So, I got inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk’s (@garvee) message, and Good People Day 2008.

I gotta write about Mr. @innonate himself, Nate Westheimer. This is long over-due, and he seems to be the guy to hype right now, despite how much fun it is for me to give him shit.

So, where to start? We got to know each other through a rather insane year of studying abroad in Madrid ‘04-’ brand05-ish. Nate was coming from Brandeis and I was coming from good ole Rice University. We were there to learn Spanish, and not talk with all the other Americans, which were everywhere and honestly, quite a bit of fun. We braved the somewhat awkward “Madrileno” social scene, conquered the night life, and even did some work together on a luxury indoor advertising startup I was doing out of Barcelona.

Needless to say, we kept in touch post Madrid. Almost a year later we met up for an epic weekend of film festing in Austin (was this SXSW?), and then we kept in touch with constant brainstorming sessions, which became more and more web focused. At this point, ole @innonate was still a web newbie, but definitely already a Mac fanboy. He was more into sociology (maybe communism?), politics, and the stock market. He’d found his way to New York city, started doing investor relations on Wall St, but definitely was being drawn to the web. I, on the other hand, was working for web based GIS startup with some guys from school in Houston, and I was looking for an out. As I started looking for a job more seriously, we started brainstorming more and more, till one day he threw out the idea for a platform where people could vent. He wanted people to be able to type in topics for these vents, and for them to be channeled together for collaborative venting about companies, products, etc. Actually, the first designs were for a service very much like what Get Satisfaction became (cool site by the way). Ventbox was eventually born from this, I started looking for jobs in New York and San Francisco, and eventually Nate found me a job posting on Craigslist for an interesting new startup in NYC called Angelsoft.

So Nate got me a job, yes. Thank you Nate! You rock, my job rocks, and I’m a happy guy for this.

Thus I entered into the NYC scene, and joined the rush. The party was on and we were brainstorming every day. Web2.0 was blowing up, Nate didn’t want to be doing investor relations, and he started taking Ventbox more and more seriously. I’m pretty sure he quit his job the day after I said “don’t quit your job yet, you need to get something off the ground first and see where it goes”. Haha, thanks for not listening!

So Nate started pouring his energy into the startup world, and I really am surprised that I didn’t see this coming. After two years of working at Angelsoft, and learning that most investors are “betting the horse”, I can honestly say I didn’t think @innonate would turn into the power house that he is now. I mean, I heard all his stories about political revolts and such at Brandies, but I had no idea that these skills would translate to the New York tech scene and to leadership in the real world. He’s definitely a guy that can execute and make things happen, even if sometimes he does it from his own angle.


Nate fought a deathly slow up hill battle creating a company from scratch (eventually with massive amounts of kickass CTOing from the ridiculously smart Lyle Bragger, who’s a damn cool guy and high in the running as a Good Person), proving that he wasn’t insane, starting from scratch again to turn Ventbox.com into a platform, building Bricabox, then starting from scratch again to get Bricabox setup in the right infrastructure. He’s been scrapping for a long time to make this happen. And you thought all he was doing was going to events and twittering?!

So, props to Nate. I’ve been a busy guy, and the amount of time we spend together brainstorming has pretty much dropped to nothing. I’m swamped with all the exciting things happening at Angelsoft, but I hope I get enough energy sometime soon to pick up those intellectual battles with Nate again.

I’ve focused most of this on business, and to continue to do so would be a grave mistake on my part, because most importantly Nate is a good person. Yes, my good person of GPD2008. He’s always had my back, and he’d do anything for any of his friends. Not to mention his never ending optimism and extreme positive faith in humanity is a good counter weight to the pessimists of the world!

Anyway, there’s lots of good people out there, I should probably spend more time finding them, and I should definitely spend more time praising them, but the props to Nate just had to get on paper right now, at 1am.