[07.04.21] Alec's Weekly Update #30
"Lock eyes like we're staring down the barrel of a shotgun (shotgun)" - Periphery
Happy 4th 🎆!
Another big day for us Americans out here, Independence Day! This is always a fun holiday that includes a lot of food and of course, fireworks. This year I was able to meet up with my siblings and mom for some good times. Either way, I hope this first week of July has been a great start!
I’m pretty proud because today I would have totally missed writing this, but I planned to make sure I had some time to get my thoughts down. I’m trying to make a proper schedule while on vacation / out and this is step one!
Alright - let’s make it short and sweet.
Hype ZipSchool Moments
This past week was a lot of fun! We had Emily come work out of NYC with us for about four days. While it did include festivities, there was a lot of really cool benefits about having her in the office with us. I feel like this a cool piece to mention given the fact that the entire world is in this weird state of “hybrid working”.
Emily lives in another state and our usual form of communication is done over Slack. For a while, we only knew Emily through one medium - the internet. I believe we all have some sort of aura around us and to really sense that, you need to be together in person. All this to say - it felt great to collaborate with her in an in person setting. I have become a true believer of the hybrid workplace.
Things felt like they moved MUCH smoother and quicker. It was good to be able to talk out ideas on an impromptu basis. Please enjoy some pictures of the ZipSchool team this past week:
So, what did we actually build this week? This week I was highly focused on making our math course offering much better. We got some great feedback talking about how when reaching this page, and not knowing anything about ZipSchool, it was just plain confusing…
This was really important because last week we found out that we were getting paying customers just through text messages that point to this page. It was INSANE to see. How do we make that better? Well this is what we came up with:
What do you think? Feel free to checkout this course now as well! This was a pretty big change to what we had before. There was essentially one massive yellow box with some text that tried to boil down the entire course in four sentences. The big changes we have here have to do with the following:
Why is this course perfect for your child?
What will you learn every week during the course?
What does a ZipSchool lesson actually look like?
Farza and I collaborated on the initial design for this. We went from whiteboard to Figma wireframe, to this! It’s freaking cool to see. Definitely learning a lot of cool skills here (especially the use of confetti 🎉). As you know, the way we will know if this works is through the data! We are in the process of measuring this and seeing if this truly made a difference. Either way - it was a step in the right direction in my mind.
Final thoughts here - ZipSchool team is on their way to Iceland this coming week ❄️! Stay tuned for an update from outside of the US 😲.
Personal Growth
This past week has been a lot of fun and yet highly tiring. Starting lest Saturday, I was doing something almost every night! Ever since I got to NYC I have been very open to doing almost anything. I feel like this has been the right move even if my sleep has suffered a bit 😅. Since even before I moved to NYC I realized that ZipSchool wasn’t just a job for me, but more so part of my life? I know this sounds so cliche, but what I’m trying to get at here is instead of separating out my personal life from my “work life” I have tried to integrate the two. I believe this has helped me do things like travel while still building ZipSchool. It has also allowed me to feel like I’m truly living my life while building something I am truly passionate about.
I’ve been asking myself recently if I could have done this at Microsoft? Could I have setup this sort of lifestyle? While I don’t have the full answer yet, I am definitely leaning towards no. I think this is the beauty of startups - you mold it into what you and your team think is best.
This past week I also attended my first “Founders Meetup”! This is something Farza has put on in NYC where founders from different companies get together and give demos about things they have built and things they are working towards. It’s a really cool environment. All the people there were working towards something they believed can change the industry they are building for. Not only that, but the culture at this sort of meetup is amazing. Everyone is SO HYPED to hear when people make progress. This is the type of community I want to be a part of and honestly, I feel like it makes it easier for people to start their own thing.
While ZipSchool is my main focus right now, I wanted to bring something to this meetup that I could start growing. I presented my app Cycles - Daily Habit Creator and how I will be building V2 of this. If you don’t know about Cycles, checkout the slide deck that I put together for the meetup or hit me up! I would love to chat with you more about it 🤘.
Some other updates I wanted to share:
👾 I bought a Nintendo Switch! I love video games, but I feel like I have problems finding times to play. So I purchased a Switch to see if that changes! Stay tuned.
🎙 Streams are SOON. I brought this up last newsletter, but wanted to bring it up once more. As you can see I am doing a solid amount of traveling this month. But by the time I get back into NYC I should hopefully be able to get a first stream going end of July / beginning of August. I’m excited and hope to see you all there!
Music Of The Week
Not much to say about music this week, but let me know what your favorite jam is!
Thanks for taking the time out of your weekend to check in and see whats up! I just realized this is the 30th issue of this newsletter. INSANITY. I’m pretty proud of it and excited to look back on this at the end of the year. Have a great weekend and start of your week! Catch ya on the next one.
Salute y Saludes.
Alec