Zach's PEN #39: Markee 2.0

2021 Week 16: My partner and CEO, some writing about capitalism, debate, and Louisa's movie-watching habits, and my automatic film processor has arrived

Dear PENpals,

I can't believe it. It's finally here. The app that the Markee team has been working on for the past year is live, and it is good. It's generally hard for me to feel proud of things, but I'm so proud of what our team has created.

This is the core team that built Markee, back in December. The team is bigger now.

Over the next few weeks we're putting the finishing touches on this thing and then the sales push begins. There's also a new, almost-complete website (videos coming soon)!

This is my first experience being part of a team that has built a single product this substantial, and one thing I've learned is that every other app I thought I was building in the past… was never going to happen. I'm grateful now that those projects died on the vine because this team has shown me that I simply don't have the skills to pull off something like this. I have huge, critical gaps (that I didn't know I had at the time) that would have doomed those projects to failure. I learned what I learned from them and I'm glad there was no further investment.

Let me tell you about my friend and partner Craig Doig, the CEO at Markee. He's in the bottom left of that GIF above. He's a private guy so he wouldn't want me saying stuff about him, but I've got to tell you a little bit about Craig.

Craig can visualize the complex superstructure of a company in a way that is truly baffling to me.

I can come up with ideas and strategies and I'm confident that if you put me in a room with a (single) problem and a ticking time-bomb, I can come up with a solution. But as soon as we get into the implementation of that solution and how it relates to the 4,127 other moving parts of a business, a team, a strategy, a pipeline—I'll quickly become overwhelmed and duck out to find another (single) hard problem to solve.

I cannot hold the whole machine in my head at once. Craig can.

He does it naturally. He doesn't even realize how incredibly rare this talent is, but he's got it. Without someone like Craig, a project like Markee couldn't even begin to be successful.

I'll tell y'all more about Markee in a few weeks at the official launch, but in the meantime, you can just think of it as a fully white-labeled meeting, collaboration, and event software, like a self-branded Slack/Zoom combination where the rooms you create have a collaborative Google Doc-like canvas in them.

Anyway, I think our chances are good.

This Week's Posts

I wrote about what I see as the main flaw in the design of our current economic system.

https://little.zachphillips.blog/2021/04/20/this-version-of.html

Zach Phillips (100/100 posts) @zachphillips

Every time I bring this point up to economically-minded friends, they respond with some version of "alas, this is just how math works 🤷‍♂️." The version of the Capitalism Game we're playing right now is designed terribly. This is how the levels work, roughly:

I wrote about how demotivating reasons are.

https://little.zachphillips.blog/2021/04/23/no-reasons.html

Zach Phillips (100/100 posts) @zachphillips

How can you make it so that everything you do is for no reason at all? In my case, I've needed to lose trust that reasons help. I've needed to become suspicious of reasons in general. 👇

I wrote about the usual difference between the $500 version and the $5,000 version.

https://little.zachphillips.blog/2021/04/18/knob-feel.html

Zach Phillips (100/100 posts) @zachphillips

I'm asked this once a week: "Which microphone|camera|lens|mixer|etc. should I buy?" This always requires a conversation (which I do love to have). Most of the time, there's an option that's 90% as "good" as the 10x-as-costly option, but the expensive one has great knob feel. 👇

This one is revision of an early PEN in observation of the Apple holiday tomorrow.

https://little.zachphillips.blog/2021/04/19/hardware-is-good.html

Zach Phillips (100/100 posts) @zachphillips

It's one of the three annual Apple holidays tomorrow. Holidays I used to celebrate. I used to stand in line each year for the new iPhone, and my career has proven over and over again that my fanaticism was 100% justified. Apple products have paid huge dividends for me. 👇

I wrote about the greatest business failure of my lifetime.

https://little.zachphillips.blog/2021/04/21/the-failure-of.html

Zach Phillips (100/100 posts) @zachphillips

I don't want to represent that I have a comprehensive understanding of the history of business, but I can say that in my lifetime, the single greatest corporate failure was America Online not following AOL Instant Messenger to its obvious conclusion. 👇

I wrote about an aspect of my personality that I didn't know was an aspect of my personality.

https://little.zachphillips.blog/2021/04/22/i-love-to.html

Zach Phillips (100/100 posts) @zachphillips

It turns out, some people don't like argument. Worse than that: Argument makes them feel attacked. 🤯 Debate might be my favorite thing: for understanding, for fulfillment, or just for fun. It took until my thirties for me to learn there are many who don't like it at all. 👇

I wrote about my daughter’s voracious appetite for the same stories over and over and what I’m learning from it.

https://little.zachphillips.blog/2021/04/24/over-and-over.html

Zach Phillips (100/100 posts) @zachphillips

Watching _Raya and the Last Dragon_ for the 146th time since it came out a month ago. This is how my 3-year-old watches movies. Over and over again, until she’s memorized every line, crying/cheering/asking the same questions at the same parts. She’s play-rehearsing the story. 👇

Photography/Babies

While I still don't have any beautiful new baby pictures to show you, this beautiful monstrosity has arrived (6 months after it was ordered). You load your film on reels in the dark, attach your tank, fill the thing up with water and chemicals, set your program and press go. It heats up the chemicals, pumps them in and out of the tank, rinses in between, agitates the tank, it even cleans itself (these damned Germans):

I've got my chemicals ready to mix. I need to shoot one more roll of film and I'll be running my first batch (four rolls of beautiful color Kodak film, two 35mm and two medium format).

But since I can't have a PEN go out without a baby picture, lest all my family and friends unsubscribe in protest, here's Wendell from when we used to live across the way from the Holiday Inn Express (technically, Wendell has been to Paris so he’s allowed to wear this sweater).

Much love, PENpals,

Zach