Expensify Blog

The Good:

I mentioned in a post a few weeks back that a major point of our offshore is to focus on our strategy for the upcoming year and re-gel as a team. This is my first offshore with Expensify and we have already made tremendous progress towards both of these goals.

As a company, we relish the opportunity to discuss the heights we’d like to take Expensify to. While we make time in our day-to-day to stew on this, we’ve been allowed ample time to discuss, in depth, and crystalize the finer points.  I’m not exaggerating when I say this year is shaping up to be an excellent one, for both Expensify and our users!

This is where all the planning magic happens!

The re-gel is also going spectacularly. We’re definitely getting closer and more confident in our colleagues all around, not to mention nicknames are spreading like wildfire. For a little fun, take a look at our Team page and guess at who’s who: Franky Danger, Crispy D, Tone Loc, The Frenchman, and Swag Da Vinci. Enjoy yourself!

The Bad:

My coconut shake consumption has escalated well into the danger zone (see depiction above). I’ve partnered with a local restaurant (it’s called “Local Thai”, in fact) to create a coffee/coconut shake. I’m aiming to bring it to the states as a subsidiary of Expensify. In fact, look out for a CocoLoco (already trademarked it) at a coffee/coconut shop near you in the coming year.

The Awesome:

We’re here to work, but we’re also here to have fun… and hustle back to work if need be. This past Saturday, a few of us decided to take a little jungle trek to another beach to survey the scene outside of our local beach bubble. We discovered a slackline and had some fun until Witold got called back for a small error he needed to correct. Did he take the relatively easy, less-timely route back through the jungle? Of course not, it would have taken longer. Instead he blazed a path through a cave and over a cliff back to our HQ. Now that’s dedication.

I watch a lot of stuffy drama with my wife.  The Bronte sisters, Jane Austin, Charles Dickens, etc.  A classic recurring scene involves tuxedo-clad upper-class elite mingle with champagne in hand — often the whole story seems to take place in interludes between these parties.  They always look so glamorous and exciting: it’s a world in a constant state of partial inebriation.  It seems so strange and foreign.  But recently I realized: it’s not foreign at all.  Exchange the tuxedos for ironic T-shirts, replace the champagne with vodka, and that’s a classic Silicon Valley afterparty.

They’re called “after-parties” because they’re always after something — typically a conference.  There are so many of them, it’s just so hard to keep track.  A thousand conferences with a million people from all over the world, listening to people drone on about some bullshit on stage, passing out business cards like unwanted free candy.  All that is killing time for the real event: the party after the event.

The problem, however, is there are only so many venues to host a party — and only so many variations on how to give out free booze.  The result is all the parties just sorta blur together.  So when an afterparty comes along that truly stands out — it’s an achievement.  And Evernote’s party certainly stood out.

Evernote is such a great company.  They’re inspirational in many ways — a laser focus on delivering an amazing product, transparent communication around their most prized internal data, and a surprising patience to achieve their current 38M-user success.  But now I can also add: throwing a fantastic conference and an even better afterparty.

I was there primarily because we’re an Evernote partner (and Evernote is one of our favorite customers), so my job was to evangelize the Evernote Trunk (watch me in action here) and model our sexy Expensify fleece jackets.  I’ll admit, I came with low expectations — I’ve already been to that same conference center probably a dozen times before.  I launched Expensify there at TechCrunch 50 in 2008, then demoed again at TC50 in 2009, and then Finovate a couple imes, and then a bunch of other random things.  I figured I’d seen it all.

But Evernote had the place set up nice.  I think this is because Evernote isn’t trying to turn a profit on the conference — they’re just trying to excite users, and they spared no expense.  Great partners, comfy seating, and surprisingly good food.  I mean, take a look at the Evernote logo, and then take a look at the sushi in the middle of the bento box below.  Look familiar?

But the party — dude!  Free street food trucks!  A live rockabilly band!  Vintage arcade games!  (Which is funny, because when I first started playing those games, they had a different name — “new” arcade games…)  I introduced Matt to the joys of Joust, Missile Command, Pole Position 2, Tron, etc.  I mean,  he hadn’t even *heard* of Centipede.  The kids these days…  After a few hours deeper and deeper into the bottomless liquor, then food at some random place in SOMA, and then more liquor, I called it a night as they continued on.

While taxi’ing home it occurred to me that this is what those BBC dramas illustrated, just modernized. Like Bronte’s London, Silicon Valley is built on a culture of partying. Why live anywhere else?