The more time I’ve spent in and around startups, the more deeply I believe in what I’ll call the Duration Paradox. Both things are true: 1. Most people waste a decade of their life working on something that will never succeed and should have quit early on. 2. Most people who are hugely successful are so because they never quit when any sane person would have. Choose your adventure wisely.| PAT KINSEL
I'm only 40, but I'm still old enough to remember when the internet and the technology community were terribly small. In my 20s: you could read every TechCrunch article and know almost everything...| Tumblr
In response to ALTView on Twitter James, You have identified an enormous problem in our society, which is the broken nature of our identity system and the federal policy and infrastructure that surrounds it. Politically, it is just not possible to create a better solution right now - look no further than the political challenges moving to Real ID. These shortcomings have forced everyone to find alternatives, which unfortunately frequently do rely upon the credit system in America. And that’...| PAT KINSEL
One of the strongest trends I’ve seen over the past few years is the desire amongst enterprise buyers to have fewer vendors and to consolidate services. I’ve seen this for several years in my own experiences selling software. It is yet another reason why we made the leap from a point solution (Notarize) to a platform (Proof) and we will continue to add more services to Proof to take advantage of this trend. I feel strongly that we’re now on the other side and we’re now seen as a con...| PAT KINSEL
I believe deeply that the team and culture you build are more important than the product. Most companies only ever have one idea and even if that idea is wildly successful, they fail to build a culture of innovation. And the music eventually stops. Companies must avoid the trap of rock polishing and evolve to become civil engineers, building toward a vision and laying a foundation for years of innovation and the ability to respond to market changes. Companies with this capacity to innovate ar...| PAT KINSEL
It’s a sad day to see InVision shut down. Most startups die for the obvious reasons, but I think there’s something to be learned from InVision’s demise. Positive - InVision showed me the power of the Invite-to-collaborate & charge to organize growth loop, which inspired a lot of my thinking at Notarize. When InVision was on the rise, I think it was entirely a result of this growth loop paired with their pricing model. It was bottoms up. A designer would register for free and share a fil...| PAT KINSEL
I have decided that an early stage (Series A-B) venture capitalist’s single most critical task is to make certain their portfolio companies do not hire the wrong executives. There is nothing more detrimental to a growing company’s progress than hiring the wrong executives just as the business is starting to scale - exactly when the CEO and Founders are letting others own key areas, teams are hired, people are trained, and culture is set. The wrong executives blow resources, repel critical...| PAT KINSEL
Notarize recently shut the entire company down, giving everyone one week off. I thought I’d write a blog post about it but realized that the email I sent internally gets the job done. For those interested in why Notarize launched #OperationChillax, here’s more. From: Pat To: Everyone Date: July 7, 2021 Subject: What would you do with a free week? Announcing Operation Chillax. Hello everybody! Notarize will be closed the week of August 9th to 13th! [and leaving the lights on for custome...| PAT KINSEL
Crossing the Chasm is a well-known concept. Startups start by acquiring innovators, spread into early adopters, and then stall as they try to acquire the early majority of customers who care less about the novelty of their solution and instead need something that solves real problems and is packaged and sold in a manner they can buy. Jumping to the other side requires rethinking everything. Many startups shoot out of the gates by selling to other startups only to hit a ceiling when they reali...| PAT KINSEL
Reinventing the home buying experience is quite possibly the greatest untapped opportunity in the American economy. We can all agree that it shouldn’t take 46 days to get a mortgage. Houses sit on the market for too long, buying agents are compensated more if you spend more, and fees and commissions are too high – the list goes on. Alex Rampell of Andreessen Horowitz recently wrote a post about this very topic that’s getting much attention. He states that to shorten this process, “you...| PAT KINSEL
Notarize started as a fun project. I thought, “someone is going to build the notary app, might as well be me.” Since that fateful decision, this company has asked more of me [ + my family and the team] than I could have ever imagined. Today marks a major milestone for Notarize as the National Association of Secretaries of State updated their standards to allow for online notarization. This represents more than to 2 years of regulatory and advocacy effort and is an extremely important mile...| PAT KINSEL
I’ll never be able to share just how hard it was to pull this off, but Notarize is the first company and platform to allow people to buy their home entirely online. Read more about it on the Notarize Blog or check out the new marketing site - Notarize for Mortgage.| PAT KINSEL
I’m extremely excited and proud about our most recent release, Notarize for Enterprise. We’ve been in a dead sprint to go from a functional consumer app that people loved to a hardened platform for enterprise customers. This release also represents a much more sophisticated “meeting” between the notary and customer, truly advancing the concept of software + a human in the loop. More on the Notarize blog: Notarize enters the Enterprise, expands to new states & welcomes former Fanni...| PAT KINSEL
Notarize is a unique company in many regards. It’s underappreciated, but the entire concept of MVP is not only an operational doctrine, but a psychological framework to get yourself to accept flaws and ship early. As Reid Hoffman is accredited with saying, “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” That’s just a big wet kiss to the warts on your product. Notarize performs a legal function. The app either does or does not produce a le...| PAT KINSEL
Since we launched our product in February, life has been absolutely crazy. We knew getting documents notarized was a pain point for consumers and businesses alike, but we had no idea how significant the interest in Notarize would be. And for us, it has been extremely rewarding as we help people execute the most important transactions of their lives. So, we’re excited to announce that we’ve secured $8 million in Series A financing led by Polaris Partners with participation by Founder’s F...| PAT KINSEL
Let’s be honest: No one likes getting documents notarized. The moment you’re told that a transaction requires a notarized signature, your heart drops and your mind starts racing, wondering where, when and how you’re going to get this done. And yet, we collectively notarize over 1 billion documents in the U.S. each year. That’s one billion moments of misery annually. And the pain doesn’t discriminate. Many of life’s most important transactions come to a screeching halt the moment...| PAT KINSEL
Storm #Jonas in MA| PAT KINSEL
Sun Valley for New Years| PAT KINSEL
Christmas in NH| PAT KINSEL
Fall in New England| PAT KINSEL
