Hello Bubs!

Homebirth, Midwives & Becoming the Ultimate Dudela.

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:06:00 -0700

It seems the hottest things in startups right now are babies. More than I can count on my fingers & toes, my founder friends are now fathers (and mothers) too. When Kaili and I got pregnant last year, it created a new interesting chapter in my life as a husband, founder, father and “dudela”.

A doula is simply any person who is there to be of assistance to the mother during her labor. Often this is a midwife in training, another mother, a family member, etc. In our birth, I got to be a doula for Kaili… Or in her words, the ultimate Dudela.

Because of all the movies I’ve seen where a water break turns into a rushed & panicked race to the hospital, followed by a screaming woman… I wouldn’t say I was immediately comfortable with the idea of a homebirth. But after reading a couple books, watching some short films about birthing and having spent a few months with our midwives preparing for our birth… I wasn’t just comfortable with our homebirth, I was excited for it and incredibly proud of Kaili for what she was to accomplish.

It was the most beautiful and powerful experience of my life and it made my relationship with my wife even stronger, and our love even deeper.

Ever since I was a kid I’ve been impressed by Kaili, but during our birth and after I’m miles beyond what can be described as impressed. Seeing her transform into a mother during her birth is something I can’t convey in words. Women are super-human. Not only can they actually create a real living, hairy-headed, fingered & toed, beautiful baby inside their bodies… they are built to deliver it naturally & healthy. Kaili was made to be a mother and being able to be there for her as she realized her destiny was such an honor.

We’d heard that you want to deliver a baby in the kind of place you’d make a baby. For some that would mean a public place that is brightly lit with people standing around, but for us it’s in a comfortable place, warm, safe and dimly lit. The only people we had with us were our midwife, her assistant and my mother-in-law. It all happened in an environment that was peaceful, nurturing and loving.

My wife thinks I was the ultimate dudela. But really all I did was try and be as present and connected to the birth as possible. That meant for the 6.5hrs we were in labor I was squeezing her back or leg muscles. When we were in the tub for the final pushes I was behind her holding her under her hips. For each contraction I squeezed with her. I could feel her body working and opening. I don’t think I could have been closer to the birth experience as a father.

I hope more fathers and mothers-to-be consider having a homebirth. Learning more about it helps wash away the pop-culture fears. A great book to start with is Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth.

And following is my wife’s words on how the birth went…

At 3 am my water broke. Before heading to bed a few hours before, my doula recommended that I walk up and down the stairs sideways to encourage Lele to drop. The technique was a success! Sitting in a puddle of fluid, I smiled with excitement and anticipation for the lil Waialea we would soon meet. I decided not to wake Bubba immediately and try to get some rest in preparation for more consistent contractions. To my surprise, the contractions were already 30-40 seconds long and 4-5 minutes apart. At this rate, there was absolutely no chance of heading back to sleep. I woke my husband and had him remove the crib to make room for the birthing tub. Being in the middle of my 38th week, we hadn’t completely organized ourselves for an early arrival.

Having learned many laboring positions in my birth class, I decided to test a few out. Kneeling on a yoga ball, standing on my hands and knees, sitting, laying on my side, and on my back were all very uncomfortable. Finally, I found that standing upright provided the most comfort and freedom to move and rock through each contraction. My husband was the best Dudela ever! He provided much needed relief by massaging and squeezing my hips. After a few hours and more intense, consistent contractions, we made the call to our midwife Nina and doula/assistant midwife Sasha with an update. They decided to head over since things appeared to be moving along at a nice pace.

When they arrived at 7 am, I had already watched the moon set and the sun rise from my bedroom window. It was so peaceful being home and I felt little discomfort. Nina and Sasha began setting up things for the birth while I clung strongly to the dresser with each surge. They recommended that I go outside and walk around while they inflated the birthing tub. At first, I was reluctant to leave the comfort of the dresser, which seemed to provide perfect support at the time. Sasha encouraged me that a change of scenery would be good. The next thing I knew, I was outside laboring on the bbq grill and various porch furniture. Bubba stayed close behind me to provide counter pressure while I waddled in his XL bed slippers to pad my feet. My mom gently sent me Reiki from the doorway. I felt so completely supported and confident.

After 1 hour, I suddenly felt the urge to push! I called Nina and she directed me to use a panting style of breath to slow things down a bit. I then went upstairs to the bedroom to check my dilation for the first and only time. As I lay on my back, she discovered that my cervix had dilated to 9 1/2 centimeters! I had no idea I was going through transition. Waialea was headed down to meet us.

The tub was not yet full, but I jumped in anyway. My mom boiled pots of water over the stove to help fill the tub as quickly as possible. Bubba snuggled in behind me. The contractions were extremely intense at this point but manageable. I lay reclined against Bubba’s chest with my head over his shoulder during rest periods. During each rest period, I found myself in an unexpected state of relaxation and painlessness. After 45 minutes of pushing, I was able to reach down and feel my lil girl’s head crowning. She had tons of dark, curly hair! She was moving down perfectly. Nina took her pulse after each contraction to confirm that her heart rate hadn’t decreased and all was good. With each surge, she pushed out a bit further then slipped back in a bit during rest periods. Nina and Sasha constantly fed us liquids and placed refreshing cold towels on our faces. Luckily my energy levels were up, thanks to the large breakfast at 4 am prepared by my lovely husband.

I was so ready to meet my lil girl. Nina had been applying coconut oil to lubricate the area while supporting and stretching my tissues. She continued to remind me how to use deeper breaths more focused on my bottom rather than the higher pitched groan I had been demonstrating. After a few more intense contractions, I knew I had to sit more upright. Sure enough, the contraction came, I pushed with everything I had and whoosh she came out entirely as if my body had puked her out of me! I caught her and quickly brought her to my chest. She had quite a story to tell as she took her first breath. Large, loud screams came from a healthy, beautiful girl.

At that point, we all cried with feelings of deep, deep love unlike anything we’d ever felt before. All three of us sat in the tub together admiring our beautiful creation for 20 minutes until her cord stopped pumping all of its blood and nutrients into our lil girl. While Nina clamped the cord, I cut it carefully. Lele remained in the tub with Dad for some skin to skin while I delivered the placenta from the birthing stool. It dropped out immediately having naturally separated from the uterus after the cord stopped pumping. Nina and Sasha helped me to the bed for a quick check up. I had a bit of bleeding, so they applied an anti-hemorrhaging medication directly to the area. Nina discovered two minor mucosal tears which she stitched up on site. What a peaceful process. I received all my care from women I had grown to know and trust in the comforts of my own bedroom without any interruptions or distractions.

Soon after, Bubba and Lele joined me in bed. We all enjoyed a platter of fruit and cheese while I breastfed my daughter for the first time. She was already so strong, so much a person with a voice and mind of her very own.

After hanging out for a while, Nina conducted the newborn screening right there at the foot of the bed. Lele scored a perfect 10 on the Apgar test which looks at appearance, pulse, strength, respiration, reflexes, etc. Welcome to the world Waialea girl. We love you.

What I didn’t expect was falling in love again, a deeper sense of love with my husband. He was so nurturing, so present, and so supportive during the whole process. Together we lead and participated in a blissful birth at home.

*Thank you to Nina & Sasha for your guidance and support for natural, gentle child-birthing practices.*

More than Money... Matter.

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 17:49:00 -0700

The mantra you’re taught to embody at Y Combinator is “Make something people want.” It’s a great one and I’ve been living it since we participated 2 years ago… But I think another mantra is worth focusing on too. “Make something that matters.”

People want all kinds of stuff that probably isn’t best for them, society and our collective future. I want a cupcake right now, but what’d probably be better for me is a beet salad (I love beets).

So many talented, brilliant & creative founders are working on products solely focused on making profits and not on adding meaningful value to the world. My challenge to you is to make something that makes more than money, something that matters.

One could also say that if you make something that really matters, people will want it. So they aren’t conflicting visions.

How to matter: Improve the quality of life for your customers. Help people express themselves, share knowledge & experience, connect in meaningful ways, etc. There is a highly profitable version of every business that also adds value. It may take a bit more work and creativity to build it, but the overall reward is far greater.

Now that Instagram has put Instabillionaires in the minds of so many eager startup founders, I think it’s important to focus on not just the money your company can make, but the impact it can make in the world and in the lives of your users.

Aside from the altruistic reasons to strive to make a product that really matters in the world, there are very practical business reasons to do so as well. Mainly; you’re more than likely to fail. Odds are good you’re going to run out of money and or never turn a profit. …And if you fail focused on making only money, you’ll have completely lost. Fail making the lives of your users better and you’ll still have made the world better.

In my several year journey as a startup founder, I’ve been broke a few times. Double broke. Both my personal and business checking accounts overdrawn. $0 to my name.

If money was all that mattered, I would have given up during one of those lows.

What Matters to Me

From the surface it looks like I’m arguing to do something more than add entertainment value and yet I run a site for naming colors… But what we do is more than that and I’ve been lucky enough to see how we deeply matter to our users. We’re about more than color, we’re about making design and creativity accessible to everyone… And giving them access to it in the most supportive and encouraging place on the internet.

It’s hurt me both times I learned that one of my active members passed away. I didn’t know them, but they invested hours and hours into helping build my company’s community. What hurt about their loss was warmed by the support and love that was shown by the community in that shared loss.

The blog post that I wrote recently to share the news that Sunmeadow, one of our users passed away received hundreds of thoughtful comments from the community and one hit me especially hard:

“This is Sunmeadow’s father. We are so thankful to Symea and Jeremy for bringing this site and our daughter’s involvement in it to our attention. We are overwhelmed by your outpouring of friendship, love, respect, and support for Sunmeadow. We were aware of some of her computer graphics design efforts but had no idea of the extent of the impact she had made.”

And not a couple weeks after I read that comment I got an email from the daughter of the other member who passed…

“I just wanted to let you know that I absolutely enjoy coming to your site to view the tribute that was done for my Mom :) I love seeing her creations and reading her words, as well seeing her fellow Colour Lovers comments. I feel like it’s a piece of her still here on Earth :) and when I have those tough days, this site helps me.”

I am incredibly honored to have had the opportunity to add value to the lives of these members and even more so with the duty to carry on sharing their work with the world. Caring about making something that matters to the world is what has pushed me through the dark days of founderhood… and onto much brighter days of revenue, growth and huge potential.

Make something that truly matters and the money will come.
Believe in yourself that you will get there.

Follow-up thought: Another way people can make the world better while building their company is to make a commitment to a cause they care about and make that cause a stakeholder in your company. I’m a fan of the idea of 1% of Nothing and think more founders should get involved. I’ve committed more than 1% to support my non-profit Hands.org so I’m trying to double my chances of making the world better while building a successful company.

[Discussion on HackerNews]

The House Y Combinator Should Have Built

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:21:00 -0800

It’s hard to critique a model that has succeeded as well as Y Combinator has… So I’ll be clear that I’m not trying to point out a deficiency in YC, but rather an opportunity to make the experience even better. This idea has been something kicking around in my head since we did YC 2 years ago, but then I stumbled onto this amazing repurposed house… and well, it looked liked just the kind of place that could be the YC House. (then I started typing…)

The Y Combinator Community Experience

YC is a heavily curated community; from the selection process of participants to the filtering of the email founders list, it’s curated so finely to maintain the quality. But I would argue that a more organic community experience could also thrive for YC. (granted it would require a thoughtful and dedicated community organizer)

The YC experience now is mostly… Founders get a house and live together for 3 months. Mountain View is highly recommended, but a bunch still live in SF and around the bay area. Some previous batches were independently organized well enough to have a large group of founders end up living in the same building, i.e. the Y Scraper. And founders from that batch have remained very close, reinvesting in each others companies, working together again, etc.

Then there is Dinner altogether once a week. Which is mostly hanging out for 30min and then listening to a speaker talk. The time all together is great, but there is natural competition amongst batch mates and when you only hang out for 30min chunks of time, most conversation is surface level, sharing the best details about product growth, traction, etc.

But when you’re around somebody else all the time, eventually you run out of posturing things to say about your idea / team and you start getting a bit more real. You work together, you joke together, you prank each other, you prepare and share meals together… You become good friends.

And let me say, I have friends from my YC batch, but I don’t feel I have any really strong friendships. We didn’t spend enough time together to build any… and then we all got busy running our companies.

Live/Work & Friend/Founder

I’ve spent a lot of time living with strangers who became good friends. I organized and ran volunteer centers in Thailand, Mississippi, Peru & the Philippines. The model for my non-profit www.Hands.org is to provide the tools, shelter, meals & organization so a volunteer can show up for a day/week/month and be effective in helping people recover from a natural disaster, ie, get yourself there and then we take care of the rest. People think they’re coming to selflessly give and help others, but often go home feeling like they got more out of the experience than they gave. That unexpected value comes from the community experience we curate, between other volunteers and the community they serve.

Some of the lifelong friendships are formed in the out field where volunteers are doing hard labor together, or it might happen back at base sharing a meal and a good story at the end of the day. Whenever it happens, it’s often driven by spending so much time together, sharing a living space and sharing experiences.

There can be distractions when you have a large group of people all in one place. Personality differences can become abrasive… A few rowdy folks can turn a quiet evening into a mess… These are all just parts of normal social interactions and community development. It does take work to manage a community like this, but cohesive output of the group working together is in my opinion well worth it.

There is an element of what I would call Loving Neglect that PG operates YC under. He’s been known to tell startups to be cockroaches (unkillable.) And the approach to housing for YC batches is one of the many small tests of how a company will work. Each year 100+ YC companies arrive in SF and solve the same problem of trying to find housing, spend time negotiating short term rents, finding / buying furniture, etc. This can seem like a lot of repeated time wasting… but I think it’s PG’s first test of “get your shit together.” And I can appreciate that.

But in YC there are plenty of opportunities for early founders to test how well they have their shit together. Housing being solved at the start could save a lot of initial efforts so the focus can be on getting your product shit together.

The Real Value of YC: The People

It really is the people that make YC such a valuable experience. You can find a small chunk of $ and 3 months of time to work on your idea, just about anywhere. But when you have the depth of experience that PG & the other partners have in working with founders & early ideas… a network of hundreds of fellow founders… and the opportunity to learn from the most successful founders & investors in the game… The people make YC such an amazing opportunity.

Post YC, the connection you have to fellow founders is through the email list and at events a couple times a year. The working relationships that have come from YC founders working together has made a huge difference for some young companies.

I would argue that if organized well, a YC batch living and working together would have an even more valuable experience. There are time efficiencies in living, working, eating & socializing all in the same place. And assuming the caliber of all founders in the batch is high, the support and motivation one provides to the other can help solve problems faster, make good products better & open up new possibilities.

Building a Real Hacker Home

I have some infatuation with creative living spaces… the hacker in me, likes to see something repurposed and made awesome. This 4,000 sqft home is built from 12 shipping containers. I mean it’s frickin orange! How is this not a YC residence?

I’ve always thought somebody should buy a crappy old motel and turn it into Startup Housing where founder teams are bunked up in the rooms and the lobby area is turned into office space. This gives teams the private space to sleep / work in, but also the social environment close by.

I’m seriously thinking about building this shipping container house out here on a ranch in Hawaii… Who’s coming out?

[Discussion at HackerNews: Share your thoughts.]

Photo credits peter aaron / esto [More Photos + Details on the House]

Inspiring Others, At All Costs.

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:52:00 -0800

This photo came up on Reddit today and it touched me at the core… As the father of a 3 week old daughter, I am inspired to share moments like this with her; to share with her my passions and experiences. But the more I learned of the people in this photo, the greater I was moved by the story and saddened at the loss.

Sion Milosky was a surfer from Hawaii (Where I’m from). He’s pictured above with one of his daughters. Sion was an elite big wave surfer, who is credited with riding the biggest wave ever paddled into (60+ feet). As a founder, I couldn’t help but appreciate the risk & rush that must go into an experience like that. But I can also appreciate the work it takes to get there.

Every ride is what it means to be alive.

There are a lot of parallels to surfing and being a startup founder. When you first start surfing you paddle way more than you actually surf. You put in a lot of work, sometimes a painful amount of work that will guarantee almost rubbing your nipples off. Then you get good enough to actually catch a wave and try to drop in… and then you learn how not to drown. (I once broke my collar bone on the sand bar after dropping in too late on a decent sized wave.) But when you learn the craft well enough to ride the wave, every ride is what it means to be alive. To be in the moment experiencing every interaction you have with the world and the water you stand on, as it crashes along. It’s a grand philosophical statement, but really… You are using your accumulated skills and experiences in real-time to interact with the world to create your ride.

After being greatly inspired by Sion I read that he died last May at Maverick’s in CA, doing exactly what he was driven to do.

It’s easy to look at the surface of things and say it’s a shame a daughter lost her father just because he wanted to ride a wave. But under the surface there is, I think, a greater message. That a daughter saw her father really live. She was shown a passion for life that few kids are exposed to.

Running a startup doesn’t have the direct threat of life that surfing does, but it comes with other monumental risks when you’re all in it. Entrepreneurship has broken many homes, bank accounts and dreams. Founders fully consumed in their company and the roller coaster of emotions that come with it, have lost touch with the ones they were doing it all for.

But, like a big wave surfer… I don’t focus on the possibility that the wave I’m riding can also drown me. I focus on riding the wave and making it epic.

Amongst the swells of my founder life.

Understanding the risks & rewards that come with the life I live, I’ve made it a point to stay fully connected and in touch with my family as I run my business. Internet companies have one amazing luxury, that not all professions have… They work wherever there is internet. And we have internet here on our farm in Hawaii, where I can run my company and my daughter can grow up on the land her mom grew up on. Where I can have the best possible quality of life for my family amongst the swells of my founder life.

It definitely helps that I’m from Hawaii. I was born and raised here. I moved home, where my passions for hacking & creating were first born. And I am fortunate to have started and run my company remotely from day one, so the culture is baked in that although we’re not in the same room… we’re all passionately working on what we love. Just today a friend was telling me about a new job that he was working remotely and how the company didn’t have a culture that supported him. “Not every company runs completely remote and values their employees over their work output.” To which I responded “If you value your employees you get better output.”

And that value / result formula I think holds true for everything. The higher quality you put in, the better you get back. I’m putting the highest quality I can into my family life and my company.

And that is what I think Sion showed his daughter. He lived his passion and inspired others, and if you die inspiring others… Your body dies, but your mission doesn’t. I’ll carry it on Sion, and do what I can to inspire my daughter, and the world too.

Discussion at HackerNews

I haven’t been drunk in 3 years... and I’ve been partying way more than you.

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:05:00 -0800

I had my last drink of alcohol 3 years ago and it’s been a dance-battling, boat-cruising, skinny-dipping, word-traveling, HUGE party ever since.

It wasn’t a choice of restriction or having less fun, but rather of fully experiencing everything and truly having the most fun possible. The way I pitched it to myself was “You should be able to do all the dumb, crazy adventurous, fun stuff you do drunk… sober. If you’re drunk, you’re not fully there. You don’t remember everything. You can’t experience the adventures fully. You’re half-assing partying!” I took the challenge, but I was in a place where one reflects on life and big changes like this are easier to make.

I had recently been recruited to work in Microsoft Live Labs getting paid $100k+ a year to do a job that didn’t take my full mental abilities. Late twenties. Newly single. Big house. Nice car. In good shape… And then I found out I had cancer under my right eye.

Basal Cell Carcinoma. I was soon told it wasn’t terminal, but having any kind of cancer in your twenties comes as a shock. And it didn’t help that I immediately started searching the web for information… where with anything medical you end up on WebMD which is a choose your own adventure that always ends up with you dieing of cancer.

I wasn’t going to die from this cancer but was going to get a big ol scar smack on my face. If you’re going to get a reminder that life is fragile and you should be living it to the fullest, in the middle of your face is actually a pretty good place to have it. My life had a dramatic moment to help me make a change, but you don’t need to get cancer to change. Every day is a dramatic moment. Every day you have the opportunity to change you life for the better. Tomorrow looks open in your calendar…

My past 3 years have been the most exciting, interesting & passionate of my life. I’ve partied in exotic places on levels that are on par for music videos. I went skinny dipping with the hottest girl from my childhood… and then married her and made a beautiful daughter. I quit my cushy job and went full-time on my startup with $1M in venture capital from top investors. I traveled to Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA, Boston, NYC, Chicago, Atlanta, Hawaii, Miami & Haiti. And I was fully present for all of it. I made those experiences awesome. I owned them. And I want you to experience life the same way.

Wasted

If I write a book about this topic some day I’ll call it “Wasted” because that’s the perfect way to describe both sides of the coin. You get wasted drunk… and totally waste an opportunity. It’s fun beating a game on easy mode… it’s much more satisfying to beat it on hard mode.

Winning a marathon probably still feels awesome, even if you did it riding a bike… But so much better to win the race on your own two shredded legs. Making good love is amazing even if the lights are off… but do it with the lights on where you can see the person with you and remember everything… Now that’s REAL good love.

My point is. Being sober isn’t being a party pooper, it’s about being a party. All the time. If you can achieve this, to party sober and have as much fun as you would drunk… you realize you have the ability to have an awesome time anytime. It’s like finding out you have a party super-power!

And being drunk doesn’t make you more awesome, funny, adventurous and charismatic. It just helps you forget that you don’t think you are.

Lessons Learned About Sober Partying

Permission to Be Stupid.

Liquid courage is nice. It helps you get up the nerve to dance, spark up a conversation, relax… But you don’t need to drink in order to do this. Chances are if you’re in a club/bar, everybody else is drunk. Go ahead and act like an idiot. They won’t know. This is something I’ve experienced several times. Somebody will offer me a drink late into a night of partying, or 3 days into a party-fest and I’ll have to say “no thanks, I don’t drink.” Which almost always gets a “WHAT? Dude you were so fucking drunk the other night.” No dude, you were. And I was just having an awesome time along with you and you couldn’t tell the difference.

Social Crutch.

Twiddling your thumbs isn’t very sexy. Having your nose up in your phone isn’t very engaging. Truth is, having a drink in a bar/club helps socially. It gives you something to hold onto and fidget with. Taking sips allows for pauses in conversations. And cheers-ing people is pretty fun. But that drink doesn’t have to be alcoholic. A bottle of water screams “I’m sober & no fun” to drunk people, so drink something bubbly in a glass. A coke in a drink glass will just look like a jack & coke. (Warning, you can end up drinking several cans of soda in one night which isn’t very good for your body, so I recommend switching it up to something like soda-water with a splash of cranberry and a lime on the rim. Or just soda-water and a lime wedge.)

Bigger Bank Account. Smaller Waist.

In my drinking days, I could put down 8-10 drinks in a night… which can end up being your entire suggested caloric intake for a day. And at $10 a drink, you could save $4k from year of social drinking. And $4k is a trip to an exotic place and a true once in a lifetime adventure.

Best Idea Ever!

I don’t know how many times I’ve been drunk… hundreds? But I can’t say that I ever woke up the morning after and thought… “Wow, I’m so glad I did that thing I did last night. It’s significantly improved my life.“ More often than not the next morning is full of regrets. I for sure haven’t had the best mornings of my life hungover, but top 5 worst days of my life were all recovering from a lot of drinking.

Enlist Your Mates.

It was much easier to sell myself on the change then it was to sell my best friend. “Dude, you’re no fun when you’re not drinking.” Now this is a guy I’ve done countless ridiculous, well-being endangering, hilarious stuff with. And all it took was a shady sex club to convince him, I would get into whatever adventure presented itself, regardless of being sober. (It wasn’t really an eyes-wide-shut sort of thing… more awkwardly sitting in a shady theater laughing at what was going on.) If your friends can’t accept the change they’ll constantly make you not drinking an issue, even though the issue is clearly theirs. My gut tells me a few nights of awesome times sober and they’ll eventually forget the issue, and more than likely appreciate the designated driver.

I Challenge You.

I challenge you to fully realize how awesome life is. To: Party hard. Go on adventures. Make good love. Be bold. Scare yourself. Laugh it up. Be awesome. You already are, and when you can party without alcohol, the rest of your life will become a party too.

~ HackerNews Thread

*Some Photos by Colin Greenleaf & Dustin Rush*

Longer Thoughts...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:52:36 -0800

I’ve been slacking on my writing. We both know this.

Expect more thoughts on…

#Startups #Design #Community #Creativity #Leadership #Non-Profit #Hawaii #Training