NOAH
JACOBS
WRITING
"if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently."
- Charles Bukowski
Writing is one of my oldest skills; I started when I was very young, and have not stopped since.
Age 13-16 - My first recorded journal entry was at 13 | Continued journaling, on and off.
Ages 17-18 - Started writing a bit more poetry, influenced heavily by Charles Bukwoski | Shockingly, some of my rather lewd poetry was featured at a county wide youth arts type event | Self published my first poetry book .
Age 19 - Self published another poetry book | Self published a short story collection with a narrative woven through it | Wrote a novel in one month; after considerable edits, it was long listed for the DCI Novel Prize, although that’s not that big of a deal, I think that contest was discontinued.
Age 20 - Published the GameStop book I mention on the investing page | Self published an original poetry collection that was dynamically generated based on reader preferences | Also created a collection of public domain poems with some friend’s and I’s mixed in, was also going to publish it with the dynamic generation, but never did.
Age 21 - Started writing letters to our hedge fund investors, see investing.
Age 22 - Started a weekly personal blog | Letters to company Investors, unpublished.
Age 23 - Coming up on one year anniversary of consecutive weekly blog publications | Letters to investors, unpublished.
You can use the table of contents to the left or click here to check out my blog posts.
Last Updated 2024.06.10
2023.08.13
Lindy Expectancy: 14 weeks
POV: You’re drifting on an inflatable raft under the hot, Texas sun, with 10 people, only two of whom you know. The raft is about a mile away from where it started, and it’s only getting further. You’re probably dehydrated, maybe a little hungry, and certainly very sunburnt – but you don’t care. Not at all. After all, you’re having fun and making friends. You’re learning about how other people learn, about how they think.
Later that night, you’ll all get together and spend 7 hours in continuous discussion, brainstorming solutions for each other’s problems. Everyone is fully focused and present.
This is Founder’s Cupid’s first College Community Builder’s Summit, and, by all standards, it is a smashing success.
For clarity, I was not one of the community builders on the retreat. My friend Bobby Housel threw the event together near Austin, Texas, at the end of the lease for the founder house he had also put together. Myself and the other entrepreneurs who stayed there over the summer were all helping him with this retreat – in my case, that mainly meant driving community builders from the airport to the house and back again.
I’ve gone on three or four of Bobby’s retreats in the past, but they’ve all been geared towards founders. From these events, I can personally say that I’ve made a lot of high impact connections that I still maintain today. At the same time, I’ve been able to watch him refine his process for hosting multi day events; he’s getting his reps in, and it’s becoming apparent.
Caption: Photo from a founder retreat earlier this year… Northern Michigan in March is a bit colder than Austin in August…
I haven’t ran it by him yet (surprise, Bobby!), but I think his proprietary formula goes something like this:
0 - Pre filter the participants
1 - Jump start buy in and presence
2 - Quickly create unique, shared experiences
3 - Engage in joint problem solving
Armed with an intuitive understanding of the something like the above list and his intern turned co-host, Zachary Post, Bobby was off to the races.
The type of people you surround yourself with is the most important thing; the building blocks of great organizations are great people. Jim Collins talks about this a lot in Good to Great…
“…if you begin with ‘who,’ rather than ‘what,’ you can more easily adapt to a changing world… if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away.”
Since this was his very first community builder focused event, Bobby had Zachary search across the country for participants; Zach did lots of research, countless cold emails, and plenty of phone screens. By the time he was done, there were students from Harvard, Berkeley, Yale, Columbia, the University of Washington, the University of Illinois, NYU, and more.
Before the participants even arrived at the event, they had already checked a number of boxes: they were building a community of entrepreneurs at a university, had passed a phone screen, and, most telling, were willing to fly across the country for an impactful experience.
As soon as we picked the community builders up from the airport, myself and the other founders doing the taxiing had a 40 minute drive to get to know them. Along the way, we recorded voice memos of everyone – for the memos, we ripped off rapid fire, hot seat-esque questions to break the ice.
The questions were a layer deeper than the get-to-know-you type.
Regular Question
“Where are you from?”
“What do you do?”
“How are you?”
Cupid Question
“Who are you and why did you come here?”
“What do you do AND why do you care about it?”
“What’s one thing causing you existential dread or keeping you up at night?”
The questions themselves are great, but already having the right people and maintaining a high level of energy during the conversation was equally as important. The desired outcome is never a product of “one, simple trick”; rather, it is the culmination of countless, simple details.
Very shortly after arriving at the house, everyone had to store their cellphones in quite a comically large safe for the duration of the day. This touch went a LONG way.
A quite obvious consequence of living in such a phone dependent society is that the default when a conversation is boring or is in a lull is to mindlessly doom scroll for eternity. The cellphone often acts as the modern, adult sized pacifier.
Caption: Zac Geinzer participating in a 1:1 interview for the Recess podcast; Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacgeinzer/ , Recess: https://podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/recess/id1657280211https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacgeinzer/https://podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/recess/id1657280211
By locking the phones away, the default for a boring conversation became re-investing in the conversation or finding another conversation.
The beach day in the intro was not the only shared experience Founder’s Cupid had the community builders experience – there were ice baths, low stakes pitch contests, small group adventures, and much more.
I don’t know what really makes a good activity. I think pushing comfort zones is a powerful element, but I don’t know if it’s “the” element.
Caption: Lucy & I preparing a pitch for “Park.Lit”
After everyone is bought in and present, the activity itself probably matters less. Doing something, rather than nothing, is a good way to expedite the process of getting to know each other.
Finally, Bobby ended the weekend with a round table. All of the community builders were able to openly discuss any problems they were facing. Then, they had the brainpower of 30 or so other people to help them get to a solution as quickly as possible.
The energy was intoxicating: it seemed that everyone felt obligated to help their newfound friends avoid some of the pitfalls that they themselves had fallen into.
Caption: Ice baths, ice baths, ice baths
If someone needed help getting grant money from their school, everyone who had done so before chimed in. If someone needed help upping their club’s engagement, everyone who had successfully done so in the past would offer their experience.
The thesis on the event was the following: collectively skip over years of trial and error by leveraging years of shared experience.
A lot went into the weekend, and it showed. People matter. So does simply having fun.
However, a very simple, actionable takeaway for me was the whole no phone business. Why have a social event if everyone is just going to be texting each other anyways? Next time you’re over, the phone might not be invited…
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Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek: Topical in regards to my post – all about building a community in which everyone feels safe and a member of.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson: one takeaway was fault vs responsibility… even if something is not your “fault,” it might be your responsibility…
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I can’t thank Bobby & Zach enough for including me in such a memorable experience, nor can I thank everyone there for being so open, present, and willing to help each other.
Also, photo credit on all of the beautiful shots goes to Austin.
Truly a time.
Cheers,
Noah Jacobs