Fifty Five. / Contributor Forty One: Brett Rounsaville, Hiya.
On Embracing Simplification, Seeing the World Through a Child's Eyes, and Deodorant Stick Butter.
Hey, everybody.
VHS Ventures is chugging away, I’m working on things on the side, and in between it all, I’m restarting our contributors’ editions here at Le Cinq!
I’m excited to introduce the newest one, a great founder who I’ve been jamming with as of late. He’s been a longtime worker in the startup world and is building a great shopping platform. He’s also seeing quite some incredible things in his lifetime!
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Brett Rounsaville.
Brett Rounsaville has taken the scenic route through life. Starting his 20-year career as a theme park designer at Disney before becoming a minor internet celebrity, a game designer and a 2x founder. Most recently he helped start an e-commerce company called Nearby that was acquired by Twitter, where he spent a drama-filled year, before leaving to start a new sort of e-commerce company called Hiya!
Brett believes that the only thing that really matters in life is the spread between expectations and outcomes. All the joy and value you can wring out of life comes from either experiencing or creating a situation where expectations have been exceeded. Under promise and over deliver. So…please don’t expect much out of this interview.
A fun fact: I’ve technically fired Donald Trump twice. Once on Good Morning America during my hobo era.
What are you currently working on?
I’ve been busy founding a new company that strips out all possible friction from e-commerce and raises up small and medium-sized brands! Once a week you get a text message that features a high quality, curated product at a great price, based on your preferences. If you dig what you see literally the only thing you have to do is text “YES” before it sells out and the rest is magic.
It’s one of those things that marries so many of my passions that you just can’t help but be happy while building. It’s got the exceptional customer experience that became part of my blood at Disney, game design elements, sales, and serves small brands. (My parents were shop owners growing up, so anytime I feel like I can help give small businesses a boost, it’s a win.)
What are you currently excited about?
I have two little girls who are five and seven. My seven-year-old recently got VERY into Star Wars and, for whatever reason, that’s not something I had ever been into growing up. It was always around but I never much cared about it and didn’t see any of the original movies all the way through until my mid-30s. Then suddenly I had this opportunity to explore a whole new galaxy right alongside her and (people tell you this before you have kids, but it’s still impossible to wrap your head around) there’s something incredibly magical about seeing a world through a child’s eyes.
It’s been such an awesome gift to be part of her enthusiasm.
What’s a story or article that you're currently thinking about?
I’ve been rereading one of my favorite marketing/business books this week. Alchemy by Rory Sutherland. It’s filled with great insights on behavioral economics, psychology and creativity, but if I could highlight just one major takeaway, it’s that creativity has value. One of my favorite lines is, “A flower is just a weed with an advertising budget.” Bottom line, put effort into making whatever you’re working on interesting. I usually phrase it as:
Step 1. How is everyone else doing it?
Step 2. Don't do that.
Step 3. Repeat.
Of course, I’m biased on account of the single through-line in my career is that I’ve always been paid to bring creativity to a job. Whether it’s designing and building props for an attraction or finding a clever new way to do business, so take anything I say with a pinch of pepper.
What’s a product you’re currently obsessed with?
Look, I’m going to need you to set aside some doubt here for a minute but hear me out. What is the worst thing that could possibly happen to you in a kitchen?
Right. Having to butter toast. You have three options:
Get a new knife dirty every single time.
Just leave a gross half-cleaned butter knife out on your counter all the time.
Do that thing where you peel back a little bit of paper from the butter stick and then just wipe it all over your hot bread and get butter all over the tips of your fingers.
Well folks, I’m here to tell you I’m a genius and there’s an option 4: Butter in a deodorant stick container. Twist it up, wipe it across your toast a few times, cap it and walk away with clean hands and delicious toast.
You’re welcome!
Wild Card: What’s an item you can’t shake your mind off of?
As someone currently obsessing over e-commerce experiences and who also loves convenience, I’m a regular shopper at Amazon. But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how they accidentally succeeded at actually becoming The Everything Store and how frustrating an experience that can sometimes be. It’s a real Monkey’s Paw situation.
I recently tried to buy a Christmas gift for my girls after seeing some people on Instagram playing something they called magnetic chess. I went to Amazon, as you do, typed in “magnetic chess,” and got FIFTY-ONE versions of the game, just on the first page! It would be one thing if they were all exactly the same, but instead I spent 45 minutes examining every variable, shipping cost, reviews, packaging, supplier, general sketchiness, before finally adding one to my cart. It was brutal and 0% fun.
Less is more.
Simplify.
"Reputation is what people think of you. Character is what you are."
- Oxford, The King’s Man
~ C O L O P H O N ~
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