Good Afternoon, Good Evening ― Goodnight
Friends, it’s been a wild fucking ride. This is a lot easier to write out, as my noir heart probably cares too much. Given I’ll be exploring something new, with my last day being Feb 20th, I wanted to share an extended story and thank you for all we’ve done with fiveonefour.
PREFACE
I think I look back about a decade ago at the more stable, bi-coastal, demanding tech scene I threw myself into. It took me around the world from Japan to NYC. In those NYC days, I got to expand, explore and enjoy every part of the city. It connected me with people like Tim, Audrey and Nico by way of Vlad. This opened the floor to meet folks like Bryan and Joj. Several unusually sloppy dinners in a small Harlem apartment later, more was had than realized.
Fast forward to countless Google-Cornell crashed events and rooftop parties later, I found myself with talented people I had hoped to work with, but timing wasn’t right. We were all young, overly confident and pursuing the ladder climb, knowing it wasn’t sustainable and there was so much more outside of that. I knew I wanted to do more.
I’ve been taking career risks a while, but each one has its own story. I moved to SF with no money and lived with friends and a dog in a shitty apartment to build what we believed in. Harassed by homeless, coiled human shit and oversized seagulls, I knew it was the place for me, but not corporate life. 900 person all-hands, 7 meetings a day and 150 people to tell you their opinion. I think Tim and myself realized we could do better, faster. Though, it didn’t happen right away.
I spent more years riding the wave at Google, LinkedIn and selling a small chrome app in between all of this. But even this adventure was really new to me, but ripe with need. But I felt in good hands with folks who’d seen it before. 0–1 leadership in unfamiliar spaces. Many hats. What-ifs?
So we decided to fuck around and find out that the first idea wasn’t going to work. Keep in mind, we did most of this on nights and weekends outside of prison hours. I didn’t even know what the hell I was doing but I knew I could make whatever it was simple and raise an eyebrow or two in the end. We built a bunch of POC’s, prototypes and stories we believed in but weren’t sure about. Then one day Tim says this isn’t gonna work I can’t get money with this idea but I can with this one. I once again, had little to no idea what this was — now what we call moosestack. But I said let’s go.
NOTHING TO SOMETHING
Since then, I decided to jump the ships I was on and take a leap into a completely unknown territory, Designing SaaS for Data engineers. I mean, I thought temporal was shrimp. Have you ever tried to build anything let alone a company? Imagine struggling to put your socks on one day. Think about that x100B. Everyday. It’s not easy. We only had a strategy doc to raise initial funds on, with no real product. Some slides barely even existed and it still worked. It takes a certain series of traits to get that done. Someone with a matching boat and car. I had never done that before, Tim had. Board engagement, strategy, initiatives, management, craft, quality control, collaboration at its most challenging times, growing a team from 0 to 20+. A small rocket with barely working seatbelts and a few cracks in the windshield.
Hiring was tough in the beginning (still is). We used ATS’s, recruiters and had little time to do it. We were blessed with Dan shortly after who helped shape the rest of the team and culture. I’m proud of what we’ve formed and the products following it. We built some shit people hated, didn’t understand and sometimes said we should try something else. But the intense, yet late night testing offsites, after midnight bar hops and broken-leg poses have all been worth it. With this team, we’ve set a great foundation, and one with a design oriented backbone to stand on top of.
THANKFUL FOR
Designing a product actually helping developers. The value, complexity, and how it powers so much of the world. I didn’t know what OLAP meant let alone the difference between ingress and egress. Folks, small and large (F45, Disctrict Cannabis).
Tim, Nico, Dan, Chris, Seb, everyone giving me this opportunity. Building an attractive, scalable hosting service from scratch with smart as hell people. For those early days late nights, weird prototypes and runny smash burgers. World-class, thoughtful engineers and product work. OG crew and those just getting started.
Working with Isa, to whom I probably speak to more than my own wife. She’s grown, helped me grow and has been a great partner in designing what we have today. Our late nights, reel sharing and me turning her into an alcoholic makes it all the more worth while. Fuck it, throw Dan in there, too. Make sure Dan stops licking the rim of his glasses, its gross as fuck.
Sales, research, user success. Seeing the positivity from the community, sold clients and multiple fundraising rounds, has been super rewarding and exciting to see sprout from the google doc we once had, the rejections we’ve heard and the uncertainty we all face everyday in this volatile industry.
Funding, hustle, growth. Managing and mentoring (sorta). It’s been wild to help scale, interview (nearly everyone) and watch them grow since. I have learned a lot. Startups are hard, take patience and often require a lot of overtime. It’s not for everyone, but the folks in the trenches always seem to survive together, off of each other, because of each other.
After hours, mistakes, WTFs Friends and moments we never expected. Close encounters with strangers, too many cocktails and dry mouth headaches. The stuff linear and AI can’t capture. And sometimes my phone if too much fun is being had.
There’s a lot of you, so please feel free to reach out before I leave. Or connect below.
Until next time
— Alex (Guy on the ground)
THE BUS STORY
I get asked about this a lot, so I’ll tell it here. It was a cold San Francisco morning, around 6 am. The homeless were chirping. The needles, fresh. Still covered in dew. I usually need to get up and trek through the city early enough to get the bus that hits Mountain View Google offices around 8:30 am, which often takes around 1.5 hours. A man wearing Cyclops-style Oakley glasses I’d never seen before opens the doors to welcome the slave 6:45 crew. Keep in mind, I am in a queue of other tech lines for Apple, LinkedIn and everything else headed that direction. Read more in the interactive version below.
STATS
2.5+ years Heading Design
160+ Issues completed
3.0d Avg completion
14 Projects completed
8+ Initiatives
200+ Figma components
50+ Prototypes
∞ Landing pages
40+ Commits / PRs
20+ Offsites
30+ Dinners
100+ EOD updates
35+ Decks
12+ Delayed flights
75+ Espresso martinis
20+ New friends
Multiple Research sessions
1+ Sales connections
WITH LOVE FOR ALL
Tim — poutineer
Isa — patient saint
Dan — mallard
Ga — front end beast
Nico — always on
Groy — frontend bull
Mitchell — quirky shield
Seb — obama translator
Olivia — gatekeeper
Carlos — zen director
Chris — articulator
Gl — silent destroyer
Dave — suave builder
JW — smooth operator
Joj — taskmaker
Ben — gentle jester
Lucio — discusser
DON’T BE A STRANGER
Scope more in the interactive story here.
