It’s finally time to take the wraps off of “TBD” and announce what I’ve been working on with my co-founder David Krieger! Our company is Onder, and we’ll be talking a lot more about Onder over the next weeks, months, and years.
Those of you who have worked with me before may be familiar with the weekly blog posts I sent to my team. I’m bringing back that format to share the big themes we are discussing at Onder, the early directions we are exploring, and what we are trying to put out into the world.
Today, I’m talking about the concepts of shedding and investing, and how they relate to what we’re doing with Onder.
When we think about shedding something, we take it to mean that we are getting rid of it. Shedding weight (it is a New Year - time for that resolution!), shedding beliefs, shedding our previous selves. Shedding whatever has been holding us back; letting go in order to move forward. Shedding is a critical part of our lives, because in order to thrive and build a life that matters, we must grow and change. And one very important way to grow is to get rid of the things that block us.
Over the course of our lives, we build up so much stuff - materially, physically, conceptually, emotionally, and spiritually. As we mature and get older, we start noticing that some things we acquired or built up are no longer necessary, or even detrimental to our well-being. I believe many of us can relate to focusing more energy on reducing what we carry with us versus acquiring more as we gain a bit of perspective and experience.
I can promise you this - in startups, in order to make progress, we must shed our original assumptions when we find that our ideas are not working.
Over the last few years, I have done a lot of shedding. I shed the armor I wore that I thought protected me from the world, which I perceived as an unwelcoming, judgmental place. When I removed that armor, I allowed different signals to get through to me. In a world where someone is attacking you with a sword, the armor truly helps, but in recognizing that wasn’t usually the case, I also saw that I was missing opportunities and meaning. OK fine - I’m still working on removing that armor!
Shedding is important because through this process we rid ourselves of unnecessary blockers that prevent us from seeing the full spectrum of possibilities. When we see more possibilities, we get to make better choices, and ultimately live a life of greater ease.
This mechanism is the foundation of the phrase “to shed light on”. Examining that phrase, you can see that we gain a better understanding of something by looking at it holistically, discerning the helpful from the unhelpful pieces, and focusing on the light that emerges.
Shedding light is a big part of what we’re doing with Onder.
Investing is also a big part of what we’re doing with Onder. When you invest, you direct something of value toward a specific effort with the intention of getting something of greater value back after some amount of time - allowing your initial value to take hold and grow.
You can invest in companies
You can invest in other people
You can invest in yourself
You can invest in your home
Investing, like shedding, is a critical part of our lives. We must invest our time, money, and effort in order to grow our assets, our knowledge, and our understanding of the world at large.
If you own a home, you understand that you must invest all of those things in it - not just for its value to increase, but because it is where you live. It is the physical center of our lives and it matters a lot to your health and that of your family. Home ownership is a meaningful accomplishment and can represent joy, family, and comfort. As a homeowner, you’re grateful for the stability, the ability to grow roots in a community, and the years of memories preserved within the walls of your home. However, the daily requirements of taking care of a home are often overwhelming and inconvenient. Things go wrong all the time. Increasingly, we don’t have enough time or the needed expertise or skillbase to be the homeowners we want to be. We are left unprepared and under-informed when it comes to maintaining our homes and resolving problems. As a result, we don’t address the areas that need attention in our homes, which can result in bigger problems and bigger bills down the road.
Onder offers the solution. With Onder we believe that we can serve homeowners by giving them a single place for answers about their homes. Instead of spending hours on Google or dealing with service providers, you’ll save time and money by sourcing high quality content that is personalized and relevant for the questions you have at hand. We are thinking broadly about how to help people invest in their homes so that they get greater value back - in both tangible and intangible ways.
It’s still early days for us at Onder. We have an opportunity to reinvent home ownership.
Right now, we are offering a place you can go to have a vetted home expert answer any questions you have about your home. As we move forward, we will build features in to facilitate taking the next step, whether it’s delivering you reliable estimates for a project (without the obligations or sales calls!), delivering you the exact supplies you need, or just helping you make the best decisions by acting as the objective friend with deep expertise who cares about you and your home.
We invite you to try it out during our free beta:
Go to https://web.onder.io (on your mobile web browser; desktop and native apps are still in the works)
Click the “Homeowners - Sign-up and Ask a Question!” button
Use the invitation code “OnderMirror22”
Record your question!
Our longer-term vision is a homeowner centric community, where Onder aligns incentives and enables you to invest in your home with less stress, greater knowledge, and the potential to get a return on your investment by helping others out.
We are excited to hear from you, get your feedback, or just talk about what we’re building in greater detail. Please reach out!