A story about an entrepreneur
3 part series: Artist + Musician + Entrepreneur
Both of my parents ran a small business. My siblings have/had businesses. My father had a startup that failed. Its in my damn blood that I should do something more in my life then just work for the man.
I struggled with my desire to start anything for years. Its lonely. In 2010 I found a like minded soul that jumped on board with me. We made this game.
It was my love for art, music and games that got me off my arse to make something great. We signed a deal with Chillingo to publish Puzzle Pegs and start rolling in the money!! Right?!? My first lesson. Go with your gut and get your product out there. We decided that the deal with Chillingo wasn’t going to go the way we planned so we pulled out of the deal and Puzzle Pegs went no where.
I learned a ton from the effort. Thus started the itch for creating companies, teams and executing on ideas. Holy shit, I had no idea what I was about to get into.
In 2012 my business partner and I after getting a cease and desist decided to start a company called Gray Squid Division (GSD) — Get Shit Done. It was really a process coming up with a name that has a domain available… you all know what I’m talking about — right? A color, an animal and a military term. Done. Let’s move on.
GSD was all about iOS app development and helping others… No, the end game was to create our own products and retire to the beaches of san juan. Nerds have dreams.
We made a few products within a short period of time. We didn’t know what the lean method was but we were doing it. Build a product in two weeks and launch it. Why not go for trademarking logos, build a website an app and grow a customer base? Get Shit Done.
We had a blast. It was fast and furious nerd style. Since it was two of us we added an artist a biz dev and thought that was plenty of overhead but keep it lean.
8 months after forming the company we sold it.
We loved the idea creating software for hardware and the only way to do it was to stop working on client work. Our products were put on hold. We jumped into the stressful unforgiving world of hardware.
The worlds first touch and pressure sensative iPhone case. It was all about timing and Canopy had the timing.
There are so many incredible videos on Sensus and the team. The coverage on this product over its 3 years was seriously insane.
Like many startups what makes them fail? Market fit? Overall timing of the product? Funding? Team. Canopy’s IP was the team. That team felt the pressure and came to a close with new leadership in the company. It’s like taking a good recipe that’s been working and swapping out real sugar for fake shitty sugar. Its not real. We can all taste its not real. This cookie no longer tastes real. Why eat it?
I’m a believer that in all situations there can be good, no matter how shitty.
Where do you go from here? You pick yourself back up and keep moving on. That’s how I saw it. I started working for another company doing similar tasks that I did with my own venture GSD. However, that itch I had started with was now a rash. I had to keep itching the entrepreneur rash.
During this stage of figuring things out I decided to go back to GSD’s shelf of products. There was one product that hadn’t been touched but was intriguing to me and like any other good entrepreneur I started another company.
Check out We Prototyped the Matrix…
