10 Questions for Jake Nickell and Jeffrey Kalmikoff

 

What's your favorite part of a typical day?

Nickell: I'm not going to say.

Kalmikoff: He wants to say going home and hanging out with his kid. There's nothing wrong with that.

Nickell: It's cheesy but true.

What part of your job would you gladly give up?

Nickell: Firing people.

Kalmikoff: It's the most awful thing in the universe.

What skill would you most like to improve?

Nickell: My vocabulary.

Kalmikoff: I wish I could type properly.

What makes for a good salesperson of your product?

Nickell: Somebody's best friend.

Kalmikoff: In a community-based business, people learn about you from their friends, not from a salesperson or an advertisement.

Who gives you the best advice?

Kalmikoff: My dad, because he's more of a traditional businessman. Talking to him makes clear how unconventional our ideas can be and how to scale them back without compromising too much.

Nickell: Insight, our VC, helps us out a lot, too.

Who is the smartest person you know?

Nickell: Maybe Ivan Indrautama, one of our programmers here. He taught me how to program.

Kalmikoff: Maybe it's like this at other companies, but our staff here is the smartest group I've known. The ideas they come up with are so on point.

What keeps you up at night?

Nickell: Thinking about getting stuff done.

Kalmikoff: I lie down in bed, my wife falls asleep in five seconds, and I end up staring at the ceiling for hours thinking of new ideas.

What's the accomplishment you are most proud of?

Nickell: Just the idea that we've stirred the pot a little bit in terms of the way businesses are run.

Kalmikoff: Being invited to speak at places like MIT. I always felt I was more intelligent than my grades suggested.

What's the most fun you've had on the job?

Nickell: The first week I got the go-carts in here.

Kalmikoff: For me, it was the first week of us working together, when I saw what it's like to work with your friends.

If you were going to start a business in another industry, what would it be?

Nickell: A summer camp for kids.

Kalmikoff: Maybe we should do that together.