Guest Speaker Shadrach White

                Airlift reminds me of govWorks. I know it isn’t the same, but the premise of contracting with the government and providing automated online services made me think of the movie. Although Shadrach seems like a much nicer person than Kaleil. 

                I agree with him that development is an art. It’s not an easy thing to do, and when you see well written code that has great functionality and high-scalability, it’s a beautiful thing. He strikes me as a philosophical person. It’s great that he just lets his developers do their own thing. I’d love to have a manager like that. It’s important for me to be able to experiment with new technologies and try different techniques, and it’s good to hear that there are business owners in the world that are open that idea. 

                Pivoting back to the topic of starting a business, I think it’s important to talk about a topic he kept referring back to in is talk. He told us the story of getting a contract with a cannabis company for them to use Airlift. It sounded like a great opportunity and it’s a no-brainer that he would take it. However, the question his adviser asked him was even more important: “Do you want to tie your brand to marijuana?” What makes this such an interesting question is that it’s kind of one of those questions that will define what your business is. I don’t think that question was meant to deter him from going forward with the deal, but to help him cement what his business was setting out to do. 

It’s a question anyone can ask themselves when starting a new organization. Maybe not specifically in relation to marijuana, but just in general. Do you want to tie your brand to sports? Do you want to tie your brand to politics? Do you want to tie your brand to cars? Do you want to tie your brand to coffee? Do you want to tie your brand to *insert noun here*? 

Again, these aren’t meant to change anyone’s mind, the exact opposite actually. When answering a question like that, you are essentially making a statement as to what your business will be about. When labeling yourself as a cat food company, you will have greater brand identity, but you could be limiting yourself to what you could do in the future.