Vindication

Way back in February '05, I posted twice about the baseball Hall of Fame.

1. Genetic Algorithms and the Baseball Hall of Fame lays out the research by my good friend David Cohen around the criteria for being elected to the HOF. (The link to his full research got broken in the move from MovableType to Blogger, and I'm too lazy to fix it. Sorry.)
2. Barry Larkin - Hall of Famer (to be) points out that Larkin meets the criteria and would be elected someday.

Yesterday, as is often the case, Cohen's conclusions were right. Barry Larkin has been elected to the Hall of Fame. Congratulations are due to Larkin... and Cohen.

The 6 Things I've Learned in My First 5 Days

Lot18 really is a startup:

1. People are crammed into the office. I can reach out and touch five people without moving my desk chair.
2. Everyone is bleary-eyed and bushy-tailed, especially the Dev team, which just closed out a major relaunch of the site.
3. The people who have been with the company for four months are considered the veterans.
4. What was very recently a record-setting month for the company is now a good week.

But it's very different from any startup I've ever seen:

1. Every day at 5pm, people start drinking wine. Every day. (It took me until Friday to join in.)
2. There are NO water glasses in the office. Nearly everyone drinks their chilled, filtered water out of an enormous wine glass.

Announcing My New Gig

I’m especially grateful this Thanksgiving. After five whirlwind years at TheLadders.com and an exhilarating year at Gilt City, I’ve just joined Lot18 as VP of Product. In case you’re not familiar with the company, Lot18 -- based here in NYC -- gives its members exclusive, limited-time opportunities to purchase directly from wineries, gourmet-food producers and other makers of artisanal goods. If you like good wine and delicious food, sign yourself up right now: http://www.lot18.com/i/aok

I’m tremendously excited to join the whip-smart team here. Lot18 is just a year old, but is already 90 people strong and has grown each month of its existence. The site experience is smooth, the customers are loyal and passionate, and the wineries are sharing their Lot18 success stories throughout the industry. Just before I started here, Lot18 announced a $30 million round of financing from top-tier VC firms Accel, NEA and FirstMark. All the signs point to a huge success in the making, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.

One last note before I let you go: Lot18 launched a corporate-gifting program last week. There are some incredible wine (and gourmet food) packages available for your clients and employees. Check it out here: http://www.lot18.com/corporateaccess

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mediocre Pumpkin

Since I started looking for my caffeine fix, I haven't tried the same thing twice. Today, I took the seasonal route.

Today's Effort: Pumpkin Spiced Latte

Verdict: Meh. Didn't taste like coffee, which is good. But it just wasn't that great. If I want pumpkin (pie) flavor in the future, I'll stick to the Chai Latte.

Old People: My neighborhood Starbucks was rocking out to the Beatles today, and everyone with gray hair was signing along. I'm holding out for AC/DC before I join in.

Yum

It's a beautiful, crisp fall Sunday in NYC. After going caffeine free yesterday, I'm back at it today.

Today's Effort: White Chocolate Mocha from Starbucks

Verdict: Delicious. I'm definitely getting this one again.

Continuous Improvement: Started fall swimming lessons for my daughters today. So fun to swim with them. They love it.

Hot Coffee & Preschool

Chilly morning today. After walking my daughter to her new preschool for the first time (her fourth day, our first walk together), I stopped off at Starbucks for a croissant and some warm caffeine.

Today's Effort: Cinnamon Dolce Latte.

Verdict: Good. Last couple sips were a little bitter, but I'd call it a success.

Morning Highlight: The walk to school was a joy. She skipped and ran the whole way before exploding into the classroom with her new friends, new teachers and Freddie the class turtle. I feel blessed.

Hustle & Grind

If you're starting a new company, you've got a lot of hard work in front of you. But not all hard work is the same. You need to hustle and you need to grind.

Hustle

Hustling is meeting people, getting in front of potential partners, customers, users, journalists, co-founders, teammates, investors, advisors, industry experts, etc. You've got to be persistent, and you have to be selling, always. Hustle is Tristan Walker badgering Foursquare until they hired him... and then quickly closing a bunch of BD deals. Hustle is Alexa von Tobel dropping out of HBS to raise money for Learnvest and hitting the PR circuit. Hustle is Alexandra Wilkis Wilson signing brand after brand after brand for Gilt back in the early days, when it was a new idea no one had ever heard of.

Grind

Grinding is putting your head down and powering through work: coding, building excel models, putting together presentations, answering customer emails, wireframing, thinking through edge cases, writing copy, trafficking ads, assembling data, writing job descriptions, reviewing resumes from (and replying to) job applicants, hammering through all kinds of repetitive tasks that have to be done. Grinding is Michael Shafrir and my kickass community team at TheLadders finding and approving jobs for what felt like 100 hours a week back in '04. Grinding is Marc Cenedella reading all 160,000 customer service emails in our first three years at TheLadders. Grinding is much harder to see, and it's much less sexy. You don't hear about it as much, but that doesn't make it any less important.

You can only succeed when you have both. Hustle without grind means empty promises, and grind without hustle means a ghost town with a fresh coat of paint. The difficult thing is that I've only met a few people who are truly great at both aspects of hard work.

As you're starting your company and building a founding team, this is something you should think about. Who's going to hustle? And who's going to grind? Do you have enough of both?

Me? I'm a decent hustler, but I find it exhausting. On the other hand, getting into a good groove at the keyboard with my headphones on is energizing. When I get rolling, I'll forget to feed myself, and I'll find myself feverishly tapping away at 3am. I'm a grinder.

What are you?