Who Knew?

About three years ago, I had no idea that I would be anywhere close to where I am today. Around that time, my roommate came up with an idea to solve a problem: Music in an open space (Coffee shops, shared offices, etc.). Collaborative filtering of the collective collections from the open space could potentially be a better disc jockey than any single human with his singular collection.

About 4 of us would get together about once a week and kick around ideas for how to pull this off and generate a revenue model. We eventually drifted away from that when we got more excited about another idea: As the world becomes more and more digital, the tracking of the data that people pay attention to will be easier and easier to analyze. We could use attention data to notify people about events that they might be interested in.

At this point, it was a fun side project and I was always curious as to where it might lead to. It started off slowly and we got more serious about it, eventually convincing other people to join us. Soon enough, I would realize that we could really turn this into a viable business and eventually CultureMob was born.

But I still had no idea that today, I could walk around Seattle and overhear people I’ve never met recommending the service I helped start with 4 guys to other people I’ve never met. 2 weeks ago, we held our first event at Neumos with ?uestlove of the Roots. I never would have imagined that dorking out about attention data with friends in a coffee shop would lead to working with one of my longtime idols.

It’s not as if CultureMob has been instantly successful, but its really starting to come into it’s own. We’ve only been live for 7 months, and I’m already surprised at where it’s taking me. I have no idea where I’ll be in another 3 years, but here’s to hoping it’s just as surprising.