A new chapter opens
It’s now been a couple of weeks since I was neither fired from nor quit but definitely left Beme, my startup. I wrote about it here and my cofounder Casey talks about it here. The short of it: I’m now a free agent, three people sadly lost their jobs (though one is already on his way to YouTube stardom), and most of our existing projects continue on in some form. I naturally have a tide pool of emotions about this, but most prominent are nostalgia for an extraordinary team operating at its best and curiosity and excitement at the many possible paths ahead of me.
When Your Startup Stops – Matt Hackett
How the end felt
Jack launching like a rocket
What now?
What do you do when a major chapter of life concludes? My immediate instinct is to hop on a plane.
This past week, I travelled with the boyfriend to Mexico City, spending most of our time with artists gathered there for a cluster of art fairs that happens every February. I started my career in contemporary art, so this feels as familiar as foreign. Our eyes got plenty, from the transactional Zona Maco, set in a massive conference center, to a joyously unsettling performance piece in a friend of a friend’s Centro apartment. Yoshua Okon’s video works at MUAC, scratching disturbingly at truth, affected me most.
Speaking with so many artists, I was struck by their voracious appetite for visual and intellectual material outside of their own work. They actively seek out what is far different from and even directly in conflict with what they make, whether that be scientific research or daily life in a different country. The best art is fueled by an orientation of uncertain gathering which is rare in tech product makers, myself included.
2018 for me must be a year optimized for broad learning. I hope to share what I learn with you, here in this newsletter.
I have no idea what I want to do next. Honestly. Before I can do anything, I need to be a beginner again. In the four years that my singular focus has been Beme, technology and the society interwoven with it have changed dramatically. Neural networks, drones, creator support platforms, blockchain, pre-seed, AR, and hundreds of other technologies and frameworks were nascent then, and I haven’t been able to prioritize exploring them deeply. Now I can.
When I left Tumblr in 2012, which was a ride on the roller coaster almost as bumpy as Beme, I was in no state to evaluate new directions for myself, my mind and habits hardwired to my job. 6am datacenter conference call? Great, I’m there, fully present! But 6am meditation, 6am writing, 6am hacking on some hardware, 6am reading CS papers? Unthinkable.
Back then, after a couple weeks of trying to fight those accumulated brain hacks in New York, I bought my round the world ticket. Spending a week completely alone in a beach hut as close to Null Island (on the actual São Tomé), visiting old and new friends in the startup scene in Berlin, experiencing the entirely different stance on urban life of Beijing for the first time, then returning to New York and exploring ideas at betaworks: It took more than two years of wandering for me to meet Casey and find my next professional home at Beme. Maybe this time I can cut the time in half, not that I’m going to force it.
Random Bits of My 2012 Round-the-World
What I will definitely be doing
There are a few things I’m committing to this year:
Reading. I have a habit of buying 1.5 books a week and reading about 0.5. That means I’m roughly 208 books behind. I try to keep one fiction and one non-fiction book going, and am currently thoroughly enjoying Homegoing, a deeply affecting multi-generational novel on slavery, and The Spread Mind, a surprisingly readable thesis that consciousness is woven into the physical fabric of reality.
Writing. The past year at Beme has been intense, and saw me drop from writing essays multiple times a month to publishing zero things in 2017. Writing is how I come to truly know things. I have to do more of it.
Investing. I’ve made a smattering of investments in the past, and been lucky enough to have a backseat view of what my friends Alex and Nick are building at Notation Capital. In the next year, as I explore, I’d like to put my money where my curiosity is, and invest in more early stage companies. I hope to share some of what happens in this process as well, as the earliest stages of fundraising are still so opaque and confusing for new entrepreneurs.
Caveat
I must acknowledge that the ability to set a side a year for learning is extraordinarily fortunate. Few have the financial and family situation to do this. That I am able to is nothing but privilege and luck in concert, and I’m beyond grateful.
Immediate future
Until the dust fully settles, my sole professional focus is helping anyone on the former Beme team who decides that they want to find a new opportunity to find it. Whether that’s connecting them with folks in my network (you!) or simply being a sounding board for advice, I’ll be heading back to New York for two weeks before my next adventure and focused on that.
In early March, I’ll be going to Copenhagen, The Empty Quarter and its opposite in Dubai, then spending three weeks in Brazil intensely improving my Portuguese. I’ll be sharing bits about all of that right here.
Questions for you
What should I be learning? Who do I have to meet? What technology or problem should I be exploring? What city’s startup ecosystem do I have to see up close? Reply to this email and let me know.
By Matt Hackett
I'm an entrepreneur and engineer, currently in exploration mode. Subscribe to follow along.
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