I originally wrote this for the Contactually Blog here, but I’m reposting this to my own blog. Inside Contactually: Our Failed Experiment with Mixed Team Seating In the 3.5 years since the company has started, we’ve had four offices. Our office prior to where we are now was a cluster of individual offices. As we grew and started putting more people into each office, the offices ended up...
“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” – Eldridge Cleaver My motus operandi has been to surround myself with the best talent possible – irregardless of any other defining characteristic they may possess (country, race, sexual orientation, affinity for hot sauce). So I never paid attention to any talk about workplace diversity, believing that that was a...
Contactually is currently in the, to quote Jason Lemkin, the Possible, but Painful phase. We’ve long since passed the initial $1M ARR phase, where we became “real.” We’ve nailed enterprise customers. We know how to hire. We have a clear idea of our product roadmap, vision, and strategy. But we’re in the long, slow slog to $10M ARR, where every month is focused not on...
When I was in elementary/middle school, I struggled at math. New concepts would be hard to wrap my head around, I was slow to learn my multiplication tables, and I couldn’t easily memorize things. But while learning the material at the time was challenging, it would all of a sudden be a “no-brainer” in following years, as I was learning more advance topics. Except trigonometry. Screw that. I’ve...
I originally wrote this for the Contactually Blog here, but I’m reposting this to my own blog. Who needs real walls? On what would otherwise be an unremarkable Monday morning, the normal stream of our team, dogs, and interview candidates filtered into our non-traditional office. So did 5 construction workers from rural Virginia, with sheds made by an Amish company. We’ve always...
Being CEO of a growing venture, regardless of current success or support network, is a hard, dark, lonely position. It may be the best job in the world (definitely the best I’ve ever had), but it’s been riddled with many tough periods and scary moments – particularly in my head. Right now, I’m just thankful. Rather than chime in about darkness and depression, demons I have encountered many...