Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. -Arthur Ashe
Taking a leap is easy, sometimes swimming back to shore is the hard part.
To escape a strong rip you need to remain calm, keep your feet on the ocean floor as much as possible, and swim sideways until you are safely out of the current, only then can you swim in.
The past twelve months I have been learning, experimenting, consulting, investing, advising, & experiencing. Attic Ventures is where all of this dabbling is currently housed — an innocuous digital halfway house, of sorts. Swimming sideways, but with a purpose, so it seems.
My previous company started in my attic, and in a happy coincidence, this past summer was spent co-working inside another attic office alongside some of the same brilliant folks that were involved in the embryonic stages of my prior creation.
Creative osmosis is the best.
Attic Ventures is currently partitioned into two distinct activities:
Creating & Investing
CREATING
We create and build our own experimental digital projects in spaces that interest us.
After spending much of the past 10 years creating and scaling content for the web, parts of the last year were spent branching out and learning more about burgeoning ancillary spaces; chiefly mobile and the cringe-worthily monikered “Internet of Things”.
Attic set out to explore these spaces through project creation. First learning and setting up development environments, then jumping too quickly into trying to create useful products. A failed early project taught me that attempting to create products, or even worse companies, right out of the gate was the wrong path for Attic circa 2014 — instead we turned our focus to side projects.
In January of 2014 Attic embarked on our most useless project yet, and that is when we began to hit our stride. Instead of trying to solve large, complex business problems we set out to make, Surfbox, a wifi connected box that let me know at a glance if my favorite break was worth the trip.
Meet Surfbox…
Not long after the Surf Box wrapped I came across a story on Spotify Lead Designer Tobias van Schneider side project philosophy.
Here is the TLDNR; version:
In order for side projects to truly succeed, they have to be stupid.
Side projects are great because you don’t need to know anything. You get to be a beginner because no one is watching you and there are no expectations
The only way a side project will work is if people give themselves permission to think simple, to change their minds, to fail — basically, to not take them too seriously.
Surfbox was completed by Attic Ventures in April 2014.
We did a full post production document detailing our learning when the project wrapped and our hope is these learnings will come in handy down the road.
Update: (read this in your best Chris Traeger voice) This story came out literally last week proclaiming the “glance” might be a new “subatomic unit of news”.
Attic is currently working on new side projects and we hope to have one more completed by the end of the year.
INVESTING
We invest in the seed rounds. We are looking for exceptional entrepreneurs working on meaningful products.
Currently we are investing in digital startups and services.
Our first year, was spent studying fund structure, talking to entrepreneurs, investor types, and closing our first couple of deals. Moving forward, we intend to continue to selectively invest out of this angel fund.
Likes: Exceptional entrepreneurs. Amazing co-investors. Compelling prototype, project, or product. Community of customers that love what you do. Equity offerings. Valuations of <5MM.
Check out the beginnings of the Attic Ventures portfolio. It currently skews East Coast — that will most likely continue.
As the Founding Manager, my hope is, eventually, we will make an investment in a promising Attic created project.
Feel free to follow along @atticventures & @mgjohnson.
