45 Days — Chapter 6— The Four Noble Professions.

August 27th — Last month I either spoiled the end of this story — although I think the ending has never been the point of a story — or I clued in a lot of people who haven’t been following along recently, and I announced on Facebook that, among other things, Rude Baguette would be changing hands in the near future, and spent some time thanking readers for having enabled me to pursue this crazy dream for nearly 5 years — you can read the post yourself for more emotional detail if you’d like. The comments, messages, emails and tweets have been a great reminder of the memories I’ve made with people, from SF to Sydney and everywhere in between, and reminded me that Rude Baguette actually impacted where people work, where they live, and their ability to pursue their dreams. Damn that’s a good feeling.

Now that the news is public, my ‘next step’ quest went from private conversations with close friends to a number of inbound requests. Having already had a number of conversations on the matter, I already had a good idea of what I wanted to do next. Or no idea, depending on how you look at it.

Ever since that weekend sitting in my office coping, I’d begun thinking about next steps. What do I “want” to do? Am I a “media” guy? What would I do if I could do anything? What am I good at? What could I get better at?

In mathematics, my favorite way to prove something is true is to prove that it being false is impossible. Professionally, I began figuring out what was impossible to see what was left.

I knew freelance or consulting was off the table, because that’s just being the CEO of a one-person company. I hate constantly going back and forth between selling myself and delivering on what someone paid for. More realistically, I hate having to do both those things at once. When I work on something, I need a long-term goal, skin in the game, and the ability to affect the outcome.

I also knew that whatever I did, I needed it to leverage what I was good at (no one hires you for what you suck at), but allowed me to improve & learn in places that could help me later down the road (the goal, of course, being to put myself in a better position to start a company down the road, should the opportunity arise — even if that’s 1, 5, 10, or 15 years later). I know I’m good at building an audience, and decently good at monetizing it (despite bankruptcy, we managed a largely bootstrapped operation for 4 years). I know I’d like to be better at Product Development — we spent 21 months building products, never quite hitting product-market fit (although getting closer and closer each time), and I love a good puzzle. There are other things I’d like to get better at — motivating sales teams, data-driven marketing, design & more — and all this played into a notion I had come to believe over the years, which I call The 4 Noble Professions in Tech:

By the End of May, only two weeks after putting our life-saving event into full motion, the blunt reality hit me: this event could go well, it could go great. But given the situation, it wouldn’t go well enough to carry our debt, to carry us through the summer. The same cash flow issues that had come to fruition today would continue on, and there was too much risk of failing after taking in sponsor money without enough self-reassurance that we’d be able to deliver on what they would have paid for. I began taking meetings to talk about ‘what if I’m not CEO & Founder anymore’ with people. Noble people.

Professionally, nobility is an odd term to use — righteous may be more appropriate to some, who associate nobility with aristocracy; however, having studied the classics in college, ‘noble’ is a term often employed in translation when referring to something of moral positive impact. A noble endeavor, of sorts.

Having spent the last 5 years writing in tech, I have seen every title, every sector, every possible cog, screw, bolt, nut, nail, hammer, wrench, & oil that make this ecosystem turn. It’s becoming stunningly clear that there are only 4 Professions in tech that actually make this ecosystem turn — that either directly or indirectly (that is, enable) employment, innovation, development & expansion (or contraction) of an ecosystem.

Product. Media. Capital. Administration. Everything else is fluff.

I’ll explain those four professionals in a minute, but first let’s look at Everything else — what I called “fluff.”

There are industrial era (and not information era) jobs, which I often equate to -smith professionals (silversmith, blacksmith, leathersmith) in the age of the machine. These are jobs where knowledge is a barrier to entry & not democratically available (unlike like computer science, whose education has become increasingly accessible no matter where you are)— lawyers, accountants, even doctors: these professions exist in a world where having a finite knowledge is an asset. I grew up in the wikipedia era — I’m much less impressed by Jeopardy winners than I am by people who know the difference between a question that can be answered by Google and questions that can’t.

Other jobs are distractions to the ecosystem — coworking spaces & incubators, coaches & advisors — I know plenty of them, and they are great people; however, if you’re not important enough to get an equity stake in the company, then you’re not core to the success. Your’e fluff — often, well-paid fluff, but if money were a motivation, I wouldn’t have spent 4 years writing a blog.

Some are mafias — alternative ecosystems within the startup ecosystem that purport streamlined success to its members, as well as protection from dangers. Business Angel groups are a traditional form of these; however, I find myself continually surprised how these traits unsuspectingly creep into the ecosystem in several forms.

This is all fluff: it could disappear, and maybe the ecosystem would be a little less fat, but it would be there.

I’m of course leaving off noble professionals that go beyond tech, like education — I long longed to be a professor; however, after my first semester of my Masters, I saw the dark political underbelly of academia and decided the best way to be an effective teacher would be to do it not as a career but as retirement.

Sure, there are fluff products, and fluff media, fluff capital, and fluff administration — however, the ecosystem requires these four cogs to turn. I have always been passionate about these four cogs, and could see myself working in any of these four fields.

Tech products are the new Brands. Brands are the new Media.

Working with a great tech startup that builds great technology — a great product — would be a great opporutnity for me to improve my product development skills, if only through proximity to great product builders. Watching how the company approaches fundraising would also improve my fundraising skills. Product & VC are two of my weaker skills (a self-assessment).

At the same time, great technology companies always have this transition point around 50 employees where they have to go from being a company whose brand is their product to a brand that is bigger than their product — Facebook is not Facebook.com, Uber is not an app. These companies became brands that stood for connection, transportation, the future. There are a lot of similarities between what it takes to build a solid media brand — consistent editorial line, staying on-message, knowing what you are & are not — and building a strong company brand.

Where they differ would be the most exciting problem of all to learn.

Media. Need I say more?

What I hated about media: no money, no budget. Working with a media that has an established revenue line and yet maintains editorial at the core of its brand would allow me to continue what I started.

Not much more to say here. I would become a ‘media’ guy for sure.

What is a journalist if not a VC who is between funds?

Capital has always been very interesting to me. I often say that founders should treat journalists the same way they treat investors, and that journalists invest in startups with their words (when they are good) — dumb money vs. smart money, am I right?

As I began talking to investors, there are definitely some core differences — namely, neither seems to understand what happens behind the scenes of the other’s job; however, the next adventure is always about learning something new, improving weaknesses & leveraging strengths. VC in Europe as a whole lacks brand — the biggest funds are quiet oligarchies, knowing that the less they talk, the stronger they are. Many smaller funds dream of being one of the Tier 1 players; however, imitation may be flattering, but the only way to dethrone an incumbent is through innovation.

The opportunity to build the brand of a VC firm, product A16Z-level content & create value where most VCs fall short — that’s a challenge I could get behind.

Politics — the last great frontier for innovation

Writing the Rude Baguette afforded me a lot of opportunity to speak with politicians. Government feels a lot like a large corporation — in France, the two are half-siblings, with most of France’s largest companies being spin-offs of government entities with similar org charts — however, where Europe’s corporations are playing a small role in the startup ecosystem (with few exceptions), the role of government has been, is, and will be a huge factor (or hindrance) in the future of Europe’s information economy.

I have been quite vocal in the past about my political views — I bern in the US, whereas I lean towards smaller government in France — each country has its own needs, after all.

Elections in the US, France & Germany in the next year will define the next 4 years of our global economy — that’s 3 of the G8 changing executive power, which can completely change the tone of how each country addresses, among other things, the information economy.

I have a not-yet-candidate in France that I’ve been pretty vocal about, and think that anyone who wants to see change needs to put some skin in the game. I would’ve never worked on the US presidential election — a friend of a friend visiting in Paris this summer who worked for one of the primary candidates confirmed my worst fears about that experience — however, I feel a strange responsibility to put France on the right track, even if the French themselves don’t see the problems staring them in the face.

Interviewing to learn. Next Steps. Farewell.

Over the past 3 months I’ve sat down with venture capitalists, media executives, startup founders & politicians to talk about what fascinated me about each area, to see what opportunities were available to someone like me (whatever that might mean). The conversations were enlightening — at any given time I’ve been 100% convinced that I had made the right choice that one of the four areas was definitively where I was going to go next.

Ultimately, however, I ended up ruling out each are one by one until it became clear that I had only one path forward. In politics, I don’t want to work in US politics & I can do more outside the system than inside the system in France. With media, I can only say that I have grown a bit tired of the media landscape. I hope to look upon it with fresh eyes in the future, but, for now, the same walls have cropped up too many times to ignore, and I’m more excited by writing about non-news-dependent topics and attending events instead of organizing them. For VC, I saw a greater opportunity to build up a brand of a VC than to actually become a VC, and, given the option, I’d rather build up a tech product brand than a VC brand, so why settle for second best?

So, last week I started working at a Paris startup, the name of which I’ll share in the coming weeks. It has occupied more of my time this past month than I expected — hence the delay in posting — and there are so many more stories left to be told, which will be told in due time.

I began this exercise of writing about what I can only describe as the most emotionally exhausting 45 days of my life for a variety of reasons. Catharsis, above all, but not just. With the Rude Baguette, I always strived to not shy away from a story just because it was hard, or because it would hurt feelings. The intention was never to hurt feelings, of course, but if a story was there, being discussed at water coolers, I wasn’t going to shy away from it just because I knew the founder, or it would impede my professional relationships, or because “we just don’t talk about that in France.”

Likewise, it seemed only appropriate that the last story I wouldn’t shy away from would be my own. I wanted to keep things private, so I didn’t. This stream of consciousness helped me process what went wrong, how I handled it, and helped me get through to the next chapter of my life.

It was closure for me. I hope it provided some sense of closure, satisfaction, or condolence to you, the reader.

Fin.