My Ten Year Plan — Year One, First Half Update

Tibet Sprague
Jul 24, 2017 · 6 min read

It’s been 6 (actually almost 7) months since I released my ten year plan to the world, and I thought it would be a good idea to do a Year one, Half one retrospective and update on how things are going. In short, so far so good!

A friend brought us to get fun tin type photos in February at http://www.kariorviktintypestudio.com

First things first, I launched my new company the Terran Collective with Aaron brodeur and Dor Garbash. We actually started doing business on January 1st, 2017, so the journey of Terran will be be synced almost perfectly with my personal one. In fact I’d say the success of my personal goals are intrinsically tied up in the success of Terran in almost every way. So how has it been? Intense, stressful, and wonderful. I have worked really hard these last months, approaching burnout at times, but I love it because I’m working on my dreams, with brothers that I love and love to work with. We are building a company that is ours, and towards a vision that is big, bold and what I want to do with the rest of my life. We will be sharing more of this vision soon so keep your eyes peeled here.

So far we have focused primarily on launching our brand as a software agency, as well as working on our first product (for now called Heroes of X), which we received some funding to build from the French government. There has definitely been a good amount of stress, mostly about money, as we get our feet under us as an agency while simultaneously building a product, but I think we’ve accomplished a lot in six months time. We launched our website, and our product is already being piloted by several customers, including the Centre for Research and Interdisciplinarity in Paris. Meanwhile we’ve done contract work for Yellow Seed, Swell Energy, IDEO, Mosaic and Demand Progress. With Demand Progress we helped fight for Net Neutrality by working on the big July 12th day of action, which got 2.1 million people to submit comments to the FCC in one day!

Overall we brought in enough income to pay ourselves a San Francisco living wage while only working half time for money, and our future outlook is bright. We are now kicking into the next gear for our product and will be launching more pilots in the coming months with the goal of opening it up to the public by the fall or winter. We have also established a good rhythm as a team, and you can read about some of our daily rituals here. We haven’t made as much progress on our cooperative operating agreements and the longer term visions for the company, but that will come in time. Our goals for the next quarter are: work on finding the right product/market fit for Heroes, establish a good sales funnel so we aren’t scrambling to lock down contracts every few weeks, and get deeper into defining our company vision, mission and structure.

So that’s work. In the meantime I have also been heavily involved in the project of starting a new communal home with Aaron, Dor and six other community minded, slightly utopian friends. This has also gone according to plan! April 1st we moved into a beautiful six bedroom apartment just two blocks from my old house in the NOPA neighborhood of San Francisco. The process of finding the right place for all nine of us was intense, and there were several moments when we were almost ready to give up as a group, but we stuck together and it worked out! Being here definitely feels like a major life upgrade. For one, our house is all around a delightful space to live in, with a sweet kitchen, a big beautiful yard to garden, a two car garage with enough space for storage and a little workshop, a fireplace, and so many other nice details. More importantly, the dream of community living has so far turned out to be just as wonderful as I expected. There are many challenges of course, but mostly I love coming home to an abundance of food and laughter, good conversation, collaboration, deep personal support, and a richness and diversity of interaction and connection that is deeply fulfilling. I will shortly be publishing a much longer piece about the early days of this communal living adventure.

Almost all of our house at dinner

What else? On the most negative side the knee that I sprained back in October still has not healed. I made progress on it through physical therapy, but finally decided to get a second opinion and found out I have torn meniscus. So I’m in for a much longer healing process. 😔 This has been incredibly frustrating, especially building on top of the years I have spent struggling with chronic plantar fasciitis. It is so hard for me not to be able to hike and dance and be active. At least I have a wonderful community of people to stay home with and I am not lacking in play and connection.

I spent most of June on the east coast with my family, and it felt like such a blessing to be able to take that much time to be with them for the second year in a row. This of course is one of the best reasons to run my own company. It was important to go home for many reasons but in particular because my grandfather Harold Chenven passed away a couple of months ago. He was the first grandparent I’ve lost since I’ve been alive, and so it has been a new kind of grieving and a real shift in my life. He was also 97 and lived a full life, so the time was right for him to move on. We celebrated his life through a special event honoring the 35th anniversary of the arts foundation he founded. While home I also attended the yearly reunion of the community I grew up in, and felt a wonderful new depth of adult connection to the people who helped raise me. Then there was the the 65th wedding anniversary celebration for my other grandparents! It was a time to truly honor the wise elders I have in my life, and acknowledge the passing of the torch to younger generations.

Finally, in the last six months American politics have gone crazy. Donald Trump’s presidency is somehow more terrible and disturbing than I even imagined. I truly fear for the future of our planet, and feel less inclined to have kids with each passing month. I still have a lot of faith that humankind can turn things around, but we’ve gone past the point where many people are going suffer and die because of climate change, and we will lose much of the beauty and diversity of our earth. Nevertheless, I have kept up the good fight. Over the last six months I have hosted meet ups to discuss how we could shift our cultural value systems and reinvent our economic systems. I have participated in numerous political actions like the Net Neutrality day of action mentioned above. Furthermore, through Terran we continue to explore how our company can both model a different way of living with each other and the planet, as well as build tools and technology to help others transition to sustainable and regenerative practices that support 100% of the beings on earth.

I guess that’s it for now! A lot has happened in the last six months, and so far I’m right on the path I set forth for myself. So while I may be a bit overwhelmed and stressed, mostly I feel incredibly grateful for this life.

Hello and goodbye!

Tibet Sprague

Written by

Entrepreneur & technologist, passionate about creating the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. http://tibetsprague.com

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade