During the first year of my daughter’s life (she’s around 13 months old right now), in the middle of writing a technical book, just after releasing my first desktop application, I launched an ambitious project. I named it after the directory in which I wrote the first lines of code: ~/Dropbox/Documents/Code/fancyhands.
I honestly started writing the website for a very simple reason, I couldn’t bring myself to make a simple phone call to my bank. I hate talking on the phone. The call itself wouldn’t require any personal information, but the thought of making this call was paralyzing… I’d be admitting that I hadn’t really used that account, that I didn’t know much about banking in general, and I’d probably have to sit on hold for a few minutes. And at that point in my life, sitting on hold for a few minutes was a non-starter, I had zero extra minutes to toss around. So I did what any self-respecting programmer would do when they have an itch they need to scratch, I wrote a fairly complicated application to handle the situation. This was months before I launched fancyhands.com.
I wrote that program and then found some people to agree to handle these types of tasks for me. Then I just stayed focused on the book and on doing what I needed to do. I started creating todo lists of things I needed to do. Each time I looked over a list, I asked myself, “do I need to do this, or does it just need to get done?”
If it was related to the book, I needed to do that myself. But if my wife and I were going to get brunch? Someone else can handle that reservation. I quickly realized typing “call balthazar and make a reservation for as close to 1pm as possible,” was much faster than me looking up the number, calling, stammering, negotiating, etc. Plus, I felt like a hot shot walking into the restaurant and seeing my name on the reservation list.
Anyways, I spent a weekend turning the site into something that other people could use. I asked the people who’d been handling tasks just for me if they’d mind doing them for other people. They were all cool with it, but I also brought on a bunch more assistants.
I quietly launched the site one weekend when my wife and daughter were out of town. It exploded. We don’t get web traffic, we get email traffic and we got a lot of it. The press came knocking and wrote a really nice batch of reviews almost instantly.
For the next few months, the assistants kept their heads down and responded to tons of tasks. They provided some amazing replies and, most importantly, saved a lot of people a lot of time.
But personally, my time has always been limited. I’ve got a great day job, so I’ve only been able to work on Fancy Hands late at night and on the weekends. While that’s great for maintaining state and keeping the ship afloat, it’s not ideal.
So recently, after conferring with some very trusted advisors, I decided to bring on the first full time employee to run the day-to-day operations here in NYC. After spending some weekends sorting through resumés, I found someone who was passionate about product, hungry, outgoing, intelligent, businessy, and in a lot of important ways, the opposite of me. In other words, I found what appeared to be the perfect person for the job.
There was a problem, he had a real offer from another, much bigger, company. It was a real job offer. On the other hand, if he took a job with Fancy Hands he’d be employee #1 at a company whose founder quite literally phones it in… and only on the weekends.
So I had to figure out how to hire this guy. I thought back to all of the startups who’ve offered me jobs over the years. About their VC funding, their amazing boards, millions and millions of dollars worth of options and a really cool loft to work in where I can play rockband whenever I want. Luckily, I don’t have any of that stuff. So I offered him what I could. An actual honest to goodness paycheck based how the company does month to month, equity, happy customers and a simple business model at a profitable company.
He agreed almost instantly. His name is Mason Levey. He is employee #1. If you need to give him a title, COO will do.
When we shook hands over the deal, I handed him his first paycheck and said “get to work.” The envelope is picture above. I hope it’s the start of something great.
-Ted
