In Horoma's Head 23

We all need that one person

So last week I took about 9 days off to go back to my mother country, visit some friends in cities I hadn't been to in about 4 years now (Paris and Strasbourg to not mention them).

The thing I like the most when it comes to time off, or at least away from work, is that it's generally the type of moments where I'll make the most progress on business matters, personal growth on diverse topics, and generally end up much more tired and than rested.

As I sat down for dinner with a long time friend and two jugs of beers, our discussion at some point lead to the common trope of big business adventures being started by groups of individuals rather than a single individual (Y combinator, Apple, Microsoft, HP, Google, Intel, etc).

This arose mostly because I was mentioning the fact that I feel like Horoma is never going to grow as fast as it could because I lack the push of that "second" partner challenging me constantly on the things I'm doing, or simply helping me on tasks I can't perform because my plate is already full.

And so my friend goes on to describe her relationship with her business partner "_He can see everything I can't, and I can see everything he can't, and together we end up having a very wide vision of each issue we have to tackle_". And this is a quite nice prospect. While I like to think that I'm critical enough of my own work, while at the same time open-minded enough to see things at a quite large scope, it still remains a certainty that having an extra brain thinking about the same topics would unearth many more ideas, shed light on potential blindspots, and keep me away from bad heuristics I might be relying on.

I'm not even talking about the other typical aspects one could ask for such as motivation when you're tired, proficiency on tasks you're not good at, and all that sort of stuff.

I'm lucky enough to have to have great friends that are more or less involved in Horoma and giving me feedback on certain matter, but they are still outsiders. When you have direct skin in the game, and you can focus 24/7 on something, the resulting ideas would probably go far more in depth.

And I think whether you want to keep things small or not, there will always come a time where you might benefit from having that other person around to help you. Hence why I think it's important to keep an eye out early on on this type of person that just look like a potential fit for future partnership. Whether it's at college, during convention, or at work, there's usually a special connection that can arise with some people and you can feel they "could fit". It doesn't mean you need to act on it right now, but it should be at least mentioned and acknowledged that you're on the same page on many things and that maybe working together could make sense, or at least help each other out.

What about now, if you don't have a candidate, but feel like you need one, what do you do?

Well, I genuinely don't know. Getting back to college or going back to an office job just to meet people seems a bit ridiculous. I think it just stays the same as earlier : happenstance. So maybe it's just about fostering potential social interactions and meeting new people.

Yet we all know that freelancing is a quite lonely job and interacting with our peers is easier said than done. There are some initiatives out there to help us meet, but they are unfortunately quite limited and ineffective against the good old methods of studying or working together in the first place.

It is actually all the more interesting to see those two trends collide : the ease we have nowadays to work alone (faster machines, cheaper rigs and subscriptions, worldwide client potential) _vs_ the ease we have today to work together (Slack, Zoom, Dropbox capture, etc).

Really talking about the business aspect rather than the mere visualization aspects has always been important, and will become more and more important as perfectly accurate and realistic renderings will be available at the click of a button (or typing some texts in an AI). Long gone is the time where you could differentiate yourself just by making realistic renderings.

What matters in today's world, and tomorrow's world is not the deliverable itself but the service surrounding that deliverable. And thinking about that service can benefit from some out of the box (or out of your box) thinking.

So , do you have such a person in your surrounding?

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Cheers

Simon