Observations after 3 Months Running an LA Accelerator

So it’s been just about three months since we launched Amplify. I can’t fully express in words how fulfilling the experience has been, but I’m going to try. I’ve started and built several companies; some have succeeded and some have failed. I’ve learned a lot over the years. I’ve come to know what I’m good at, what I suck at. I know what I love to do and I know what I cringe at the thought of. I accept that building a company is not all fun; there are things you will just have to do. It just is. But for me, the thing I really love the most is those early days, when it’s a really small team; maybe just a few founders and a couple of early champions. The passion, camaraderie and excitement along with the daily ups and downs of building something from nothing just floats my boat.

At Amplify I have the very unique opportunity to be a part of not one company at that stage, but literally dozens of them. Today we have five funded companies in our portfolio. They are all quite different in the problems they aim to solve. They are different in the teams they’ve put together. They approach strategy, product, marketing and just about everything else their own special way. One might think that simply putting these companies in a room together would create more chaos than good. But ironically it’s very much the opposite.

Every day I see sparks fly not simply because the companies are creating things. They are feeding off each other. In the morning Grant makes tea and pumps people up with some thoughts he’d been pondering from the night before. Something suddenly dawns on Charles as he’s deep in thought trying to solve an issue. As he lights up, Kabir says something totally out there, that somehow just makes sense. Rhett walks in with no shoes and it’s raining outside. Head down and just crushing work Chris responds to my sudden recollection of some task I’d asked him to do a week early, which he’d already done… a week earlier. Marc diligently does his work, and interjects some perfectly succinct idea in the midst of a totally chaotic brainstorming session and Jon stares at the whiteboard with a determination that I’ve never seen on any other entrepreneur before.

This is the family we’ve assembled in just three months; but it seems like we’ve been together for a lot longer. We learn from each other. We inspire each other. We annoy each other. We laugh, we joke, we make progress and we have fun. Those are things that happen in most startups, that’s why people can’t seem to give up the lifestyle even though it can suck in many ways. But at Amplify, we have something even more special I believe. I’m convinced that each of the startups that begin here will leave a little bit of each other in them and from my selfish perspective; I’ll leave a little bit of myself in each of them. It gives me great pleasure.

Go ahead and think it’s cheesy. It’s fine. But if you aren’t loving your job more than you can describe right now, ask yourself why and do something else; no matter how it sounds to other people.

We’re going to invest in 40 companies over the next 24 months. Some companies will stay at the Campus longer than four months, the length of the program, but most wont. I can promise you that I will feel more than a bit of sadness when they leave.