The summer of 2014 started out with a lot of potential. My business wasn't in the best shape, but I was hopeful that our pivot into commercial agriculture might end up saving us from going under. I gave a talk about our plan to a few people at the first Solid conference in San Francisco.
In retrospect I can see that I was wrong about almost all of the points I made about the future during that talk. I was making the best projections I could with the information that I had, but it was incomplete and based on a few false assumptions. By the end of the summer my company went under and I spent the next few months shutting down the business.
A year later I had the opportunity to give a talk about how my company failed. I was able to return to the Solid stage and talk about some of the lessons that I learned along the way. My talk about failure was roughly four times longer than my first talk. (I still feel bad about running long and cutting into Ian's time. Sorry Ian) (I also committed the cardinal sin of video presentations and didn't repeat questions into the mic. Sorry everyone.)
Writing and giving my second talk was a very cathartic experience. It was really helpful for me to get the story of Oso Technologies off of my chest. I enjoyed the chance to share my own experiences with a group of people who were clearly very interested in not repeating the mistakes that I had made.
I'm finally releasing this video to what I assume is a pretty small audience at this point. Maybe someday I'll be able to point people to it, but for now I'm just happy to have it out there.