Should have hired a tech co-founder

Don’t you guys just sell watches? With batteries?

It’s been 3 years. THREE YEARS. And we’re terrible at tech. We’re an e-commerce company that can’t easily show you, our customer, your shopping cart. We don’t have predictive data about what watch color would best complement your collection. We make it exceedingly difficult for you to give us money. You want a blue watch? Just click these 46 buttons and you, my friend, can get a blue watch.

Approximately correct

We’ve had incredibly talented part-timers like David and Sean (when he is “on”, he’s our Tech Director; when he’s “off” he’s Sean the Intern). We had another intern. We have great (like, really great) advisers like Nathan and Abie, and best friends who run awesome ed-tech startups and give us unlimited advice.

And, um, we suck. Like, TEN YEARS suck.

Why is this?

Because I was a History major (Hispanic Studies minor!) and a Deloitte Consultant (actually loved it) and an MBA (Go Bears!) and I don’t know how to hire a technical person.

Business School for Dummies

Because we focused on product (our watches and our customer service) and ignored growth.

This is Sean’s Watch. Not representative of our standard line

Because we found sales in other channels that required late nights of packaging (and lots of manly muscles), but not a pretty website.

Wrapped ‘em myself

But that is all okay! We are able to “overcome” because of a concoction of grind and empathy. We have to work hard to make up for our shortcomings — and we do. And we have to care more than the next business about our customers for them to allow us to deliver a sub-par tech experience. I don’t know if we care more, but we care a lot. Not yet Zappos-a-lot. But a lot. We’ll be Zappos-a-lot by December 2013, as that’s (truthfully) 100% on our road-map.

Not having a full-time tech teammate has also allowed me to play the role of Product Manager and UI/UX designer and know-it-all who knows nothing about designing a website for interchangeable products. That’s fun. It’s unclear if the team thinks that’s fun, but I like learning and I can’t really justify getting a J.D. after I turned my MBA into a career peddling watches.

Young kids take note. PowerPoint was the preferred method for website design in Winter 2010.

Anyway, if you’re talented, come join us.

And if you’re starting a company, even a low-tech customer-service-and-fashion company, hire a tech co-founder.