Your business can't love you back

Hey friends 👋!

This week, I returned from a lovely summer holiday traveling the British Isles with my wife Sarah and two of our best friends, Keith and Chelsea.

It was a wonderful trip. We came away feeling like we saw so much and so little at the same time. And as we took in the rich and complex history of this group of islands, I couldn't help but reflect on our own history as a group of friends.

Sarah and I met Chelsea in college. She was boisterous, sharp, and determined to be our friend whether we wanted to be or not. And I'm so glad for that. Because from the moment she chose to add me to her inner circle, Chelsea has been one of my biggest champions and has had an incredible impact on my life.

I still remember getting lunch with her a few weeks after joining my first accelerator program. I was in a slump. My initial MVP was a dud. My founding team had dissolved. And I was struggling to build a new iteration of the product. I told her I felt isolated, alone, and that I needed help. She immediately said, "You should talk to my boyfriend, Keith. He works in tech. I'm not sure if he can help you, but he might know people who can."

A week later, Keith and I met for the first time at a mediocre restaurant in a small town halfway between us. I told him what I was working on. I told him why I cared so much about helping people make stuff on the internet. We talked about our favorite YouTube creators, technologies we thought were interesting, and our experiences in the traditional educational system. After we got the check, Keith said, "So, I'm in. What comes next?"

A week later, Keith and I signed as 50/50 partners in Lumastic. And for essentially the next three years, Sarah, Keith, Chelsea and I spent half of our lives together. We got together multiple times a week to cook, watch movies, and play board games. And every Monday night, we'd have a long 3 hour meeting about go-to-market strategy, product development, and financials.

To this day, I have no idea how this worked. I have no idea how something that seems to break so many friendships made ours stronger. I have no idea how they're still friends with me after some of the domineering ways I acted as a myopic founder who was in love with his business. But I'm so grateful to them for it. And I'm so grateful that even though the business didn't work out, we came away with a deeper love and appreciation for each other because of the journey of building it together.

And this is something that I think it's incredibly important for founders to remember: your business can't love you back, but the people you love your business with can.

Just some thoughts. I'm getting back into the swing of writing this next draft and I'm hoping to have a blogpost/excerpt type thing for you all to read next week! Stay tuned and thanks for being here with me!