The company, Falling Fruit tv, that I helped start around 1 year ago, dissolved a couple of weeks ago. While I’d prefer not to get into the specifics, as there is a lot of private and still hurt feelings involved, I will make a couple of observations/thoughts that have come to me in the aftermath of Falling Fruit’s dissolution:
- Start-up companies are hard work, rarely succeed, and are almost always a labor of love (or of intense greed). Fortunately ours fell on the side of the former.
- Though it’s not the mere purpose of a start-up, on of the by-products of participating in one is that you’ll learn way more about operating a business then you could ever learn in business school or by working for someone else. The start-up environment demands that you familiarize yourself with pretty much every aspect of the business, and as a result you will know way more then you want to about how to start, fund, and run a business.
- Conscious business practices, and values motivated from worldcentric and above stages of human development are absolutely critical in the business world. They may not always be successful, but we have an obligation as conscious entrepreneurs to make them so, if we can.
- The companies values should be aligned at the highest levels of the organization. Without that shared understanding from investors, the decision makers, and ideally throughout the organization it will be nearly impossible to cohere and act quickly enough to respond to market conditions.
In any case, I learned a great deal with helping start Falling Fruit, and was extremely disappointed that we didn’t succeed. It will probably take a long time to integrate all of the different learnings, and deal with the pain of something failing that I cared so deeply about, but in the end I have a feeling that will have been well worth it.
On another note, Buddhist Geeks will continue on, but in a new form. Ryan and I owned BGeeks, outside of Falling Fruit, and so when FF went down, BGeeks did not go with it! It’s new home is on the Personal Life Media network. The same great dialogues we’ve been having on BGeeks for the past year and a half will continue over there, and we are so thrilled to be able to keep doing it.
As for myself, I’m heading on a much-needed meditation retreat next week. I’m spending 9-days at the Insight Meditation Society w/ my partner Emily, sitting with Jack Kornfield & Co. and then walking through the woods over to the long-term retreat facility, The Forest Refuge, to spend another 2 weeks deepening in the practice.
And if you have any questions/comments about Falling Fruit or Buddhist Geeks, shoot me an e-mail at: vince [at] buddhistgeeks [dot] com
