Creating Fast Moments
I live for fast moments. The sprint to recruit and close a superstar…that’s a fast moment. The intensity of raising capital…that’s a fast moment…the breakthrough product idea that changes everything…and the week long sprint to get it into production…those are fast moments in the life of a startup. These fast moments are the days and weeks when everyone in the office shares an elevated heartbeat…anticipation becomes palpable and you can begin to vaguely make out the place that was talked about but previously beyond the horizon…
If I go too many days in a row without a fast moment…I start to feel it. Before I think it…before I analyze it…I can literally feel the slowness in a period of time. I get grumpy without being able to articulate why…I get unproductive without being able to articulate why…I just feel the slowness and it literally interrupts whatever I am doing and says “hey…wake the fuck up…we’re not going fast anymore.” It usually takes me about two or three days of unpleasant feeling to realize what’s happening and then I sit down with a stack of white computer paper…i map out everything that is happening both internally at the company and externally in our market…I find the 3 or 4 fast moments that are waiting around the corner for us…and I steer directly into them.
When I was younger, running Hyperpublic…I would literally try to create these fast moments myself… “not moving fast enough? I’m going to go out there into the world…hunt a giant fucking animal…whatever that might mean…and I’m not coming back until I’ve got a carcass to drop in the middle of the office floor.” That kind of works…but there are many more fast moments than a CEO can create on his or her own. We have such a talented group of people building Wildcard…on any given day…any given person is capable of changing the game…now when I map on that stack of white paper…i’m just trying to figure out who is coming up to bat this inning and what type of pitch represents their next fast moment.
The reality is it’s a 9 inning game…in a 162 game season…and some innings are gonna be slow…sometimes we’re going to have to grind out a 0-0 game until the bottom of the 9th…and sometimes we’re going to score 8 runs in the very first inning…I guess I should be more accepting of the slow moments in the season…but I can’t help it…I just love fast moments…and I’m gonna chase them down until the day I stop playing this game.
Jordan Cooper's Blog: startups, venture capital, etc... 
And …there is no crying in baseball.
sagacityhappens
September 10, 2014
Thanks for giving me the words for this insatiable drive, Jordan. I’m several steps behind you in building my team. If you do a second part on the subject (and I hope you do), I wouldn’t mind seeing a simplified version of your map.
Jason Goodrich (@chigoodrich)
September 11, 2014