Seattle Startup Life

Conenza has been growing pretty rapidly lately. We’re packed like sardines (ode to Radiohead) in our current office and I love it. Being able to just turn your head and talk to someone about a question is so easy and efficient. It’s the simple things that make working at a startup great: the small kitchens, the intimate walks to lunch (and the intimate walks straight back), the ability to work on all aspects of the product, and especially the smart people. You see, a startup is essentially made up of two things: a great idea and really smart people. The right mixture of the two ingredients transforms the hodgepodge of humans and concepts into a well run machine.

I love talking to people that make me re-think myself. It’s an exhilarating feeling.  I had two meetings today that really challenged me. The first included Andrew Smith, Katherine James Schuitemaker and I going over user-flows. We did a walk-through of how media would be used in the next version of the social network we’re building. Towards the end of the meeting, Katherine suggested something she was thinking about on her way back from a recent trip. Her idea was very simple yet extremely complex. Her question (or challenge?) to us was: how do you build a visual representation of user profiles – their professional trends, decisions, challenges, success-metrics, personal stories – and show it in a compelling way? I took it a step further in my head. Once you build something, how do you make it a product that users will find useful?  It took fundamental ideas that I overlooked and turned it on its head. Needless to say, I was stunned at how hard I was thinking about this problem. Sometimes the best conversations are the ones sitting around a table, deep in thought.

If you enjoy solving complex problems with simple solutions, drop me a line. We can use you at Conenza.