January 2nd, 2021
Has the past year felt a bit like groundhog day to you? For most of the year, it has been a cycle of waking up, stumbling to the kitchen to brew coffee, and then sitting down at the desk to start work. In many ways, it has been a highly repetitive year.
And in the monotony, it’s been pretty easy to fool myself into thinking that the year has been stagnant.
But — when I look back at the year in totality — it has been a pretty damn good one. It feels weird to say that. Especially given how many people in my life are out of work, struggling without daycare or school, and battling with isolation and depression. I feel incredibly lucky.
Given that I was a remote worker prior to the pandemic, I was able to transition pretty easily to quarantine life. And being able to keep focused on work was a great distraction from the stress of living in NYC during the first wave of COV-19. It was something within my control — and I could focus on projects when I didn’t want to think about the morgue trucks parked on my block.
But let me take a step back… For the past several years I’ve written an annual reflection. I have a version of this that I keep for myself — focusing on things that went well, things that didn’t, and what I want to focus on for the new year — and a version that I publish to keep my friends and family up to date with my life. I realized that this year that all of my previous reviews have been grounded in the meme of travel as forward motion. I’d look at all the places I went and reflect on the journey and the things I learned. Travel, unlike almost anything else, has the ability to create a deep sense of reflection. My past reviews have used travel as a foundational measure of where I have been and what I’ve done. Exploring new places and new ideas have been both a catalyst to my life and an opportunity to reflect on what I’ve done.
Well 2020 was light on travel. But it was not light on growth. And I’m excited to share with you what has been going on in my world for the past year.
Work
At the start of the year, I was freelancing full-time across several early-stage tech projects. Many were a continuation of the work I had done in the previous year. And all, in all, it’s been a fun and interesting year applying technology to some really interesting projects.
These ranged from launching the first Professional Athlete Investment Token as a bond on the Ethereum blockchain. To helping a founder get LumiSpeak — a remote-based coaching app for people with speech disabilities — off the ground. To helping my family’s restaurant adapt to COV-19 by launching new offerings. I even recorded a sample podcast on Blockchain — let me know if you would like to hear more!
One of the biggest achievements of the year was working with Spencer Dinwiddie. of the Brooklyn Nets, to launch the first Professional Athlete Investment Token (PAInT). After announcing the project in October of 2019, we had a few delays that led us to launch the bond offering on March 12th. Successfully closing the offering and selling 9 tokens at a face value of $150,000 was a huge win. And I’m excited to see that Spencer is evolving the concept with his Calaxy platform.
While most of 2020 was spent as a freelancer, I am thrilled to be full-time on one project — Blocknative. In July I became a full-time employee after contracting for about a year and a half. This was possible because we raised a new round of financing. An intense process of listening to our customers and shipping product helped us to establish ourselves as the foremost experts in the mempool. And we now count some of the top blockchain projects as our customers — which provides a huge learning advantage as they push us to dig deeper and produce better products.
Since becoming a full-time employee my role has expanded from product-marketing to head of strategy. My focus ranges from product-positioning and copywriting to hiring and scaling the team.
As a fully-remote company that has been rapidly scaling and evolving our product roadmap, keeping alignment across the team requires a great deal of effort. One of the things that I really connected with as a contractor was that the CEO would share the Board Slides every quarter on an all-hands — to keep the team aligned with leadership. And every week, on our standup, our team spends a lot of time talking about what we are learning from customers — via sales calls, support channels, and more. This investment in organizational alignment has been crucial to helping our team — product and go-to-market — stay aligned as we evolve our product.
Looking ahead to this next year, I’m excited to be part of a high-growth team. We’re quickly scaling. And the team has grown quite a bit over the past few months. I’m excited to dig in and see where the next year takes us!
Relationships
There is nothing quite like living in a tiny Brooklyn apartment during a global pandemic to stress test a relationship.
Intense cohabitation.
After about 11 months of living and working in a 1,000 square foot apartment — I feel like our relationship is stronger than ever. Lots of communication (and noise canceling headphones) helped us to navigate the new norms. And I couldn’t imagine living through the pandemic with anyone else.
And while we started this year as boyfriends, we ended it as husbands. We got engaged on the day NYC shut down due to COV – and we originally planned to get married once the world returned to normal. But then RBG died. And Justice Roberts issued a public statement telling us that same-sex marriage violates religious freedoms. While Amy Coney Barret was getting confirmed, we applied for a marriage license and wrestled with the decision to elope without any family present. On the day we chose to elope there ended up being a blizzard and we shared our vows on the top of a mountain in Colorado with the light of two cars (don’t worry, I’ve submitted a full write-up to Modern Love).
2020 has been a wild ride — and I’m lucky to have Kaleb as a partner as we navigate it.
Giving back
This year I became more involved with ReadWorks — a non-profit that builds tools that help over 17 million students. 65% of all 4th graders in the U.S. cannot read and comprehend at grade level — and this problem is only worst in America’s most underprivileged schools. As a member of the Young Professional Board, I’ve been able to consult on marketing and work on some new fundraisers (look out for our 2021 initiative). Since I started my career in EdTech, I really enjoy keeping this work going — it is high leverage and high impact.
I also went Carbon Neutral in 2020. For relatively short money, I’ve been able to reduce my carbon impact and fund some cool projects. I was shocked to learn that despite living in a small apartment and relying on mass transit, my CO2 emissions were more than double the world average. I divided our household’s impact between Wren — where my monthly contribution is paying for tree planting across the Sahara Desert — and Climeworks — which is building technology to capture carbon out of the air. I love the mix of a proven technology (trees) and moonshot projects. And I have been surprised at how this monthly payment has made me more conscious of other ways in which my daily habits impact the climate crisis. We are past the point of burying our heads in the sand and leaving the climate for the next generation to figure out. Prudent cities and states are starting to pass funding measures to harden infrastructure against the wave of climate change-related impacts. Colorado may be the first state in the country to require all cars sold to be electric. And Denver just passed a measure that will provide $40 M per year in funding to reduce emissions and prepare the city for the impacts of climate change.
Adventure
2020 might have been short on travel. But it wasn’t short on adventure. For the start of the pandemic, we didn’t leave a 5 block radius of our apartment. We spent a lot of time exploring Prospect Park and Greenwood Cemetery. But one of the most surprising things about the start of the pandemic was how I was able to reconnect with friends I hadn’t seen or spoken with in months (or years). Yes, zoom fatigue is real. But well-curated and crafted events online can be rejuvenating.
In looking back on the year there were two standout series of virtual hangz:
- What’s In Your Fridge?! Lockdown Edition. — Our friend Leah organized a great series of virtual cooking events where 12-20 people would zoom in, show what’s in their fridge, and then compete for the best-cooked dish. Some people had nothing and seamlessed in food. Some made fun desserts like maple bacon ice cream. Structured online events go really well.
- Our friend Sarah organized a series of virtual hangs with friends over the pandemic. I LOVE the format. She starts with quick intros and then throws deep prompts at the group before breaking everyone into small, breakout rooms. In 30 minutes you’ve been in 3 rooms with 10-12 other humans and feel like you actually know them. And then when the group comes back together there is a sense of social cohesion and usually some fun storytelling games. Sarah is a pro at organizing people and building community.
And while NYC in a pandemic was a ton of fun… as our lease came to an end we quickly decided to leave the city and move across country. We bought a car, leased an apartment (sight unseen) and drove across country to improve our quality of life. Denver had been on the roadmap for a while, but the pandemic gave us the opportunity to expedite the move.
And since we’ve been here, almost every weekend has been spent hiking, now shoeing, or snowboarding. It’s been pretty incredible.
Creativity
I’ve always found work to be a great creative outlet. Working at the intersection of marketing and product for early-stage technology companies has been a fun and fulfilling career.
This past year at work has involved a lot of writing – mostly published publicly on the Blocknative blog.
I’ve also been drawing more as of late – partially due to the recent purchase of an iPad and Apple Pencil. The combo makes illustrating much more accessible and has been a great way to spend an evening. I have published illustrations of terrible (great) puns on instagram.
Books that made my year:
I was a few books off from my goal this year, and most of my reading was fiction (most of that was sci-fi). I found this year I needed a bit of break, and to spend time enjoying a book and getting outside of my head and the current events. If you’re looking for something to read this year, might I suggest:
- COVID-19: The pandemic that never should have happened — how has decades of underinvestment in public health led us to this point? Is COV the start of a trend? This book feels like a must-read for everyone who lived through the last year.
- Stillness is the key — Stoicism at its best. I found this book to be a thoughtful reflection on stillness and what it means to be in motion vs. at rest. How can we slow down so that we speed up?
- White fragility — this was a tough read. But a necessary one given BLM and the national dialogue on race and privilege.
- The almanack of Naval Ravikant: a guide to wealth and happiness — my friend Eric spent years compiling this book. It is a great deep dive into some core areas of life.
- A new program for graphic design — this practical guide is a deep dive into the history of design and how design informs every other discipline.
- XX — this sci-fi novel is unlike anything I have ever read before. If you want a wild read, with incredible typography, give it a go!
Products that made a huge impact in 2020:
- Starting Strength — at the start of the year, Kaleb and I did a 12-week strength cycle at CrossFit South Brooklyn. Three times a week we would hit the gym and progressively add weight to all the major lifts. At the end of the cycle, I was the strongest I have ever been — right in time for gyms to get shut down. But having that foundation of strength made it easier to go into lockdown and transition to other forms of fitness.
- AloMoves.com — for most of the pandemic we have spent every Thursday evening doing a zoom yoga class with some friends. Alo is a treasure trove of incredible classes — and the first time I’ve ever wired deliberately on connective tissue (fascia).
- Talkspace — all of the smartest people I know go to therapy. For years I’ve thought about it as a tool for self-reflection and introspection — a place to talk through what is top of mind with an impartial third-party who is literally there to call you on your bullshit and point out patterns you may not notice. Blocknative made a three-month trial available via our healthcare this year, and it’s been a great way to talk through what has been a chaotic and challenging year. Use this link to get $200 in credits and give it a try.
Looking ahead to 2021
Over the past few years, I’ve shifted from making resolutions to setting areas of intention. I am beyond excited about the challenges of growing Blocknative over the coming year. We have an awesome opportunity to build a core piece of infrastructure in an emergent sector. As a whole, I think 2021 will be a takeoff year for the blockchain ecosystem — and we may see our AOL moment and begin to have mass adotoption.
I have been thinking a lot about two blog posts during the holiday down-time — the 100 hour asset and this 2 x 2 grid for choices — as I look to what skills I want to develop further these are helping me to refine my thoughts.
And I am holding out hope for a return to some travel during the back-half of the year.
Let’s make a ruckus in 2021 =)
-Sean
p.s. how has your year been? shoot me an email, it would be great to catch up.