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Personal Random

An Update, Part II

My, how things change in just a month. According to my last update, we were supposed to be preparing for a move to Los Angeles right about now. Instead? We’re holed up with the rest of the Bunches team at a home in Napa Valley. This post was supposed to be a deep dive into Bunches (it’s still coming, I promise!), but instead it’s been sidetracked into an update on where we are due to COVID–19.

On Bunches

Bunches is my latest startup, and the first one that I’ve started from scratch myself. After years at larger companies, and after leading Exeq through an acquisition that culminated last year, I finally feel ready to lead my own from start to finish. Hopefully, this is the big one. What we’re building sounds quite simple, but also has the flexibility and opportunity to grow into something huge, which is exciting.

Simply put, we’re building the easiest way to create a paid group chat. With the rise of the Passion Economy, more and more people are looking for ways to directly monetize their audiences and creations, so we’re creating a way for them to do that.

We raised a pre-seed round last November, closed it in December, moved to the SF Bay Area in the beginning of January, and have been working with our investors since then. I’ll go into a bit more details in the next post.

Basing the company in Los Angeles makes a ton of sense for us, considering our target audience and preference for sun and a food scene. But then this little thing called a coronavirus happened.

On COVID–19

Thankfully, we saw the writing on the wall fairly early, and were in a position to make decisions freely. We decided to isolate as a team, and booked a house in Calistoga, CA. I’m not going to lie…it’s a dope house. Jacuzzi, pool, a grill, a yard, and plenty of space for everyone. After all, there are 8 of us living in one home. But we are still living together.

Right now, we’re making decisions to preserve four things:
1. Our health & neighbors’ health.
2. Our cash.
3. Our productivity.
4. Our vision.

As of this writing, we’re all healthy and asymptomatic (knock on wood!), we have enough runway for 18 months or so, we’re still cranking on the product, and we’re still excited about what we’re building. So far so good…we’re four-for-four.

What’s Next?

Frankly, I don’t know. As I wrote in the last post, we do plan on moving to Los Angeles, but with the pandemic throwing a wrench in those plans, who knows what the coming weeks hold. I do know that I’m with my family, building something of value in one of the most beautiful areas of the country. I couldn’t be more fortunate.

Stay tuned for the next update!

Categories
Personal Random

An Update, Part I

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. For those of you who enjoy following along, I’m sorry for the delay. In any case, here’s a brief update on what’s happened in the past year or so…and what’s happening now.

On Exeq

At the end of 2018, the writing was on the wall for Exeq. While we had solid product traction and usage, a couple of things were happening in the market that changed the investment landscape. Goldman Sachs was entering consumer fintech in a real way: they had just acquired Clarity Money (folding them into Marcus) and they were the banking partner behind Apple’s soon-to-be-launched Apple Card.

With Goldman and Apple both entering the fray, we knew that CAC was only going to rise, product differentiation would only get slimmer, and that to compete you needed bottomless pockets.

Serendipitously, we had recently brought on a pilot partner on the B2B side of our business. There was immediate alignment around what we were doing, and acquisition talks began in earnest November of 2018. We canceled our plans for raising another round of funding and pursued the acquisition with the full support of our board.

As anyone knows, acquisitions are rarely closed quickly (if at all!), but long story short, this one did close in Q1 of 2019.

On Flagship

Flagship was, and remains, a very exciting company in the hospitality and retail world. As an umbrella brand over solid brands in the Northeast, they’re building really engaging businesses around food, fitness, and wellness.

I joined Flagship initially as CTO, but we later realized a more appropriate title would be Chief Strategy Officer, primarily tasked with helping to guide decision-making, digitizing the business, and implementing an overarching strategy around the CEO’s vision.

While we both knew from the outset that the relationship was likely short-lived (having operated in and having come from two different worlds), I’m thankful for my time there. I’m grateful for the learnings and friendships made there, and can only hope that the impact that I and the Exeq team had there is even longer-lived than our tenure.

What’s Next?

Currently, the family and I are in back in the San Francisco Bay Area through the end of March before heading to a new city: the City of Angels, Los Angeles.

I’ve started a new company that I couldn’t be more excited about, one that has a genuine shot at being legacy-defining.

I’ll give the full story in the next post.

Categories
Random

Lazy Monday Links

Here’s a list of stuff that had my attention this past week. Maybe you’ll enjoy it as well. Check it out:

  • Philadelphia Bans Cashless Stores: In another episode of claim chowder, the first blow in the coming cashless war has been dealt. I’ve long said that I don’t know how long “going cashless” will be legal, though I was a little wrong here: I figured the federal government would be the first to intervene. Philadelphia claims it’s a social inclusion issue, which I buy (but there are actually technology solutions that can solve that problem). The real issue with stores going cashless in my mind is at the federal level: it can devalue USD and renders circulation moot. This will be a very interesting storyline to follow over the next decade. Especially as plastic becomes more expensive for retailers.
  • Cameras, apps: Noosh to showcase the future of restaurant tech: This is one of those things to file in the “creepy but cool” category. I mean the internet access points are whatever (seriously, if you’re going to a restaurant because of their internet bandwidth, WTF are you doing with your life?), but the integration of technology into the experience is something to watch. I think the AR piece is a marketing gimmick for now, but there will be a breakout application in AR commerce over the next 5-10 years. Don’t believe me?
  • Snapchat NYC Metro Card AR: Came across this on the interwebs this past week. Pretty cool implementation of Snap’s AR lenses. Download it here (you need an MTA card).
  • Star Wars: A New Hope Infographic: This thing is huge and very cool. Wish there was a horizontal version (print it out, put it on a wall).
  • How Chinese Novelists Are Reimagining Science Fiction: I wish the title of this article were a bit different (they’re not reimagining SF, they’re contributing to it from a different worldview than the typical Western author). In any case, I’ve fallen in love with Chinese SF. I recently picked up another Ken Liu anthology (the newly released Broken Stars), and one of the best things I’ve read this decade is Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past series.
  • Game of Thrones Season 8 Trailer: It’s here. Finally here.
Categories
Books

How I Track My Reading List

Derek Brown Reading List in Notion

If you just want to get to it and see my reading list, click here.

If you want to sign-up for Notion, feel free to use my referral link here.

More than a few people have asked me how I manage my reading list. First of all, here are a few of the requirements that I want in a solution:

  • Mobile and desktop accessible. I read everywhere. At the coffeeshop, on a plane, in my office, at work, in the bath. I need my reading list where I read, which means everywhere. If I don’t have access to my reading list, then as I’ll certainly forget to update it regularly, which means a nightmare of organization later whenever I get to it.
  • I want a queue system. I not only want to track what I have finished reading, but what I am currently reading, and what I will be reading.
  • Quick entry of new books to add to the queue. In the same way that I want to be able to update my reading progress, I need to be able to add books to the list in real-time as well. You never know when you’ll receive a recommendation from a friend or colleague, when you see a cover in an airport, or when a book you’re reading makes another recommendation. I want to jot those down immediately so I don’t forget them…plus it means I’ll never run out of books to read.
  • Sortability and filtering. I try to be diverse in my reading, which means tracking how much of which genre/author/etc. I’m reading. I also want to see which books I own and which books I should pick up the next time I wander into my local bookstore.
  • Quantifiable tracking. In addition to just having a straight-up list of books that I’ve read, am reading, or want to read, I also want to be able to quantify a few things: how long does it take me to read? How many books have I read? How long does it take me to get to a book once I’ve heard about it? Things like this matter to me so I can hold myself accountable for my reading: I want to feel guilty when I have been pouring time & attention into TV, social media, or video games rather than reading.

I don’t like Goodreads, and not just because of the Amazon affiliation: it’s just a pretty bad interface to keep track of a lot of reading, in my opinion. I’ve also tried a number of off-the-shelf (ha!) solutions that just haven’t worked for me, so I decided to roll my own. Over a year ago, I switched from Evernote to Notion for keeping my life together (travel plans, side hustle ideas, etc.), and it was a logical place for my reading list to live.

Utilizing Notion immediately solves for the mobile/desktop requirement, and my implementation of the reading list also solves for the rest. There are a couple of things I’d really love that would make it perfect, but this is definitely the best solution for me out of everything I’ve tried thus far.

In this post, I’ll walk you through how I’ve setup my reading list using Notion. You’ll find a couple screenshots along with descriptions for how I’ve implemented the table.

Screenshots

Derek Brown Reading List in Notion
Click to see full-size.
Second half of my reading list in Notion.
Click to see full-size.
Various lists in my reading category.
Various lists I have in Notion. The primary is Reading List.

Columns

  • Status: This is a select column in notion, with pre-configured color-coded values. Most books on the list don’t have a status, but those that do fall in one of four categories:
    • Reading: What I’m currently reading. Usually, only one book falls into this status, but occasionally a second will slip-in.
    • On-Deck: These are the books that I want to read after I’m done with what I’m currently reading. It lessens the mental load of picking what’s next as soon as I’m done with a book. I don’t have to comb through my shelves or backlog to figure it out: I’ve already done it.
    • Next?: These are the books that I’d think about reading next (and moving into the On Deck status). It’s the real queue out of all the books on the list.
    • Finished: Once I’m done with a book, it moves to this coveted status. At the end of the year, I move all books with a Finished status to their own table (ie, “2019 Reading”).
  • Own: This is a checkbox column, and simply indicates whether I actually own a book or not. I prefer to own every book I read, and I buy books from local bookstores (McNally Jackson, Greenlight, Strand are some favorites here in NYC).
  • Title: Self-explanatory, hopefully. This is a text column.
  • Author: This is a multi-select column, with each author as it’s own value, set to the default color (although Notion’s current implementation of default coloring is a poor design/product decision…or just a bug). This allows me to easily sort the table or filter by a specific author.
  • Genre: Another select column, with color-coded values. My genres are as follows:
    • Biography
    • SFF (Science Fiction/Fantasy)
    • Tech
    • Science
    • Finance
    • Humanities
    • History
    • Business
    • Literary Fiction
    • Travel
    • Spirituality
  • Priority: This is a column I’m testing out. It’s a select column with Urgent, High, and Normal values, and I use it to further decide what to read or purchase next.
  • Tags: In all sorts of products I’ve worked on, including this reading list, I’ve found a generic tag holder to be useful. I have a couple of tags that I utilize in my reading list:
    • To Buy: This is a super useful tag when I’m standing in a bookstore, and have no idea off the top of my head of which books to pick-up. I filter down to the “To Buy” tag, and see if they’re in stock. Easy!
    • Classic: I want to track which books are considered “Classic” by some standard, and I utilize a tag to do that (for example, Hemingway’s Old Man & The Sea or Asimov’s Foundation).
  • Notes: Random text holder (usually something quirky about the book or a release date).
  • Start: A date in Notion, which indicates the date on which I started reading the book.
  • Finish: The counterpart to Start, which indicates the date which I finished reading the book. In the summary on this column, I count the number of non-null cells, which gives me a total count of books read year to date.
  • Days to Read: A formula in Notion, which calculates the difference between Finish and Start, giving me the number of days that it took me to read the book. In the summary on this column, I calculate the average days to read, which helps me keep pace for my desired book count in a year.
  • Series: For some books (Scalzi, Dark Tower, etc.), I want to tie books to one another in a group. I have a select column here to do just that. Here are the series I’m currently tracking (mainly SFF):
    • VanderMeer’s Southern Reach
    • Scalzi’s Lock In
    • Jemisin’s The Broken Earth
    • Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past
    • Scalzi’s The Interdependency Sequence
    • Scalzi’s Old Man’s War
    • King’s The Dark Tower
    • Le Guin’s The Hainish Cycle
  • Added: This is a fairly new column, which I…ahem…added this year. It’s a date column that helps me track when I added a book to the list. Eventually, I’ll probably track the time it takes for me to get to a book, once I’ve added it to the list.

Some Stats

  • Total Books on the List: 220 right now.
  • Read So Far in 2019: 10 books.
  • Average Days to Read: 4.8 days per book.
  • Fastest Book to Read: Gene Edwards’ A Tale of Three Kings (read in single day)

Conclusion

Hope this helps those of you looking to track your own reading in a serious way! I’ve found Notion to be a great tool for this (among other things), though I definitely have a couple of gripes with them about some of the minor details. Feel free to check out the list yourself at the link above, and feel free to sign-up for a free plan at Notion using my link above as well. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to comment!

Categories
Books

Reading Rainbow: March 5, 2019

New pickups for the reading list.
New pickups for the reading list.

New pickups for the reading list.

I know some of you have been asking how I manage my reading, and I promise I’m going to get to it (soon!), but in the meantime, here’s a look at what I’ll be reading over the next couple of weeks. Picked these up from my local bookstore (Mcnally Jackson in Williamsburg), and the guy behind the counter mentioned how wide-ranging the selection was. I just kinda shrugged. Guess I’m a well-versed reader? Who knows. In any case, here’s the haul:

  • The Drawing of the Three by Steven King: I recently picked up and devoured The Dark Tower from King, a book that’s been on my list since high school. Well worth the wait, and I’m stoked to sink my teeth into the second book.
  • The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin: Ursula is legendary in SF/F circles, but I’ve yet to read one of her novels. I have this one and The Dispossessed in the queue right now, so I’ll at least start the Hainish stories. If they’re as good as people say, then I bet I pick up her entire body of work.
  • Shameless by Nadia Bolz-Weber: Nadia isn’t from my “brand of Christianity”, but I love what she had to say about grace, the Church, and Jesus in her previous book, Pastrix. I haven’t gotten to read Accidental Saints yet, but this tome on sexuality in the Kingdom of God is at the very least going to be an interesting read.
  • Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman: This one doesn’t need an introduction. I’ve read parts of it prior, and obviously watched the videos, read the Medium notes from the class, and lived in the Hoffman-created world at LinkedIn. I’m sure this one will be a book that I mark-up.
  • Ten Restaurants That Changed America by Paul Freeman: For those that know me, you know I’m a huge foodie, and in love with the hospitality industry. In another life, I would’ve gone to culinary school and opened a restaurant. Who knows what the future holds? In any case, this history lesson should be a good read, though it’s a bit thicker than I expected!

What do you think? Any of these sound interesting to you? What are you reading this week?