ImmutableType Alpha Season Memberships are Live!
Build in public. Bleed in private. Muddle along until it works.
Q2 Update from ImmutableType
A Story about Jack
Venture Miami Incubator
Alpha Season Memberships are Live
Thank you
A Story about Jack
Some people are truly built differently, and most people never really have the opportunity to experience people who are completely “different”.
John (Jack) Byrne was completely different. Warren Buffet referred to him as “the Babe Ruth of insurance” for his work to save GEICO insurance and then later Fireman’s Insurance as well.
Jack was the father of former Overstock.com CEO, Patrick Byrne, for whom I worked for nearly a decade. Jack was a consistent presence at the company for a number of years and would host conversations and lectures for management.
It was during one of these lectures in 2007 that Jack pointed out the inevitability of the great financial crisis when he described the doomed state of that fiasco. Anyone in that room would have had a front-row seat to a list of spoilers to the future events of 2008. It was a fascinating experience to have someone call the shot as he did and then to watch it play out. Jack was a true seer.
The more actionable story of all his lectures for me was how Jack described the real process for building companies. Though he was an actuary himself, his management observations were precise and without B.S. One of his favorite jokes had the punchline, “yes, he drowned, but only beneath an average of two inches of water.”
We were building a company at that time, one which we all believed was complex and nuanced and well ahead of the curve. We had ideas, and PowerPoints, and strategies, and initiatives, and big plans for the future. Our innocence was so adorable that we actually explained our plans to Jack in a room full of dark wooden tables and second-hand office chairs.
He eventually stopped us all with a wave of the hand and a chuckled. Jack walked with difficulty and a cane at times in those days, and he stood from his seat and started walking around the boardroom table chuckling loudly. He yelled something along the lines of “that’s not how you build companies!” and laughed and walked carefully by holding the backs of each chair with his left hand while slowly making his way around the room.
He spoke loudly, saying, “You MUDDLE!” and waved his hand again “That’s how you build companies!!” He then shuffled his feet exaggerating unsure steps and punch his fist in the air to make his point.
“You muddle from one point to another.” He shuffled again. “You choose a destination and you all muddle together to that point” again, exaggerating a shuffling experience with imaginary arms locked to people on each side of him. “You MUDDLE!” Punching his fist in the air. “An you get to where you’re going…”
I remember being amused and embarrassed at the same time. This man had built GEICO and befriended the greatest investor of our times in Warren Buffet, and his grand advice was for us to pick a destination and make our way together without identifying each step of the way.
His advice was to be imperfect but to progress to the destination, and, also, to dispense with the B.S. of our plans and presentations.
Muddle along and stop taking ourselves so seriously. Take imperfect steps and get to the damn destination.
Venture Miami Incubator
ImmutableType was accepted into the Venture Miami Zero-to-One program spring cohort. This program began in late February and will run through June 20, 2024 where we’ll exit with an investor-day event.
The Venture Miami program has been an incredible experience. We have over 200 founders as part of the program and a dozen mentors and city leaders supporting our work. We have made significant progress building ImmutableType during this program to date and appreciate our community support.
As part of this program, I have been attending twice-weekly workshops and tech events around Miami. The reception of ImmutableType’s mission has been incredible, and we’re expecting strong momentum as we complete the program in June. I couldn’t be more grateful to its leadership for their support.
The advice from Jack has come back to me many times during these few weeks as part of Venture Miami. We are experiencing the modern version of his advice to “muddle along” as company builders, though today we refer to it as shipping an imperfect product and learning from the feedback.
The process to research, launch, and iterate is a more formalized description of the company building feedback loop, and it is a foundational part of the Venture Miami incubator curriculum.
It’s such a stark contrast to how we build software within enterprise environments traditionally, which is far more akin to waterfall in most orgs. It’s a very refreshing and empowering experience to hear our mentors advise us to “muddle forward” and launch an MVP and iterate to progress to the next point by using the feedback received. It’s not a natural experience for traditional enterprise professionals, so the encouragement from the community has been key to getting many of the cohort off the starting blocks and into the race.
As we’ve been working through the program and meeting with mentors, the end point has become very clear, launching an imperfect demo of our products to customers and the Miami investor community is progress.
The instinct to seek perfection before launching will certainly lead to failure for many startups. I’m grateful for this kick in the pants to launch before we’re ready.
Alpha Season Membership is Live
And it’s with this backdrop to muddle forward that we launch our first membership offering: The Alpha Season Membership.
ImmutableType is building our onchain publishing app for journalists, and as we’re doing so we’re inviting our earliest supporters to become our earliest membership holders. These memberships will be our Alpha Members and receive priority ranking based upon ascending membership IDs. Being early is better. Being first is best.
$1.49 Secures Your Early Member ID
One of the great incentives in life is an advantage, and an early member ID signifies HOW early our members supported our mission.
We will reward our earliest members more than our later members, and the lower your member ID the greater the rewards.
Why Only $1.49 for Alpha Season?
Being early is the game for Alpha Season, not how much one may pay to secure their early ID. I have made the decision to price as low as possible to include as many people across the spectrum as possible. Nearly anyone worldwide may have the means to pay $1.49 USD for their earliest ID.
5,000 Total Alpha Season Members
I’ve chosen this total as the minimum quantity of audience members a newsroom may serve when we launch our publishing app live. My personal assignment is to gather 5,000 members to support our first journalists.
How Will I Know My Rank?
This one is going to be manual for me. I’ll be emailing new memberships confirmation of their rank daily as best possible.
The first confirmation email will be automated and include an order number beginning at 1000. For example, my personal membership order number was 1001, and my membership rank is #1.
Your order number will likely be your rank, though I’ll end up purging duplicates and/or fraud orders that may increase your ranking. I’ll confirm ranking manually until we are able to code something automatically. (We’re muddling along, as you can see.)
Upcoming Schedule for Alpha Season Members
ImmutableType is working our way from point to point during 2024.
Here are the upcoming events of interest to our community:
Launch ImmutableType on Producthunt.com, June 12, 2024
Complete Venture Miami program June 20, 2024
Launch {REDACTED} campaign - June 18-20 (tentative dates to be announced)
Build and launch journalist publishing app - Q3 2024
Reach 5,000 Alpha Season Membership - Q4 2024
Recruit 3 Miami journalists to publish genesis articles and photographs with members receiving first-look collecting opportunities - Q3 2024
Offer discounted Lifetime Memberships exclusively to Alpha Season Members
Reveal our novel “Reserved Membership Purchasing Privilege” for Alpha Season and Lifetime Membership account holders
Answer the question of “{REDACTED}” as soon as we’re able to answer that question in a manner compliant within regulator standards.
Secure Early Alpha Season Membership ID Now
That’s about all we can say at this time.
Simply jump in and secure your early ID now, and we’ll get this party started for ImmutableType’s earliest members.
Make sure to subscribe and share this email to family and friends as well. This is a low-risk and high-upside decision.
I’m buying a membership for each of my family as soon as I hit “send” on this notification. I’m going to spend dozens of dollars.
Thank You, As Always
I want to thank you for subscribing and following along as we build ImmutableType. This endeavor is a long road, but Jack’s advice has become an empowering reminder to keep putting one foot in front of the other and to muddle along to the next destination.
We’re going to get there, as long as we keep moving.
Sincerely,
Damon Peters
Founder, ImmutableType