“It’s pronounced Koushi, like Yoshi… you know, like that green dinosaur from Mario.”
That’s how Koushi introduced herself during her Tacklebox interview. I liked her from the start. Her idea, Stemless — Seamless for weed for specific use cases in Oregon (her hometown, where it was legal) — had promise. That made it that much more difficult when she approached me after the first workshop.
“Brian — can we talk? Some things have changed…”
This wasn’t just any workshop. This was the first workshop for the first ever session of Tacklebox Accelerator. It was 10pm, and 11 founders had worked their day jobs before showing up to a three hour “Idea Workshop” I ran out of a sweaty WeWork conference room. It was so hot the windows had fogged up. I’ve since shortened that workshop… drastically.
So I knew what Koushi was going to say before she said it. She’d been expecting something else, and she’d like to drop out of Tacklebox and get her money back. I’ve been an entrepreneur for a long time, but someone telling you they don’t like what you’ve built never gets any easier. I braced myself.
“There were layoffs at my company today and I was a part of them. So… Stemless… it has to work. Is there any way we can meet more frequently, or maybe I can work from your office during the week? I know we can make Stemless work.”
I didn’t say anything.
“We have to make this work.”
That was the moment Tacklebox started. I’d done eight months of work leading up to that first session, but I didn’t realize what Tacklebox actually was until that moment. I had always assumed it’d be a product I sold to customers. I would help people validate or disprove their startup idea, they’d pay me money, and we’d go our separate ways. Transaction over.
No, no, no.
The last 50 founders to go through Tacklebox have taught me that that’s not how it works. They’re here to turn their idea into a product people love. And I’m in it with them, for the long haul. Lots of products don’t matter. I realized that Tacklebox does, and I have a responsibility to act accordingly.
It’s been 20 months since Koushi interviewed. She’s worked absurdly hard, moved her family to Oregon, and recently closed her second round of funding. Stemless is growing fast. Here’s an email she sent last week post-raise. For reference, Jeremy is in our Angel group — investors who vet and occasionally invest in Tacklebox alums:
Originally this post was going to announce that applications for the next session of Tacklebox are open. It’d talk about how Stemless reached product-market fit in a tricky market. Tactically, what she did during Tacklebox was awesome. Email me and I’ll tell you all about it. But I thought this story was important, too. Tacklebox is certainly a bunch of founders working to build products people love. But it’s more than that. We’re in this with you.
