Best Laid Plans.

So K left for Seattle today and had to catch a crazy ass flight at like 7 am from Newark due to Hurricane Irene related cancellations.  As a result, she had to be up at 5 am.  As a result, I decided to get up at 5 am as well.  When you are so lucky as to be awake at a cringe-inducing time and you find yourself without a dull headache or a desperate wish to be asleep or so barely awake that you are basically blacked out with no memories...I can't help but burst with the awareness that I might be *super* productive, somehow, against all previous experiences.  It is FIVE FUCKING AM.  I can work out, have breakfast, clean the house and still be in the office an hour fucking early to work a 12 hour day, and I FEEL GREAT.

So I did it.  I got up, had a leisurely cup of coffee, gave K a kiss goodbye and hopped on by blue bike and rode straight up the West Side Highway at 6 am.  I rode and I rode and I rode.  I listened to Jason Sudeikis on the WTFPodcast.  I worried about my rear tire being slightly flat.  I wore my bright yellow helmet.  I put in a stupid tobacco snus packet I decided to try to quit smoking (again) (this time it's 8 days in).  I had a wonderful time.  An hour and 15 minutes later, I reached the George Washington Bridge, which I think is the only bike navigable bridge in NYC I haven't crossed.  Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queensboro and now GWB.  On a crisp cool and calm morning, it was a little bit amazing.  It is so much higher than the east side bridges and the ability to see almost the entirety of New York was spellbinding. I crossed the bridge, switched up some podcasts (to Radiolab, of course) and made my way back.  26 miles today.

So I got home, got all ready for work and was determined to fix my motorcycle, because the battery had died several weeks earlier.  I put on my ratty jeans, a white v neck t-shirt, grabbed the battery, grabbed the jumpers, a screwdriver, backpack, headphones and went straight out to fix the shit out of Butterbear. Twenty feet outside the door, I realized that, for the first time in THREE years, I neglected to grab my keys.  3 hours after K left to Seattle.   Long story short, I called the Management Company who did not give a shit and then called the Super who said he would be here by 11:30 (why the fuck don't supers live in the building anymore?  What good is it if my super lives in Queens and has to take the train to let me into my apartment?).  I then wandered the East Village for 2 hours and was back by 11:30 sharp at which point I received a call that he was "on his way" and would be here in 45 minutes.   I then checked my VM which I had received 2 minutes earlier in which he said he would be here in 30 minutes.  I sat down on my front stoop and played Angry Birds for well over an hour before he arrived.

I arrived at work 5 hours behind schedule.

Ever cognizant of my laziness, I forced myself to clear out a few unpleasant tasks I just don't really feel like doing.  The first is surfing through some of the pages of "competitors" and working through design templates for the business profiles and left some notes for the developer within a few of the pages being developed.  The second is really trying to hammer out some of the credit analysis and finer points of financials and how that information is presented to the users and how to do that in a meaningful way without pushing reliance on this information.  The third was going back through some of the yet to be posted blogposts.  The fourth was figuring out whether to go to a national conference that will cost me over $1000 to go to, but may be exactly the people I need to meet.

Tomorrow will be better.  It looks like my workflow is picking up.  And when I'm actually working, it's good.  It's just sometimes easier to re-check Slate than to dig into another piece of paper I don't really want to create.
 

August 29

I have no other explanation other than laziness.  Malaise even.  I haven't been firing on all cylinders.  I need to build external accountability structures so that I will do this right.  

It appears that I am not the self-starter.  The dynamo.  The do-it-yourself-work-tirelessly-until-success guy.  I am just another guy who doesn't like working that much but reallly reallllly hates certain types of works so much that he will run away to do something else.  That being said....I will make this happen.  It just isn't hard wired into my system.  

It will be a fight. 

August 9

This was supposed to be a pretty big day since I was going to be meeting with Andre Wechsler of Wechsler's Currywurst and Jimmy Carbone of Jimmy's No. 43.  I was a bit nervous because it was a bit of a big day. Wechsler was an ex-investment banker who decided to open a small shop that served authentic german currywurst (curry smothered german sausages) and beers.  Jimmy Carbone is one of the vanguards of the good beer movement in new york as well as all things local -- local food, local suppliers, local production and putting on lots of local events.  

The meeting at Wechsler's was quite good.  I arrived at noon, before anyone was really showing up and we had a good 35 minute conversation where I picked his brain about his experiences as a small business owner and the financial issues that arose.  The place didn't have AC, so it was muggy and we were both sweating a lot, but the talk was quite productive and he indicated he would be quite interested in participating.  That's a first for us thus far, so it was wonderful to hear.  I left feeling great.  

The meeting at Jimmy's was friendly and quite helpful, but it was clear from the get-go that he didn't believe in the model and didn't find it appealing.  He poured me a small glass of IPA from California and we sat down at one of the tables in front to talk.  He offered me food several times, but I declined because I found it a bit difficult to eat and try to talk at the same time.  I did, however, eat some of his spiced fried hazelnuts, which were awesome.  In the end, I think his greatest reservations was that he was firmly against taking debt for anything if he could.  Loans add fixed costs and the amount of time you have to pay back a loan was more important than the interest rate received.  The inflexibility of loans and the fact that they have to be paid back were major detractors from his ever considering to take a loan and he was pretty convinced that if he ever needed financing at such a low level, he would be able to procure it from a variety of sources ranging from trade creditors to friends and families to any other arrangements he could find.  10K was simply not a large enough sum, because it could easily get taken out on a credit card.

Ultimately, we needed to face a strong headwind on the business model.  We have never been properly challenged and most people we encounter basically see the model the same way we do, or don't dig in deeply enough to really engage with the issues, so having someone hitting the model hard was useful.  Not that it was fun.  I mean, he was certainly a very generous and friendly guy who took an hour out of his day to talk to me, but he didn't really see the merits of the model.   

I had to shake it off, so I played Portal 2 for the rest of the day until I turned back to working on web development some more.  

August 10

Today was a heavy day for web copy writing.  I basically spent 7 or 8 hours thinking through user interfaces, the presentation of information and copywriting the FAQs, describing the business and really trying to cut to the heart of the message.  Selling the concept truthfully and making it compelling is going to be a challenge, because there exist levels and levels of nuance that I find fascinating that no one else will take the time to consider.  I need to sell the central model fast and hard and make it as clear as possible.  Being unusually wordy and precise at times, this may be quite the challenge.

Later in the evening, Ben and I met with a developer named Matt who we had met at the Dim Sum Startup Enthusiasts Meetup.  Matt developed and sold a daily deals site based in DC and they were unusually successful in an otherwise crowded field.  The discussion moved quickly from topic to topic and it was abundantly clear that we were dealing with someone who was extremely intelligent, articulate and thoughtful.  He was also quite friendly and very easy to get along with...all in all, a really great person to consider working with.  We talked through the various issues facing us technically and in terms of the model and he seemed to be quite impressed with how we were tackling the issues we saw and the preparation we put into everything.  It was a great conversation and I'm quite glad to have met him.  Hopefully we'll be able to work with him in the future as we move towards a more technical focus.  

August 11

Today, not so productive.  Just don't really feel like doing anything.  But, I wrote some web copy and will be sending out our incorporation documents for (hopefully) the very last time.  Thank god.  We need to exist.  And fast. 

August 5, 2011

Today was a productive day.  K.and I decided to devote tractor beams of intense focus today to get the most painful parts of the Villager process either firmly in motion or firmly resolved.

We got up slightly late (my fault, fuckin' snooze) and got to B&H Lunch counter by 11 am to have some of the best mornin' food in the area.  I had a challah grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup and K. had a strange veggie juice and half a whitefish sandwich.  We love those guys.  The dude behind the counter just had a baby, Hanna, who is now 5 weeks old, which he showed to us on his iPhone.  Very cute.

We then took the F train to Dumbo, where we commenced a full-blown assault on a few projects.

1)  K. decided to start with my market research on the competition.  Unsurprisingly, the success of Kickstarter has spawned a multitude of copycats and crowdfunding investment platforms.  She spent some time fixing up my primitive word document and migrating it to a powerful excel platform.  She also spent some time looking at 33needs, getting seriously annoyed with the company, and modeling out the important parts of it.

2)  I spent two hours trying to understand interest rates, yield, different ways of structuring interest rates and trying to figure out how the various laws worked.  It was painful.

3)  I then turned my attention to legal documentation.  I spent the next 6 hours reading the borrower and registration agreements for Prosper and LendingClub line by line and re-drafting them to match the needs and structure of Villager.  That was very painful.  It is slightly more fun to re-draft contracts from scratch and make them fit a particular structure...definitely more fun than working within highly constrained highly regularized environments where you are expected to understand things you can't possibly understand...but I still hate spending hours and hours in front of a contract.  It is very painful stuff.  At least I was able to get a very rough draft of the Borrower Registration Agreement, Promissory Note, Lender Registration Agreement and Terms of Use together.  I'm glad I finally turned to it, though, because it certainly raises a lot of issues and complications I am not looking forward to tackling.  But need to tackle.

4)  Didn't hear back from the folks I emailed yesterday...Rick's Picks, Brooklyn Roasters, Xi'an Famous Foods.  The day before I was 3 for 3.  Yesterday's batch came back 0 for 3.  Shame.  We'll see though.

4) Kristen then re-directed her attention to the back-end mechanics spreadsheet.  She worked her considerable magical talents on the spreadsheet and was able to build in the concept of monthly compound interest payments.  Very impressive stuff and it definitely gets us a long way.  Very happy that she's able to make such enormous contributions to the company and do things I could not even dream of doing.  It is very good stuff.

5)  I polished a blog piece on the Five C's of credit analysis.  Still far from ready for public consumption, but it was good to spend some time writing.  I enjoy writing.  (This blog doesn't count.)  When a piece of writing comes together, it always makes me so happy and satisfied . But boy, it certainly hurts like a motherfucker to get a piece to come together.

6)  Been in contact with my web developer James throughout the course of the day, so that's been helpful.  Gchat is very good for this purpose.  You can do what you need to do but not remain locked into face to face discussions for long periods of productive time.

That's all. It's 11:45, so we've gotten about 12 solid hours of work in...but I still feel good, so let's see what I get into next!

August 2 and 3, 2011

The last two days have been pretty good.  Felt like we were getting somewhere, although somewhat slowly still.

August 2, 2011

1)  Jimmy Carbone from Jimmy's No. 43 answered my email almost immediately about meeting up to discuss his restaurant and Villager.

2) Andre Wechsler from Wechsler's Currywurst is also happy to meet up to discuss the same.

3) I set up a lunch with two bankers from Citi to discuss retail banking with small businesses.

4) Set up a meeting with Alie Shaper and Craig Kayaian from Brooklyn Oenology, a wine producer and tasting room, in Williamsburg.

August 3, 2011

The morning was spent preparing for the meetings today.  The first meeting was a little underwhelming.  Dave S. introduced me to some of his colleagues who work with the smallest of small businesses as relationship managers at Citi.  They weren't really able to tell me anything Dave hasn't told me and didn't seem especially interested in answering any of my questions with anything more than terse, very straightforward answers that offered little insight.  Luckily, I had some excellent Provencale Moules Frites.   And then I had a beer with Dave at a German Restaurant Beer Bar at 3:30.

After that, I hopped on the swelteringly muggy subway with a single transfer to make my way over to Brooklyn Oenology, where I met with Alie Shaper and Craig Kayaian (her boyfriend and informal business strategist) about their financing options, as well as a quick discussion of Villager.  The discussion was really quite lively and interesting.  Alie started out as an aerospace engineer who decided she wanted to be in the wine business.  Pursuing that goal, she went into the wine business and hopped around a few places until she decided to mix the artisinal, local and high quality concepts of Brooklyn and produce local wines in the borough.  In 2006, she began producing her own wines from Long Island grapes and began selling them through local retailers.  After her production ramped up and expanded considerably, they decided to open a tasting room in Williamsburg, where they showcase their own wines and other wines and spirits from New York.  All of their wine labels come from local artists and they use the tasting room as an arthouse as well.

The discussion ultimately was wide ranging.  They need a capital infusion that is beyond the capabilities of Villager and are planning to expand and grow.  They want to push out and be bigger.  We talked through the various forms of financing, from a convertible debt deal to a straight equity deal to a structured note to bank loans to interest free Villager-like loans, to bonds to offering structure and the difficulty of the securities laws.  Without going into too much detail, Craig and Alie were razor sharp, ambitious and very charismatic.  I think they will be fine with whatever path they choose.  I find that despite my nervousness, I love meeting all of these business owners.  It's just so much more interesting.  I just need to get my product FINISHED so I can figure out how to sell rather than to just serve as a sounding board for all of the ways small businesses can raise money.

It becomes more apparent to me every day that the charlatans and assholes who perpetrated securities fraud and made excessive money pushing other people's money around have made it incredibly difficult for smaller players to access funds.  Sure, the public markets are extraordinarily liquid and get a pricing premium because of the enforcement regime, but what about everyone else?  

August 1, 2011

Getting up on time is a bitch.  Another day where I set my alarm for 7:30 am and I wake up at 10:30 am.  Non-lawyer life is very different.  My body is going to get used to sleep and it is going to be bad news.

Today was a bit of a mixed bag.  I ended up working from home today because I was up at 10:30 and had a 6:30 meeting.  Yes, this is ridiculous, but considering that my commute would take about an hour total and I had to get ready and everything, that would only leave me about 5 hours of solid work time with an hour of travel, a half hour getting ready and not getting a workout in.  The workout is important because I got a 3 day pass to a local gym and figure I should get the most out of it.

First thing I did today was sign up for Rackspace.  We officially have a web server!

Second thing I did was re-draft our entire LLC Agreement for the company.  After a nice conversation with Niya last night about the tax implications of structuring the LLC to give me 80% of the company while only contribution 33% of the capital, she explained that my concept of an LLC membership interest operating like a normal corporation equity share was the wrong way to go.  Instead, LLC's have capital accounts for each of their members, so as long as all future profits and losses are allocated 80% to me, I don't incur tax income upon incorporation and capital contribution.  This is all very boring, but it was critical to getting the company structured correctly.  I spent the morning stripping out all of the portions of the agreement referring to "Units" and replacing it with the capital account and profit allocation construct instead.  I think this works much better.  I didn't proofread because I am sick as balls of proofreading legal documents, but I can clean it up later.

I also spent an hour or two talking to my good buddy Mark who is a coder that has offered to construct our web back-end.  The original plan was for him to come up for a 4 day weekend and we would commence a crazy hack-a-thon.  About halfway through the day he mentioned that if there was ever a time for me to make him an offer, I should do it because he was getting fed up with his job.  He was considering going to another company, so I offered him a month in NYC, paid with accommodations, to come work for Villager for a month to code and fix the entire back-end up so it would be flawless and fully operational.  It's very exciting.

I also spent another hour or two re-editing and constructing the web copy for the website.  There's a lot to be populated, so I had to take some time to re-polish.  I have been writing quite a few blogposts for the company, so some of my language and key words have changed.  Just wanted to get it consistent because messaging will be very important here.

Finally, I met with Jill Ackerman, who is the head of the 12th Street Block Association.  I heard of Jill when I was talking to the owner of Continuum Cycles, when a young school teacher came by and mentioned that she was just a spectacular leader and amazing at organizing folks in the area.  He gave me her email address and I put in a message to her.  We didn't quite get off on the right foot.  She pushed me away during the first email exchange and during the second email exchange immediately attacked what I was doing as potentially detrimental to the neighborhood.  We swapped 4 or 5 emails where I patiently but flatly explained that she misunderstood the business model, after which she slowly began to come around and agreed to meet.   It was a little hostile for a bit, but once I explained what we were doing and conceded that she probably didn't want to meet, her curiosity was finally piqued.  Go Figure.

We met at Cafe Pick Me Up on the corner of Avenue A and 9th.  She was probably in her mid-40's, a pleasant looking woman.  We exchanged pleasantries for a lot of the conversation -- she narrated many of the events that swallowed up Alphabet City in the 90's and past ten years, talked about changes in the neighborhood and then we got to the meat of her activism and concerns with the neighborhood:  bars bars bars.

In her particular block of the East Village, there are about 19 bars within a 500 foot radius.  Although this seems sorta like a fun thing and good for the community (maybe), it turns out that there are other effects.  The main concern for her is that her community was now a destination for night life but that there were no sustainable daytime businesses.  The groceries disappeared, normal services were no longer available and the daytime businesses that were open could not sustain themselves because no one comes into the area during the day.  She further went onto explain the crazy liquor license situation in NY.  Liquor licenses cost like 200-300K to acquire.  When a bar or restaurant is sold, one of the most important assets to be sold is the liquor license for the business, which can be provisionally transferred to the next owner for 6 months, after which it can be renewed.  What this means is that any business that has a liquor license stands to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars if they can't get paid for the license -- much like a security deposit.  Thus the landlords and the business owners stand to lose a lot of money if they close down their bar and like, a hair salon moves in, because they aren't able to sell the liquor license and get their money back.  As a result, it seems almost like whenever a new location obtains a liquor license, it will be nearly impossible for any other business to take over the space except a restaurant or bar that wants the license.

Pretty fascinating stuff.

Okay, off tonight to go to dollar oyster night at Desnuda.  Hopefully I can con the bartender / owner into talking to me about their financials. 

July 27, 2011

A shortish day in the office because I needed to get a haircut and because Kemi was coming in from out of town in the early afternoon, so I didn't really get to the office until 3.  Sigh.

The day was consumed primarily by two tasks:

1)  Finishing the blogpost about Soaking up the Annoying, which went up last night.
2)  Trying to write up some of the back-end requirements for the website, which I sent to Mark.

Nothing great.  Yesterday, Tuesday, was far more productive when I drafted up the entire fee structure issue and took care of that.  

July 25, 2011

Today started out a little weak.  I woke up at 10 am, rather than at 8 am when I planned to be up and I just didn't feel great.  I think I need to stop eating spicy foods -- even though I have no issues with the actual eating or the spiciness, it throws my digestion into disarray for a couple days at a time and I have learned that when my digestion is a little bit off, my entire sense of well-being goes off-kilter.  Plus, we are coming off of like 5 days of wretched heat-wave heat, where we are subjected to a barrage of sweating, followed by sluggish lounging to avoid any sort of re-heating effect.

We spent the entire day yesterday lying on the couch and watching The Office on Netflix for like 4 hours, and a couple of documentaries (Beer Wars, eh, not bad not good), Modern Family and Jackass.  It was a good day, but it was extremely sluggish.  We also left the house exactly one time to go to Ben's place to watch Breaking Bad (the episode felt like filler) and came back home drained.

Anyway, today was not such a bad day.

First, I wrote a nice email to Alie Shaper at Brooklyn Oenology in hopes of having a meeting with her to learn about her business finances and seeing if they would be interested in the Villager platform.  After, I went over to Continuum Cycles, where I had a 30 minute talk with Jeff, the owner, about his finances and the Villager platform.  I love the store and I love what they do and I would love if they would raise through Villager.  They are good people and it seems like their business model is perfect for Villager.  I also met a young teacher named Frank who works with the CB3 to try and change the business makeup of the east village.  He pointed out that the neighborhood has like 24 bars in a 500 foot radius and that it means no one visits the area during the daytime so more sustainable daytime businesses can't stay alive.  Their goal (12th Street Block Association) is to bring more daytime non-entertainment businesses to the area.  Very interesting stuff. I reached out to the head of the association, Jill Ackerman, to see if she'd be willing to meet.

P.S.  Alie Shaper just emailed me back.  Awesome.  

July 18

Been struggling quite seriously over the past couple of days to finish up an entirely too academic issue of identifying the correct scale for social investments.  The concept hit me like a bolt of lightning during a discussion with Slow Money NYC, but getting it into digestible and interesting text is a bit of a challenge.

Today has been so-so.  I feel terrible today.  Sore kidneys or something and dullness in my stomach.  I have a feeling this relates to the massive amounts of alcohol consumed over the weekend.  I take responsibility, but ugh.  Plus, it doesn't help that it's upwards of 95 degrees and muggy as fucking hell in New York right now.

As far Villager goes, today was first contact with a business!  I met with the owner/head chef of Egg Williamsburg and his number 2, who runs operations at the business.  Egg is a gorgeous little restaurant that serves straightforward, super high quality southern influenced foods.  Very charming, loved the space and the atmosphere.  The main issue is that they are seeking funding in the 500K range which is outside of Villager's ability to manage and probably isn't a good start case.  We did discuss financing alternatives for the restaurant and I tried to walk them through some of the alternatives, but it's abundantly clear to everyone in the small business world that the securities laws are unholy minefield entirely focused on stifling capital formation and only aiding those who can access high powered lawyers.  They offered to feed me and I reluctantly declined, having just consumed a large green juice down the street and we had a productive and quite pleasant conversation.  I hope to re-visit them in a later phase.  I liked them a lot.

I spent the rest of the day reviewing financial statements and business plans of various presenters at the Slow Money entrepreneur's showcase.  The amount of cash flowing in and out of these companies is interesting to see on paper.  I'm not sure how much money I expected a small business to make or how much profit they would see, but in many ways it is lower than I expected.  Margins are also quite tight.

I also spent the rest of the day feeling lethargic and generally crappy.  My bike sprung a flat after my meeting with the Brooklyn Torch (local currency) ladies and someone stole Kristen's front tire in the course of the evening.  Bunch of fucking savages in this town.

July 12 and July 13, 2011

I don't think I really remember much of July 12.  Not for any particular reason, but just cuz.

So....the big event of July 12 was the "Find a Co-Founder" event that took place on a private terrace, a 4,000 square foot private terrace to be precise, where 400+ entrepreneurial types gathered for free drinks and ostensibly a chance to meet a co-founder.  As could be expected, almost everyone that showed up was some person with a business idea seeking help in executing that idea.  This is pretty much the prevailing theme in NYC startup culture.  I certainly was not looking for a Co-Founder, I was just forcing myself to go to a networking event of this nature (which I totally hate) and just getting used to the friction of having to cold-introduce myself to dozens of people.  Among the people I met included the founder of Rent-Hackr, who wants to bring transparency to rents but has no clear strategy on how to get thousands of people to sign up when you need thousands to have a starting point, a video conference consultant and a reporter who started writing down everything I said, even though I spent most of that time talking about Villager and how frothy and ridiculous the tech scene is.  I drank beer.  It was just fine.  I am a natural relationship builder -- I am not a natural networker.  I also found a woman who wants to build a "social gifting" sight, but refused to reveal her "twist" her "secret" her "special little design" which really wasn't that secret.  (As you can tell, I got the secret out of her.  I kept a straight face.)   Afterwards, I made my over to Williamsburg for the Gastronauts event and add tongue tacos, congealed blood, gorgeous Van Leeuwen ice creams, pork chop over rice and paired it all with...Rolling Rock.  Mmmm.  (New york is fucking hot these days and sitting outside in my suit was a no no).

Other than that, I spent quite a bit of time refreshing myself on securities laws in preparation for a Slow Money NYC small working group meeting the next day and also studied up on the models they were considering.  It should be interesting.   I also chose some more samples I received from my web designer.  That guy is the tits.

Today, July 13 has been better.  I just had lunch with Amy Cortese, author of Locavesting, at Rucola, a beautiful little restaurant in Boerum Hill that serves all local, organic foods.  Delicious food, great conversation and really got along well.  Hopefully this relationship continues on and that we have a long fruitful partnership in working on local projects.  At 4 pm today, I will be attending the Slow Money Investors meeting to explore options of how to invest in farms and organic food in NYC.  I hope that my years of organic farming, Pollan-fever and securities law background are a good fit for what they need.

ALSO, I received an email back from Egg in Williamsburg who are trying to raise money for a farm in upstate New York.  They are excited to talk about Villager and I really hope they are a good first target for our pilot. First business contact!  Whoo hoo!!

Update:

The meeting with Slow Money NYC (Investors Inspired by Slow Money) at Faber Daeufer & Rosenberg was quite productive, not least because I was gathered in a room with many people with similar food and investment philosophies as well as a mix of accredited investors and, of course, Amy.  From my memory, I met a dude named Michael, who worked at an investment fund, Derek Denckla (the chairman and serial social entrepreneur), Amy Cortese, Steve Godeke (an investment manager and business prof at NYU), Holly Howard (on steering committee and works at Egg Williamsburg, who we are going to be speaking to next week), Nicole Reed (steering committee, need to follow up), Brian Kaminer (Steering committee, need to follow up), Sam Kressler (a finance guy who didn't survive the cataclysm who went into food systems and is now trying hard to get back into a big bank...) and Evan Wagner, who is in Green construction.  

The thrust of the discussion was finding ways to foster an actual investment platform for agriculture and slow food.  The discussion was slightly discursive at times and the chairman of Slow Money NYC was quite good at explaining a lot of the possibilities. We had a hard time finding focus, but I think it was a relatively productive session, not least because people began to develop a baseline familiarity with each other (at least us new ones) and I was able to make some of my views heard.  

In particular, it was entirely unclear whether the point was to democratize slow money financing for the public or whether it was merely to channel capital to preserving the foodshed.  I think the issues faced are entirely different on both sides.  If you are trying to channel capital, then you are targeting accredited investors.  Among accredited investors, you are probably shit out of luck targeting institutional investors or funds, who do not invest in "high risk, low return."  That leaves you with rich folks.  Ultimately, as I said during the meeting, what we are pricing into these investments is a positive externality.  You are never going to be able to get a single individual to "invest" in high risk, low reward investments if you expect to provide a return, social or economic.  They, investing 1 million dollars, will never reap enough social reward to give up that giant chunk of money unless it is a form of philanthropy.  I argued that on a small scale, of 100 dollars or 200 dollars, people are able to reap the social return on investment and externality because their contribution was small.  Thus our focus should be on expanding opportunities to the retail level.  Otherwise, it was charity.  

I think I need a more fulsome post about this on the Villager blog.  To the top of the list!

July 7, 2011

Day 3 of the raw food / only plants day was in some ways better and in some ways worse.  I certainly feel a little less ill than I normally do, when I eat myself into a stomachache and coma three times a day, but I find it difficult to cope with the gnawing hunger.  It is amazing how much food I don't have to eat, but nevertheless cram myself full of.  After waking up to a crazy green juice Kristen made out of lettuce, chard, kale, apple and some other fruit or other, I went to the office by bike, sweating the whole way over the bridge and sweating another 30 minutes in the office.  I LOVE new york in the summer, but sometimes it can be a little bit brutal.

Today I did a full re-write of the Villager Questionnaire for individuals to get a sense of lender demand.  I decided to eschew the corporate voice and just write in my own voice.  It is still slightly sanitized, but hopefully it's not all that different from how I used to write on this blog.  I'm sick of corporate voices and corporate language and the jargon that glazes over communication with a slick veneer of vagueness.  Maybe it will land with a pitiful thud, but might as well give it a go.  I don't want to become what annoys me.

I also spent a significant amount of time researching methods of credit analysis and re-examined the Five C's of credit analysis: Capacity, Conditions, Collateral, Character and Capital.  After going through each prong, I realized that Villager fulfilled each of these issues in innovative new ways and was excited to go through and write it up.  As usual, my first run was extremely subpar and my final was only slightly better.  I need to spend a little more time with this, but I think it is important and useful.

There was also a torrential downpour that appeared from nowhere and disappeared as quickly.  Not before the Manhattan Bridge spawned dozens of beautiful little waterfalls and the sewage line in the office parking lot began spewing sewage, flooding the cars up to their bumpers.  Gross, but still kinda interesting.

July 6, 2011

Sent out an email to Jessica  at Greenlight Bookstore, who had capitalized their business with community funding.  She's out of town until the 10th, but hopefully I will hear back from her soon after.  Got her information from Amy Cortese, the author of Locavesting.  Hoping I can learn a lot here. 

Scheduled a lunch with Amy Cortese at Rucola for next Wednesday.  Also very excited to see what she can tell me about the brooklyn local finance scene. 

Spent some time reviewing securities offering exemptions and options for small businesses.  Made a small business securities grid to prepare for meeting with BedStuy organic. Met with Darell Brown and Evelyn Oliver of Organic BedStuy to discuss their financing options.  They are a startup, but are trying to create an organic grocery in BedStuy, which is a virtual food desert, so hopefully that works out.  Fortunately and unfortunately, they are seeking a relatively small slug of capital ($85,000), so they may have some difficulty getting any investment.  Very interesting to meet them and hope they do well. 

Discussion with Mark O. today about the possibility of coding the back-end of the platform, which he says shouldn't be too complicated.  Am interested to see what type of product he can put together and see if it can form the foundation of the site.

Swapped some emails with James G. about setting up the servers and the PayPal sandbox.  Hope to pull the trigger on those arrangements as soon as I get the incorporation documents back from the NYSOS.   Hurry up!

The biggest issue is to just get out there and start talking to businesses.  I need to figure out a game plan for this, I am stalling and I don't have any good reason for it other than just being nervous about the process.  I'm hoping to spark that process by creating a few more organic relationships that get my foot in the door rather than blindly soliciting, so we shall see how that goes for a couple more weeks, otherwise I will need to just suck it up and get going.

***

This is also the third day after we watched "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead", which is a documentary about an aussie who decided he was too fat and too sick and went on a 60 day juice fast across the United States.  Pretty remarkable stuff.  I was entirely skeptical and definitely had the "oh here we go again" thought once I saw him making juice in the back of his SUV...but after the first 30 minutes I was hooked.  It was fascinating to see the changes he underwent.  Even more fascinating is his encounter with a morbidly obese truck driver who he happened to encounter at a truck stop and the unbelievable transformation the truck driver underwent after attempting his own juice fast.  Pathos galore.  I didn't pull this hard for Rudy.  (well maybe)

In any case, Kristen and I were so enthralled we decided to go on a 3-day mini fast:


Cooked food once a day.
No alcohol.
No meat.
No eggs.
No dairy.
No fish.
No flour.
No refined sugar.
No simple carbohydrates.
Lots of green smoothies and fresh juices.

I have to admit -- this shit is difficult.  I find myself hungry ALL of the time.  Even after eating a barrel of vegetables, my stomach feels oddly hollow.  I am grumpy.  I am just sorta uncomfortable and not really in the mood to eat another raw piece of vegetable. 

That being said, I do feel strangely better that I am just filling my body entirely with plants, lots and lots of greens, lots of water, nutrients and nothing refined. Also, even though the first day was kinda shitty, the second day feels normal.  Lets see how the third day goes. 

(Why only three days?  Visiting Kristen's family down at the shore this weekend and it's unlikely that we are going to be eating only vegetables and not drinking anything.  And we don't want to have a conversation about it.  I, myself, find myself very easily annoyed by dietary zealots and raw foodists and juice people and fasters, etc.  I just am curious and already fully subscribe to "Eat Food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants."  Why not see how it goes?)

July 1, 2011

So the Digital Dumbo event (sponsored by Big Fuel) basically exemplified all of the things I don't really like about networking:  Lots and lots of fashionable young people crowded into a giant sweaty room, the twitter stream for the event writ large on a screen, "Like" stickers that you are supposed to stick on each other's customized T-shirts to demonstrate how much people like you for some sort of contest and just a pervasive sense of "awesome awesome awesome!" in a way that's not awesome.  I will continue to go to these events and hopefully meet some interesting people, but it's just not all that fun.

Today was not a very productive day, I suppose.  We woke up at 11, went to lunch with Jeff M. at B&H (good dude, good food) and then we arrived at the office around 3:30 pm with all sorts of gear in tow: a new television, some cables, a twelve pack of old school Rolling Rock.

I had a long productive talk with James G. about his web development contract and we talked through the ins and outs of print and digital design so that he could get to work in earnest on the development.  And then drank beer.

Now Kristen is going to help me develop my forecasts so I can determine how many accounts I need in order to make my first dollar and then my first billion and a half.  Oh yeah.

Thursday, June 30

Quote of the Day from Rework:  "It's entirely your responsibility to make your dreams come true."

Arrived in the office a bit late, ended up sleeping until 9:30 or so due to meeting with James R. and Wei D. over drinks at Old Town Bar to discuss refugee life from the BigLaw maelstrom.  Good talk, mostly ended up gossiping and talking about every thing for a few hours rather than dig into the details on our respective companies.

James raised the point that Villager should just intermediate between the businesses and the lenders without actually issuing any of the notes.  That is, the business should be the note issuer.  I spent some time today thinking about that, but I think in the end we have to avoid that path because 1) simplicity is critical to the customer experience on both ends and 2) the securities laws implications of a direct issue are a bit too complex to have a  small business owner grasp.

Today was another day of struggling to figure out what to do:

1)  Finished Zaragosa post on the blog.
2)  Reviewed the contract from James G. at GoToBed for web development services.  Revised the contract and sent it back.
3)  Modeled out the direct issue concept and decided against it.
4) Emails with Brooklyn Torch.

Still haven't heard back from the developer who was ostensibly the dream partner, but I think my decision to go with GTB rather than them is probably proved right by the fact that it took 1 week to get a proposal (after a promise of "this week") and a day has passed without a response.  In the end, I need someone who will work enthusiastically and throw themselves full-time to the project and be fully available and responsive to my guidance.  James seems to be that guy and he is very good.  Hopefully his chattiness will not cause any productivity issues.

Also came across someone else's post on Profounder who rolled up the concept fairly neatly, which I have re-summarized here:  Villager will have the advantage of rolling marketing, customer acquisition, identifying loyal customers and strengthening existing relationships into the process of funding.

Off we go tonight to the Dumbo Digital "What's Your Status" event sponsored by Big Fuel.  The last Big Fuel event I went to was annoying and I did not enjoy it.  We shall see how it goes.

Migration.

So, I may or may not blog here from time to time.  But since Villager is the new focus of all of my time, I suggest you also re-direct to villagernyc.wordpress.com.  It's beta and will be migrating to the actual site once it's ready...but it's a start. 

Villager: The First Week

Unsurprising -- there is a lot to do.

The initial moments of panic I suffered in the first three days came from thinking of Villager as a tech start-up, which would put us in fierce competition with the bustling  masses of crowdfunding platforms, peer-to-peer lending giants and social media driven start-ups.  Ten minutes on Techcrunch or a quick review of the dozens of start-up articles that are published daily by mainstream media sources immediately convey the fact that New York and San Francisco are in the throes of start-up mania.  The (must-be-dreaming) valuation of Groupon at $25 billion, Facebook at $50 billion, Twitter at $7 billion and Zynga at $10 billion has angel investors and venture capitalists in frenzy mode, throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at start-ups in hopes of riding the next wave.  Software developers are being lured with bigger perks and better compensation and there appears to be unlimited appetite for developers and a very limited supply, as the earlier fears of software engineering being dominated by outsourcing were clearly wrong.  All of this led little ol' me to start freaking out because so far this is just me and all of the tech folks I know are so happy at their jobs that there is no way I could convince them to jump ship.  This is a fiercely competitive world and culture I was not entirely ready for and that I am frankly a bit terrified of.

But, I think all of this is wrong.  Besides the fact that I think we are witnessing the frothy crest of a social media bubble (I don't see how it could be otherwise -- all you need to do is look at this article to fully grasp the froth), I think it is fundamentally wrong to think of Villager as a tech start-up, despite the fact that the internet is a critical tool.  I am not trying to reach a national or global market, I am doing the opposite -- I am trying to reach deeply into local communities and strengthen the ties within.  I need to push hard to cultivate connections with small businesses in New York and Brooklyn and push harder to reach citizens (heh, villagers? (no.)) in these markets.  I want to use technology to re-orient to the local, not to the global.  Now that it's the simplest thing to take a dollar and stuff it into the balance sheet in a Chinese or Indian company instantaneously, it should be just as simple to take that dollar and invest it in the donut shop next door. (Disclosure: I love donuts.) (Not much of a disclosure, of course I love donuts.)

In these terms, I am more comfortable and confident of steering my own course and finding my own way.  The entire mission of Villager is to preserve the character of our neighborhoods, of allowing local entrepreneurs and their dreams to thrive, to strengthen the bonds of community, to re-consider the meaning of investment, to reduce the footprint of the chains that slowly undefine the character of a hometown and use of the power of infinite possibility and optionality to choose what we would like our neighborhoods to look like.  I hope to build my business accordingly.   

Starting Over

The idea of starting an ambitious and complex company was a lot less scary at 3 a.m. while handcuffed to my office desk.

I've been on "vacation" for exactly three days working from my brand new "office" space in DUMBO (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass) Brooklyn just trying to get a sense of what I will need to do to get Villager from just another idea to a company that actually works. 

Three harrowing days.  Just sitting at my desk.

I have discovered that I am going to be trying to elbow my way into a crowded room full of very connected and powerful people.  Since embarking on my "internet surfing IS learning" tour of social lending and crowdfunding, I have since discovered profounder, rockethub, indiegogo, crowdrise, microplace, loan guarantee fund, myc4, on deck capital, funding circle, community lend, fynanz (awful name), big carrots, crowd cube, start some good and of course have learned more about Kiva, Lending Club, Prosper, Kickstarter and Inventure, which I already knew about. 

Three. Harrowing. Days. 

It's easy to tell yourself that it's going to be hard and there's going to be doubt and it's going to be challenging and that you have to fight for everything that is worth it and that you just have to believe and struggle and keep moving forward...but sometimes you forget what that actually means.  

Overcoming self-doubt is the challenge.  Here I go. 

Villager.

I have decided to learn to fly on the way down.  Wish me luck.  

Terry Jones is a fucking idiot. 

$1.44 two hard boiled eggs, testicular in my styrofoam bowl, flat spots notwithstanding.
$17.99 giant bottle of yellow tail cabernet sauvignon (year irrelevant, if the label even attempts it)

Tired.

But Hunger Games was awesome.