The website First Round posted a list of 40 Favorite Interview Questions from Some of the Sharpest Folks We Know.
I thought it would be interesting to share my answers to these questions.
The highlight of the last five years was when we launched the Genuine Origin Coffee Project (genuineorigin.com). I joined the company pre-launch, pre-revenue when it was just a business plan. We did everything from name the company to develop the customer-facing website, e-commerce engine, and back-office systems. It was the moment when we brought the various workstreams together, plugged all the components in, turned it on, and it worked that I look back on! There was so much that went into it… we did the marketing, supply chain, packaging, logistics (3PL and final mile), payment processing, banking, etc. etc.
In hindsight, it is also interesting to reflect on the things that didn’t go as well as we had hoped and take lessons away from them. For example, we struggled a lot with building the perfect system that the customers would love and had to make a lot of tough compromises along the way. In hindsight, we didn’t really know what the customer wanted until we put something in front of them and saw how they interacted with it. In doing so, we learned quickly what the customer did and didn’t like. Looking back, it would have been worthwhile to bring something to market faster and learn from our mistakes rather than invest time and resources upfront building something that the customer ultimately didn’t want or need.
