Reflecting on one year at LoopVOC

Today marks one year to the day since I helped co-found LoopVOC and is the company's first birthday!

My first day on the job was a Monday. I remember driving to our CEO Lauren's house with my backpack, notebook, water bottle, and my new Linux laptop. Once I got comfortable, I also brought my dog along. At one point during the early days, Lauren had the entire entranceway of her house covered with mock-ups of her vision for Loop. We would spend all day brainstorming the user journey, noting questions on each print out and moving through a flowchart. I wish I had taken more pictures to document and remember this process.

We've done a lot in just 365 days since then. Some of it was hard, but its been the best growth experience of my relatively short career. To grow the fastest, you have to be challenged—and that was definitely true here. I've learned a ton about software, company formation and structure, people skills and negotiation, making products consumers actually want, and about myself. I'm especially excited about how our team has grown—it's incredible what our team has taught me given the short amount of time we've had together. We'll keep growing and learning and building things, together. And by the time every employee hits their one and two year anniversaries, we'll have done so much more.

It's important to me as I reflect to remember that a lot of startups die within one year. We've already beaten huge odds by surviving and growing in employees, investment, and month over month revenue in just one year.

Will I look back and say that the first year was the best? The worst? The easiest? The hardest? Who knows. I'm happy with this crazy choice so far. Here's to many more years Loopin'--building products for companies that want to make customer needs central to all of their business decisions.

Want to see what we've done so far? Take a look here