Chapter OneTHE HIGH COST OF NOT UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE
“The motion has passed.”
Click. Beep. Click. Beep.
“The organizer has left the conference.”
And just like that, we lost everything.
Greg and I sat in his basement apartment and exhaled. That friendly female robot was gently informing us that our final board meeting was over, and that we had just been fired from the company we started. It was a stinging message delivered with a peppy, upbeat voice.
“Well, what do we do now?” he said.
“Let's just drive.”
We needed to get out of Boston. It was early August 2014 and the humidity was thick. After so many months with all-day meetings punctuated by all-night coding sessions, I was feeling claustrophobic, burnt out, and emotionally exhausted.
We hopped into my 2000 Nissan Altima, crumpled up another parking ticket, and started our westbound journey on the Massachusetts Turnpike. It was an odd feeling … driving in the opposite direction of our office in the middle of a workday. The entire team was back there, going about their ordinary business. Greg's sales team was trying a new go-to-market strategy calling on university advancement offices. My engineering team was cranking away on the new version of our mobile event management app.
The day probably seemed completely normal to them, but they were unaware that they no longer had bosses.
“Where are we going?”
“I don't know. Maybe Cleveland? Chicago? We could just go to California and start something new.”
I didn't really care where ...
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