It’s been more than a *year* since I updated the blog and it’s been more than a *year* since I updated this particular story. Really, at the time, I felt like I was putting too much effort into things that weren’t really paying off…so I took a step back. That, and I had some trouble trying to figure out how to wrap up the story. I thought about wrapping it up for a long time, but, again, I just didn’t have a very good ending. BUT. Something happened this past weekend that made me think…’jeez, this whole year this whole thing kinda came full circle.’ The end of the official story (that’s been sitting my drafts) goes something like this…(taken from where I left off (see part 3)):
(4/x) A few weeks (months?) later, I hear that Josh had a meeting with Dan Gilbert, the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers (and the richest man to ever use Comic Sans in public), and I hear that Campless is sold to Gilbert for ‘seven figures’.
Amazing.
Apparently, though, this is now when the *real* work begins. I do myself a disservice by listening to every Josh Luber podcast and Youtube video and want to stab myself for blowing this opportunity…I missed the boat…again.
The site drops and I’m genuinely excited. Especially since it reminds me of my days on Wall Street - a legitimate financial market for sneakers. Dope.
Ramin and I keep in contact, though, and discuss news and rumors and all of the ‘what-ifs’ that cross our mind…We talked about code and crypto and sneakers and life and family and wives and kids and NFTs and music and travel and jobs and all kinds of things…he even came out to the Bay Area a couple of times and I brought him to my favorite Chinese spot in SF and my favorite Taco spot in East Oakland.
At some point, I don’t remember when, I tell Ramin that I’ve been working on this sneaker grading algorithm and he sets up a meeting between him, me, Josh and Greg Schwartz (today he’s the *current* CEO of StockX) to talk about it…
Ramin and Greg are there, but Josh is noticeably absent. My pitch is simple: if you expand beyond just deadstock, you can make money multiple times over *on the same pair of shoes* by grading and facilitating the sale of used shoes. I have a number of questions for Greg and am a bit perplexed as to why they’ve chosen to run certain aspects the way they have…one of the questions I ask has to do with the fact that I have around 100 pairs of shoes I want to sell and I can only find about 40% in their product catalog…I remember he kinda laughed at me: ‘well, we’re not going to have every shoe in there’. It’s a long few years later that I understand why: I’m incorrectly looking at the potential of StockX as a sneaker collectors hub and they’re looking at the potential of StockX as a money-printing machine. The meeting was pleasant enough, probably a half hour or so…but I know, almost immediately, that this conversation is going to lead nowhere. Even though Ramin did his best to put me in a position to succeed, I couldn’t pull it off.
A little while later, while hanging out in San Francisco for the day with my family…on the suggestion of Ramin, I somewhat cold-text Josh while sitting in traffic: ‘Josh, do you have any suggestions for me as to how I can pull this whole ‘grading’ thing off?’
I get a quick response that starts going down a path that isn’t relevant to what I’m doing exactly, and I see the ‘typing indicator bubbles’ doing their thing, so I quickly respond with ‘oh, I’m not doing that [specific thing]’. The typing indicators stop.
And.
I stare at my phone for a few seconds.
Nothing.
I notice traffic is starting to clear up.
Nothing.
I figure he’s got something new to think about, so I don’t press it.
I’m driving and I’m left on ‘read’.
And that’d be that…because I’m left on ‘read’ for…about…3 years.