Starting a company after being laid off

You don't need a perfect plan to start. You just need to start. My story of starting ugly begins with getting laid off. I graduated in 2007. Then, in 2008, the global economic crisis hit. A collapse driven by unchecked speculation in the housing market. It fucked shit up. I'm sure you've read about it.

At the time, I had landed a job as a lead designer at a company outside of Philadelphia that consulted with startup companies. We were hit early and hard, and I got laid off. I had an apartment in West Chester. I had two options: survive or move back home with my parents.

So I went on Craigslist. I posted my services, and I also looked for people who needed help. One of the listings stood out—a group looking for a user experience designer for a new startup. They were former VPs from SAP, whose U.S. headquarters wasn't far away. We met at a Starbucks in Paoli, PA.

These executives, easily 20 years older than me, shared their vision: a platform for organizing home documents. It was an experiment outside of SAP. They needed a designer and builder. They contracted me. I brought on my friend Ryan Findley to help build the application. We worked on it together for nearly two years.

That opportunity launched my business, Thought Merchants. I moved from West Chester to Philadelphia and shared an office with Ryan, renting a desk. This whole journey starts, almost poetically, with a Craigslist post.