I feel like i've hit a turning point in my life. Something has happened in the past 6 months, in the past 3 years since leaving Simply Hired & PayPal. I'm not sure when it all clicked, but i've been fortunate to have a lot of wonderful things come my way lately.
Those things include but are not limited to:
- working with / investing in great startups like Mint (thx Aaron), SlideShare (thx Rashmi & Jon), TeachStreet (thx Dave), and many others
- running conferences like Startonomics SF (thx Debbie), Graphing Social Patterns (thx Gina & Tim), and Web 2.0 Expo SF (thx Brady & Jen)
- creating the now-infamous Stanford Facebook class (thx BJ, Yee, Jia, many others & our students!)
- coming up with Startup Metrics for Pirates AARRR! (thx Hiten, Andrew, Eric, *SO* many others)
- getting Startup2Startup rolling last year (thx Leonard, Brian, Kat, Saar, & MANY friends/sponsors)
- joining FoundersFund this year (thx Sean Parker for giving me a shot)
- launching FF Angel LLC and investing in some great startups (thx FF, also Jeff Clavier & many other angels & VCs for great advice)
- retooling fbFund & creating the fbFund REV incubator program (thx Cat & folks at FB, Accel & FF, many others)
- kicking off GeeksOnaPlane Asia trip (thx Christine, George, lots others)
- putting Finance4Founders together & ready to rollout (thx Dan & others)
while this may seem like a laundry list, the one common thread in all of the above projects has been the amazing help of my friends & colleagues. there is no way i could have accomplished any of these efforts without the patience, tolerance, brilliance, and sheer hard work of my home boys & girls. you folks really do rock. (and i know how much of a pain in the butt i am to work with!)
seriously: how lucky am i, to be blessed with so many incredible people in my life, who have given me so much, created such tremendous opportunities... while i remain the lazy, ADD, easily-distracted, crazy sonuvabitch i've always been, who barely manages to make rent each month. i mean, it's nothing short of a miracle that i can find my ass with both hands in the morning, and yet somehow after so many years in the valley i have found a nice little groove. how cool is that.
these days i actually wake up early & excited to do the work i'm doing, happy as a newborn puppy to spend time working on projects with people i like, and i keep pinching myself to make sure this shit doesn't disappear tomorrow. well even if it did, i would treasure the moments thus far...
lastly, i must acknowledge the folks at home who help me find purpose and reason amidst all this insanity... thank you to my wife and our two beautiful kids. you are the light of my life, and your smiles & laughter are precious beyond the treasure and measure of mortal men.
truly, i am a very lucky person. thank you to everyone :)