Going to DC for a family weekend tomorrow. However, my wife started the flu or something similar yesterday. We had relatively cheap tickets to see Hamilton last night, but had to give them away. :/ Here's hoping. Forever Labs has been keeping me plenty busy. We've finally resolved that a consumer banking service doesn't benefit from spending time and money on peripherally-related R&D. We've been told so since Y Combinator, but always resisted it. Our YC partner called our plan a houseboat: a shitty house and a shitty boat. As a result, we are spinning out an R&D company, and FL is going to have a stake in it. I'm going to be heading up that company. I'll still be CSO for Forever Labs, and my goal is to use the cells that I've banked. That's why this whole thing started. It's just that until Forever Labs is a household name, we aren't spending FL resources wisely working towards something else. We have a saying that "YC is always right." I can't tell you how many times they have been. I guess when you launch a few hundred companies each year, you start to pick up on things.
I've been through several decades of startups and VC money, in my lifetime, and even worked for the Seattle version of YC called TechStars. There is an incisiveness that investors have, isn't there? "That's not your business... why are you doing that?" Erm... uh... because... it ... seemed right? Or something? "Spin it off into a new company, affiliated with the existing one. It's a good idea too. Just not in the same box as your first Good Idea. Here's more money, and the phone number for my friend who invests in these other types of businesses you are spinning off..." It can be head-spinning. But amazing. Friends of mine had a site that sold... I dunno... some sort of Web 2.0 shit, or whatever. I don't actually remember what their product was, but it was web-based. Then they developed some tools to measure how their site was working. Admin tools on the back end. In an investor meeting, they were demonstrating the effectiveness of their pipeline - how people were finding them, going through the purchase process, etc. - and the investors said, "Hang on... wait a minute... what's that tool you are using to show those numbers?" It took a minute, but they realized the investors liked their BACK END more than their product! PIVOT. And they became the first company to provide truly viable tools for measuring SaaS success. (I think they were bought and integrated into SEOmoz, eventually.) Life is weird. And a helluva ride. Enjoy it!
Wait. Hamilton is still showing? In New York? Where's the best site to buy tickets?
We're passing through Detroit when we're next in the US in a few weeks. This is excellent to know. Thanks everyone.
That could be awesome. Recommend any bars? I'll work out what dates we're going to be there.
For Detroit Itself I'd recommend starting at Grand Trunk for architecture and beers. Also Ready Player One is a barcade near there too that is pretty fun.