Smash Notes
Aviel Ginzburg. Startup founder turned VC and a dad.
Aviel Ginzburg is a Managing Director of the Alexa Accelerator here in Seattle, Partner at Founders Co-op and Co-founder of Simply Measured. We talk about the founding of Simply Measured, what it’s like to be a new dad, and how to survive high-stress work while having a baby. As always with other founders we will talk about his startup story and touch a…
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Notes
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Aviel Ginzburg, co-founder of Simply Measured and later a partner at Founders' Co-op, says the move was close to accidental. Soon after college, a startup he was attempting with a high-school friend was not going to happen. They had no idea what they were doing, and their egos outran their ability. He wanted to go somewhere and learn what building a startup and building software actually required. The options were Seattle and San Francisco. He chose Seattle because a friend was already there, and he did not know anyone in San Francisco.
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Aviel came to a Startup Weekend in Seattle not knowing anybody, and left well connected. How did he do it?
He volunteered for a role that nobody wanted, and he did a good job. HIs job, connections, and eventually funding for his startup all followed from a simple act of doing what others would not.
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Aviel new both Marc Nager and Clint Nelsen, and he was the one to introduce them to Andrew Hyde and help negotiate the sale of the company.
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Aviel Ginzburg, co-founder of Simply Measured and a partner at Founders' Co-op, says he splits a startup into three questions, in order: can it exist, should it exist, and how does it exist. He raises them while talking about a team that finally has the resources to test whether it can tackle a problem and prove a market. The point of the order is to settle possibility before debating whether anyone ought to build it, and to settle that before arguing about how to build it.
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Aviel and team founded their company as "Untitled Startup," raised funding without an idea, and did not have a particular idea of what to build.
Eventually they realized they could build a company around Twitter's streaming API. They built a prototype over the weekend, and launched it.
Shockingly, people wanted to pay them for this new product. The team started listening to their customers, and building the tools their customers wanted. They followed the money.
Eventually they changed their name from "untitled startup" to "Simplymeasured."
Now Aviel advises founders to not raise any capital at this stage. He says you should not commit to playing a game, until you clearly know the rules.
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Founders who become VCs often imagine themselves in shoes of the founders who pitch them. In reality though, everyone is on their own journey, everyone has their own issues going on, and everyone's experiences are unique. It helps to understand.
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Aviel says that is an illusion. A parent is more like an advisor. You can't tell your kid what to do, they have their own agenda. All you can do is guide them.
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The first time his kid laughed, unconstrained and magical. That was the point where Aviel realized his baby was really keen on living, on being alive.
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When you have a kid, some parts of your life remain the same, while other change, fundamentally. At some point you have to figure out if you still like your partner, if you still get along. You have to figure out your home life, and at the same time manage how to run your company while also being present around your family. You have to reprioritize everything.
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"For the 1st 6 months, you're gonna be in reactive mode, like if you're trying to learn a new skill at work. I learned a new muscle. It's like lead an initiative. You're not going to be doing it justice, especially for the 1st 6 months, because you're trying to readjust your own life and figure out who you are. So I think being having a good support network and being realistic about what you're going to be able to accomplish and then also practicing the ways that you're going to need toe work rather than suddenly being blindsided by the fact that you have all these other priorities. There's something I would encourage everyone to do, and I definitely have the support network. But I was I was probably missing the other two in ways I should have had." - Aviel.
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Aviel Ginzburg, a partner at Founders' Co-op, says much of his work is decisions: which founders to back, and which problems are worth a founder's time. Working smarter, in his version, means making fewer decisions and making them better, not grinding through more of them. Some issues are not decisions at all. If one choice really matters, the rest may not, and seeing that saves time. He once joked on Twitter that his 2018 goal was to say "I don't care" instead of "I don't know." The joke was about information overload. He would rather skip an opinion than spend the day forming one on every headline, including the nonstop news his parents watched.
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Aviel started taking his family to every one of his work trips. This way he gets to be with his family, and they get to travel.
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Aviel Ginzburg says what he wants most is real conversation with his son. Early on, a baby felt like a drain. Now the child does things that give energy back, and Ginzburg wants to see how his son thinks and who he turns out to be. He jokes that he cannot wait for the teenage years and the long arguments about politics and world events he remembers from dinners with his grandfather and his father. He also says he was not sure he wanted to be a dad. At the start it felt like something his wife wanted more than he did. After meeting his son, he cannot believe he thought that.
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