It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve posted, but for good reason. My family and I are settling in comfortably with the newest member of the family. The baby isn’t sleeping through the night yet – most nights, she thinks it’s party time. Hopefully, this isn’t an omen for the future…
I have been spending a lot of late evenings working on projects with a tiny person in my arms on in the bassinet next to my desk. I remember doing this with our first daughter four years ago, and I enjoy the one-on-one time. At that point, I hadn’t started taking on the world of entrepreneurship and thoughts of starting a business had not formed in my mind yet. During those late nights four years ago, I did a lot of reading and a bit of writing and coding the occasional Web site. I had decided to be a stay-at-home dad and didn’t have much focus beyond taking care of our new daughter. Now, I’m just as busy as I was during graduate school, wrapping my brain around new problems, devising new solutions, and interacting with others in the community. This is something I missed during the first year or so taking care of our first child.
Speaking of the first child, we had an entire week of birthday to celebrate her turning 4. With the new baby getting here so close to our preschooler’s birthday, we wanted to make a big deal out of the event. We ended up having parties both the weekend before and the weekend after her birthday, and she celebrated her actual birthday on Tuesday when she was at school. The first party was mainly for the wife’s family and my daughter’s friends, while the second birthday was mostly for my side of the family. Our kitchen is still decked out on party garb… I guess it goes along with the Christmas decorations that we haven’t had a chance to take down.
Progress has been slow and steady on projects the past couple of weeks. Team Sexy Life gave a presentation at 1 Million Cups in Iowa City two weeks ago, and our project got some great feedback from the crowd. A portion of Team Sexy Life also spent the day at Vault in Cedar Rapids this past Friday doing some work to prepare for the beginning of Venture School, which will be here before we know it. We have officially applied to Venture School, and barring some unforeseen problem with our application, we should be ready to go on March 22 for the first day of the program.
I’m really excited to go through Venture School again in order to get some advice from the professionals on the viability of our product and company. There are a lot of subscription boxes out there, and we need to find our niche – some type of kicker to differentiate us from the rest of the crowd. I think we have it in our tips and tricks from a relationship counselor and the outstanding customer service program we have planned. However, if this time around goes anything like it did when I went through the program with Tom, we will probably stumble onto something even better during our weekly presentations or meeting with one of the faculty members during an office hour. The advice we will get from the Venture School program is well worth the price of admission.
We have also started working on versions 2 and 3 of our Sexy Life Web site. The page we have now is working fine, but it’s not anywhere close to what we could have out there to market our brand while we go through Venture School. We have the new site designed, but I haven’t converted the design into code just yet – it’s on this week’s pile of things to do. Also on the pile: wrangling MailChimp, putting together a stockpile of social media posts from some of the research that Team Sexy Life has done, finishing out and launching another client’s Web site and social media accounts, and some major organizing in the home office.
Also, the calendar is quickly filling up for the rest of the winter and into the spring. Venture School takes up a good chunk of the calendar in March and April, but there are some other events I’ll be attending:
- Gamicon, February 26-28 – eastern Iowa’s longest running game convention, where I’ll be running the video game room for the eighth straight year. The convention had over 500 attendees last year, and with the number of registration e-mail alerts I’ve gotten over the last few months, I think we’re on track to beat that number this year.
- Startup Weekend Cedar Rapids, March 4-6 – with as much fun and success as I had with Team Sexy Life at Startup Weekend Iowa City back in November, there’s no reason to miss this one. I’m looking forward to creating something fun and working with a brand new set of people on a project.
- Venture School, off and on from March 22 through April 29 – I know that Team Sexy Life hasn’t officially been accepted to the program just yet, but I think we have a pretty good chance.
- Young Entrepreneur Convention, April 22-23 – I won a ticket to this conference at Startup Weekend Iowa City, knowing nothing about it. As the organizers release more information about this get-together in Des Moines in April, it seems like it should be a fun time. It sounds like I might even have to break out a dress shirt and tie for this thing.
After the end of April, the calendar finally clears up again, just in time for summer activities. With two small people, there will be plenty to do this summer. But for now, back to work.