PMBC Group Client Timyo Featured on Built in LA.
When I started thinking about what would become Timyo, I thought about email not only as a productivity killer but as a destroyer of work-life balance. For too long, too many of us had lived under the tyranny of constant communication—feeling guilty for not answering right away on Slack, feeling crushed by the weight of emails piling up in your inbox, feeling like the only way to get ahead is to to be available to work on the weekend and nights. Even worse, the email status quo had been normal for so long that some even seemed to take a perverse pride in communication overload, as if “inbox” was commensurate to importance. We had forgotten an obvious truth, that busy-ness is bad for business.
When I decided to launch Timyo in the US, I knew I needed to pick the perfect place. The obvious choice for a tech business is, of course, San Francisco: there’s already a full ecosystem of VC with billions of dollars and an eagerness to find the next big thing, as well as tons of other entrepreneurs (all easily recognizable in the same t-shirt: thanks, Mark Zuckerberg!). In San Francisco, they know that “H2” isn’t some new kind of bird flu, but the visa that talented potential hires will need to work in the US. It’s place where people are proud to work 16 hour days, where they are happy to spend all weekend crashing and coding at the CTO’s condo in the Marina, where they spend so much time working from smartphones that they started communicating in pictures to cut down on the tapping.
So, of course, we came to LA.
Los Angeles is a perfect fit for Timyo’s ethos. When others think of LA, it’s “sun, beach, Hollywood…” and we have all of those for sure (though there are better beaches north and south and “Hollywood” isn’t really in Hollywood), but when you live in LA, real life is more about a great quality of life, a priority of work-life balance (yes, the word “work” is still involved), and entrepreneurship. That last one surprises people, because I think in recent years we’ve come to think of “entrepreneur” as synonymous with “tech startup”, but an entrepreneur is any self-starter, someone eager to make their own way, not looking for a corporate safety net or the security of a clear forward path for advancement…from actors to agents to casting directors and hair stylists, that describes pretty much everybody in LA. Soon after arriving in LA, we had the chance to meet and work with Will Arnett. Not only is he a fantastic actor and funnier than hell, he is an insanely hard-working producer with a more entrepreneurial mindset than just about anybody I’ve ever met…
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