Why I Left Everything to Work at Chewse (and Why You Should, Too)
You spend the majority of your waking moments with the people with which you work. Assuming you’re working a 9 hour day, you’re probably spending roughly 2100 hours a year with them.
In that same amount of time, you could:
- Watch the entire Breaking Bad series 33 Times.
- Walk from SF to LA and back at a leisurely pace 8 times.
- Read Infinite Jest 66 times.
I’m obsessed with spending my time wisely. I get uncomfortable and unhappy when I feel like I’m wasting time. So far, I’ve spent about 2100 hours working with the Chewse team, and I can’t imagine a better way of spending that time.
I work in early stage start-ups because I want true, honest growth. I want to be better, more effective, and provide authentic value. In startups, there’s no hiding if you’re ineffective. There’s no one else to drive the growth of your company — each person has a profound effect over the growth and trajectory of the collective team. Because of this, entrepreneurship creates a very intensive, accelerated learning environment. Time is precious, and the amount of work to do is endless, so entrepreneurship necessitates quick action with limited information. The consequences for being wrong can be pretty devastating.
I work at Chewse because growth often comes from instability, uncertainty, and surviving tough times. Getting through that requires a strong team. Entrepreneurship is fucking hard. It’s supposed to be. It’s a profession where you’re dealing with constant ambiguity; you’re trail blazing. Times will be more shitty than they will be good, and we’re all social animals: when things are tough, we look for solace in others. Strong bonds are formed when a team is under extreme pressure — just look at the bonds formed from military boot camps.
Warren Bennis, a former professor of mine (and academic leadership guru), coined the term ‘crucibles’ to explain the transformative period of time that shapes leaders.
“…the crucible experience was a trial and a test, a point of deep self-reflection that forced [leaders] to question who they were and what mattered to them. It required them to examine their values, question their assumptions, hone their judgement. And, invariably, they emerged from the crucible stronger and more sure of themselves and their purpose — changed in some fundamental way.”
Startups are, quintessentially, shared team crucibles. When your startup is running out of money, you and your team have been working 16 hour days for weeks, and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, you’re experiencing a crucible. When you’re exhausted at the end of the day, you better love your co-workers. Who do you want to fight in the trenches with? Who is going to carry you when you can’t walk anymore? Furthermore, when you rise out of that crucible, who better to celebrate than with those that slugged it out with you? It’s with these people that you’re spending 2100 hours a year.
I moved from Los Angeles with 48 hours notice, leaving behind my first startup I built for 3 years, a girlfriend of 6 years, a city I loved, and a family of friends in order to join Chewse. I gave up a lot to build something great with a team of people whom I truly believe can achieve greatness. My life before Chewse was fine. Good, even. But, looking back, I wasn’t pushing myself and didn’t feel I was growing enough.
It’s been just over a year since I moved up to the Bay to join the Chewse team. I have grown tremendously as a result of spending my time with the team at Chewse. The following is just a taste of what I’ve learned in the past year:
- An understanding of startup financing — what it takes to go from an idea all the way to a billion dollar company, and how the investment ecosystem works. (Chewse raised $1,000,000 in March 2013)
- How to be good at cold calling, and learning how sales can play an integral role in an early stage tech startup. (At this point, I’m pitching to 60-80 companies a month, some of them closing on the first call. I used to dread even making scheduled phone calls)
- How to build sustainable, non-vain growth. (We’re doing 10x what we did a year ago…and the past 3 months we’ve averaged 70% Month Over Month growth)
- How to identify the Key Performance Indicators that matter (Our mentors have taught us frameworks that took Facebook from 100M to 500M users…and it works on pretty much any business)
With my first startup, I learned more about growing businesses in the first year than in my entire 4 years at USC. During my first year at Chewse, I feel like I’ve learned more than my entire 3 years of building my first startup. This accelerated growth of learning would not be possible without the unique mix of traits and teamwork that makes working at Chewse outstanding.
Chewse is an exceptional place to work if you’re interested in genuinely growing personally and professionally, because the team has a unique combination of characteristics. Much of this stems from our co-founders Tracy Lawrence and Jeff Schenck, who embody all of our culture principles and provide such a balance as a team. Tracy is a masterful storyteller — which is a powerful skill to have as our CEO and leader. Schenck is such a great generalist of a CTO; he understands the tech, the business, the design, and how it all interweaves. Together, they provide an evenness of perspective that serves as a great foundation for the rest of the team. They drive our culture, and our three pillars of culture at Chewse: passion, integrity, and community.
Each of these culture points means something slightly different for each person within the company. The following is how I interpret our core culture principles.
Integrity: We care for each other, our customers, and our partners. We want to provide actual value in this world, and we don’t want to do it if it involves compromising our morals. There’s no feigning strength, or vanity metrics — we lay ourselves out there to the world, vulnerable, because we have nothing to hide.
Passion: Sure, we love food, but we love a lot of things. We are passionate people. We get nerdy about things we love, whether it’s Markov algorithms, komboucha, or crossword puzzles. We love talking about these things passionately, sharing with other people, and always, always wanting to learn more.
Community: We want to create community through food; that’s why we break bread together every Thursday evening for our Team Syssitia. Food has always been a way to bring people together, and we celebrate that constantly at our company, not only with the service we provide to others, and our environment in the office. We’re a community because the work we do is so challenging. We need a strong community to support one another, push each other harder, and carry each other through this crucible.
Working for Chewse is not for everyone. In fact, it’s probably not for most people. You definitely have to be a special type of person to endure the hard work and uncertainty of startups. But, Chewse is the perfect environment those that want to experience true, meaningful growth with a team of great people.
There’s too much to see in the world to stop learning. Do what scares you. Be uncomfortable. Stability can create complacency. Mediocrity is boring.
If you want to push yourself harder, learn more, be better, become stronger, then come work for our team. Send me an email right now at jeffokita@chewse.com. We are always looking for fantastic people to join this dream team.
We would love to have you.
