from an off-beat tee i found online after searching “coffee and homies” on google images
- Kanye, “Real Friends”
One of my favorite things to do in the world is grab coffee with people. This is a pretty hard thing to do during quarantine so I’ve just been brewing my own cup and calling people via zoom instead. Coffee chats satisfy an intrinsic need I have to just learn more about others and explore how other people think, but are also a great way to validate ideas that I have with others. After catching up recently with a friend of mine, we jokingly came up with the idea of the “Coffee Round” that I’d like to explore.
I’ve been making some major breakthroughs in my fitness journey (don’t stress yourself out about this sentence, this is a 100% a flex), and I really wanted to share it with my buddy Samee Siddiqui who I used to workout with before the Ronies hit. He started talking to me about this new idea that he was working on, and we both geeked out about how incredible it was that there’s an incredible amount of building that’s being done during the quarantine. After a lively back and forth, I jokingly sighed and told “I don’t really have the funds to cut a 25k check, but I’ll happily buy you a $5 coffee. I’ll lead your coffee round!” He laughed at the thought and hit me back with “lmao we’ll give you your own section on the About page called “bro who bought me coffee 1 time”.”
It’s mad facetious, but it’s true. There’s so many people doing really dope things right now that I truly wish I had the funds to support them. Truth is there ain’t enough zeroes in the bank account to fund my dreams and my homies’! So I decided that I’ll make do with what I have. If you know me, and you know that I mess with you, you know I’ll happily step up to the plate and go to bat as best as I can — hell I better because I fucking wrote an article about it. After some reflection, I realized I can offer the following services:
Be radically honest with you. If your app is booty, I’m not sugar coating it. I’m giving you my thoughts whether you like it or not.
Help you think through problems. I’m a quick learner, by the grace of God, and I can connect dots fairly quickly. If I don’t immediately understand your domain, I know to the least that I can ask some good questions to help guide you.
If I can’t do it, I’m confident I can find someone who can. Recently a friend offered me a fairly high compliment. If I can’t figure it out, I can find someone that can with 90% confidence.
If nothing else, your next cup of coffee is on me and I’m leaving you with some positive words of encouragement.
A coffee round isn’t an actual thing, but if I were to define it: it’s the 10 people you reach out to when you’re about to start something or hit a roadblock to check your assumptions and test your ideas. Yeah you can call them advisors and frankly that’s probably more direct. We don’t gotta imbue VC/tech terms into every aspect of life (but I’m going to do it here lol). A coffee round is literally you hitting up the homies. So who is leading your coffee round?
p.s. love my boy @ibn_il_leil
edit* 09/04/2020 2:12 pm : we’re airtight on coffee round being the first 10 people, no reason, very arbitrary