Andrew Machado's Blog

10,958 days to acclimation

Andrew Machado — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 23:07:28 +0000

When climbing Mt. Everest climbers commonly progress up the mountain gradually. They hike to a camp over the course of six days and stay there for almost two weeks to get acclimated to the altitude. They then progress up the mountain, go back down, then back up much further and continue the process until until reaching the top.

Life reminds me a lot of this, but without the sever danger or the sherpas. I feel like I’ve spent the last 30 years just getting situated with my environment. Surrounding myself with particular friends and making decisions based off my gut or what I feel is right.

The most important thing I’ve discovered is that you make a lot of decisions in life that dictate future outcomes. Most of the time you don’t realize that though. I’ll name my three most interesting ones below.

1. Working at Yardbarker
I had spent four years at eBay doing merchandising, loved thinking about products, but never had the guts to take the leap and do it. Pete Vlastelica took a chance on me and though I brought a lot to the table, I had plenty of learning to do. think both parties could agree the results were very positive. As a byproduct I moved to San Francisco from Santa Clara and met my current girlfriend of four years when buying my Condo. Winning.

2. Asking Ron Johnson for a raise
Ron Johnson is the former head of Apple Retail, now CEO of JCPenney. I was an intern at Apple in the summer of 2003 and I felt I was underpaid compared to others. At the time I was deathly afraid of confrontation, but I imagined myself working at Apple awhile and felt it was worth bringing up. I scheduled coffee with him, picked his brain about a few things and point blank asked him if I could get a raise. It worked! Within a week I was rollin in the dough…or an extra couple bucks an hour. My memory is a bit rusty. Sadly this story came up at an interview a few years later at Apple and it contributed to me not getting a particular role there. At the time I was crushed, but now looking back I would’ve become a lifer at Apple and probably wouldn’t have taken many chances.

3. Bert Toledo
As mentioned in #1 above I met Bert in 2008, but what’s really interesting is in 2010 I convinced her to leave her job of many years to become a real estate agent. She quickly realized it wasn’t for her, but along the way she and I discovered a big problems existed in the industry and now we’ve built a company trying to solve these problems.

Bonus: Buying Abby MacMullan a drink
When I was single I would frequent bars with my buddy Shaun. I think it was January of 2005, because we’d spent late nights playing World of Warcraft leveling up to the all mighty lvl 60. We took a break from WOW to go to the Red Room in downtown Santa Cruz and a blonde woman walked into the bar with her sister. Shaun’s eyes lit up. Instead of letting Shaun sit jaw dropped about how pretty she was I walked up to the bartender, ordered her a drink and told her it was from the guy in striped shirt. That guy was Shaun, the shirt was mine funny enough. Years later they were married.

I feel pretty comfortable with being 30. My knees hurt when it gets cold. People used to tell me I look like Mark Wahlberg….just recently someone said I look like Donny. Regardless the climb and the decisions you make keep things interesting.

Fulfillment through others

Andrew Machado — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 17:29:29 +0000

As a child I remember the feeling of being fulfilled much easier to achieve. In 1992 I told my mom I’d never visit our local arcade again if she bought me Street Fighter II for my Super Nintendo. It was out 60 days earlier in Japan so we imported the game, I couldn’t read any of the words but it didn’t matter because it was Street Fighter. I’d spend that summer logging hour after hour beating the game with every character, beating my friends and at points of frustration trying to break the controller with my mouth. Don’t tell my dentist. But, soon I grew tired of the game and I moved on.

I was ten then and now nearly twenty years later I find that reaching fulfillment is much harder, shorter and at some points frustrating. You write goals on paper, you achieve them, then what? I remember the night before we relaunched Open Home Pro. I stayed up all night with excitement, the article hits techcrunch, traffic rolls in and then what? You move on to the next goal without thinking about it. Why can’t I be ten again throwing a fireball at M Bison.

It’s not all bad though, because even though the feeling is shorter or harder to achieve when you hit it the feeling is ten times more powerful than when I was younger. Which leads me to where I find the most fulfillment.

My friend Ryan Spoon has been telling me about this great company called Space Monkey. He’s been super excited about it for what feels like months. For Ryan to say something I knew they must be great. In fact looks like Polaris made an investment. Well yesterday Space Monkey won top prize at Jason Calcanias’ Launch Festival. Upon the announcement where was I?, at the conference waiting for it. I dropped everything else I was doing for two hours because I believed they’d win and wanted to be down there. I even prebought celebratory Kombucha.

I’m a firm believer in the company we keep as being a reflection of you. Rooting for your friends to succeed is only natural, but it’s also the most fulfilling feeling in the world. Where do you get your fulfillment?

How Bad Do You Want It?

Andrew Machado — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:42:54 +0000

As I crossed mile 22 my legs locked up and my body felt like it had no more left. I’d spent three months, 100s of miles on two pairs of Nike Air Max 360s to have my body fail me when I needed it most. I debated quitting, threw my Fuel Belt off into the bushes in the surbibia’s of Las Vegas. I think around mile 23 I even pissed myself, but I didn’t care. You spend countless hours and days doing what I call “setting the table” to take learnings previously and apply them forward. You run into walls like this constantly, but at the end you ask yourself “How bad do you want it”. Funny enough I pushed forward, ran across the finish line next to my dad and collected my medal.

When I was a kid I played a ton of video games. I mean tons. The day I turned 16 I got my first job at Software Etc selling the video games I loved. At 21 I beat out 700 candidates to help open one of Apple’s first retail stores, now selling my new obsession computers. I was told I had little to no chance of getting the job, but (pre LinkedIN) I networked with the right people and got my resume in front of the right people. It’s all about how bad you want it.

I’m now going through a new chapter in my journey, fundraising. In one word it’s “grueling”. At any point you can give up. You hear countless rejections. You question every slide in your pitch deck. You analyze the data and say maybe we don’t have enough momentum. You counter every response about how big the market is. In the end it all comes down to how bad you want it and how much you are willing to sacrifice. Suddenly those 26.2 miles don’t seem so bad.

Giving Thanks

Andrew Machado — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:51:52 +0000

It’s been a long year. The last six months have been an incredible journey filled with setbacks, accomplishments and as of today fulfillment. As of today we are finally shipping the latest and a full rewrite of Open Home Pro into customers hands.

The purpose of this post is not about the app, but about the people that helped or inspired its being built.

Bert Toledo - without her we never wouldve started building ohp. She inspired it with her frustration and it turns out 14,999 others have her problem too. She’s my rock. Best girlfriend in the world.

Josh Elman - On September 11, 2010 Josh offered his initial feedback of my mvp product and I thought it was spot on. He talked a lot about focus and simplicity. I would find myself rereading this email a few times over the course of development.

Michael Dearing - When I met with MD he said one word that changed our design forever. Photos. Photos are everything in real estate and they are everything in our app.

Ryan Spoon - Ryan has always encouraged me to take the leap. Without his advisement and resources we never wouldve shipped. God bless him.

Chris Smith - Chris really put OHP on the map by talking about how great it was for agents at Inman’s Agent Reboot conference held in major areas throughout 2011.

Egg Haus - Rob and his team were exceptional to work with. We developed some really great methodologies throughout the app that we agreed our innovative and great for our user base. The design work done in this app I’d argue is the strongest in the real estate industry. The landing pages look so good i’d hang them on my wall. Bravo.

Robert Malko - Robert barely exists online. He has no Twitter or Facebook profiles, but boy does he work his ass off. He poured countless hours to help get this out the door, including 16 straight yesterday.

I had two great interns for a few weeks along the way. Sam and Kirk thanks for the help figuring out conversion numbers.

Chris Lim - Chris was instrumental in getting us enough funding to build towards our vision. His enthusiasm is his best quality. He got me excited to keep pushing towards the finish line.

Angelo DiNardi - Angelo hadn’t done much iOS programming when he turned my original powerpoint slides into a functional app. He’s ridiculously solid and has one heck of a head of hair.

Steven, Tristan, Tyler, Can, Mona and rest of the artists formally known as Apture. Thank you for forcing me to build a better product. The polish that we put into every pixel really pays off for every user.

Last but not least mom, dad. I think nearly every phone call we’ve shared you two have asked how is it going. Not once did you ask when is it shipping?

Pushing all your chips in

Andrew Machado — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 23:47:37 +0000

In Rounders if you haven’t seen it Matt Damon’s characters goes through quite a few swings at the poker table. To kick things off he loses everything after pushing all his chips in.

More recently you’ve seen it with the Los Angeles Angels signing both Albert Pujols and CJ Wilson. They are essentially betting the teams long term health financially on winning now. They think they have the right pieces in place combine with these two signings to take a run at the World Series.

This kind of tactic I always appreciate. It takes some real faith in your decision making to run the risk of losing everything (poker) or cripple your team financially to sign players for over 300+ million dollars combined. If you aren’t willing to bet the house on yourself and your gut feeling then why even play the game.

We constantly see friends and people who are complacent. They want to go into business for themselves or possibly change to a different company, but don’t. You hear things like “but what if” and “the risk is to high” when in fact I believe the risk is even greater if you don’t.

Your time on this planet is limited. Push yourself to make harder decisions and take greater risks.