My Journey to Founding @Evolyte
I'm sure there are very few of you who will care about the journey that led me to found evolyte, but I wanted to get it out on the internet so my son and my daughter could someday read this, and remind them that believing in themselves and following their dreams are the most important things.
I grew up in Sioux City, Iowa, which is about to get flooded as we speak, but that's a story for a different time. I loved playing baseball from the first whiffle ball I hit off a tee at two years old. I played for almost two decades until I got to college and decided to focus on academics.
This is a crucial piece of the story, because it was always my dream to play professional baseball, 3rd base, the hot corner. I mean, realistically, I probably wasn't good enough to make the majors, but you never know, I do have a pretty rediculous work ethic (thanks Kevin and Sally!). The point being, I never tried out for the Iowa baseball team, so there will always be a hint of wonder and regret for not at least trying out.
Cut to four years later, and I had passed a handful of some of the most rediculously difficult professional examinations on the planet (actuarial science exams, and yes, there are eight in total!), had two internships with PricewaterhouseCoopers, and graduated without a job. Thanks economy.
That led to what I like to call my blue period, where I worked at Cost Plus World Market for $9.50 an hour after graduating with a double major in Mathematics and Actuarial Science, and minors in Business and Statistics, 2 internships in downtown Chicago, running multiple student organizations, and basically never having fun.
Awesomesauce. Talk about a kick in the....you get the picture.
So there I am, at 1am in the morning, no money in my bank account, living in BFE up north in Chicago, throwing away garbage at Cost Plus and I freakin lost it. I was tearing apart cardboard boxes, throwing stuff, and at my lowest point, even cussed out God.
I called up my parents, my dad flew up, we rented a Lincoln Navigator (they were dope in the early 2000s, right?), packed up what I could, and drove the 14-hour trip from Chicago to Dallas to live with my parents all over again.
Now that's big pimpin. What's happenin' ladies? No? Okay...
Skip forward 3 years and I'm working for a management consulting firm sitting in Fortune 500 Board rooms advising the leaders of the free world how to incentive people to perform better and in a way that's aligned with the corporate and financial strategy of the firm. Some of my work was put in front of the head of the largest company in the world. You better believe you double check your work.
In 2007, I started BlueStone Investments because every Mathematician saw the movie Pi and thinks he can beat the market. +43%. Check.
So what to do from there? Get engaged and go back to business school, duh. So we packed the Uhaul up and moved back to Chicago in 2008 for like the billionth time, and started at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. While I'm there, it received a $100 million grant and renamed the school after Mr. Booth himself.
Cut to 2009 and while BlueStone was winding down, we started Evolyte, a group of childhood friends. There is literally nothing better than that. If you can work with your friends every day, you're already rich. The backstory of my interest in Evolyte, however, I've so far neglected to tell you, but let's just say I've been hacking the 1s and 0s since the days of MS DOS. I got my first computer, a 386 Gateway 2000 PC at age 13, and never looked back. It's sort of funny, I never had any formal education in software development or visual design, but couldn't get enough of it. I've always been ravenous for digital knowledge and so picked it up strictly by osmosis and a love for the game (pun intended).
So I suppose my mathematical training comes in handy. It's all about a universal language of simplification. Great design is all about telling a story through visual minimalism. Same stuff there.
So with my MBA graduation approaching, a hot internet market, and the goal of finally living my dream sitting right in front of me, I quit my job in 2010 to focus on Evolyte full-time.
The act of quitting your job that allowed you to live a carefree life isn't simply a binary decision. You don't just flip a switch. It's gut-wrenching, it's self-doubt, and it's also the: how-the-heck-am-I-going-to-pay-for-food-when-the-money-runs-out-before-the-income-comes-in (damn, do you know how long it took to add in all those dashes? I mean, seriously.)? If you don't have these thoughts, well you're just not human, or you're mental. For the latter, Evolyte's offices are next door to an anger clinic, so you may want to go ahead and check that out.
Everything is circular, right? Remember how I've had that one regret in the back of my mind about not trying out for the college baseball team? "Self", I said to myself. "Self, you're not going to make the same mistake twice and be walking around with two regrets, so get out there and hustle like Rick Ross." So I took a spoonful of my own medicine, grabbed my Mary Poppins bag full of ever-growing Apple tech, and hit it hard.
Flip to today. Good things. Lots of good things. From crazy dangerous, awesome angles. Awesome like Kevin Bacon's dance moves in Footloose (you're welcome).
So what's the moral?
As a friend, who's writing a novel the likes of which would confuse the movie Momento, said at dinner last night,
"Find a way to get paid to be you."
Now that's elegant simplicity. You shouldn't change who you are for a romantic partner, so why would you do it for your career, which these days, lasts 10x as long?
Find what you love to do, and don't stop doing it. The money's simply not worth it to hate your life every Sunday night.
