What in the world?
We started a company because we wanted to work for ourselves. Jay and I have been in advertising for a long time, and we’ve worked at tons of different places and with many different people. But our family is fairly anti-authoritarian. We don’t like being told what to do, even if it’s good for us. Tell me to plug in my phone, and I will want to let my battery die (you’re supposed, don’t you know, let it die sometimes. I heard somewhere).
During COVID??
How scary is it to start a business during the worst epidemiological pandemic to hit the United States in decades, if not a full century?
Well, how scary is it to start a business any time?
One thing we learned during COVID is that people can work effectively from home. I live in Texas and Jay lives in New York. We always kind of said we’d start a business if/when I moved back to New York. Then we were both working from home (like much of the rest of the world in our industry), and we realized that, actually, we could do it.
The Beauty of Not-Knowing
“What happens next? Of course, I don’t know.”
— Donald Barthelme, “Not-Knowing” (1987)
One of my favorite writers is Donald Barthelme. His essay “Not-knowing” discusses the importance and art of operating in a space of not being sure what to do, or how things will go. This is, in fact, a super-productive space to be in. Necessity, it is said, is the mother of invention. When I was in a comfortable, well-paying corporate job, I found it easy to become complacent. Now, in a world where I don’t have guardrails to hold on to, I have to be much more careful and deliberate with each step I take—but the journey is far more exhilarating.