Happy
new year!
2024
from josh + emily
[click here
for 2023]
january
refreshed with a trip to hawaii, we set out for the one main goal of the entire year:
sell
brainjolt
requirements:
1) give it a good home
2) die trying.
[click
to see!]
account disables.
head of paid is no where to be found.
how will we ever sell this dumpster fire.
we find out someone on the team is trying to sell secrets to a competitor.
squashed it.
but still,
how tf
do we sell?!
feeling uncertain, we take a beat to explore + think.
we also had a call with our first hypertext beneficiary ❤️
it was inspiring.
we have the spiciest gnocchi on the planet
emily learns how to make a rug
and zizi learns how to send text messages to josh on whatsapp.
and then we have our first
talks with a potential buyer.
it’s emily’s
ex boyfriend.
it is a
very bad idea ™️.
…who introduce us to dozens of interested parties!
from all over the world!!
we land our first
in-person buyer meeting
at a wework that shares
office space with
jessica alba’s
“the honest company”!!!
josh wears a zip up hoodie
with more holes on it
than we can count.
we are exhilarated + exhausted.
the road looks very, very long.
so we pick ourselves up...
josh freezes a milky way for adam because he said it reminded him of his childhood...
emily buys an espresso machine to obsess over, tries to impress mackenzie thomas with wikipedia, and josh teaches zizi more new ipad games...
craig visits for an email workshop with us in wework and
a trip to
terranea...
while josh’s grandpa’s health
heartbreakingly declines.
so josh climbs up on his roof to get a new perspective.
february
emily meets her mom’s boyfriend from romania...
they re-connected a
50+ year friendship from when they were dancing partners in school
and then we head to florida for grandpa’s funeral.
we all pick our favorite grandpa tie to wear at the memorial
and its the first time in several years all of josh’s mom’s siblings have gotten together.
emily cries at the sight of her motel (it’s scary + not what was expected) and we almost get a gun drawn on us for arguing about getting a refund
(thankfully, a cute historic spot over a restaurant is available and crisis is averted)
we catch the sunset daily, climb banyan trees, ride bikes around venice, walk the jetty, and spend time with fam.
and then we have an amazon rates crisis.
and our incredibly helpful finance guy goes on indefinite paternity leave.
we hire -and fire- two leaders
(one says they don’t use slack during business hours)
and again we wonder, how are we going to sell this thing.
but it’s emily’s birthday, so we go to the ringling museum for the day, in between difficult business calls + meetings.
(it’s here that we get the idea to build a “museum of the internet” some day)
josh lives his dream life for another couple days with a 6-seater golf cart and home-made oatmeal cake from aunt lorry, and then we head back home.
with the help of bankers, we land 18 interested potential buyers, one which remarked we must be too expensive based on our financials.
things are looking up.
zizi gets a heart shaped pizza for valentine’s day 🍕
josh introduces a matching game to zizi on the ipad
nugget is baby babushka
❤️
and emily makes love/hate lists for various people (inspired by
dreambaby press)
we have 3 meetings with buyer prospects, and abaham comes to town to work on new test concepts
emily goes to utah to work on accounting, get fancy soda’s, and walk on a frozen lake
josh gets zizi some hot pink rainboots and more pizza
and we show greg some love with obnoxious balloons delivered to his hotel during a soul-searching trip
haley comes for a fun bestie visit and obsess over custom charm necklaces + bracelets
we make our own version of
the 01/01/oh, oh hat
inspired by the
“time bomb y2k” documentary
that greg hyped up
[inspired by this guy in the film]
march
blue kazoo signs a deal with barnes & noble to be in 500 stores by fall
josh dives deeper into ai and makes zizi her own princess story, which she absolutely goes bananas over
and josh shows zizi real-time prompt engineering
our favorite event, naive yearly, makes a turn around from not likely to happen to setting a date, and we’re thrilled to work with the one and only kristoffer
[click to read
the rest]
we spent a magical weekend in san clemente biking around and wondering why we don’t live there
and created a graveyard of project trackers from over the years.
we discover a very inappropriate joke about suicide on a brainjolt article and freak out over thinking the ai copywriting bot made a terrible mistake… but find out it was a human writer and had to part ways.
buyer meetings
continue…
and taylor swift’s eras tour movie comes out so we host a watch party with haley, bellamie, and the pipers flying out for the weekend to sing and dance and go to toppers
zizi gets double pink eye for the first time, and emily + zizi both learn about eyedrops for the first time.
then we ✨finally✨ get notification that
our hacked spend
from last november
was refunded!!
we ended march in pine mountain club for easter, watching home videos of josh as a teen playing punk covers while getting completely snowed in.
april
after geeking out on suno, josh makes a tiktok on
how to make a lo-fi music channel
with ai
emily officially changed her middle name to her last name, and swore to never change it again
josh introduced kahn academy to zizi as a learning tool, and while zizi loved it, we were skeptical
We seriously considered buying the tiniest house in minnesota as the hypertext house
and tried taking zizi to a mschf art exhibit but the line was around the block, so we went to dinner in santa monica instead
josh went for a hike in malibu, encountered a mountain lion on the trail, and a random guy gave him a note and a cd of his music
and emily met him at nobu afterwards to celebrate not getting eaten by the lion.
second round meetings with interested buyers (including forbes), and 5 brand new prospects.
one of them was a billionaire with a huge exit in insurance tech (although we didn’t realize it during the call) and josh told him he did a good job at the end and our bankers laughed at us
emily went to a tiny zine poem workshop in the arts district with gabrielle
we took zizi to summerland: showed her the best pizza ever (bettina) but she fell asleep at the table
she also:
- tried kombucha for the first time
- loved staring at the ocean
- took her first rolling eye selfie
- re-created the iconic counter-top photos
emily and zizi made their own version of taylor swift’s “fortnite” music video
zizi was a little too inspired by post malone in that video and tried to recreate it one morning before school
josh continued to find new ways to scale
and we tried interviewing lawyers for the potential sale but everyone was so bad.
we had our first in-person buyer meeting in a very cool office in culver city
(where an ex-brainjolter also worked)
emily had a fun girls night for kat’s birthday in l.a.
and while still wondering if any of these companies will make an offer to buy brainjolt, we designed a coffee table book of ai ads josh made + printed our favorites to decorate our walls.
may
greg got a fax machine and we made him a song and sent faxes
we invested in anthropic and x.ai
and we had more second, third, and fourth round buyer meetings.
the grind is real, and so are motion sickness glasses from working in the car
to keep sane, josh still builds fun stuff like this font entirely with ai (with a few hiccups along the way)
we hire holly as head of paid, and are super excited about it as josh is dying running all the things: the company, paid media, and trying to sell at the same time
emily teaches zizi how to use voice-to-text with chatgpt and she designs things like dinosaurs made out of hearts.
we met with centerfield in person at their office… which is in the same wework we had our very first buyer meeting in, but this time in a new floor with a massive board room.
during the meeting, josh notices a bird nest outside the window of the huge room and we’re all really hyped about it.
haley is in vegas for work, so we decide last minute to meet her there
and get our very first offer for brainjolt while taxiing for departure.
we both cry a little…
maybe this will work after all.
still, no one at the company knows.
we see a show at the sphere, enjoy nobu in vegas, go to a spa, and lose track of time enough to miss our flight back so we rent a car and drive instead while josh insists we get “road food” at mcdonald’s
we rent a car and drive instead. and on the way, we pull off on zzyzx road, just for fun.
and then…
we get a second offer!!
amidst the chaos, haley tells emily that taylor swift tickets in stockholm, sweden, are way less than the shows in the u.s.
so on a wednesday night… emily + haley decide to leave the next day for a saturday taylor swift show in europe, and come back sunday.
we go to seattle to visit the company behind offer #2 – the smartest (and richest) people we’ve ever met.
we’re in a room all day with 14 people peppering 100’s of smart technical questions. we have dinner with them and it’s an incredible day.
we commit to keeping them in our lives, regardless of the deal. they will later betray us, but we don’t know that yet.
before heading back, we visit the space needle and moma, why not.
and run into an ex-brainjolter on the plane on the way back, literally sitting in josh’s seat!!
after much deliberation, we decide to take offer #3… with centerfield, and sign a letter of intent.
are we really doing this? is this really happening?
terrified of the unknown journey ahead, we agree that we need to focus + lock in.
no distractions.
it’s going to get crazy.
and then emily finds out her landlords want to sell the apartment.
now.
so much for limiting chaos.
josh and craig build a new tool called the bob ross creative maker, and its a hit - jamming out 100’s of creatives in minutes.
and with kristoffer, we set our sights on slovenia for the 2nd annual naive yearly conference, which we’re nervous about missing due to sale implications but dedicated to trying to figure it out.
but first, a family visit in florida… which include the aquarium, scrabble nights, and sunsets at the beach every night.
and we introduce zizi to rattler’s bbq,
while internally screaming at the possibility of actually selling this thing.
and the prospect of emily uprooting her life to a new place.
may
june
emily looks to altadena and pasadena for new homes… and discovers her credit score has tanked due to complications with a business credit card
josh texts emilys therapist from her phone and she jokes that she’s disturbed.
more pizza nights with zizi, mom + andras for his first sushi experience, and haley comes to join emily for a 20 year high school reunion.
the reunion is amazing, with the exception that emily lost her voice and it was impossible to talk.
we navigate another in person meeting with centerfield with 100’s of requests for various forms of diligence research and 20+ people in the room.
abraham surprises us for this big meeting by waiting out front, and emily is still without a voice + pounding hot tea the entire meeting.
josh makes zizi her first game… a matching game on the ipad, and she’s absolutely amazed
josh meets rahim (priya’s husband) irl for the first time after years of knowing about each other… before we even meet priya
it’s rare to meet another nerd who created a bbs as a kid, too
diligence continues to be grueling, but we try to stay sane. abraham starts swimming 3x per day, and josh joins in.
josh makes the cats meow pixl piano, and hands off two ad accounts to holly, thank goodness.
emily takes zizi to pedicures for the first time, and she continues giving concerts outside the garage of the home that is now for sale.
emily starts packing up, but still fits in a mom’s trip with ivana and nathan to oxnard, and a fun celebration for zizi’s 4th birthday.
bellamie comes to visit, we go vintage shopping, visit a psychic for the first time, and we go to a radiohead cover concert and josh + bellamie absolutely hate it.
and then we’re given the news that diligence will require a test to prove ourselves, and the deal hinges on it.
this is not great.
our bankers are pissed. we’re pissed.
everyone advises us to say no + move on.
instead, we begrudgingly agree to do it.
july
bellamie bets josh and abraham that she can hear the difference between hot and cold water being poured, wins $1 from the bet and frames it
we head to sacramento for the 4th of july to visit family… it’s 107 degrees, we swim in the vogel’s pool, and discover bed bugs in the airbnb
and josh surprises his mom with a car
we negotiate the test requirements, including a budget for costs, and start testing like crazy.
we’re still not happy about it… the rates for various prices are different from what we originally understood, and its stressful managing all of this while no one knows what’s happening while still running the company
but we find a loophole… and quickly scale up on it
(this grabs the attention of quite a few exec’s who are not happy about it)
meanwhile, emily officially packs up everything and moves to pasadena
and while visiting terranea, josh realizes we’ve beaten the test requirements in 3 days
in the spirit of trying new local spots, emily starts a coffee shop diary and explores around with zizi
it’s exhausting driving the 60 miles round trip to santa clarita (where zizi is still going to school for another 2 months)
absolutely over being stretched in all directions, we make a bold decision to stop the test.
abraham and josh want to summarize the test findings in an email, but emily encourages “a presentation to end all presentations”, to ask for it irl, and have it in their office.
they ask us to keep going, but we’re so done. it’s not sustainable and we’re struggling to keep it all together.
meanwhile, nugget is losing more and more weight and is slowly dying, despite josh’s dedicated attempts to get him healthier.
emily’s health is also not great, with several issues and running a bunch of medical tests.
josh is doing everything he can for nugget like special diets, different ways to hydrate, and several doctor visits. it’s absolutely heartwrenching.
zizi is struggling with all of the recent changes and having full blown meltdowns. it’s a rough period for everyone.
we barely get through july’s amazon prime day (blacking out most of it)… one of our ad accounts goes down repeatedly due to being paid by credit card and both facebook + chase thinks it’s fraud due to the scale
perhaps as a coping mechanism, emily becomes obsessed with facebook marketplace, estate sales, and vintage shops
and emily + zizi befriend a physicist in his 90’s at a local coffee shop.
abraham comes back for the final test presentation and we get hyped to take a bold stance. we work on the preso for 2 straight days
we practice and emily gets choked up beforehand (tears, of course).
afterwards, abraham takes a nap on the wework floor, josh becomes obsessed with the hum of the conference room white noise, emily rushes back to get zizi from the ongoing hellish commute, and josh + abraham jump in the ocean while we all hope that the deal is still on the table and we didn’t blow up everything.
august
it’s a stressful, hectic time and josh + emily are fighting quite a bit
we cancel the copenhagen / slovenia airbnb + flights, thinking we wouldn’t be able to make it and are super sad about that but committed to trying to get the sale done
emily and zizi go to catcon in pasadena for the first time, joins a bbq with friendly neighbors… and finds out billy zane also lives in the complex
one of our leaders finds out she has cancer so we cancel our minnesota onsite set for september and await more news.
emily cancels her month long stay in minnesota, considering all of the chaos and uncertainties
we experience a big downturn in profit, the trading team is not happy about commissions, and the timeline for the sale looks to be in jeopardy and we continue to be in a miserable limbo.
we experience an agonizing week of silence post test presentation, and finally josh breaks the silence by calling to see what’s going on.
they say they have everything they need from the test, but call out that we don’t seem inclined on doing more anyway
haley comes to visit: we go to an estate sale, visit emily’s new place, sugarfish for lunch, run into our investment banker at the langham, get cookies from levain bakery and go to an arcade with josh
josh finds himself taking cold dips in the pool several times a day for survival and also gets into coke slurpees
after months of no-contact, the first buyer to give an offer slips into our dm’s, which feels confusing.
and we get the news that blue kazoo is now in barnes & noble stores all across america.
emily gives zizi her old ipod from 2008 and brings her to her first estate sale… she loves both
we visit the museum of jurassic technology and it re-ignites our future museum plans for hypertext
josh takes emily to running springs to get some fresh mountain air for a day to try to chill out for once.
zizi has her last day at her preschool in santa clarita, which feels like a big deal
and we continue to make the best of pasadena… we visit old friends whose kid’s emily used to babysit, and zizi falls in love with vroman’s bookstore.
september
we visit pine mountain before zizi starts her new school, and josh makes a typing game just for zizi
nugget passes away
zizi: “nugget is my best friend.”
emily visits the iconic malibu wave house for an estate sale (before karlie kloss moves in)
we are super torn up about missing naive yearly, so we decide at 10am to leave for a 7pm flight that same day.
because we booked last minute, we had no idea what to expect with lodging but ended up with the coolest airbnb with 100 steps to the top floor
emily dangled her feet over water at the canals for the first time
we discovered restaurant karla, went to reffin (twice, after going too late the first night), and lots of magical night bike rides through the city.
then on to ljuliana, slovenia and missed copenhagen a lot
met thom, joel, sarper, thomas, anna rose, sarah, and deepened our connection with kristoffer and ana.
the second annual
naive yearly is even more incredible than the first and we’re beyond grateful to have made the trip
we say yes to a spontaneous invitation to a countryside restaurant with 4 new friends…
laughed the entire time and marveled at the incredible food + connection.
on the ride back, mostly everyone feels sick from the windy roads and full bellies, and emily later threw it all up in her hotel.
josh + emily go for a different countryside drive… exploring vogel ski spot and a restaurant that made us commit to either inside or outside dining but no option to change once seated which we thought was funny
after much deliberation, abraham + josh + emily decide to accept the purchase agreement and move forward
we leave for a long layover in frankfurt, but at this point emily was super sick and tried going to the doctor at the airport. it was wildly unhelpful
zizi makes a new best friend at her new school while we were gone, and we learn they play every day after school in the grass
we go to downtown la to introduce zizi to kazunori + grand central market, and visit a kids museum
started generating sms revenue which is exciting
and josh’s fridge breaks.
october
we are all systems go for a sale close date of october 31st, and are sprinting to make sure everything is complete
there is an influx of diligence asks, and emily spends every waking moment working on it through weekends and at lunches
a potential buyer from indonesia last year (remember??) reaches out after ghosting for a whole year
zizi learns how to write “emily”, 1 2 3 4 5, and tries a balance bike
zizi also discovers she loves foggy mornings
kristoffer shares the story about how naive yearly almost didn’t happen
we receive our very first handwritten “unsubscribe” letter in the mail.
amazon breaks their data during the october “big deals day” event, leaving the team scrambling and guessing at profit numbers
we pivot with band-aid solutions and fake versions of our data, and still pull off over a million in profit over the two days.
hurricane milton hits josh’s family’s area, and his mom evacuates - more scared than ever.
and we head to big sur to try to take a breather and re-group for the last push to the finish line.
in big sur, we try to get friends to join as the location has a full guesthouse, and we weep uncontrollably while watching anne of green gables.
greg + jenny swan visit, and we introduce them to din tai fung and enjoy walks around the neighborhood.
we are completely wrecked over the “net working capital” calculation the private equity firm has included in our deal, and josh wants to ditch the entire deal.
it feels insane and we are so demotivated. we muster up the guts to pay them a visit in their fancy office in beverly hills.
we fake smiles but we are so haggard at this point.
much is out of our control - but not the wallpaper image for the lead investment banker on the buy-side. josh changes it to an image of lord sauron
emily disassociates by decorating her wall for better video call presence
we invite / beg priya to come visit us for thanksgiving - its on our yearly goals and we haven’t met it yet, despite meeting her husband first.
hobbes starts a new strange behavior… waiting by the door every morning until josh comes out of his room.
josh emails the local park to replace the squeaky swings, and victoriously, they do! a small win amidst a huge storm of even more uncertainty.
josh scribbles out the most iconic “7 days to close” checklist, and we all die inside at the amount of work. it’s 18+ hour days from here on out
josh text’s emily’s therapist (again) and they send x-files gifs to each other. it’s a strange time for all parties
we convince abraham and molly to change their thanksgiving plans, and also invite them to california with the whole fam
we find out we need to change the “brainjolt llc” name post-close… we settle on zzyzx systems, and no one can say or spell it
emily fights with the loan company to death, trying to get out of the shark loan the previous brainjolt team put in place but manages to cut fees in half
we fit in a meeting with wikipedia, as we were a benefactor the previous year and we learn a lot of cool things about wikipedia and how they run
and we head into halloween, 100% ready to close and then celebrate with trick-or-treating with zizi afterwards… only to find out the deal is delayed another few days.
we wait and wait during a long drawn out call after school pick-up, and end up cancelling trick-or-treating. we go to pizza night but we’re sad and disappointed, and unsure still if it will go through.