BUILDING COVER - Part I - The Start
Last modified: 2024-06-27
Whoof -- where to begin...
I graduated in December 2021 with my MBA in-hand and was ready to get back
into startups. Not as early as before but still with a lot of potential. I had
done one of my internships at a publicly traded company and the second at a
private company but with over 2000 employees. Both of these left me missing the
experience I had pre-business school of being able to focus on building vs
"socializing ideas" in an effort to get internal momentum. I just really wanted
to work with some great engineers and designers and build a great product that
our customers loved. I was really happy to find that opportunity in
Deliverr.
Then, under a really strange set of events, I found myself having worked at three
companies led by four CEOs under five direct managers under 18 months. I will probably
cover as much as I can in another blog post but TLDR; Deliverr was bought a month
after I joined by Shopify and then sold by that company a year later to Flexport.
Deliverr was great -- very impressive founders and culture. Shopify was....big. Too big and very slow. Flexport was....Ok, as a disclaimer I need to say that I'm speaking as someone who was there only for four months but also one who is no stranger to chaotic environments (I've missed many a paycheck because the startup just forgot to issue payroll) and I've pulled more than my share of all-nighters to get something ready before a demo.
Flexport was challenging. At the risk of violating my NDA, I'll leave it at that.
I found myself included in a round of layoffs at the end of 2023 (it was a
very good thing) and feeling burnt out on building product. Without going into
too much detail (again, best suited for another blog post), trying to build a
product when the organization is in the process of being sold and resold is like
pulling teeth while riding a horse...on a bumpy road. I was demoralized and
frustrated trying to launch a product when simple things like "What is the name
of our company?" couldn't be answered.* Everything from what style of components
should our engineers build in to what website is our marketing copy going to be
hosted on was up in the air. We would have weeks of work that had to be thrown
out when someone at the top changed their mind about something.
After leaving, I thought heavily about whether I still wanted to work in product. I really loved working with a multi-disciplinary team of engineers and designers and I REALLY love getting to show customers something that we built based on their feedback. But 18 months of trying to build product in a dysfunctional environment left a bad taste in my month.
I needed to rediscover my love of building products. This feels very
self-indulgent to say but hey, I'm a proud "Touch
Feely"
grad after all and more importantly, I really didn't feel that I could be an
effective product manager at any other company without it. I decided I wanted to
try to build a product entirely start to finish.
That product ended up becoming COVER, your pop culture companion.
Background
I consider myself very technical for a product manager. I've worked
exclusively in data intensive products in many different stacks and have written
production code in Go, Python, and Node. I've worked on CLIs, web apps, and data
pipelines, and countless scheduled scripts.
Coming off of building a product that was subject to corporate machinations of a company being sold and then sold again, I wanted to build something that was entirely in my control. But I've never built a product completely from start to finish. I've always had the benefit of working with brilliant designers and engineers to collaborate with. To be honest, that bothered me.
This was a perfect opportunity to build a product that I wanted, build it to be exactly what I wanted, and learn some stuff along the way. Plus, in the time that I had dipped my toes into the world of logistics, a little thing called ChatGPT launched and seemingly changed everything. Having my own product would allow me to experiment with AI and see what all the fuss was about.
I definitely didn't know exactly what I was getting into (which was
essentially the point), but about 100k lines of code later, I have a product
that I'm proud of and that I think is a good start to a larger vision.
What is the problem?
I really enjoy television. I enjoy everything from the trashy drama of
Real Housewives of Salt Lake City to the prestige drama of Succession. I think
the Great British Bake-off is as exciting as Deadliest Catch. I love the
alt-comedy of Nathan for You and I love network sitcoms like New Girl. There is
probably a lot to unpack here but it goes back as far as I can remember. Let me
just say that my love for television goes back to at least the late 90s when I
would watch Friends with a camcorder pointed at the screen before family road
trips so I could rewatch it in the car from the 2 inch viewfinder.
These days, every time I'm at a dinner party, inevitably the conversation
turns to "What are you watching right now?" and there is also something I add to
my list.I think we're in a golden age of television but for me trying to keep up
to date on new shows can feel like a full-time job. Hyperbolic? Maybe -- but for
context, I've currently started 67 different shows and have another 145 new
shows on my watchlist.
Why isn't there an easy way to track what I'm watching, see what's coming up next, and get recommendations based on what I've watched before?
What is the solution?
Movies have Letterboxd.
Books have Goodreads.
But television?
There's no good way to keep track of what you're watching, what you've watched, and what you want to watch. COVER is a platform that allows you to do just that.
(And before you say it, yes I know about Trakt, Serializd, etc. I've tried them and found their UI cluttered and features lacking. They weren't for me. But more power to you if they work for you.)