The Robot Co-op

About 5 years ago, I was starting up The Robot Co-op with Josh and Daniel. We were about to sign a lease on our own little office in Capitol Hill (our first day there was September 1st, 2004).  We didn’t even know what we wanted to build so much as how we wanted to build it and who we wanted to build it with.  We talked those days about a lot of things that I think were crucial to the success we eventually found.

• Building a company that was as much a product in itself as the products that it created.
• Being able to walk to work, working in the heart of the city.
• Working with people you like.
• We liked the etymology of the word company. With bread. To share bread with. And so our office was organized like a dinner table, and we ate together pretty much every day.  Often, we would talk about how we started the company simply to have friends to share lunch with.
• Build something that, if successful, you’d still want to work on. For example, not just working on personalized text ads because it would be successful even though it might not be fulfilling in itself.
• We found companies that we admired and tried to imitate their strengths: 37 Signals, Flickr, Craigslist and LiveJournal especially.
• Start small, and scale without having to keep hiring people.  Don’t try to grow simply for the sake of growing.
• Avoid the Delmore Effect. Do your best idea first.
• Build something quickly. Test your idea with something that’s as simple as possible. We started by simply asking people what they wanted to do with their lives on a 1-page site with no account logins.  It was called Twinkler, and it proved that the idea of talking about your goals was infectious.  The fully built site came a few months later.
• Be ambitious in vision.  Expect success, and that you’ll have to work for it.

43 Things just passed 2 million accounts (that’s people who have one or more goals on their life lists) this month.  The Robot Co-op has been profitable for several years now thanks for advertising on goal pages and a few other things.  We started with 6 people and now have a whopping 7 people.  We still eat lunch together, and some of us still walk or bike to work (the others look nervously out the window every 2 hours looking to see if their cars have been chalked since there’s no real parking in our neighborhood).  We like the things we’ve built, and have found that it is possible to have a lot of success without selling your soul or doing something that you don’t want to do.

I’m thinking again about where it all started, because, as some may know already, I’ve decided to leave the Robot Co-op and start up my own 1-person company (aka going solo, since we always fancied ourselves as a band). A lot of these early thoughts and conversations are coming back to me, and the surprising thing is that they all still ring true to me.  If anything, starting up Enjoymentland will allow me to go even further in the execution of the ideas that have proven themselves over the last 5 years.  In other words, the experiment worked, and now we can take the experiment to the next level.

The Robot Co-op, I feel, transformed me from an aspiring developer into a tested entrepreneur filled with big ideas, and I will always be indebted to the conversations we had around those 4.5 door desks in 2F.

Enjoymentland

My new company will be headquartered in an artist studio above the fantastic VAIN salon in downtown Seattle (which is funny to me because I got a lot of flak from a Salon article that made fun of the fact that I said The Robot Co-op was above a yoga studio).  In any case, it will be just me, a desk, a computer, and leftover art from McLeod Residence.  It will be an experiment in ultra-minimalist tech-startupery.  In the beginning, until I have become somewhat sustainable, I will not be hiring anyone and hopefully will not even take any money (we’ll see).

My wife, Kellianne, works at VAIN, so this means we can sneak out for a snack once in a while.  The salon is 5 blocks from our house, and 3 blocks from the market, and also 3 blocks from my gym. I’ll be able to adapt to her work schedule so we can have the same days off (a luxury we’ve missed since she started working Saturdays and Sundays).

The philosophies of the kinds of products I’ve built and want to build are also going to be applied to the company itself.  The company should make my life more enjoyable.  It should be sustainable, it should promote health, and it should be social.  It should be open, transparent, friendly, personable, and good.  It should focus entirely on products that also express that vision, and which work to make the company sustainable within the first 6-12 months.

What will I do?

To begin, I’ll be working on Locavore — making it more social, expanding into different kinds of food other than fruits and vegetables, and also expanding to other countries outside of the US.  I’ll also be working on several other social iPhone apps that are focused on making life more enjoyable.  They will often have in common the fact that they encourage sharing, communicating, building relationships with friends and family, and becoming more aware of the life you are living.

It’s another bold bet, and a bit of an irreversible step, leap of faith, whatever.  But more than that, I see this as a chance to continue moving towards the kind of work that is truly self-expressive, life-improving, sustainable, and fun.

Once I get the basic building blocks set up and I’m officially in the wilderness, I’ll be posting as much about it all here and on my @enjoymentland Twitter account.

A lot more is about to happen.

This entry was posted by Buster on Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 4:33 pm. It is filed under Enjoymentland. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.