(8/12) Dad jokes. My last day at Urban Necessities was filled with hope and promise and then it quietly fell into…confusion. @twojskicks , @cease91 , @joaniebean and I discussed next steps and I had my laundry list of things to do. I won’t lie – I was *kinda* showing them vaporware and I told them as much. If you don’t know what vaporware is – it basically means you’re showing off a great looking website without too much functionality on the back end…most people do it to demo an idea and that was the intent. I had my team ready, so I knew whatever changes they requested would be made and everything would be done in due time. The website was fully functional, it just didn’t carry all the features I knew they would want.
So we gathered around the counter, and we chose to grade – of all the shoes in that shop – the KD VII ‘Bad Apples’…inspired by Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Seriously. That should have been an omen. Let me repeat that – we chose to grade a shoe that got its nickname from a fairy tale. 🤦♂️ And as I sat there explaining all of the knowledge I had built around grading – all of the flaws I saw and all of the nuances of the platform I built – I wasn’t effectively able to translate my language into something everyone could understand. Even sneakerheads. We painstakingly sat there for a good hour while I tried to explain the workings of the system in grading a pair of Bad Apples and it really felt like one bad apple ruined the whole bunch.
I’m not entirely sure what they expected and I’m not totally sure where the disconnect was, but I think we both left that meeting a bit more confused than when we had entered it.
Jay told me not to worry, he told me him and Cease would figure it out. He asked that I leave grading supplies for a few hundred pairs and we’d be in touch. Jay wanted me to work on a better packaging solution, then jumped on Periscope and told his followers about what was to come, he said it’d be out in 90 days and we’d be rollin by that time.
My cousin and I hopped in his Tacoma and headed back to Oakland. I was still hopeful and trusted it would all work out, but I just didn’t really know how.
