Good Partners Are Mutually Assured Execution Devices

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I had a great weekend this week. I took a beautiful lady out to some of the world’s last remaining old growth cypress forest, went to an independent film festival, and skateboarded with some old friends. I completely forgot about what I’d been working on, and instead just enjoyed the weekend.

Meanwhile, my partner was plotting and scheming, and updating our game plan.

On Saturday, he logged into our Basecamp and further refined the initial plan I’d put in place for talking to our initial customers. He’d also written up an initial questionnaire with a list of questions for our target customers. Oh, and he actually built out an initial list for this week with 25 direct contacts we have to discuss our software product with.

Logging in Sunday to the Basecamp to see all the work he’d done, I immediately felt guilty, and started looking for things to cross off. So I chose building an email drip list and installing a simple open source CRM for our customers. And because of his awesome work, I felt like I had to work and do something awesome in response.

We’re working in a positive feedback motivation loop.

We only met two weeks ago, at a hackathon here in Naples, and already we’ve met with some amazing venture capitalists, a potential competitor, and pitched our early product to about 20 highly connected people. Compared to working on your own, there’s just no contest. You need a partner, now.

I don’t have any idea what a wooden structure is, but I’m building a city.

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My people tell me they’re building the houses out of wood, and I heard that wood is scalable.

I can’t tell you what my city is going to look like, but I spoke with a lawyer. He said my vision at least justifies getting a patent started and forming a corporation, and a whole lot of other legal services.

I have a lot of respect for people like you, who know what plumbing looks like; who can tell the differences between concrete and wood structures. I tried looking at them, but my eyes just get blurry.

I need people like you to complete my vision.

My vision is huge, and we’re going to get a lot of money.

I saw your idea for homes, but I just don’t think anybody would actually pay for a house. Instead, I think you should look into giving houses away, and let people pay for upgrades.

Have you looked into advertising?

You could build homes, and then duct tape advertising to people’s walls to pay for building the city.

I don’t know how big my city is going to be, it could be any size, but I’m going to go big and spend a lot of money. It could be nothing, it could be something huge.

Look, I’m going to be honest with you. I need people like you, smart hungry people on my side. People who know what the hell electrical wiring is, and how indoor plumbing works.

I respect what you’re doing, but I just don’t think the market of charging for houses is big enough.

I can’t tell you what I’m building, but would you be interested in working for me?

We’re going to target every aspect of living in a city, and I lived in a city before, so I completely understand the process of living in a city. I’m just missing the builders now.

I hired some people 5,000 miles away from me who I share my vision with. But they just don’t get it, they’re only building what I tell them. They have no eye for details, and couldn’t draw a decent skyline if they tried. I need talent like you to fill that tiny gap.

So, what do you think about wood technology?