My startup is about love

Tired of pretending that this company is about anything other than loving people

I love people so f*cking much.

I have a hard time going to coffeeshops where they know me by name because I end up wanting to party with the baristas, invite them to my wedding one day, and never give them an order ever again.

One time, I racked up tens of thousands of dollars in debt one time training a junior engineer fresh out of coding boot camp because I really believed in her even when I was fighting to pay my rent.

I once gave the shoes off of my feet on the BART to a homeless guy and walked into work barefoot in the rain. He had painful pustules all over his toes and he was crying aloud, begging that someone give him shoes on a crowded San Francisco workday train at 8:30 AM. Some other guy with Italian leather loafers who was tired of the homeless dude’s cries told him “no one’s going to give you their shoes, so just shut up!” How some people can be so fricking heartless, I’ll never understand.

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Not only do I love people so much, I’m tired of pretending that I don’t. So I’m announcing what I actually, truly want:

I want a cofounder. Someone with as big a heart as myself. I want to go into battle with them and fight to the death for them. I want the glory, the power, and most of all the love.

I want an insanely ambitious team of metaphysical misfits, voices in the desert. You don’t have to be in the Bay Area or dress goth or whatever. Show me that you have a big heart, attention to detail, that you’re a little weird, and that you want to fight.

I want engineering managers who, in another life, might have been therapists. I want HR departments that aren’t just CYA factories but that actually work to help and improve people and who remove bad actors, even when they’re economically important.

I want investors who can be a real, genuine friend in a founder’s darkest times. I want influencers and dev rels who talk about alleviating the brutal frustration that is sometimes coding. I want ICs who feel as comfortable writing an AST parser as they do opening up about their fears and aspirations.

I want a hometown, Tucson, that supports me and my ambitions, and that I can pour all my love back into. I want to have kids here. I want to raise people’s voices and help people join this amazing industry called tech for which I’m so grateful.

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Some of what I’m describing goes directly against what’s considered corporate best practice. I really don’t give a f— anymore.

I’ve been working on Scrappy Cash for six months like a hermit, slowly dying inside, convinced that I needed to have a measure of success before anyone would follow me into battle. Now I see that it’s the opposite: build the team first, and then the product. And how can one build a team other than by being exactly oneself?

I’ll leave you with the wise words of Creed, who put on an incredible performance last night in Phoenix. (Man, talk about a misunderstood band.) Never forget that the greatest prison is the one in our own minds.