Monthly Archive for July, 2008

Lone Rider Brewing Company

Published
by
jeremyrwelch
on July 29, 2008
in Business and Entrepreneurship
. 6 Comments

Today I visited a true brick and mortar start-up during my lunch break — an odd experience when I’m used to seeing only code and design ideas scratched into a journal. Sumit Vohra, who I met at one of Ryan Allis’s parties several monthLone Rider Brewery - Outsides ago, offered last week to show me the progress he and his partners have made on LoneRider Brewing Company. I happily accepted his offer, and met him today to check it out.

I had no idea that starting a brewery required so much time and capital. Being around web entrepreneurs so often has shown me only one path, where the up front costs to get running are low. Sumit has been working on the brewery for over 6 months, and he and his team are still around a month or so away from opening up.

This is a picture from outside the brewery. The building is very non-descript; just a standard warehouse type building a quarter mile off a main road. There are plans to transform the outside a bit more, but for now, the focus is on getting the equipment up and running, which you can see in the picture below.

Lone Rider Brewery - InsideSumit and his team put together all of the equipment themselves, with the help of some other brewers and electricians to make sure everything was properly designed. The place is already very impressive, and there’s still a couple weeks worth of aesthetic work to finish before opening.

I’m already a huge fan of local breweries Red Oak and Big Boss. However, I’m not sure if either of these breweries can match the Lone Rider experience. Lone Rider should be open by the time I come back from California. If you hear that I’m back in town, you now know where to find me.

Taking Time off from School - Part 1 - How to Make the Decision

Published
by
jeremyrwelch
on July 24, 2008
in Education, Entrepreneurship and Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Taking time off from school can be very worthwhile. Since making the decision to take time off from Duke almost 8 months ago, I’ve become more focused on and more passionate about my work, learned an immense amount through independent study about topics ranging from web programming and design to investing, and developed an appreciation for my everyday circumstances and environment.

This is part 1 of a series of posts on the topic of taking time off from school.

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Despite the fact that taking time off can be worthwhile, few students ever make the jump. Leaving school can be a very scary process because the university is structured to provide support, enabling students to focus on schoolwork. Food is available in the cafeteria at all hours, textbooks are neatly organized by class and ready to purchase at the university library, and all students are automatically assigned an adviser. This is not the case in the real world. The process of transitioning from the complete lifestyle system that most universities provide to the open-ended “real world” is complex.

When I first began thinking about taking time off, I asked a number of close friends and mentors for advice. Very few of them were able to make suggestions. Only one of them had actually taken time off from school during undergrad, and he made the point that each experience is so unique, it’s hard to make specific suggestions. The key questions I posed to each mentor: How does one make the decision to leave, and what do I need to make sure I know before I take time off?

I’ve thought about these questions a lot. Below I’ve listed a combination of suggestions from my mentors and my own recommendations from my experiences over the last eight months.

1. Know exactly why you need to take off

Why do you need to take time off from school? Though there are more, most people leave school for reasons related to either health, finances, or attention, or a combination of the three. One of my best friends from college, Josh, left school to run the Chordoma Foundation and find a cure for a rare type of cancer he was diagnosed with during his freshman year. Another friend of mine left school to run a technology company called iContact. In both of these cases, the individuals did not leave school to “find out who they were.” They already knew exactly who they were and what they wanted, and left school with a very specific purpose.

2. Know how time-off fits in with your long-term goals

Even if you know exactly why you are leaving school, anyone making the decision to leave should consider how time-off will affect one’s long-term goals. Leaving school should contribute, rather than detract, from those goals. Josh’s long term goal is to find  a cure for his cancer. Until this goal is overcome, there are no other educational, career, or financial concerns.

Each experience will be unique, but each person should consider how a leave-of-absence will affect his/her education, career, family and close friends, and finances.

3. Build a support system

Taking time off can be very lonely. Dorm life in college guarantees that students have the chance to interact with other people often. Leaving this system, unless a person can manage to stay close by during their time-off, without first building a support system can lead to a very lonely existence. Most students will not be able to relate to your experiences while taking time off, so your best bet is to find a mix of students and older mentors to regularly meet with.

Also, consider living with a few roommates, even if they are older and are working full-time, instead of finding a one-room apartment somewhere. If you do get roommates, just make sure that they are individuals at least somewhat similar to yourself — it will be hard to focus on your work when you come home everyday to a roommate that is always sitting on the couch playing video games or watching TV.

4. Develop a plan for the next six months

Even if you know exactly why you will be taking a leave-of-absence, and you know that the leave fits in with your long-term goals, you should still develop a detailed plan for the next six months. There’s a good chance that things will change drastically once you actually take the plunge, and that you’ll have to chuck the plan out the window along the way. But, no matter what happens, there’s an extreme amount of value in laying out a plan because it makes you aware of where you need to focus your time and resources.

What are your living costs or expense per month? Do you have enough cash flow from a job or savings from your bank account to cover these expenses for several months? Will you still be covered under your current insurance plan if you take time off? Where will you be living, and how much cash will you need to cover moving expenses? Do you know how to cook? What will you be doing each day with your time?

Also, when will you know that its the proper time for you to return to school? Set a date on your calendar three months from the day you leave school on which you will review your progress and make the decision whether to return to school in the upcoming semester. Remember, most schools sign up 2-4 months before classes begin, and many have registration deadlines for each semester.

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You know why you’re taking time off, how the time fits into long-term goals, you’ve built a support system, and you have a plan for the next six months. Now comes the hardest part. Muster up your courage, walk over to your dean’s office to tell him about your decision. Fill out any necessary paperwork, then let your parents and friends know about your decision.

Welcome to the real world.

Next up in this series: Part 2, “Surviving the First Two Weeks in the Real World.”

Moving to California

Published
by
jeremyrwelch
on July 17, 2008
in Entrepreneurship and travel
. 2 Comments

In mid-August I will be moving to the San Francisco Bay Area of California, where I will continue working by day for Ignite Social Media Agency and by night on a new start-up with Jack Sullivan, Pratt ‘08.

Because of the move, I made the decision to resign from my positions as co-chair of Entrepreneurship Week at Duke and board member of Leadership Triangle: College Edition. I was lucky to have the opportunity to help these two organizations start and grow over the past year, and I look forward to seeing continued growth in the future. I encourage those of you that are still in the Triangle to keep your eye on both of these organizations, as they will both be instrumental in creating the types of individuals that are needed to make the Triangle a better place. If you’d like to get involved with either organization, please email me.

I wake up every morning excited about the chance to breathe in the world around me, create new things, challenge myself and others, and learn and grow. I’m thrilled to have the chance to drive across the country and explore the Valley, and will be making photo and text updates to this blog several times a week (subscribe to my blog feed by clicking here).

The “smiling faces and beautiful places” of the south have been very good to me. I will be back in time.

The adventure begins August 15th.

Young & Restless Chinese on Frontline

Published
by
jeremyrwelch
on July 13, 2008
in Education and Video
. 1 Comment

I stumbled upon a recent Frontline documentary a couple days ago about young people coming of age in 21st century China. The film shows that the mix of capitalist economic ideas, communist government policies, and global cultural influences is creating identity conflicts for many young Chinese.

Individuals profiled in the piece include an aspiring rapper who gets conned on the Internet, a former McKinsey consultant now running two businesses, a first time hotel owner balancing family relationships, and a migrant worker who rejects an arranged marraige in favor of true love.

The documentary is well worth the hour long viewing time. The video is not embeddable, so to watch you’ll have to follow the link below to the Frontline homepage.

Young & Restless in China

Notes from Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience - Part 1

Published
by
jeremyrwelch
on July 7, 2008
in Business, Entrepreneurship, Philosophy and Productivity
. 0 Comments

Below I’ve listed some key ideas and notes (along my thoughts and conclusions at the end) from Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience, a book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:

  • So how can we reach this elusive goal [happiness] that cannot be attained by a direct route? My studies of hte past quarter-century have convinced me that there is a way. It is a circuitous path that begins with achieving control over the contents of our consciousness. (pg 2)
  • Yet we have all experience times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions, masters of our own fate. On the rare occasions that it happense, we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long charished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like. (pg 3)
  • It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable. (pg 7)
  • How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depends directly on how the mind filters and interpret everyday experiences. Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe. (pg 9)
  • Though the evidence suggests that most people are caught up on this frustrating treadmill of rising expectations, many individuals have found ways to escape it. These are people who regardless of their material conditions, have been able to improve the quality of their lives, who are satisfied, and who have a way of making those around them also a bit more happy… …Such individuals lead vigorous lives, are open to a variety of experiences, keep on learning until the day they die, and have strong ties and commitments to other people and to the environment in which they live… Perhaps their greatest strength is that they are in control of their lives. (pg 10)
  • …after each success it becomes clearer that money, power, status, and possessions do not, by themselves, necessarily add one iota to the quality of life. (pg 13)

There’s so much great content in this book. This particular passage highlights something I’ve slowly observed as I’ve entered and exited various kinds of societal systems ( schools, family, friend groups, athletic teams, etc.):

Caught in the treadmill of social controls, that person keeps reaching for a prize that always dissolves in his hands. IN a complex society, many powerful groups are involved in socializing, sometimes to seemingly contradictory goals. On the one hand, official institutions like schools, churches, and banks try to turns us into responsible citizens willing to work hard and save. ON the other hand, we are constantly cajoled by merchants, manufacturers, and advertisers to spend our earnings on products that will produce the most profits for them. And, finally, the underground system of forbidden pleasures run by gamblers, pimps, and drug dealers, which is dialectically linked to the official institutions, promises its own rewards of easy dissipation–provided we pay. The messages are very different, but their outcome is essentially the same: they make us dependent on a social system that exploits our energies for its own purposes.

There is no question that to survive, and especially to survive in a complex society, it is necessary to work for external goals and to postpone immediate gratifications. But a person does not have to be turned into a puppet jerked about by social controls. The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them rewards that are under one’s own power. This is not to say that we should abandon every goal endorsed by society; rather, it means that, in addition to or instead of the goals others use to bribe us with, we develop a set of our own.

Most entrepreneurial disruptions to economic and social systems occur because someone or something from outside a system makes a change that those within a given system cannot understand. There is an apparent corollation between entrepreneurial success and independence from economic and societal systems. Many aspiring entrepreneurs that I know understand this point.

But there is another closely related point that many aspiring entrepreneurs do not understand. Once a change is made, that change must fit back into the system. You built a cool widget — but will the masses actually use it? Because if you think your widget is the coolest thing on earth, but no one else does, you don’t have a business.

Entrepreneurs break the system in order to fix it, and often times they do it unintentionally.