Garth's World

From Whiteboard Stickmen to One Million Members

Image by lumaxart via Flickr

On May 17th, 2004, Jim Fowler called all the Jigsaw employees (8 people) into our flea infested conference room to show us the result of 4 months of feverish effort. He typed in www.jigsaw.com and up came our home page in 3 shades of “pansy blue”, complete with our Cartoon Network inspired  logo, a basic search box , and an Excel -looking list showing  20 of the 50,000 contacts we had acquired to lure new members in to share with us. After executing a couple searches, Fowler grabbed the sales team (me and three guys I got off Craig’s List) and showed another application that the developers had built in parallel to the main site, a barebones CRM system

Image by Jigsaw via CrunchBase

that we called (and still do) “Admin.” Listed there were the members that had signed up to help us build our business- a total of 8 with yours truly as the first registered member.  Fowler, beaming with pride, declared for the first of what now has been at least 1,000 times, “Gentlemen, this community of users is the foundation that will allow us to grow into a public company.”  What was running through my mind: “Fowler is the joker in the deck that we used to build this house of cards- how did I get sucked into playing this dot bomb poker game again?!”

No Reprieve for the Infirm

Is there anything that blows more than being sick as an adult? 

On the home front, there are endless meals to be prepared and cleaned up, things to be fixed, stories to be read, fights to be broken up, the endless social calendar algorithm to be negotiated.  I can almost forgive my wife for eyeing me with thinly veiled disdain (and every dad knows verbatim that “no sniffle you have compares to 10 months of being p

Image by ratterrell via Flickr

regnant”). It reminds me of my high school football coach who would blame every loss on the fact that the “walking wounded” didn’t prepare enough in the offseason to avoid getting hurt and couldn’t play in games. In public (I am currently on a plane) you can feel the hostile glances as you cough and sneeze into your elbow. I actually thought the automaton at the security line might call me out as a possible H1N1 quarantine candidate, until I realized she was much more concerned that her replacement was late returning from a break than actually detecting any public threat (must have only been a Level Mauve security day). And finally at work, particularly for the quota carrying salesperson, the ever increasing work pile yields to no personal affliction.

Hey Thor, try using a Screwdriver!

If you have been following this blog recently, you may have noticed that my attempts to spin together descriptions of daily business adventures, Jigsaw corporate branding and useful insights for sales people might becoming somewhat forced. The Jigsaw angle is obviously the red headed stepchild of the three. But this week I am happy to report that the bond is lock tight and, just like the superglue that I accidentally squirted across my brand new hardwood floor, will be obvious for all to see.

This morning my furious networking efforts landed me at a meeting of volunteers for the Professional Career Center that is being opened with funding from the governor as part of the

Image via Wikipedia

Charlotte Regional Economic & Workforce Recovery Initiative. Normally I run shrieking from anything that sounds government- oriented. But after I realized that no law enforcement officials would be involved and that I wouldn’t be required to wait in line at the DMV (that’s next week), I decided to give it a try. As it turns out, I have access to something that people looking to rejoin the white collar workforce need (business contact information), as well as extra energy needed for motivation.  In exchange I can meet other business execs that are similarly donating their time and resources to help get Charlotte back on track.

Low and behold, I also get to investigate that inclination in the back of my psyche (Bart Simpson realized it was his conscience) that wants to take a break from racing around in my own personal gerbil ball and actually help other people in a community.