Coder. Speaker. Writer.

Almost one month ago I left Mint.com to strike it out on my own.  I remember leaving the building after saying goodbye to people that I had helped hire, and built a product with for over 3 years of my life.  The days leading up to my last day were filled with a bit of sadness, and apprehension.  I recalled all my fondest memories of team lunches, the burritos in the park, and the countless milestones and awards Mint had won.  But my last supper with the Minters was probably one of the best and most fulfilling experiences and evenings.  I shared my ideas for new startup with them, as we enjoyed our final feast together.  Despite knowing I was leaving a team of people that I cared about greatly behind, I got into my car and drove away feeling excitement for the next challenge and the next team and product I was going to help build.

Even though I was involved with Mint since the very beginning, which was over 4 years ago, I felt like I joined Mint, blinked, and it was over.  While it was a memorable experience I’ve been making an effort to enjoy more of the process and living every moment of it with my own startup.  As someone who has always been future focused living in the present is a challenge for me.  But I actually really love it!

How do I do it?  For starters, I have a slight advantage, getting in on the ground floor at Mint I witnessed first hand what its like to deal with scary concepts like the unknown,  constant change, the imperfect product, and endless set of problems that arise and need to be solved.  For example, a couple weeks ago I had a conversation with my partner about data quality.  She was really concerned that we wouldn’t have perfect data for our customers.  I listened to her concern and then a thought occurred to me, “Where I have seen this problem before?”  Oh thats right Mint never had perfect data!  And yet Mint user were willing to live with it, because the value we were providing to them as a service that provided a complete picture of their finance outweighed small data anomalies.  Drawing from that experience made me realize that I was in control of the situation, and could help to assuage my partner’s fears.

Every once in a while my old CEO calls me up to ask, “How the new business is going?”  And my usual cheery retort is, “Everything is great!”  How could everything be great, when I don’t have any users, revenue, or a prototype build yet?!?  Because I have a team that I have proudly built, it’s not big, but in my mind its still a team of more than just me.  And because everyday I make small strides, like signing up the first customer who will help me test my prototype and solving at least one product problem a day.  Before I go to bed I review the days activities like enjoying a meal or cup of coffee while conversing with a friend, reading a new book, writing some RoR code, giving a talk to other entrepreneurs, and thats enough for me to feel like I have a purpose, and want to go to bed so I can jump out of it the next day and do more!