Stay Healthy. Stay Safe. Stay Sane
Serial entrepreneur and investor Joe Cohen on his daily habits and what the future might look like post Coronavirus
This the eleventh interview in the Beyond Work series looking at how founders and innovators work from home during the global pandemic of Coronavirus. In this interview, we remain in London and catch up with entrepreneur and investor Joe Cohen.
Originally from Cleveland, USA and now based in London, Joe Cohen is a serial entrepreneur and investor. He founded online ticket marketplace Seatwave in 2006 and, as CEO, grew it into a hugely successful marketplace for selling and buying tickets to sports, music and cultural events. The business was acquired by competitor Ticketmaster in 2014.
Joe was also Global COO of Match.com, responsible for the operation and successful technology-driven expansion of several online dating businesses (under Match.com umbrella) across 43 countries and 18 languages.
Joe went on to found Property.Works — an online marketplace for commercial property. Joe is now an avid investor and holds numerous board positions including a non-executive board position at Sofar Sounds.
London, England
What does a “typical” day look like for you?
7:00am: Get up
6:30–7am: Coffee and look at news/twitter
7am: Listen to daily Daf Yomi podcast
7:30am: Wake children
9am: Stretch and exercise: working on two challenges here and here
10am: Take dog out through the Heath
11:00am: calls with company CEO’s and investors
12:30pm: Lunch — I am doing 16 hr calorie restriction most days
1pm: Continue calls and Zoom meetings
4pm: Reading
7pm: Dinner — one benefit of the quarantine is having dinner with family every night
8:00: Reading, also watching The Last Dance
10pm: Sleep
How has Coronavirus impacted work/life?
All the companies I work with involve people physically coming together so they all have been changed immeasurably at this point. Working from home has made me consider other people’s home lives a lot more. I see them in their homes, with their families and all parts of our lives have merged together. I have also been speaking with geographically distant family members and friends more frequently. I speak with my father a lot more which has been a great change. He recently moved into an assisted living facility so my siblings and I are helping him to adjust and worrying about his health. He’s ok. I am more grateful for small things like Sky Broadband delivering 45Mbps consistently.
What productivity tips have you found useful whilst working from home?
In terms of productivity tips, I have been using Bear for a few years and I have found it to help me keep my notes organised and easy to refer back to. I find it impossible to find tweets that I want to read a link later so I now just like all the tweets to articles I want to read. Easy to find my likes. I try to complete things in the now so I don’t have a backlog of to-do’s.
Also, the time at home has given me the opportunity to listen to Wagner’s Ring Cycle from end to end, something I’ve not done before [it’s 17 hours]. I also am midway through Shelby Foote’s narrative of the American Civil War. Nerdy, right?
What five books would you recommend during this time at home?
Books are so personal, so I find recommendations troublesome unless you know someone’s taste. I read much more non-fiction now, but I try mix in fiction as well. I am a bit obsessed with John LeCarré and have read most of his books several times.
A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O’Toole a
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges by Nathan Englander
Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido
Dog of the South by Charles Portis
When this is all over, what will the opportunities look like?
How is the unevenly distributed future accelerated?
- Highly distributed food manufacturing — paradigm shift, think about the shift from bringing ice out the Lake District on a lorry to London >> having an ice maker in your freezer. Food will go through this transition in the next decade.
- University education has restricted access in an effort to raise fees and scarcity. Now the brand value is shifting from universities to individual instructors. Instead of applying to be accepted at a prestigious university, students will choose the best instructors from around the world for each course. The NBA went from a league of teams to a league of superstar players. Higher education is going through this transition.
- The shrinking of government in the US and UK is problematic in many ways and also creates more opportunities for businesses to step into the space government has vacated.
- Onshore manufacturing of goods that will be considered a strategic asset (that were not before Coronavirus)
- The biggest problem the developed world faces is a crisis of the spirit. Can we move from a society that venerates conspicuous consumption back to one that values relationships, community and being part of something bigger than ourselves? There will be an acceleration of the fundamentalist trend in Abrahamic religions but that seems more a reflex then a way forward.
What will?
Finally, one last thing I think about a lot — “the work is not ours to finish, but neither may we desist from it.”
[“You are not required to finish your work, yet neither are you permitted to desist from it” Rabbi Tarfon quote taken from Pirke Aboth, or The Ethics of the Fathers.]
