Finding My Path
Since my last day of full time work at CircleUp, I
- Explored building a talent marketplace focused on remote Executives. I developed a business model and conducted customer interviews. This was early in the pandemic, with the thesis that as organizations increase their hiring outside of local areas, they would need new tools to discovery talent. I thought a well designed marketplace could improve incentives for existing social networks to surface talent to jumpstart hiring processes. I still like the idea. But, it wasn't my passion.
- Founded a Climate focused Benefit Corp. The talent network morphed into a potential business line of a new company which created as a Benefit Corporation. My idea was a perpetual motion machine for climate - a for profit business structured to provide 50% of the profits and equity to the climate. I reasoned this company would attract great talent by paying market salaries (including stock options) while irrevocably committing to a compelling cause. The math works only if there is significantly less ownership for the founder and the business operates with less outside capital - two 'concessions' I thought would be helpful not a hindrance. If potential employees see that success would go to a cause and not a person, on the margin, they may be more likely to sign up.
- I developed and taught a course on Creativity. I began asking myself what skills I hope my children develop in their formative years. I landed on the ability to develop and share new ideas. I read as many books as I could find on the subject over a few month period, gravitating more toward academic work on children and all of us, rather than the 'exceptional' creatives that are captured in popular books on the subject. I don't believe we can all be Picasso or Marie Curie, but I do believe work is more fulfilling when we are called upon to share a novel and meaningful ideas. And we can all do that. I taught the course on Outschool. I never got traction, and didn't invest as much as I could have in marketing and building that work. The content lives on as a header for this website as a reminder to me that I want to revisit this work at some point.
- I created a blog. You are reading it now. It started with the creativity work and a few posts on entrepreneurship. I also wrote about decision making, stakeholder governance, web3 and investing. Over 50 posts, I experiment with subject and format - from 100 works to 10,000. I still have no idea where this will go, but am continuing to write for now.
- I wrote a crypto white paper. I spent a lot of time reading other white papers, talking to investors and even attending a crypto conference. Around the sae time, I read this book on Jack Bogel and Vanguard, and explored an idea for a digitally native asset manager coordinated through a token. If fully owned by clients and designed to create long term wealth creation through low-cost buy and hold index strategies, the structure could follow the path forged by Vanguard.
- I became a teacher. Well, a part time elementary school teacher. Swing Education is a platform to sign up for substitute teaching roles. I get to experience classroom teaching again, in a wide variety of school settings. I am still doing this, and enjoying it. I don't know whether this will lead to full time teaching again, or just better decision making when investing in education, but it is engaging, fulfilling and demanding work for now.
Those are the activities I remember, though I am sure there are more.
This post was inspired by my friend Yael's terrific post in the same form. I read every post of hers, and a dozen or so other blog posts and podcasts that also help me learn and explore the world. I'm very grateful for this time.
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