow down and put things in perspective.
I was in Brazil for four days and had a wonderful time. I met with mentors, friends and spent Xmas in São Paulo for the first time in 5 years. Lots of joy, gratitude, and for the most part, time to put things in perspective and ask some deep questions about life and where I will take things in 2015.
After spending a few days in São Paulo I flew to Mendoza with my Mom and Dad, where we drank over 39 different wines in 5 days. I had more than three six-course meals, slept over 10 hours every day, got back into running, and met some cool Argentinians. It was also a pleasure to re-encounter a great friend at the Hotel we were staying at and spend some time with people I care about.
I wrote about shutting down all my social media (once again), but this time I really got rid of all the #FOMO associated with it. Sometimes not having Facebook forces you to make phone calls or me more thoughtful when you get in touch with people. That's great.
It also allowed me to read a bunch more. Since shutting Facebook down, I read four books. That's almost a book a week. Fantastic.
We are still going through a deep change management process where more VPs are leaving, re-org is still happening and the culture keeps changing. It's normal and painful. I've decided to take a step back and just get my job done. I made a promise to myself that I won't suffer what I have no control. After 3.5 years of SendGrid and seeing some of the smartest people we have leaving the company, you get mixed feelings about where things are heading. I am a big fan of our new CEO but seems like things are going to get worse before they get better again.
I'm doing a decent amount of research on email and messaging apps. Happy and grateful for this one.
We are assembling a team of incredible people to work on this new mobile app. This Tuesday I am going to General Assembly SF to learn more about their mobile development course so that we can start building this MVP on the side. If you want to learn about what we are building or feel like brainstorming ideas, I will buy you coffee in San Francisco.
The Economist - Why everyone is so busy
I found this article originally on @parislemon's blog and given the email research I've been doing it's a pretty fantastic resource to understand busy people and their inboxes. It always comes back to emails and messaging at some point.
What a wonderful panel. The combination of Michael Bloomberg with Evan Spiegel is certainly the contrast of two generations. The balance between both of them is super interesting and also cool to see Evan with a more humble attitude towards things after the email leak. After all, being 24, and a billionaire is probably not an easy thing. He understands that now, he has a huge level of responsibility on his hands.
Buy this book now. Seriously. I don't read fiction at all and most times I find it really hard to read something refreshing on business-related books. Peter Thiel is brilliantly perfect in this book.
If you can understand and have empathy with the other side, you will be able to grow, mature, and evolve, to ultimately build a true partnership.
Why are you and your team the right people to solve this problem? Founder authenticity is paramount when funding a startup.
It is impossible to define yourself by your past. All you have available is in the present. When you are present, you know what you should do.
