Since my last post, I have:

– Taken a full time job
– Am considering sponsorship to stay in Australia
– 1st potential technical co-founder and I broke up (*emotional tears*)

Basically, a 360 from where what my goals were a few weeks ago.

Tomorrow morning I start working at Zambrero, the 3rd fastest growing franchise in Australia. Zambrero makes awesome burritos, sort of like the Chipotle of Australia.

When I told my tech partner last week about the job, he was a bit nervous, but thought we could still execute the project. Within a few days I got a message from him stating he thought this job would occupy me too much, as well as his need to make more money and put extra hours into his job. And just like that, I’m back at square one. Bummer. He was a decent guy, but I think it was the right move for both of us.

So here I am again, with everything planned out to the T for an alpha and on the search again for a driven technical co-founder. I plan on still contributing time to the project in the evenings and weekends, and since the alpha isn’t a ton of work, a hacker could probably bust something out in a weekend.

So what caused me to take the job at Zambrero? I’ve been lucky enough to work at some awesome startups with great execution, as well as abysmal early stage companies with no chance in hell of going anywhere. Zambrero, from what I’ve seen, seems to be the former.

I read an insightful book awhile ago called Tribal Leadership. It discusses natural groups and how to build a thriving organization:

The image above shows the different tiers that organizations can be put in. 1 is the worst, 5 is best. Zambrero is a 4, and maybe even a 5, which is one of the reasons why I think this is an opportunity that cannot be passed up. It just seems like a really fun place to work. When an unpaid intern says, “I don’t know if I’m ready to leave, I want to keep living in Sydney and working here a bit longer”, you know that the company has got to be doing something right.

So it’s been a week and I’m now on the hunt for a front end developer. I’m now “dating” a technical co-founder, which chemistry wise has been going great. We both understand the vision of our startup and now just need to execute steps toward an alpha.

After discussions, we’re possibly looking for a front end developer (which we would pay) for an easy project with us, but with the hopes of possibly finding a keeper in terms of joining our team.

With my self-taught design skills, I’ve mocked up one page that we’re looking to get sliced and CSSed. My technical co-founder is focused on the back end, so we’re looking for someone will killer CSS skills who can also polish off cross browser compatibility and such.