Generation Limbo

Documenting the work lives of Generation Y

[genlimbo]

“I had the hope from the very beginning that I would live from my art.”

008 – Mele de la Yglesia

Spanish artist Mele de la Yglesia is beautifying Berlin one wall at a time. After years of internships and networking and, now, a new baby, Mele is starting to see recognition for her work. Scene: Mele and I meet over cappuccinos on a sunny day in Wilmersdorf. Elisa Maya, Mele’s newborn, stares around curiously and intermittently bangs on the table.

Could you tell me about what brought you to Germany?

I studied visual arts and design in Madrid. I decided to do the Erasmus program because I always loved traveling. I didn’t know much English, and of course no German, but there was a list of every Erasmus destination, and I saw there was a good design school, so I said, yeah, Hildesheim, in Germany. Let’s go there. It was amazing. I studied at one of the best universities in Germany for design.

After that year I finished my studies in Madrid. My then-boyfriend, whom I had met during Erasmus, and I, we said, let’s move to Berlin. We had visited it during Erasmus. And that’s what we did.

What did you do when you first moved to Berlin?

I had the hope from the very beginning that I would live from my art. But for two years I was trying and trying. I was making enough money, but not really enough to live. I was doing exhibitions, selling drawings and art to people, and interning in three different galleries and an agency.

My main job was to find artists and places to put their work. I got to know a lot of artists here in Berlin, and after two years, everything came into the flow. Through my networking I met the gallerist behind FELLINI Gallery, where I drew my first wall design.

“I was doing exhibitions, selling drawings and art to people, and interning in three different galleries and an agency.”

So the gallerist approached you. How did she find your work?

Through another artist who was working there already, Winston Torr. The gallerist saw my work and asked me to paint the door of her gallery. Then I made an exhibition with her, and she commissioned me to paint the wall on Bergmannstrasse. That was a turning point in my career.

How did you strike a deal for the original drawing, and then the exhibition, and then the Bermannstrasse project?

It wasn’t really a business thing. It was more person-to-person, something quite spontaneous. Nobody was drawing the gallery’s wall, and I said, “Look at that space. I can do that. Let me show you what I can do.” I didn’t have to sell it.

Did it ever get awkward when you were talking about compensation?

Yes. This is horrible for me. I don’t know how much my work is worth. Many people say to me, “Are you crazy? 1,000 euros? It’s worth 10,000!” And another person says, “1,000 euros, are you crazy? I would not pay that.”

I’m not sure how much I’m worth. It’s not that my work is worth only the five hours I put into it: it’s worth the process behind it. I didn’t come one day and do this suddenly from nothing. I had to study six years. I had to develop a style. But on the other hand, I do it so easily that sometimes I undersell myself. It’s really difficult. I think it’s the worst part, when somebody’s like, “How much is it?” I always say, “It depends.”

I have hundreds of ideas about how to calculate things. Per hour? Per piece? Per square meter? Per…what? How?

For example, a month ago a shop called me to draw their walls. I said, yeah, of course. They asked me for the idea and the budget, and in the end they wanted a drawing about 5 square meters.

This would have been easy before. I would have taken my bike, worked about 10 hours per day for three days, and in about 30 hours I would have finished.

But now I have a baby, and I don’t have a babysitter. I was drawing with her in the carrier. She was crying, and I couldn’t focus because she was moving. So the same job that used to take three days now takes more than one month.

We fixed the price at the beginning. In my other life it would have been worth it, because it would have been three days of work. Now I would never do that again for the same price. I have to recalculate how I charge for my work, because now my time is worth more. I’m more productive now, and each hour I spend away from Elisa, the more I have to give her to a babysitter.

“I have to recalculate how I charge for my work, because now my time is worth more. I’m more productive now, and each hour I spend away from Elisa, the more I have to give her to a babysitter.”

Earlier you mentioned that your drawing on Bermannstrasse was a turning point for your career. Who was the first to contact you after the drawing?

It was Alexander Dewhirst, a director of the design firm DesignerDoc. He contacted me to design some wall art for his new house in Greece. Finally it didn’t happen, but I gave drawing lessons to his kids, and nowadays I am still in touch with him and his family, always open to new projects and collaborations.

After that I began working with Alexander Dau for HOLI ONE World. The company organizes an international electronic music event, a mix between the Indian Holi festival and a music festival. For two years I was doing the whole festival’s design. Stages, merchandise, flyers, advertisements. All the Facebook pages, the online marketing. All the graphics for everything. I was working hard, and it was just amazing how much I learned. I was not a mother, so I had time.

Did you always prefer to work freelance?

I’ve been freelancing for a year. Before that I worked as an employee of the company. But I don’t like to have a timetable every day, 9 to 5, 9 to 6. I always wanted the capability of deciding, for example, where to work. When I travel for holidays or to visit family in Spain, being a freelancer gives me the capability to work from there, because everything can be sent through the Internet. So I said, let’s see if I can go freelance and continue working for them.

It is a bit crazy; to manage yourself in Germany is a nightmare because of the taxes system. You have to do a lot of paperwork all the time.

Do you have any tips for others trying to make a living off of their art?

That’s what I was missing from my studies. They teach you to do a lot of things, and then they say, “Bye!” You’re like, okay, I have this knowledge, I have these capabilities, but what can I do now? In the university there is not even one subject that teaches you how to live from your art or how to sell yourself. They create artists, but to be an artist is really difficult if you don’t know how to sell yourself.

“In the university there is not even one subject that teaches you how to live from your art or how to sell yourself.”

Do you have any comments about what it’s like to find work in Berlin and the support it provides for artists?

I think Berlin is a lively city full of creative people with original ideas ready to get things done. But from my experience, it’s really difficult to stand out. There are so many good people competing to sell their art, and you have to work hard to be at the same level.

In my internship I worked full-time and earned 200 euros per month. And there are some internships that are unpaid. I worked unpaid, too, thinking it was good for my CV. Then when you work you think, my time is worth nothing. That is not sustainable. Companies can do that because many people believe it’s good for their CV. If you don’t take it, you know another person will. So there are a lot of opportunities, but also a lot of people fighting for them.

But for startups and freelancers, it’s amazing. You really learn a lot from everybody. Like betahaus Berlin is an amazing place where there are talks, conferences, seminars, and workshops for people like me trying to start their own businesses.

One difference I find between Germany and Spain for artists who are starting is the support from the German government, which helps you from the very beginning to make your idea happen. In Spain you have to invest a lot of money at the start, which makes it very difficult, or almost impossible, for many people to create and develop their projects and businesses. This is extremely important, in my opinion.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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[genlimbo]

The film industry in general is not for the faint of heart. You have to really love what you’re doing, or else you’re not going to last that long.

009 – Geoff

Geoff jumped into the film industry right out of high school, moving to LA with little money and a lot to learn. In this interview, Geoff talks about getting his first gigs in LA, starting from the bottom for a second time in Berlin, and the mix of luck, skill, and grit needed to make it in the world’s most star-studded industry.

Scene: I chatted with Geoff over the Skype airwaves, me from an AirBnb in Budapest, Geoff from his home in Berlin. Originally we talked about his life in film over Indian in the German capital.

To start off, could you tell me about when you started getting into the film industry in LA?

I started to get into the film industry in 2005 or 2006, straight out of high school. I was thinking of doing the normal film school route, but I knew that getting a degree wouldn’t help me in terms of actually getting jobs. In a lot of creative fields, all they care about is that you’re skilled. They don’t care how or where you received those skills, they just care that you have them. So I thought, I’ll move down to LA, and I’ll just start working on set.

I had actually known a few friends who, out of high school, went to film school, and by the time they graduated I had 10 times as much experience as them because I was actually working on set.

What kind of things did you do?

Getting hired was a problem because it’s like that Catch-22 where they’ll only hire you if you have experience, but in order to get experience you need to be hired. What I first started to do was to work for free. My sister was kind of in the film industry, and she had heard of a friend of a friend who was a producer on an indie film. They were looking for production assistants, and I said, “Oh hell. I’ll work for free for the entirety of the shoot.”

So that’s what I did. I worked for free as a production assistant on that film, and about halfway through they promoted me, I guess you could say, to the key set production assistant, and by the end of the film they started to pay me.

Once I had that one credit under my belt, it was a lot easier to get more jobs.

The only way they’re going to bring you on-board is if they don’t have to pay you, if there’s nothing to lose on their end.

How long were you working on that first indie film, in total, and how long before they started paying you?

I would say I worked on it for about a month or a little less before they started to pay me. I think the entire shoot was five or six weeks.

Good for you.

Yeah, I was happy. But the funny thing was I never actually ended up getting paid on that movie. Completely unrelated, but it turned out the producer had embezzled about a third or a fourth of the film’s budget. When the end of the film came, he ran off. It turned out he was using a fake name. They never found him.

About half the crew–including high-ranking members–ended up not getting paid. So I didn’t end up actually getting paid, either, but it was nice that I was going to get paid.

Does that kind of deceit happen often, as far as you know?

As far as I know, not really. I never experienced something like that.

Coming out of high school, how did it occur to you to offer your work for free in order to get your foot in the door?

When I first arrived I attempted to find some paying work, but the problem with LA is you’re competing with God knows how many people for the same position. Everyone is trying to break into the film industry, so everyone wants to be a production assistant. Paying gigs are going to go to the people who have the experience and are worth the money.

I would say, in a lot of fields, if you have no experience, the only way they’re going to bring you on-board is if they don’t have to pay you, if there’s nothing to lose on their end. I knew that offering my work for free was the only way I was going to get my foot in the door.

After working in LA, what made you go to Berlin, eventually? I know you had a winding road.

The transition to Berlin really didn’t have much to do with my career. It was more just a personal choice.

I had always been a big traveler. Straight out of high school, just before I moved to LA, I did a long backpacking trip with a friend in Europe. I fell in love with Europe in general and with traveling. After a few years in LA, I did another backpacking trip with a friend of mine, and it was during that trip I decided I wanted to go to Europe for a few months, try it out. It was a bucket-list type of thing.

I had also always wanted to learn the German language. I was like, okay, I’m going to move to Germany and take a language course. But when I researched it, I realized that in Munich, which had been my top choice at the time, the rent and cost of living was through the roof. I had also just been in Vienna, which is close by, and which, of course, is also German-speaking. It’s much cheaper there, and I knew a few people there, so I moved to Vienna and started taking language classes.

While I was there I attempted to start working and realized it wasn’t really going to happen. But someone I had bumped into had mentioned Berlin. They said it’s really cheap, and there’s a huge film industry in Germany, especially compared to Austria. So I switched to Germany.

It was one of those things that just happen, where suddenly instead of just visiting Europe, I found myself living in Europe. Eventually my visa expired and I had to return to the US. I got back into filmmaking, but I just kept thinking about getting back to Berlin. I worked on a few projects, saving up money to return.

There’s a lot of books that explain how these well known producers and directors have broken into the film industry, but if you actually look at them, the only pattern in their stories is that there is no pattern.

What were some of your first jobs in Berlin when you moved back?

I did a few jobs as a camera operator and cinematographer on music videos. Really low-paying stuff, but at the time I was just making connections and taking what I could. Also during that time I was taking language classes, so I didn’t have a lot of free time to work anyway.

Eventually I got to the point where I was just plain running out of savings and needed a full-time job. It was at this point that, through an odd connection with my dad, I was introduced to an editor who was based in Berlin. I ended up interviewing with her for an assistant editor job on her next project. I got that, and from then on finding work wasn’t difficult anymore.

She put you in connection with a lot of positions?

The main connection was just with her, really. She is an experienced, well-known editor, so she has a lot of work coming her way. We developed a good working relationship, and so pretty much any time she had a project, she would bring me on-board. A lot of the work I’ve had in the past years I owe to her.

Those kinds of connections are crucial. So tell me how it is when you’re editing a film.

Again, in a way I was really starting over from scratch. Even though I’d worked in the film industry in LA, I was unknown in the film industry in Germany. I think for a lot of people, when you’re an expat moving to a new place, you find yourself on the bottom again trying to prove yourself in your new country. That’s exactly where I was.

I had never worked so much as an editor, and not much on features. I was always directing or camera operating. So on my first feature with her I started as a, in Germany they call it a Praktikant, like an intern or trainee.

Do trainees typically get a stipend?

It wasn’t a stipend. I was getting paid. It was just very low, break-even kind of pay. It would cover my expenses and rent but not much beyond that. But again, I was happy to be getting paid anything. And just the experience working with her and working on a feature was invaluable as well. So pay was really not my main concern at that point.

So anyway, halfway through the film one of the other editors left, and I was promoted from a trainee to the assistant editor position for the second half of the editing process. Through that first film I had proved myself, and people respected me from then on.

It was one of those things that just happen, where suddenly instead of just visiting Europe, I found myself living in Europe.

How was it after that first job? You continued with editing gigs?

After the first job it was was great. I worked a lot with that one Berlin-based editor on a lot of really interesting projects that we were editing all over, in Germany, India, Greece, so it gave me a chance to travel. During that time I also made other connections that allowed me to work in Berlin from my home editing station. There’s plenty of work. As long as you know the right people and fight for it, there’s plenty to go around.

You told me Germany has a pretty lively film industry. I was surprised. Now I think I’ll start looking for the set locations of every movie I watch.

I’m telling you, you’d be surprised. If you ask any American they can only name maybe one German film, and so they think it’s a non-existent industry. But a) German films are quite big in Europe. Of course, they show in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Germany-speaking regions of Belgium, etc., but they’re also big in France and the UK as well. But there’s a lot of big-budget American productions–TV and film–that are being shot in Berlin, and a lot of people don’t know that.

That’s really cool. From what you told me, it seems like it’s really not for the faint of heart to go into editing, at least, because the hours are pretty difficult.

I wouldn’t say it’s just editing. The film industry in general is not for the faint of heart. You have to really love what you’re doing, or else you’re not going to last that long. No matter what department you’re in, whether it’s editorial or production or costume or makeup, you’re going to be working long hours. On set you’re going to be working at least 10, 12 hours a day. In some cases, on some films, you’re working 14, 15-hour days. But the majority of the people I meet, they love what they do. They just couldn’t imagine themselves doing anything else. And so the hours aren’t really that big of a problem.

The people you meet who complain the most about the hours really shouldn’t be in the film industry because their heart isn’t really in it. On the very first film that I worked when I moved to LA, we had eight production assistants on the first day of shooting and only three on the second. After just one day, five of the people quit. They expected it to be glamorous; they didn’t expect that they were going to be working on their feet for 12 hours. It’s shocking for some people, the amount of work that goes into a movie.

So typically, you’re working on a cycle. When you have a gig, you’re working long hours for a set period of time, and then once you finish that job, you have a break until your next gig.

That’s kind of the love-hate relationship with freelance work in general. You get to pick and choose when you want to work. At least that’s what people say.

The constant look for work never stops. Even a few days into one film, you’re sending out feelers for your next projects. I can’t really say that freelance is better than a 9-5 just because I’ve been working freelance for 10 years, so I don’t really know anything else, but it has its ups and downs. I prefer it just because it allows more time for travel and being flexible.

It’s shocking for some people, the amount of work that goes into a movie.

So now you’re adding onto your editing work. Tell me about your current project and goals?

Directing is my passion, so I want to slowly get myself back into that by focusing more time on my own projects. In terms of directing, the only way you’re going to get jobs is by showing examples of past work. It’s been a few years since I’ve directed something of my own. It’s time to work on a couple of short films that I can show to producers.

The key is just to get yourself seen. No matter what you do, if you’re a camera operator or an actor, what-have-you, get yourself seen.

Really cool. When can we expect your next short?

Good question. I’ve been hoping to shoot before winter, when the weather changes and shooting outside is miserable. So hopefully by the new year I should have something shot and edited.

Let me know.

Definitely.

Do you have any comments for young people trying to get into the film industry?

It really depends what position you’re looking for. Whether you’re an actor, an editor, a director, a cinematographer, a producer, your path is going to be very different. And there’s really no one path.

There’s a lot of books that explain how these well known producers and directors have broken into the film industry, but if you actually look at them, the only pattern in their stories is that there is no pattern. You can’t listen to one person’s story and go, “I’m going to do exactly that,” because it won’t work.

A lot of it just comes down to luck. I would say it’s 30 percent talent and 70 percent luck. I’m not saying that the film industry isn’t full of talented people–it is–but a lot of the time being in the right place at the right time and working on that right project.

The key is just to get yourself seen. No matter what you do, if you’re a camera operator or an actor, what-have-you, get yourself seen. When you’re unknown, people aren’t coming to you. Waiting around for someone to come to you is ridiculous and a waste of time. You might as well do something else. It’s really just being persistent and getting your work seen by as many people as possible. That increases your chance of finding that right person who can help you further your career.

Well said.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

[genlimbo]

It’s just very frustrating when you have a good brain and two good hands, and you can’t do anything with it.

007 – Nanja M.

Nanja is a human rights advocate living in Amsterdam. After discovering that her master’s in international development couldn’t convince any NGO to hire her, she started working on a second master’s degree. Scene: Nanja and I face each other across her kitchen table. Nanja makes coffee in her stovetop espresso maker and drinks from a glass cup. In an act of hopeful defiance of Amsterdam’s slow-starting summer, she wears shorts.

What did you study?

I did my bachelor’s in organizational psychology and then I did a master’s in international development studies, both in Amsterdam. Now I’m studying in a master’s program to become a teacher.

What did you hope to do with that combination of studies? Did you always want to go into teaching?

No, I wanted to go into the development world. I still want to get into the NGO sector – that’s what I hope to do with my first master’s degree. But since I also like giving trainings and teaching, and it’s hard to find a job in the NGO sector, I started the master’s program to become a teacher. Yes, it wasn’t my first choice after earning my master’s in international development studies, but after some teaching experience I really wanted to do the teaching master’s, since I liked it so much.

Tell me about the volunteer work you do.

I work at CHOICE, it’s a youth-led organization for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and meaningful youth participation. We have two main programs. In one, we have partners with youth-led organizations in Africa and Asia, and they’re fighting for a certain purpose related to SRHR issues in their countries. We support them financially and also with capacity-building trainings, depending on what they need. For example in Malawi they’re more focused on child marriage, so we focus our trainings more on that. And we have an advocacy program where we go to international conferences to lobby for our purposes.

I know a lot of people are working for almost nothing or for free.

How many hours a week do you think you spend, on average, volunteering?

There are five people on staff who get paid, but the rest is all volunteers. If you’re just keeping the organization going, they say an average of four hours. But if you go to an event, or you go to give a training, you have to spend between four and 10 hours a week.

You mentioned it’s really hard to get a job in an NGO here. How has that process been for you?

[Laughs] Just writing applications and getting denied. Maybe go to an interview, but then they found someone better. They always look for a lot of experience. It’s really difficult. It’s already two years since I graduated.

Have you had any internships because you couldn’t get other kinds of jobs?

Yes. I did an internship at a foundation for off-grid solutions for solar lighting that mostly focuses on Africa.

Did they offer a stipend for your internship?

Yeah, they paid 200 euros a month [laughs] for 24 hours (3 days) a week, plus travel expenses.

Do you think you got anything out of the internship?

Yeah, it’s working experience. I did learn a lot about project management, but since it was only six months of experience it often isn’t perceived as enough.

If you want a paid job in an NGO, you end up in the office doing monitoring and evaluation. My work at CHOICE is really in the field, so that experience, a lot of times, doesn’t count, either.

So in the end you’ll have two master’s degrees and a bachelor’s. Do you think that will help with applying for jobs?

Well at least I’ll be able to apply to teaching jobs as well. I can do that now, but they pay you less when you don’t have the degree. And they want you to get the degree in the end, anyway, so you have to study next to your job.

In general, how would you describe the job search here in Amsterdam for students when they are just leaving university?

In Amsterdam we have university, and we have hogescholen (HBO), which is like a university of applied sciences, a bit more practical, which actually, I think, makes it easier to get a job nowadays, like in marketing and business.

Then we have middelbaar beroepsonderwijs (MBO), which is one level more practical. So you really study to become, for example, a waitress, plumber, or electrician. And then there were people in my restaurant studying at MBO level waiting as an internship. And they got paid, for a full-time job, $350 per month.

Just because they were in the school?

Yeah, it was their internship. I was doing the same thing and I was getting paid 11 euros an hour. It’s ridiculous. Everyone’s doing it just because they can.

But from the traditional universities it’s very difficult because you can do so many things, but actually you can’t do anything – you learned from the books, but you never tried, you know? So a lot of people do internships, or they just start working in a restaurant to make some money.

How are the laws surrounding internships here? Are there rules regarding how much interns can work and how much they must be paid?

You have a standard that has to be paid, which is between 350 and 500 euros per month, for full-time work [laughs]. It’s not a lot. But they have this new thing, werkervaringsplekken, an “experience” position, where they make you work for free to get work experience. They give you a volunteering contract or something, because I think the internships are only allowed when you are still in uni. I don’t know the specifics, but I know a lot of people are working for almost nothing or for free.

The only way to get a job now is to do internships first. It’s also only meant for people who have money to work for free.

What kinds of companies are doing that?

All kinds. A lot of NGO’s [laughs]. They always look for volunteers, but of course, because they don’t have the funds, or it’s harder for them to get funds. But I think the businesses that really have money, they’re not like that. Not the consultancies, and they offer traineeships.

If there are so many people who could be hired as interns instead of employees, do you think this system is making it harder to get real jobs?

Yeah, I definitely think so. And that’s also why real jobs today require so much experience. The only way to get a job now is to do internships first. It’s also only meant for people who have money to work for free.

How do you make ends meet when you’re put under this pressure?

Every now and then I get work through a staffing company that specializes in education. This July I’m going to teach in a summer school. A lot of times at the university of applied sciences I work in administration or watching over exams.

I used to work in restaurants a lot to make money, but I’m done with that. I’m looking for a job in my field.

Do you have any other general comments on what it’s like to be young here trying to work?

Obviously for me these are First World problems. I’m still able to live and do everything I want and get food. It’s just very frustrating when you have a good brain and two good hands, and you can’t do anything with it. It’s not only for the money that I want a job, it’s also because it’s part of life. It’s really annoying, because you know you can do all these jobs, but they will be like, no, we found someone with more experience, or, okay, you can do it, but for free. It’s frustrating.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Author’s note: The day after this interview, Nanja received a job offer for a temporary, full-time position at a partner organization of CHOICE.

[genlimbo]

“I wondered how hard could it be to actually think about inclusivity. I know that there are people out there who have different body shapes who would love to be featured in a magazine.”

003 – Roxanne Fequiere

After traversing a series of sometimes rewarding and sometimes strange freelance jobs and internships, Roxanne has given in to the voices in her head telling her to take a chance on her own project. By day Roxanne serves as copywriter for eBay Fashion; by night she’s earning her editor/owner stripes at print magazine Golly. Scene: The end of September at Le Pain Quotidien, Greenwich Village. Our waitress is not very attentive, the music a bit overpowering, and the steamer just plain deafening, but we manage to talk about life plans and what it means to jump into the deep end.

To start out, do you want to tell me what you do?

Right now I am the head marketing copywriter for eBay Fashion, and I also provide copy for their home and garden and sporting goods articles. That’s what I do by day, and then by night [laughs] I am the editor-in-chief of Golly Magazine, which is a magazine that I started and launched last month.

So how did you get started doing copywriting?

Actually I had no background in copywriting [laughs].

I worked for a fashion startup called StyleIQ, a mother and daughter team who started basically taking a Handycam into people’s homes and interviewing them about their personal style. I found it online, probably Craigslist, and I was like, this is the coolest thing ever. They were very creative.

I interned there full-time. Five days a week, no pay. [Laughs] At that point I’d already moved out of my parents’ house, and I was living off savings and tutoring to make ends meet. I did that for three months. It was very circuitous; I don’t know what I’m doing, but I need to keep surviving and take anything that wants to hire me that seems like it might pan out.

Then three months after interning full-time at Style IQ, they got funding. I was like, perfect. I can stay at this [laughs] amazing place and not be killing myself to survive. They hired me on.

It was just me wanting to create something that felt like what I always had wanted to find.

I worked there for about nine months and then they basically said to me, “I know that you wanna write, and we don’t feel like it’s fair for us to keep you around here thinking that maybe in the future there’ll be a better outlet for you. We wanna part ways, but we believe in your work ethic: anybody you wanna talk to, we’ll give you an introduction.”

They had this Rolodex of hundreds of people in and out of every industry you could think of, so I basically got to take my pick. And one of the people they introduced me to was Andrea Linett [sips], the co-founder of Lucky and, at the time, the creative director of eBay Fashion. She wrote to me and said, “I shoot people for my blog, you should come over to my place and we’ll shoot you, and I’ll just talk to you.” I didn’t know that there actually was an opportunity.

When I got there she wasn’t available, she was like [quietly], “I’m on the phone with my boss,” and I was like, Okay. I did this whole photo shoot with her husband, and it was getting to the end where I was signing the release, and I was like, Is she coming out?

Then she literally came out on the phone and was like, “I’m on hold. A copywriter’s leaving. I would like you to step into that role. You want this job, right?” And I was like [laughs], Yeah. I don’t think she’d even seen my writing at all, but she was like, “You’re a smart girl, you can do this. Do you think you can fly to [laughs] California next week?” I had just quit my job, and I was like, Of course I’ll fly out.

I left so confused. I remember I called somebody and was like, I think I just got a job?

Did you aim, at the beginning, to do copywriting?

No. I wanted to do fashion journalism when I was in school slash graduated. I had thought I was gonna do Teach for America, but then I was doing so well in that process that I realized that I was relying on it instead of actually looking for writing jobs. I took myself out of the pool to spur myself to look for some writing jobs, and then nothing panned out.

I did a couple of internships and like freelance things, but I really wasn’t challenged in the places where I went. Maybe it was my fault for not believing in myself enough to go for places where I would’ve felt challenged. I was just writing trend pieces, and it made me feel like the kind of writing that I wanted to do about fashion was gonna be a little harder for me to find.

So how did Golly start?

I’ve been kicking around the idea of having my own magazine forever. I remember talking about it in college with people. I never quite felt like the magazines that I love to read and do read in great quantities every month really were for me. And maybe it was just because I started to move into a certain age and was reading Jezebel and other things online, but it felt like everybody else was saying the same thing, yet nothing would ever happen. I guess it was just me being like: what’s the deal? Not that it would be easy to start a magazine, but I wondered how hard could it be to actually think about inclusivity. I know that there are people out there who have different body shapes who would love to be featured in a magazine.

Another thing was I just felt like eBay was… eBay. It was a great volume of work there, but I don’t think anybody would argue that it’s incredibly creatively challenging. I have this job, it’s paying me more than I’ve ever been paid in my entire life. I don’t wanna make a stupid decision and bounce on it, throw my loan repayment down the toilet, and no longer be able to live in my apartment because I’m looking for something that challenges me. I needed a project on the side, and this magazine was something that had been in my mind forever. I guess it was just me wanting to create something that felt like what I always had wanted to find.

Do you remember the day that you started putting this action plan in motion?

We had gone to these small business classes, and we were just losing our minds. There were questions that we didn’t have the answers to that we were supposed to put in the business plan, and we were going nuts.

We knew that we weren’t going to do the project if people had to work for free.

And then [sips] one of us must’ve said, Well, we might have to push the issue to another season because this is taking a really long time. But we came to the realization that we’ve pushed it back a lot, and we could talk about this for the next four years and never do anything. Why don’t we put this business plan on hold and just do the magazine?

And then I just started reaching out to people. I was like, if I don’t send these emails, I never will. Honestly, the minute you reach out to somebody and engage them, you can’t stop. We had to throw ourselves in the deep end and just go for it. It was telling people that we were doing this thing that was the biggest hurdle.

Who’d you start contacting first?

We knew that we weren’t going to do the project if people had to work for free. But the first time out we had no idea what range of prices people would be comfortable with, so we sat with people, gave them our pitch, and told them that we were financing this ourselves but that we don’t wanna ask them for free work. [Sips] What do you usually work for? What do you feel comfortable working for?

Some people would say, “Honestly I’m so excited about this, I’ll do this for free,” or “I’ll do it for free, just reimburse me for whatever I do,” some people would say, “Here’s my rate,” or, “Here’s what I could do.” Some people would tell us, “I get paid this, but I’ll have you do it for a quarter of that.” So it was a big range in terms of what people would do.

We didn’t mention that in the first email, which I think was a mistake, for instance with the woman from Tomboy Style. She was the first big person, to me, that I reached out to. I read her blog every day, and I have the book. I was like, I can’t believe I’m emailing this woman. I mean, it worked out, she did it [laughs].

It was telling people that we were doing this thing that was the biggest hurdle.

I was actually in L.A., and I emailed her before I got there trying to get her to talk to me that weekend that I was in L.A. She was like, “You know, this weekend’s kind of crazy,” and I was like, okay, but I’m here. It would only take a minute, I really just wanna meet you in person and give you my pitch.

I don’t like to like nag people–I’m very quiet. Everything was out of my realm. At a certain point she was like, “Oh, maybe I can do it, I don’t know.” [Laughs] “I don’t mean to be rude, but I actually just can’t do free work.” And I was like, I don’t want you to. At that point I realized I really need to put that in my initial email. So it was trial and error, tweaking the email every time I’d send it out to somebody new to get the most information across.

Why was it so important to you to pay people to do the work?

Been there [laughs], done that, all the free work in the world. I mean, I don’t think that if we had done free work that it would’ve been worthless to them. I’d like to think that the magazine is going places and it’s something that people wanna be a part of, but that’s just not something anybody can eat on. So, I knew it was gonna be hard, but having been there, I just couldn’t do it. You know what I mean? It would be very difficult for me, with a straight face, to say to somebody, Why don’t you just do this project? We’re not paying at this time.

How do you feel like your attitude toward work is the same or different from other people’s in your generation?

I think it really runs the gamut. I have friends of mine who make me feel like [laughs] I’m doing nothing with my life, I’m a slacker, and I need to get it together. But even the people who seem to have a little bit more of a carefree perspective on jobs, they still work like five jobs. It may be stuff that I wouldn’t be able to like do because it wouldn’t feel secure enough for me, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re still doing three, four, five different projects. I feel like that’s where I feel like my generation’s at. They might not do it in the traditional way, they might not be looking for those jobs that have 401(k)s, but they get by in ways that I can’t even fathom just by being in a [laughs] million places at once.

If I had to fall on one side of it, I would place myself a little closer to the has-it-together side. There are times where I feel like I’m closer to the other side, but I know that that’s just me being ridiculous with myself.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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[genlimbo]

“It’s every little kid’s dream to play in the NFL – I got to do the next best thing.”

006 – Jay Kapoor

After earning his stripes in investment banking and corporate development at UBS and the NFL, a chance conversation has landed Jay his dream job – maybe. Scene: On a Saturday morning Jay and I attempt to grab a spot at famed (and rightly named) Little Collins but with no luck. Forced to retreat into Starbucks, we talk over Christmas music and waves of shouting middle schoolers.

When you were in college, what were you working toward? What did you want to do when you graduated?

I had interned at UBS over the summer of 2010, and I came back and I said, now that I’ve been at a bank, I get what they do, I like what they do, and to be frank about it, they pay really well. And when you’re accruing student loans and you’re paying them off yourself, you have to think about what’s the business decision. That turned into, go do investment banking for a while, the money’s good, the work opens a lot of doors for you, and eventually you can do something like private equity or go be an investor. Put your passions on hold for a couple of years and you’ll get paid really well for it.

The problem with which is, when you put your passions on hold for a couple years, most people in banking put them on hold for a while, and you come out 10 years later and realize, what did I ever want to do? Why am I doing this?

This guy I worked with, he lived in New Jersey. He would put his wife on speakerphone when he called her at 11 o’clock at night. She literally was like, I haven’t seen you in for fucking ever, you’re asleep by the time I get up and take the kids out, you’re home after I go to bed.

That’s not a life anyone should live.

Why do think the culture is like that? Is there pressure to work those hours?

It’s not a pressure to work those hours – it’s a requirement. The way an investment bank is profitable is they take on a lot of deals, and they take the work of two people and they give it to one person. They will give four deals to a junior banker and say you lead when this gets done. And the pressure to get that done is because you see a light at the end of the tunnel, and for most people that’s, I’m going to a hedge fund or an investment fund, and I’m going to make a lot of money doing that, so I just need to put my ego aside for a couple of years, take whatever abuse I’m going to get, get it done, and it’s fine.

How did you decide to leave, and how did you realize you wanted to get into corporate development?

There were a few deals that I had done that turned me onto the media space. I’d always been interested in film and media and music, but I never thought about it as a business, as an industry. I did a deal for EMI [Music] when they were being bought by Warner Music. And then I did this deal for a sports company called NEP Broadcasting. NEP takes the trucks that go to events, like a red carpet event or the draft or NFL games, NHL games. They record the video from the sideline, and they satellite it over to ESPN or E! News, and they turn it into Sports Center or whatever it is. And I got that business. It was just like a fish to water. I’m on the call as a junior person about a year in, and I’m leading questions on the call. And I basically was like, this is where I need to be. I get this. This feels natural.

I don’t know if you knew Sid Aurora. He was my roommate. He’s in Boston now, but we talk every other day. He was like, “Dude, this doesn’t sound like you. I get that you wanna be an investor, and that all makes sense to me, but you don’t want to work across a bunch of different companies. If I told you to go work on a roofing company today or a consulting company today, no. That’s not you, right? I get you. You wanna be in film, you wanna be in media. You love the entertainment side of it. Go find something that does that. Get that experience, and you can go be an investor in that space once you’ve built an expertise.”

That was really good advice, which is, know what you’re good at, and be good at something that other people aren’t good at.

What kind of positions were you applying to?

I knew I wanted to do a media focus, but most of the funds I was talking to didn’t peak my interest. A lot of the media-focused firms are either out in LA or they were looking for people specifically out of media teams. I didn’t have an area expertise. You wanna specialize in something, but if you specialize in one way or another you get pigeonholed, you don’t specialize then you’re kind of a jack of all trades. You’re not necessarily at the top of anybody’s call list. And that’s always a balance you have to find.

So I said, okay, I think corporate development is really where I’m gonna be able to shine and take my skillset, and you get to understand the business from the inside. I was looking for a mix between corporate development and basically something to bring in investment banking, but more of the strategic side.

When I looked at the NFL they said, “Look. We’re an FP&A team, so we have the budgeting and forecasting aspect, but there’s a split, let’s say 60/40, 60% you do this, 40% you’re gonna do that corporate development side.” I love that. I mean, come on: it’s every little kid’s dream to play in the NFL – I got to do the next best thing.

I’ve been at the NFL a little over two years now. My boss is also an ex-investment banker, so he got why I wanted to leave.

You wanna specialize in something, but if you specialize in one way or another you get pigeonholed, you don’t specialize then you’re kind of a jack of all trades. You’re not necessarily at the top of anybody’s call list.

I got involved in a lot of projects on the inside for something that I’m really passionate about, which is the endgame experience. Our generation has typically grown up watching the game on TV because the TV experience has been so good. So I started getting involved in projects internally on the corporate development side to build an app to track how fans react to the game.

The more I got involved in that side, I started realizing something about the NFL, which is that we are a very strong business, but we’re not a growth business. And at 25, when I really want to expand my knowledge base and be somebody that has that expertise in a certain subject matter, you have to be with a growing business, you have to be somewhere where you have the opportunity to try new things. Where you have to try new things because otherwise your competitors are going to eat your lunch.

How I decided that I wanted to leave [the NFL] is actually another conversation with Sid, funny enough. We’re sitting on my balcony, we’re having this talk. I told him I had looked internally within the NFL for a couple of different roles. As I went through the process, all the roles that I looked at weren’t exactly what I wanted. We have an investment fund at the League as well. I talked to them internally, but their whole thing was, Well, there’s some early stage companies that we like, but they’re a little too early stage, we don’t know if we wanna work with them.

Those answers weren’t sufficient for me. That’s kind of how I came to the conclusion that we are great at what we do, but we don’t wanna be anything else. They talk about the next billion dollar initiative, that’s talked about every time we do business plans, but there’s not enough people necessarily willing to try these little ideas. To no fault of their own, it’s because they’re too early stage.

I want to be that, when some guy says to me, what do you do for a living, I’m excited to tell them.

For me, I wanna try those little ideas. I wanna see a company like that that’s small but has a great idea and a great team and help build them into something that’s valuable. And that company-building aspect really comes from working as an Angel investor or a VC, which is what I’m going to do at MESA.

MESA is Media Entertainment Strategy Advisors. They’re a small 32-person company at Union Square. An old buddy of mine from banking reached out and, kind of the same story I’m telling you I told him over beers.

He was like, “You know, as a matter of fact we’re looking for something similar.” They were looking for somebody a little more junior, but he said, “Why don’t you come in and talk to them, and if they like you, we’ll see where it goes.”

Sure enough, a couple of conversations turned into interviews, turned into more interviews. By the end of it I had met five of the six partners, all the founding partners. They said, “We were looking for somebody junior, but we have the opportunity to make an opportunistic hire, we think you’re that guy. We wanna bring you on as an associate starting in January.”

I was ecstatic. They have a $10 million fund, they’re looking to raise another one soon. It’s a little earlier than I thought I wanted to leave the League, but sometimes when these opportunities come, you feel it and you know that it’s the right thing for you.

That’s been the search for me because I didn’t love investment banking. I loved parts of it, right? There were deals that I worked on, companies that I worked on that were great and even at the NFL there were parts that I loved, more than I did at banking. And I’m hoping with this I’m gonna love even more of that.

What would motivate you to stay in a job? How does that play into your personal motivation to follow your passion?

The way I balance my day job with my passions: going to talks, meetups, fireside chats that augment what I do for work every day.

Now to be able to turn that into an actual career is really exciting. Whether or not within the first year or two I’m going to make an investment, I doubt it. But I’m going to be around people where I can go to them with ideas and they’re going to tell me why I’m right or why I’m wrong.

This is something that over the last year and a half that’s really developed to, well, I’ve been interested in reading about it, but could I turn this into a career? I looked around and I said, yes, there are actually people who do this as a career, and they all seem to love what they do because whenever I go to these talks or meetups and I ask them what they do, their eyes light up. And I want to be that, when some guy says to me, what do you do for a living, I’m excited to tell them.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

[genlimbo]

002 – Michelle Hisae Meronek

Michelle is a jeweler based in Brooklyn. After quitting her retail job and fashion internship to pursue her career of choice, Michelle is searching for a way to monetize her own jewelry line. She spends three days a week working as a jeweler’s apprentice and the rest of her time building her own business.

Scene:

10 a.m. Inside Michelle’s Bushwick work studio. Michelle greets me outside on Morgan Ave wearing her typical vintage style, white wifebeater and worn-in blue denim jeans. She wears a simple necklace, earrings, and a couple rings. She sips from a stainless steel thermos.

So, Michelle, tell me about what you do.

I am a jewelry designer, or a jeweler, whatever you wanna call it. I first started it in college, and I did more–actually I have this out right now [plays with a rope necklace]–like rope style, nautical, tribal pieces, just as a hobby outside of my internship that I was doing. I started an Etsy shop and it was just like extra cash, and it was fun and creative.

And then I graduated, and just said, I wanna go to a big city. I mean, I was in Boston for school, which is a city, but I just set my eyes on New York. I had a phone interview with the designers from Vena Cava. They’re two really awesome girls who started their line out of college. Very modern, funky, bohemian but also artistic, upscale as well. I just felt like their line really meshed well with my aesthetic. So I got an internship with them. [Sips] It was… Three days a week? Two days a week.

Was the internship paid?

No, it wasn’t. I was working retail at the time. At Free People. Getting like $10.50 an hour or something stupid [laughs]. It was bad, it was so bad. But I had to. You have to make ends meet somehow [laughs].

So I got an internship with them–though it was more of the brand side of it, so we would make storyboards and get textile samples and get samples made in the garment district. I wanted to see the other end, but they didn’t show during Fashion Week that season [sips]. When that was coming to an end, I told her I really wanted to see how that world worked, and so she hooked me up with the guys that used to produce their fashion shows. Immediately I was like, Sweet. I would love to work for you.

And so then I started working for them. At first it was unpaid, and then maybe three months in they hired me as an assistant.

Was it hard to make that happen?

At that point I was just like, I really love working for you, and I want to keep working for you, but I can’t sustain this. And they have to understand you have bills to pay. It was just like, work hard, and then have the conversation. You just have to have the conversation. ‘Cause if you don’t ask for it, then they’re not gonna pay you.

I think it’s very important to value your time and know where the point is that you’ve learned enough that you have more to give to them. I mean, you’re still learning, you’re always learning, but that you’re like an asset. And then I think it benefits everyone. If you’re getting paid, you’re working harder, and you respect and value the job and the company more.

I was a freelancer technically, was never fully hired. I got a day rate. So it’s unlimited hours, but you get X amount of money. Which can be really good, or you can totally overwork. It just depends on how much you’re getting. But it was pretty fair. It was balanced. There is no health insurance for them.

How’d you make it work? You came to New York, you were working unpaid internships for a while, and then just working this job. I can’t imagine living off of that.

I asked for a loan from my parents, which, [laughs] to be honest, I’m still paying off: so, words of caution. I had a car back in California, so I sold that, and I used some of that money to fund my lifestyle. But it was definitely like, “Mom and Dad, this is a dream that I want to make happen.” And it was very much a business transaction. I was like, “I’ll pay interest if you want me to pay interest, I’ll be in debt for X amount of years, but I want this to happen.” So they helped me with that. I’ve been here for… Almost three years? And it’s hard. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them. I mean, I probably would be here. I just would’ve taken a different path.

So what made you take the leap? To take the class and then eventually make this change in your job situation. What was the final push to make you do that?

I just [laughs] I would sit in front of the computer [laughs] and just be like, Ugh, fashion. I definitely got jaded after a while, and I hit that point where I was like, Why is all this money being spent on this huge campaign? I was working in high fashion, so we were working with bigger clients that have these huge budgets, but I wanted to narrow it in. Like, I’m in jewelry, this is fashion. But it wasn’t the road that I wanted to take.

I knew I loved making jewelry, but I only had the most basic skills that I had taught myself, so I wanted to launch into something bigger. So I signed up for, at the time, was an expensive investment [laughs], but it was a wax carving class. It was like $500, a six-week course. You start out with a block like this [handles a green block of wax], and you file it into the shape of a ring, and then you cast it in metal. It’s more of an ancient way of making jewelry. So I took that class, and I fell in love with it. And it was just the kickstarter of… I guess what’s happening right now [laughs]. That was a year and a half ago? Last May.

I was still working for that other company at the time, and I was taking the class, and I was like, Wait. I wanna do this for the rest of my life–er, maybe not the rest of my life, but I want to do this seriously. So then I got a job with Claire, working for her two days a week. She was looking for an assistant, and I just had one of those days at work where I was like, I wanna find a job that’s related to what I love [laughs]. I found her Craigslist post, and then I went and met her. She works with fine metals and semi-precious and precious stones, and she does stone setting. I’d never used a torch before; I had barely used a flex shaft, which is this guy [turns and points to the flex shaft hanging behind her]. But she was really supportive of me wanting to learn and so she hired me and then taught me everything I know, [laughs] basically. She totally took me under her wing. And then eventually I quit my other job, and I bumped up my days with her.

I was back in California on vacation. My family goes to Yosemite every summer, and I was hiking Upper Yosemite Falls, which is a really intense hike. And on the way down, I was in nature and in my zone and like, What the hell are you doing? Just quit your job, and you’ll make it happen. And so I think the wilderness inspired me. That was the final straw [laughs].

It was definitely a risk. It was like, Okay, this is a well-paying job. It’s pretty stable. They like you. They’ll keep you. It wasn’t a financial move: it was just a gut move. I felt safe quitting and being like, I really wanna learn. If I’m gonna do this, then I really want to just go full throttle and do it. So there was pressure, but it felt like I had enough people on my team, and I had enough drive inside of me that it was the right decision. My bank account didn’t like it, but it was fine [laughs].

Now I’ve been doing three days with her, and then the rest of the time I’m just developing my own line and running my own business.

Do you have any certain income goals that you you try to meet, or are you more focused on growth, on your own learning?

I’m definitely sacrificing income [laughs]. I mean, I make enough obviously to sustain myself and to fund my business, but I wouldn’t necessarily… Prototyping things can be really expensive. And it’s most of all time-consuming. You can work in the studio for eight hours and prototype one piece, or at the end of the day it just doesn’t look like how you want it, and then you start again the next day. So that’s a big money drainer [laughs]. Because if I wanna prototype something, and I wanna make it in 10K gold, or 14K gold, then I have to put the money upfront myself. If I wanna buy diamonds, I have to put the money upfront myself. So there’s a lot of investment money that has gone into it. It can also be really cheap too. I mean, wax costs like $5 and then if I get a cast in brass then it’s pretty cheap. So it just depends on what style I’m going for.

I just try and go out to eat less [laughs]. But it’s a balance. I have ebs and flows. But it’s definitely linked to my personal income at this point. I haven’t set it apart from my personal income quite yet, and that’s what I’m looking for is to eventually get to the point where I just see it as a solitary business and not linked to my own rent [laughs]. But I don’t mind it. It’s not a drain or anything. It’s just exciting. It makes you work harder.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Photo credit: Vida Soleimanzadeh (NYC)

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[genlimbo]

001 – Aneesh Bhoopathy

Aneesh is a front-end designer from Audobon, PA who turned down the security of a full-time job in order to found a tech company. After a year of working in his parents’ “dank” basement, Aneesh and his co-founders secured a small amount of funding and relocated to Brooklyn.

Scene: The roof of Aneesh’s freshly-moved-into Williamsburg apartment over two cold 16-oz cans of Sixpoint’s Bengali Tiger.

So Aneesh, tell me about your work. What do you do?

I am a startup cofounder with two other people. We’re all first-time founders. I have a couple founder type roles, but I still do most of the design of the interface of our product and a lot of the front-end development.

What we’re working on is Point. Our idea is that there’s no good way for me to share an article that I really like with you. So we have mediums like Twitter and Facebook for blasting stuff out to everyone, but if I want to just be like, “Hey, Lauren, I really like this,” there’s no great way of doing it.

It’s really quicker than chat and email. You can highlight your favorite part of an article, and the discussion happens right on the page you’re sharing. You don’t have to remember to visit this other tab. It’s just there, always.

Right now this is manifested as an extension for Google Chrome, but our vision is greater than that. We want a mobile app, we want other browsers: we want to be The Way to share a link privately with people, be it a coworker, significant other, best friend, whatever.

When you decided to start up your own venture, did you want to be doing founder roles, or were you most excited about doing more design?

Being a design founder is cool because you are the first designer at the company. You already get this autonomy, you already get this voice in the direction of the app.

I still don’t, right now, get excited about the roles of strictly being a founder. It sounds awesome, but what it comes down to is just responding to a shit load of emails and being on top of things. And in all honesty it does take time away from the creative process of design. But at the same time being a design founder is cool because you are the first designer at the company. You already get this autonomy, you already get this voice in the direction of the app. I’m glad I’ve gained the experience, because now, if someone wants to ask me questions about the legal details of raising money and stuff, I can speak intelligently about it, which I couldn’t before. So yeah, it’s valuable, but I don’t get up and I’m like, “Yeah, gotta talk to the lawyer today.” It’s not like that at all.

Tell me a story about how you guys decided to start this product. Where did the idea come from?

So Phil and Ashwinn were seniors at NYU. They should’ve been studying for finals, but for whatever reason they weren’t. Ashwinn texted Phil with this idea that was like, “Via a Chrome extension, can I highlight something and show it to you?” And that’s where it started. And Phil, being the crazy guy that he is, kinda put off whatever finals stuff he had to do and started looking into it and was like, yeah, this should actually be possible. Which is an exciting realization because there was nothing out there like that. So they went to a hackathon and they made a prototype in a couple nights that worked. And they gave it to some of their friends, and even though it looked like shit and kinda worked like shit, it was still an exciting enough concept. They applied to an incubator with the idea and they got in.

Meanwhile I was in New York a couple weekends after this. I was also in my senior year, so I was looking for jobs, and I was in New York for an interview. After my interview I was kind of exhausted. Went back to my hotel room, and then I was like, “Well, I’m in New York. I should see what these guys are up to.” I took the train downtown, despite being exhausted.

A very un-Aneeshlike thing to do.

[Laughs] Yeah, normally when I’m tired it’s over [laughs]. So we went out, had some drinks at this bar by NYU, and they were talking about this thing they were working on but didn’t tell me what it was. They were like, “You have to see it,” which piqued my interest.

So after we left the bar they pulled me into Ashwinn’s room down the street [laughs], and Ashwinn took out his laptop and showed it to me. I had that same like, Wow, this is a cool experience, that all their friends had had. At which point they weren’t like, “Alright, you should come work at Point!” They were just like, “Okay.” [Laughs]

It wasn’t until later that Ashwinn was like, “If this interests you, you should come do this.” And he told me about the incubator that they had gotten into at that point called Startup Launchpad, and he was like, “I know you want to want to apply to jobs, but at least put ‘em off until the end of the summer. We’re going to go through this incubator. Just come do it with us. It’ll be fun.” Fair enough. I mean, the jobs I was applying for, there was no reason not to start them two months late.

I came up to New York and that was that.

So did you turn down job offers, or did you put them on hold to join the incubator with them?

I turned a couple down, but one of the places I ended up working at part-time, while I was at Point, in a mutual agreement.

That was a bit later on, though. So a bunch of stuff happened with Point. We quit that incubator after a day of being there and moved back home [laughs] and started working in my basement.

Why did you guys quit Startup Launchpad?

We were only given $7,000 for the summer for living costs for me, Ashwinn, and Phil. We were all living in Ashwinn’s room inside a 3-bedroom apartment, and he had roommates. It was kind of an absurd idea, and it became clear pretty fast it wasn’t going to work. We weighed that against the benefits of staying in the program, and we thought we could be productive at home.

Did your parents understand that you were working on something?

So what we’re doing is obviously nebulous. To people like my dad, who are pretty old school, it’d be hard to see the value in something you’re not directly selling, like a product or a service. It’s just a crazy new concept. But the same time you hear in the news Snapchat and WhatsApp are doing things that aren’t that different than what we’re doing, and people are trying to acquire them. There’s obviously some value in what they’re doing by becoming an interesting platform of communication.

My parents saw how hard we were working. I think they saw that whatever we were doing, we were at least passionate enough about it to do that every single day, despite working in this kinda dank basement in the suburbs when our friends were getting jobs and stuff.

Tell me about what an ordinary day was like when you guys first started working in your basement. You woke up, and then what?

We were focused on just building at that point. It was just pure getting things done.

These guys would come over at 10:30, and we would talk about what needs to be done. And then we would do that thing for most of the day. There was no email, there was no Trello – there was no bullshit.

They would pack lunches [laughs] because if they didn’t my mom would just like demand to cook, and we didn’t wanna make her do that. So they would bring brown bag lunches, or if we were lucky we would go to Wawa.

What do you mean, “If you were lucky?”

[Laughs] We couldn’t do it all the time, we didn’t have that much cash, but sometimes we would just go to Wawa. Those were good days.

On Fridays we would get frozen pizza, and we would make it in the oven. And a tradition was then born called “Pizza Fridays,” and it lasts until today, usually. But now we can actually go get good pizza.

Then come Friday or Saturday night we wouldn’t go out. On Facebook I’d see my friends in New York and I was like, Shit I could’ve been there, but now I’m at home. But eventually I came to terms with that, and I sort of thought of it as like, this is the only time when on a Friday or Saturday night nobody’s gonna fucking bother me. I can read or sketch or whatever. You get used to that, too. But it was pretty crazy [laughs] how unsociable we were for a year.

That part was tough. I mean, no one wants to live at home. It just sucks.

On Facebook I’d see my friends in New York and I was like, Shit I could’ve been there, but now I’m at home. But eventually I came to terms with that, and I sort of thought of it as like, this is the only time when on a Friday or Saturday night nobody’s gonna fucking bother me. I can read or sketch or whatever.

So when you started working part-time at Venmo, did you reach out to them seeking part-time work, or were they trying to get you onboard again?

I kinda ran out of money at one point. I mean, you don’t need a ton of money to live at home, but you need something. And so I got the part-time job at the end of the year. They had reached out to me, and I was like, “You know what? I could probably use some part-time work right now.” I told them what I was doing, and they were down with that. The founder there, Iqram, had had the same experience when he was starting Venmo, so he was really receptive to it. He was like, “If where I was working didn’t let me work there part-time while I was starting Venmo, then it wouldn’t have worked out, so I feel that.”

They were really nice about it. I think that was awesome on their part.

Did you have to pull back a little bit from working for Point?

Not in terms of actual time commitment, because I was working the same amount of time, but what’s interesting, I think, when you’re involved in a product is how many thoughts come on time off and at night. It felt like some of those things that happen when you are in your time off, and you’re having those ideas about Point in the shower or just sitting there didn’t happen because you were also thinking, I’m working on this thing at Venmo. I’m doing this, I’m doing that. And that time in the morning where I could sit on a cup of coffee and read something that might serendipitously affect Point didn’t happen, ‘cause I was grinding on Venmo.

It’s like when you have like eight classes in college, you can’t focus on one. Not to that extent, but there’s something there. Maybe all the creative energy wasn’t there because it was split between two places. It just felt a little more compressed, but I still feel like things got done at the same velocity, if that makes sense.

How was your transition from your parents’ house to New York?

We were really productive back home: there weren’t the distractions from being in a city. The thing that was hard about it was fundraising, because it required a lot of meetings. That’s when being back home bit us in the ass. We would get in a bus, or get in Ashwinn’s car, and come up here for a day, and it was kind of pain. That was the thing that was hard, but actually getting work done and building our product was great.

What have you guys been doing in New York? What’s changed since September?

Things haven’t settled down at all. We have been working on our mobile app, which is a departure from what we were doing before. We’re splitting a lot of our time between that and our current product. That’s tough because we want to spend all this time doing product design and getting things right there, but at the same time we’re trying to grow our current experience for people. We’re working with someone remotely on the iPhone app.

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[genlimbo]

Mele de la Yglesia - Generation Limbo

Spanish artist Mele de la Yglesia is beautifying Berlin one wall at a time. After years of internships and networking, Mele is starting to see recognition.

Do art schools need to teach business, too? Berlin-based artist Mele de la Yglesia argues yes:

“In the university there is not even one subject that teaches you how to live from your art or how to sell yourself.”

[genlimbo]

Amid New Overtime Rules, More Employers Might Set Email Curfew

As the Obama administration looks to expand the number of employees eligible for overtime pay, more companies may curtail the use of email after hours to cut labor costs.

Why proposed overtime legislation might mean a ban for some on after-hours work email

[genlimbo]

…For anyone who thinks this unpaid intern stuff is someone else’s problem, please think again. This is all about the dignity of being paid for one’s labor, and the resolution of these lawsuits will help to determine if the door has been opened or closed to more and more unpaid work.

David Yamada, Minding the Workplace

[genlimbo]

I Quit My Job — Here’s Why

Some of you may be wondering why suddenly all my Facebook pictures are coming from Europe. Here’s the story: I’ve quit out of marketing in order to pursue a passion project.

It’s believed that our creativity peaks during time between jobs.

I’ve been working in marketing since before graduating college (it’s been almost five years!). It was my easy way out, a way to get paid to write when I couldn’t find a position in workforce development (my true interest) from the start. But year after year, I went no where in my career, all the while knowing I was depriving myself of the chance to pursue my goals. I’m not getting any younger, so if not now, when exactly will I try to do what I really want to do?

While working and traveling as a freelance marketer over the years, I’ve watched others my age follow career paths as confused and perhaps as unguided as mine: some endure series of unpaid internships in an attempt to get their foot in the door; others turn to high-paying jobs so they can repay loans and joint “adulthood.”

In the U.S. and other places around the world, youth today are worse off career-wise than we were decades ago. Youth employment levels are at record lows, and wages are stagnant at best for those with college degrees. Yet we work longer hours than our predecessors and, with our cell phones always at hand, we never escape the office or the boss.

I don’t know how work will evolve for us over time. But something big is happening here, and I aim to document it. Will I find interesting stories? Will anyone care? Will I make a living doing this? I have no clue. But I’ll never know until I try.

Follow my work over the next seven weeks at the channels below. And if you have any comments or suggestions, or want to commission me for a project involving Millennials, feel free to contact me by commenting or by writinglauren [at] generationlimbo.com!

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