Creating an Unbucket list with Yoni Sarason? Your ears will thank you, starting with a trip to Chicago’s Green Mill Jazz Club. Historically noteworthy for being a favorite of Al Capone, Yoni recommends the Green Mill find its way on to your Unbucket lists for the electrifying vibe that permeates venue performances. Click play below to hear a little more about why Yoni chose the Green Mill for his Unbucket This!
Unbucket This! with Yoni Sarason
Photo Credit: ChiILLeica / Music Credit: Karl Denson – I Want the Funk
Unbucket has much to be thankful for on Thanksgiving. We are very much a “lean startup,” and so we wanted to share our founders’ respective lists of things Unbucket couldn’t do without on this beautiful American holiday.
When you start from nothing, you find what you’re most grateful for comes into sharp focus. -Elliot
5. Skype – We don’t have an office yet, so it’s the next best thing.
4. EMG – An incredible strategic marketing firm that believes in Unbucket as much as I do.
3. The LA Tech Community – We’re not Silicon Valley, we’re Silicon Beach. We do it our way.
2. People Who Challenge Me – You are making me stronger, so keep bringing the heat.
1. My Inner Circle – You know who you are, I’d be nothing without you.
Unbucket’s core concept translates well into the beginnings of Unbucket itself – two friends with common interests and good ideas. This list contains a few of the things that fill the supporting roles in our adventure. -Brian
5. Dropbox – It serves as our virtual office – file system, backup mechanism, collaboration tool.
4. Textmate/Transmit – The best code editor and FTP program allow us to build this great product we are unleashing.
3. Anyone Who Will Listen – We have received incredible feedback and advice from willing ears around us, whether family, friends, acquaintances or the unsuspecting AMEX customer service rep.
2. Technology – Let’s face it, the ever-changing technology landscape gives us the tools to build something incredible and makes the space in people’s lives that Unbucket fills.
1. My Wife – Katie not only keeps my personal life in order and encourages me to make Unbucket happen, but she also acts as the company secretary and chef.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
Love,
Unbucket
Girls making an Unbucket list for a weekend in LA? Closet Rich founder Elizabeth Kott has you covered like Ella Moss Cashmere in this third episode of Unbucket This! Hint: Plan your visit around the second Sunday of the month and head to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl Flea Market. Okay, that wasn’t a hint, it was a full blown spoiler, but you gotta watch the video for the inside gems.
For the latest in hand-selected pre-loved fashion, follow @ClosetRich or head to closetrich.com and get that Jenni Kayne you know you deserve.
For us, venture capitalist Fred Wilson’s blog AVC is a regular source of inspiration, provocation and knowledge. It’s rare he hands the pen to anyone else, but yesterday a guest post was smashed out by the cold metal claws of Grimlock (aka Fake Grimlock). Appropriately, the topic was “Minimal Viable Personality,” the concept that all products should have a consistent and well-developed voice (even if that voice is all caps and stunted grammar).
Below is an excerpt that inspired this Unbucket post:
HOW NOT BE BORING
HAVE PERSONALITY EASY. ANSWER THREE QUESTIONS:
1. HOW YOU CHANGE CUSTOMER’S LIFE?
2. WHAT YOU STAND FOR?
3. WHO OR WHAT YOU HATE?
NOW HAVE MISSION, VALUES, ENEMY. THAT ENOUGH FOR MINIMUM VIABLE PERSONALITY.
After reading this, we pictured ourselves on a Grimlock daytime talk show dedicated to startups. It’s called GRIMLOCK EATS STARTUPS HAS BEER and airs weekly on the Food Network. There is a segment called “How Not Be Boring” where these three questions are posed to a startup founder. If the startup founder isn’t mercilessly eaten by Grimlock by the time question three is answered, the startup likely has an interesting personality, or Grimlock is just really, really drunk.
Our answers would go something like this:
1. We make relationships stronger and lives more fulfilled.
2. Living a meaningful life with those you care about.
3. Technology that distracts us from living active lives.
Here’s to hoping we don’t get eaten alive.
Welcome back to another episode of Unbucket This!, where we ask those driving tomorrow’s culture what we should all be adding to our Unbucket lists today.
This episode is brought to you by Aaron Kaczander, a writer in Los Angeles and the unofficial Mayor of Culver City. You can follow him on Twitter @aaronkaczander. We tried a new format this time, let us know what you think!
We’d like to introduce to you Unbucket This!, an interview series focused on giving you ideas for your Unbucket lists from the people that just always seem to know what you should be doing next.
Joining Elliot for the inaugural episode is Eli Sussman, co-author of the cookbook Freshman in the Kitchen (buy it!) and our close hometown friend. Happy Unbucketing, and let us know what you think.
Co-founders Brian Berman & Elliot Darvick
Brian Berman, Co-Founder
Unbucket is about experiencing life together. It is about social discovery of new experiences and strengthening your relationships with others. I’m not only selling this concept….I’m living it. The very genesis and lifecycle of Unbucket is itself my first, and perhaps greatest, Unbucket list. Unbucket is the product of innovative thinking and hard work put forth by me and Elliot. Elliot and I have been good friends since our early college years, and Unbucket is a product of the common interests we share and the exchange of ideas between us. Launching a web startup is certainly a new experience for both of us, and it promises to take us on an incredible and uncharted adventure. As we build Unbucket and bring it to the world, Elliot and I will be living the Unbucket mission: experience new things with someone else.
I have always been passionate about a wide array of interests in life, and I try to take advantage of all that life has to offer. I have also been fortunate to have family and friends that help me take advantage of all that life has to offer. Really, Unbucket is a natural reflection of my life’s path. My interests have always been diverse, and included among them are entrepreneurialism and technology. I come from a long family history of entrepreneurialism ranging from traditional bricks and mortal retail to cutting edge internet commerce. I have always wanted to run my own business and I try to infuse technology into everything that I do. I have been programming for the web since the internet’s nascent stages, and I have always dreamed of starting a web-based business. One of my goals has always been to create a product that lives and breathes throughout the web.
Unbucket is as much about fulfilling my dreams and interests as it is about helping others to fulfill their own. My hope is for Unbucket to become a widely used platform that facilitates life experiences for others. If we can succeed in doing so, I’ll be more than happy. In any case, I am very much looking forward to the journey.
Elliot Darvick, Co-Founder
There is little I treasure more in life than those closest to me. I like to joke that keeping in touch is my favorite hobby. Some people garden; I make phone calls. But like tending to a bed of plants, maintaining close relationships takes time and sincere effort to keep them alive and healthy. Unbucket was born out of a deep desire to leverage technology for bringing people closer to each other.
Too often we sink our time into technology that keeps us passively connected with those we barely know, when we should be investing that same time into the relationships we care about most; in the near future, you’ll be able to use Unbucket to do exactly that. With Unbucket, we aim to combine the best experiences with your best relationships, all in the name of living a more fulfilled life.
On a personal note, I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of building this company. Many times I’ve walked up to the line separating entrepreneurial from entrepreneur, and the time has come for me to charge across into the unknown of the latter from the safety of the former. Ad astra.