Is It Practical?

"I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your      friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone." - Henry Rollins


It's funny and fitting for me to be writing a blog about a former wall street guy's foray into a professional life of great uncertainty in technology after actively avoiding the greatest innovations of our time, and quote Henry Rollins.  For those of you who don't know, HR was the singer of Black Flag, a pretty important California punk band in the early 80s, and has remained an interesting and relevant, albeit intense, personality in the media and music since.  One of my favorite shows on TV about five years ago was the Henry Rollins show on IFC.  His show was a entertaining platform for his very strong opinions about relevant issues, and one show in particular that stands out he had a particularly nasty rant about the irrelevance of social media, which at the time meant Myspace.  I tried
my darndest to find a clip of this anywhere but came up short.  Maybe one of the 25 people who have somehow found my blog will come back and provide it.  Anyway, from what I remember, this scathing soliloquy dripped utter contempt for the people who were providing something so benign now but very revolutionary in 2006, which was the action of users updating their status.  He was pretty disgusted with how crappy it was that people were wasting their time to update their status on petty and useless statements about banal routine things and their petty opinions. Most of us also felt this way in the beginning.  It was a self indulgent and useless thing to do and who cares if Ashton Kutcher is taking a dump.  Except, my 40 year old brother actually asked me the former question a week ago about twitter, and, I'm pretty sure that today Henry Rollins is on facebook, twitter, and probably even the graveyard known as myspace.  Maybe his updates have more substance now that we could ever hope to have, maybe he doesn't update at all, but if I met him now, I'd like to ask if he feels he allowed himself to get a little too hot about something that is now, for better or worse, the way things are done, by pretty much everyone.


Actually this blog isn't about Henry Rollins.  It's about a guy who couldn't have less in common than HR, my very own dad.  My dad and I had our second chat about what I've been doing with my life since his third son arriving home with a dusty backpack from Asia and the west coast of this our great nation.  My dad and I don't have arm around the shoulder, beer commercial evocative father and son conversations.  In fact, we've never shared a beer, he's not much of a drinker.  What my dad can do, really well, is break things down with a quickness and cold deliver that assessment directly into the deepest parts of my cranium, in ways that make me feel like I have what it takes to know what the right answer is, if only I stopped to focus once in a while instead of being a space cadet.  That's more my own thing.... So anyway, I told my dad a few weeks ago that I had a world changing idea that was going to open up the world of personal finance and I knew that I had exactly what it took to get that done and was ready to take Silicon Alley by storm, without raising a dollar and with nothing but sweat and grit armed with a few contacts and true passion.  Since coming down to earth with my head still in the clouds, I had my "what have you been up to" conversation a whole three weeks into the endeavor just the other day.  Here's what he had to say:


Is it practical?


Absolutely not.  But the world of entrepreneurs is far from practical.  It's completely uncertain how people are going to react to whatever I end up putting out there, and also what I'm going to learn from them.  What's pretty incredible is that his own dad (and my mom's dad) was the child of immigrants and somehow started businesses with zero contacts, zero money, and zero college.  Maybe America was just in that high of growth mode at the time, but where did they get the guts to do that?  Three generations later none of us have known a day of struggle, at least financially.  I have to imagine that 100 years ago when they were born, whether or not food was in plentiful supply that week was a legitimate concern in the Podolinsky and Schwartzberg households.  America might be more like it was then than it was for the generation before me, maybe I'm nuts but the opportunity to do something special has never been better, and for the first time in my life, I feel like I'm in the right city at the right time, instead of feeding at a 70 year old tete of a rugged money game.  You can feel it here.  Technology is unexplainable to people who don't want to hear about it, but it's the best game in town right now, and it's the only game in town for the future.


You, admittedly, are starting from the very bottom...


Fact.  Should that be scary though? Sure, in the context that I have absolutely no background in computer science, have never run a lemonade stand, and suck and splitting the dinner check for seven people.  PS that joke must never get old, when the "trader" has to take out his iPhone in order to compute that without just rattling off the splits down to 25 cents and everyone has something clever to say.  Anyway, I can see it as an exciting new thing where I learn every day, am exposed to cutting edge worlds, and have nowhere to go but up.  I know the stats.  Most startups fail, and I have read no fewer than fifteen books or blogs since lunch written by Stanford and MIT grads whose first one, two, three companies bit the dust and how they merrily laugh about it because they are madly rich now.  Where is the blog or the book by the guy with that background who tried a few things and just went back to having a regular joe job?  I don't think you want to read that.  Probably because that guy is probably banging out a nice income doing nerd things and I'm just a dreamer from wall street who was around people for the last dozen years who are likely to get upset when they actually open the email I sent them in June about Uber and still want to believe they "had that idea a year ago!"  Starting from zero I have nothing to lose, I'm not naive enough to think that I can make a company go boom just because I have identified a problem (that was about 20 days ago) but I also know that it's equal footing out there, and if I focus on trying to tackle this problem and play nice and follow the seemingly infinite amount of solid advice out there, something special is going to happen, for the world and for me...


(here's the good one)


Why don't you just get a job somewhere?


That may happen.  But I have no idea what the future is going to hold.  The meetings keep getting better, I keep getting better at talking the talk, and the learning keeps getting more solid.  But it sure did make me feel all warm and cushy to fantasize about that job at a large and sexy institution full of guys who have and have not at least tried something once.  No one in their right mind tells a person that they should not follow their dream, probably because even though the dreamer is probably deeply unaware of what they're up against, if they do make it (assuming they are reasonably intelligent and hard working) how stupid will you feel?  And why should you be negative to someone's face?  You do the right thing, and wait till their back is turned to do that.  But here's the thing, if this exploration leads me to a vision in progress towards becoming a company or an existing company, and everything falls into place, I'm not stupid enough to consider fighting for something with him/her/them.  If their intention is to create something that helps people the ways I want to help people, then the end result if successful will be the same.  Plus, it goes without saying that they will have gobs more experience than me in executing.  Today, I walked past the phone booth with the lotto LED on it and apparently we're up to $158mln.  Before I hopped on a flight to Bali on April Fool's day- there was a massive powerball jackpot for like double that amount.  No one really asked this question, but if I won, I would have still gotten on that very plane and traveled, pretty much alone, for a few months. Maybe the hotels would have been slightly nicer, and you don't have to believe me, but nothing would have changed.  It was my dream so it was perfect.  If I won the $158mln, I'd still want to create something like this.  In fact, the contacts I met would probably worsen if it got out that I had $50Mln in the bank, they'd all be trying to take advantage of me, and how would I be able to meet like minded people and look in their eyes and know their hardships and challenges and learn together.  These are the people who are trying to do real things, and I am one of them.


You say all that 'there are no jobs on wall street anymore' stuff as a crutch.  You must have been good at what you did...

I guess I was Ok, but it's not really an option anymore anyway.  Here's the thing about 1998-2011 (RIP), there were more professional downs than ups, and I never made the "FU" money and never came close.  I guess there were a few years that were top of the second quartile for persons who have 8+ years experience and work on a trading floor in New York City, but by no means did I ever clean up.  I guess it was more of a function of being employed for 90% of the last eight or so years that is more impressive than anything.  I didn't go to a great university for wall street contacts, I have no MBA, my tennis, lacrosse, and golf games are beyond laughable, and my drinking game was more creepy than it was monetizing.  I wanted to be a trader because my brother was one, and he never even traded client orders.  I just wanted to be him, sit around on a desk, bang out money and throw nerf balls at people's heads.  And this intention was all I needed to propel a 13 year career in that industry.  Fact. What parts of the job I was good at is now irrelevant, because even the greatest (most connected) traders I know are being sacked daily.  I'm sure I could have been smarter, sharper, more keen at networking.  But, If you think I'm clueless, you have to understand that when I tell any, not most, any of the people I used to work with (six firms, thirteen years) what I'm involved with now, they will immediately say "can you hire me"?  They're serious, too.  Serious about not having any idea what's left for them in the business, and seriously probably already flooding your inboxes with their new ventures as self proclaimed "bankers" at firms of ill repute, financial advisors, and yes, some of them are going to regale you with the story of their new startup.  The difference is, they're going to be asking you for money.