Smash Notes
Jonathan Sposato challenges the meaning of the American Dream.
Jonathan Sposato is a Seattle entrepreneur, investors, and a community activist. He is a chairman of Geekwire.com and Picmonkey.com We talk about his childhood and what it was like to be growing up in a mixed family, in a time and place when that was definitely not the norm, and how that shaped his life and his outlook on the future. We talk about…
People
Notes
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Jonathan was born in London to a Chinese mom and a Korean dad. Due to circumstances, his mom ended up raising him on her own. At first, they lived in Brooklyn Heights, NYC, and although it was not quite a ghetto, it was not a great neighborhood at the time. They were poor, and unable to provide great care to Jonathan, his mom sent him to live with grandparents in Hong-Kong.
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Even though Jonathan did not speak Cantonese, nor did he really know much about Hong-Kong or his grandparents, he says it was a fantastic experience. He learned a lot and got to meet his extended family.
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Jonathan Sposato wrote a book about this called Better Together , in which he talks about gender and how we can do better in the business by having more women be in positions of senior leadership.
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Having some luck in life enabled Jonathan to feel very grateful for what he already has, while giving him grounding to not take things for granted and to always appreciate how far one can go. He knows first hand how much impact one can make even by simply helping others to have a sit at the table, so to speak.
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Microsoft taught their employees to be great engineers and managers, and marketers and strategists and technologists, but very few had any kind of mentoring on how preserve wealth or to be philanthropic with it.
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Jonathan says he knew he had a mom, that she lived in New York, and that she would send back money and Christmas presents, but he did not actually see her for six straight years. However, he has nothing but fond memories of his childhood in Hong Kong, growing up in a massive city, gaining independence, learning a lot.
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Jonathan's mom married Dawn Sposato, who subsequently adopted Jonathan as his son, and to honor that gesture Jonathan is keeping with his Italian last name.
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When Jonathan arrived back to the US, after more than six years abroad, his parents made an effort to make sure he felt welcomed. Non-the-less, it was still the suburbs of Edmonds, Washington in the 1976. People didn't know what to do with a family of a Caucasian husband and an Asian wife.
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Jonathan Sposato told Geek at Sea he does not condone fighting, but he has told his son that if another child hurts him physically, he should punch back. The lesson is that a bully can become a shrinking violet once you hit back, and that you then have to use that power fairly. He limited it to a pattern of bullying where the other child hits first, and he would give a daughter the same permission. Host Kirill Zubovsky, who grew up in St. Petersburg, said he had already implied the same rule to his four-year-old. Sposato tied the view to growing up as the only child of color in Edmonds, Washington.
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Jonathan Sposato told Geek at Sea that the lesson he wants most is for a child to stand up for other people, not only for himself. When his son, about ten, says the group made fun of a girl, Sposato stops him. He asks why she deserved it, why everyone jumped on one person, and how it would feel to be that person. Many against one is probably unfair, and the boy should ask whether he had to join. Schools now teach children to recognize bullying, which he welcomes, but it still happens. Talking about it plainly with a ten-year-old matters more than sealing childhood off from it.
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Jonathan Sposato told Geek at Sea that children can hear adult subjects if you bring the words down to their level. He pointed to a TED talk, How to Teach Your Kids About Consent. Consent is not only about sex. It is a question of power and of rights, and you can explain it to a six-year-old by talking about friends. His example was the drive to school with NPR on. When the news is about sexual harassment, he does not change the station. He says a body belongs to that person, and nobody touches it without permission. He uses the same plain style with his ten-year-old when the subject is bullying.
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Jonathan Sposato told Geek at Sea he bristles at lining up his son Holden's first job, then first and last month's rent, then a down payment. He knows houses cost more than they did in 1989, and he does not look down on parents who give that help. For Holden he wants the satisfaction of having earned it himself, which is what Sposato means by the American Dream. Host Kirill Zubovsky said that after college he moved to Seattle to start a company rather than take a stopgap job at Starbucks, and that he can also see why a parent would help buy a house.
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Decisiveness (or stupidity) and the ability to move fast without fretting over decisions. Commitment to a path, where you spend vast majority of energy and resources. Also, ability to work independently, without any outside support, but all of the responsibility.
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Big companies are set up to optimize individual's performance. All you have to do is to be good at one thing, and the company will support you being the best at that one thing. Startups require entrepreneurs to be extremely self sufficient and to take on all the responsibility.
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Affection is important. Whether you use words of affection or acts of kindness, your kids need to know that. In today's day and age, that's especially helpful to normalize this behavior for boys and let them know that showing emotions and affection is a good thing.
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Take risks. Have self-awareness. Stay in the growth mindset.
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Starting a media company in Seattle was not an obvious startup, but it felt right. Jonathan knew that Seattle needed a company that would champion local startup ecosystem, the cost to try it out was relatively cheap, and there was an endless stream of ways to monetize this business.
Related notes
- Can You Work Hard on a Startup While Also Being a Good Dad
- How Do You Raise the Kids to Stand Up for Themselves
- What Would Justin Kan Tell a Founder Who Is Just Starting?
- What Does Sposato's Book, Better Together, Have to Offer for People
- How Did Jonathan Sposato Go From Bullied to Admired?
- Should You Start a Startup
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