Letter from our Founder:
Finding Serenity
//
CONTACT
info@HenceSupply.co
Park City, Utah 84098
Letter from our Founder:
“If outdoor time was so important to me, I was sure it was, or could be, to others. Especially in a world where mental health struggles were becoming both more pervasive and acknowledged thanks to our global pandemic misadventures.”
Like the singletrack and skin track that serve as a psychological reset for me, this career journey of mine has offered up its share of twists, climbs, and drops at every turn. The flow state, piece of mind, and personal connections that I find on aspen-lined paths have supplanted the fulfillment I chased for years throughout my sorted career. It took being professionally beaten down, physically injured, and emotionally spinning for me to pull together the seeds of insight that would soon give way to Hence.
And so the story begins
After several stints as a restructuring investment banker, a relatively long stint building a clean energy investment banking group, and a couple short stints as a principal investor sprinkled in, I decided to stop chasing money (somewhat) and get my feet wet as an operator. Instead of a low-risk, high-compensation role at an established company, I went the opposite extreme. I chose a high-risk, low-compensation but arguably more rewarding role at an early stage start-up.
Flash forward 4.5 years and the venture-backed software company, where I served as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Revenue Officer, among other unofficial roles, was not scaling. This was despite our company having super compelling technology, which offered a great return to a technology-starved industry (commercial real estate), and three brilliant young founders plus a small rockstar team of like-minded, hard-charging individuals. While we were working with several big-name, real estate investment firms and arguably had confirmation of product market fit, we were struggling to achieve the repeatable sales cycle status that big venture capital firms back.
When COVID hit, besides the world generally becoming a weird place, my work situation became even more difficult. It quickly became clear that with all this uncertainty, my wife and I now both working from home, and the kids not in school, it was a horrible time to gut remodel or tear down the house that my family had recently purchased.
Instead, it was time for a change—time for something dramatic—time to pursue a lifelong dream to live in a ski town and have my kids on the local ski team. What’s the worst thing that could happen? We move away for a couple seasons, then return to our beloved Austin with a great story in hand? Plus, I needed to buy more time at my company to hopefully see it through to a successful exit (and oh yeah, the prospects of looking for a new, grass-is-greener gig seemed daunting for the first time in my life, amidst a global pandemic).
Mountain life
Skiing and the mountains had always been my nirvana, mental safe place, and spiritual home. So, with all the above as context, my family (wife, son and daughter, and Golden Retriever) moved from Austin to Park City in the summer of 2020.
Unlike my other love/obsession, tennis, skiing had never gotten fraught or complicated for me. As I got older and the stresses of life continued to mount, tennis became more and more of a mental grind. What had looked effortless for my idol Federer, ranged from occasional bliss to more-often-than-not pure torture. Refreshingly, skiing came easy for me from the day my parents dropped me off at Buttermilk at age four and I won a blue ribbon for some obviously spectacular but apparently unmemorable feat. The passion continued to grow through annual family trips, father-son trips, high school Young Life trips, college trips, and then a partially aborted post-undergrad season in Summit County, Colorado.
Following grad school and my move to the wild and mind-expanding urban jungle called New York City, I skied as much as possible, including venturing outside North America to both Europe and South America. When I finally got married, my wife was already bound to a life of skiing (we got engaged in Aspen).
Our kids had no choice, either. Our annual family trips to Taos and ski pass-propelled Spring Break jaunts to various western resorts became increasingly integral to our family wellbeing (at least mine). The chairlift proved to be the one place we could all be present, happy, and consistently get along—away from the stress of work and the distractions of devices. With each passing year and newer, ever more complex life challenges, ski trips with family and friends became all the more important to me.
Mission accomplished. We moved to a great neighborhood in Park City, immediately fell in love with the Wasatch, and started making friends with locals who shared our passions. Our kids started school (masks on), and I immersed myself in cross-country mountain biking on the 500 miles of single track literally outside our backdoor.
Things were pretty great. But…
Back to reality
My company still refused to scale. Promising relationships with new marquee customers were not developing at the expected pace (here we were mid-pandemic, and our biggest market was commercial office buildings—need I say more?). Great conversations with several high-profile venture capital firms never materialized into term sheets.
We then went down a path to sell the company. After talking with multiple potential suitors and a series of book-worthy twists and turns, we executed a letter of intent with a buyer, which represented the best of two real options (all stock deal, of course). My initial elation was quickly offset by the realization that, while I would now have a higher-paying job with a well capitalized company, I wasn’t going to be at “the table” for the first time in my career.
Now, I’d merely be a cog in the wheel. A role both boring and ill-suited to my experience—incredibly deflating after years putting my higher strengths to use. With the deal’s initial triumph devolving into personal despair, I still had a job to complete—to get the transaction across the finish line for the sake of our team and über-supportive investors.
Ok, psych yourself up. More heroics are required—now, more grit and grind in nature. At least I was killing it on the trails and having a blast with a growing group of peer riders. Pedaling my emotional pain and frustrations away, I tolerated the suffering of my new three-dimensional role as CFO, CRO, and quasi-junior legal associate (our attorney of big firm heritage currently had no junior lawyers supporting him at his small boutique). Oh well, take another one for the team.
Missives from the depths:
From injury to desolation to realization
Then, one day, I broke my wrist. I didn’t do it careening down a steep singletrack, but rather by trying to find the family iPad I’d hidden from our kids on a high shelf in our bedroom, standing tip-toed on a rolling chair on our hardwood floors (don’t recommend).
After surgery and a bunch of pain pills, I took my place back at my desk. The serenity offered by my bike was now taken from me, replaced (poorly) by alcohol, pills, and the occasional streaming binge. I was just barely holding things together, yet I couldn’t let years toiling in start-up land be all for naught. I had to close the deal. Laboring away, I extracted productivity and diplomacy from the deepest reserves I could muster.
It was from these depths that I had a several revelations:
1) My mental health had never been more closely correlated to my time spent outdoors.
It was my release, my serenity, my time to think, my time to let go, my social outlet, and most importantly my drug of choice (infinitely better and with a much longer half life than any of my other occasional crutches). Most importantly, it served as a real catalyst for my productivity and optimism. My killer gym workouts and increasingly less frequent runs (thanks, skiing- and tennis-battered knees) were less and less doing the trick. Now that we lived in the mountains, mountain biking and skiing (both resort and backcountry) became my true obsessions, essential for smoothing out my fluctuating mental states.
If outdoor time was so important to me, I was sure it was, or could be, to others. Especially in a world where mental health struggles were becoming both more pervasive and acknowledged thanks to our global pandemic misadventures.
2) Technology increasingly had its grips on me—and clearly had its grips on my kids.
Since my first Blackberry and several successive iPhones, my device addiction became increasingly more acute—no downtime, always working, always thinking, always able to scratch my intellectual itch for more information. Somewhere along the way, I had stopped reading for fun. To escape my phone’s tentacles, I would often relax by binging on series and podcasts—stimulating and even sometimes inspiring, but never providing the mental downtime I desperately needed.
For my kids, it was even worse—especially as the pandemic deepened. They descended into mindless hours of gaming and spin on YouTube, TikTok, and SnapChat. Email and even text communication skills faded. They became frantically dependent on their tech dopamine hits. Their impatience, insecurity, and isolation only grew. Technology wasn’t just bad for adults’ capacity for presence (and flow state), it was also ruining our youths’.
I and other parents that I sought out for support and advice were equally observing the general decline of our kids’ drive and communication skills, and the inherent loneliness of living through your phone and becoming increasingly more inwardly focused. It was also increasingly apparent that technology was killing our youths’ attention span, patience, and interest to do hard things and master the foundational building blocks that are essential to a successful life.
3) Team sports, while an important part of my youth, were radically changing to a world of specialization.
Kids are forced to specialize early, to pick a sport in grade school and play year round in “select” leagues with paid coaches. This rather than being encouraged to play every sport in low-key local rec leagues during each sport’s traditional season, which was the case when I was young.
Not only is there more pressure for kids to pick the right sport at way too young of an age (and attendant high pressures to perform), but an increasingly high cost for parents, both monetarily and from a time commitment perspective (including private coaches and distant away games/tournaments). Kids, who are not wired to be super-competitive or average to good athletes, are getting pushed out at earlier ages based on performance or, alternatively, dropping out from all the pressure and lack of variety.
There is only a select group of kids, and their dedicated parents, who can tolerate and make the necessary commitments to reap the benefits of playing multiple sports at their highest level. In addition, for kids who get pushed out or drop out of a particular sport, it is hard to change lanes and enter a new sport at an older age and compete against average to good athletes, who have been exclusively focused on playing a single sport for years—unless they are truly exceptional athletes. Traditional individual sports, like golf and tennis, have been this way for years.
So net, net, you have more kids being pushed out of traditional sports at an earlier age and removed from friend groups and environments that are fundamental to their personal development. To fill this void, these kids are often relying on their devices even more for stimulation, meaning, and solace.
For my son, who went down the select soccer route when we lived in Austin, seeing his joy at the skatepark, skiing on our annual trips, and learning to surf at camps, without all the inherent pressures of team sports, was both rewarding and an eye-opening experience for Type A parent like myself.
Turning realization into action.
With these insights crystalizing in my head amidst my own professional uncertainty, the genesis of Hence was born—a platform to showcase people doing soul-enriching and noteworthy things in the outdoors and the greater outdoors’ ecosystem. Hence’s mission is to more effectively connect content creators, athletes, and brands to tell their stories to the growing outdoor community in an impactful and enduring manner. And in doing so, inspire others to get outside.
Our small but talented team of industry veterans view adventure sports and the outdoors as a forum for personal development and physical and mental wellbeing that can span a lifetime. These endeavors (biking, climbing, hiking, running, skateboarding, skiing, snowboarding, surfing, you name it) provide the freedom to progress at one’s own pace, without the constant measurement of performance versus one’s peers. Outdoor adventure also provides the opportunity to take calculated risks in a supportive community, where everyone encourages one another to push through their personal limits, tackle new objectives, try new tricks, or just get out there to take that next step. Most notably, these pursuits force us to be truly present in our surroundings, momentarily put aside our struggles, thoughts and fears, and connect with nature and others in a heightened manner during and in the afterglow of their offered states of flow. These benefits are vital for everyone, but especially our youth and young adults struggling to find their way in the world.
“Tomorrow always presents new opportunities—you just have to put yourself out there—figuratively and literally.”
Life is clearly hard, but we view these endeavors as opportunities and tangible examples demonstrating that you are never defined by where you currently are in life—whether in your relationships, work, faith, or personal pursuits. Tomorrow always presents new opportunities—you just have to put yourself out there—figuratively and literally.
The sale of my prior company closed and hopefully all my efforts will be rewarded someday. And, my wrist healed. Like most things in life, adversity brings opportunity. And it has set me on a path to build a business that aligns with my personal passions and with a mission to improve peoples’ lives. In the days ahead, Hence will be announcing exciting details about the platform we’re creating to empower people to equally pursue their passions, transcend their current challenges, achieve their dreams, and most importantly, keep moving forward. Stay tuned.
See you tomorrow.
“If outdoor time was so important to me, I was sure it was, or could be, to others. Especially in a world where mental health struggles were becoming both more pervasive and acknowledged thanks to our global pandemic misadventures.”
Like the singletrack and skin track that serve as a psychological reset for me, this career journey of mine has offered up its share of twists, climbs, and drops at every turn. The flow state, piece of mind, and personal connections that I find on aspen-lined paths have supplanted the fulfillment I chased for years throughout my sorted career. It took being professionally beaten down, physically injured, and emotionally spinning for me to pull together the seeds of insight that would soon give way to Hence.
And so the story begins
After several stints as a restructuring investment banker, a relatively long stint building a clean energy investment banking group, and a couple short stints as a principal investor sprinkled in, I decided to stop chasing money (somewhat) and get my feet wet as an operator. Instead of a low-risk, high-compensation role at an established company, I went the opposite extreme. I chose a high-risk, low-compensation but arguably more rewarding role at an early stage start-up.
Flash forward 4.5 years and the venture-backed software company, where I served as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Revenue Officer, among other unofficial roles, was not scaling. This was despite our company having super compelling technology, which offered a great return to a technology-starved industry (commercial real estate), and three brilliant young founders plus a small rockstar team of like-minded, hard-charging individuals. While we were working with several big-name, real estate investment firms and arguably had confirmation of product market fit, we were struggling to achieve the repeatable sales cycle status that big venture capital firms back.
When COVID hit, besides the world generally becoming a weird place, my work situation became even more difficult. It quickly became clear that with all this uncertainty, my wife and I now both working from home, and the kids not in school, it was a horrible time to gut remodel or tear down the house that my family had recently purchased.
Instead, it was time for a change—time for something dramatic—time to pursue a lifelong dream to live in a ski town and have my kids on the local ski team. What’s the worst thing that could happen? We move away for a couple seasons, then return to our beloved Austin with a great story in hand? Plus, I needed to buy more time at my company to hopefully see it through to a successful exit (and oh yeah, the prospects of looking for a new, grass-is-greener gig seemed daunting for the first time in my life, amidst a global pandemic).
Mountain life
Skiing and the mountains had always been my nirvana, mental safe place, and spiritual home. So, with all the above as context, my family (wife, son and daughter, and Golden Retriever) moved from Austin to Park City in the summer of 2020.
Unlike my other love/obsession, tennis, skiing had never gotten fraught or complicated for me. As I got older and the stresses of life continued to mount, tennis became more and more of a mental grind. What had looked effortless for my idol Federer, ranged from occasional bliss to more-often-than-not pure torture. Refreshingly, skiing came easy for me from the day my parents dropped me off at Buttermilk at age four and I won a blue ribbon for some obviously spectacular but apparently unmemorable feat. The passion continued to grow through annual family trips, father-son trips, high school Young Life trips, college trips, and then a partially aborted post-undergrad season in Summit County, Colorado.
Following grad school and my move to the wild and mind-expanding urban jungle called New York City, I skied as much as possible, including venturing outside North America to both Europe and South America. When I finally got married, my wife was already bound to a life of skiing (we got engaged in Aspen).
Our kids had no choice, either. Our annual family trips to Taos and ski pass-propelled Spring Break jaunts to various western resorts became increasingly integral to our family wellbeing (at least mine). The chairlift proved to be the one place we could all be present, happy, and consistently get along—away from the stress of work and the distractions of devices. With each passing year and newer, ever more complex life challenges, ski trips with family and friends became all the more important to me.
Mission accomplished. We moved to a great neighborhood in Park City, immediately fell in love with the Wasatch, and started making friends with locals who shared our passions. Our kids started school (masks on), and I immersed myself in cross-country mountain biking on the 500 miles of single track literally outside our backdoor.
Things were pretty great. But…
Back to reality
My company still refused to scale. Promising relationships with new marquee customers were not developing at the expected pace (here we were mid-pandemic, and our biggest market was commercial office buildings—need I say more?). Great conversations with several high-profile venture capital firms never materialized into term sheets.
We then went down a path to sell the company. After talking with multiple potential suitors and a series of book-worthy twists and turns, we executed a letter of intent with a buyer, which represented the best of two real options (all stock deal, of course). My initial elation was quickly offset by the realization that, while I would now have a higher-paying job with a well capitalized company, I wasn’t going to be at “the table” for the first time in my career.
Now, I’d merely be a cog in the wheel. A role both boring and ill-suited to my experience—incredibly deflating after years putting my higher strengths to use. With the deal’s initial triumph devolving into personal despair, I still had a job to complete—to get the transaction across the finish line for the sake of our team and über-supportive investors.
Ok, psych yourself up. More heroics are required—now, more grit and grind in nature. At least I was killing it on the trails and having a blast with a growing group of peer riders. Pedaling my emotional pain and frustrations away, I tolerated the suffering of my new three-dimensional role as CFO, CRO, and quasi-junior legal associate (our attorney of big firm heritage currently had no junior lawyers supporting him at his small boutique). Oh well, take another one for the team.
Missives from the depths:
From injury to desolation to realization
Then, one day, I broke my wrist. I didn’t do it careening down a steep singletrack, but rather by trying to find the family iPad I’d hidden from our kids on a high shelf in our bedroom, standing tip-toed on a rolling chair on our hardwood floors (don’t recommend).
After surgery and a bunch of pain pills, I took my place back at my desk. The serenity offered by my bike was now taken from me, replaced (poorly) by alcohol, pills, and the occasional streaming binge. I was just barely holding things together, yet I couldn’t let years toiling in start-up land be all for naught. I had to close the deal. Laboring away, I extracted productivity and diplomacy from the deepest reserves I could muster.
It was from these depths that I had a several revelations:
1) My mental health had never been more closely correlated to my time spent outdoors.
It was my release, my serenity, my time to think, my time to let go, my social outlet, and most importantly my drug of choice (infinitely better and with a much longer half life than any of my other occasional crutches). Most importantly, it served as a real catalyst for my productivity and optimism. My killer gym workouts and increasingly less frequent runs (thanks, skiing- and tennis-battered knees) were less and less doing the trick. Now that we lived in the mountains, mountain biking and skiing (both resort and backcountry) became my true obsessions, essential for smoothing out my fluctuating mental states.
If outdoor time was so important to me, I was sure it was, or could be, to others. Especially in a world where mental health struggles were becoming both more pervasive and acknowledged thanks to our global pandemic misadventures.
2) Technology increasingly had its grips on me—and clearly had its grips on my kids.
Since my first Blackberry and several successive iPhones, my device addiction became increasingly more acute—no downtime, always working, always thinking, always able to scratch my intellectual itch for more information. Somewhere along the way, I had stopped reading for fun. To escape my phone’s tentacles, I would often relax by binging on series and podcasts—stimulating and even sometimes inspiring, but never providing the mental downtime I desperately needed.
For my kids, it was even worse—especially as the pandemic deepened. They descended into mindless hours of gaming and spin on YouTube, TikTok, and SnapChat. Email and even text communication skills faded. They became frantically dependent on their tech dopamine hits. Their impatience, insecurity, and isolation only grew. Technology wasn’t just bad for adults’ capacity for presence (and flow state), it was also ruining our youths’.
I and other parents that I sought out for support and advice were equally observing the general decline of our kids’ drive and communication skills, and the inherent loneliness of living through your phone and becoming increasingly more inwardly focused. It was also increasingly apparent that technology was killing our youths’ attention span, patience, and interest to do hard things and master the foundational building blocks that are essential to a successful life.
3) Team sports, while an important part of my youth, were radically changing to a world of specialization.
Kids are forced to specialize early, to pick a sport in grade school and play year round in “select” leagues with paid coaches. This rather than being encouraged to play every sport in low-key local rec leagues during each sport’s traditional season, which was the case when I was young.
Not only is there more pressure for kids to pick the right sport at way too young of an age (and attendant high pressures to perform), but an increasingly high cost for parents, both monetarily and from a time commitment perspective (including private coaches and distant away games/tournaments). Kids, who are not wired to be super-competitive or average to good athletes, are getting pushed out at earlier ages based on performance or, alternatively, dropping out from all the pressure and lack of variety.
There is only a select group of kids, and their dedicated parents, who can tolerate and make the necessary commitments to reap the benefits of playing multiple sports at their highest level. In addition, for kids who get pushed out or drop out of a particular sport, it is hard to change lanes and enter a new sport at an older age and compete against average to good athletes, who have been exclusively focused on playing a single sport for years—unless they are truly exceptional athletes. Traditional individual sports, like golf and tennis, have been this way for years.
So net, net, you have more kids being pushed out of traditional sports at an earlier age and removed from friend groups and environments that are fundamental to their personal development. To fill this void, these kids are often relying on their devices even more for stimulation, meaning, and solace.
For my son, who went down the select soccer route when we lived in Austin, seeing his joy at the skatepark, skiing on our annual trips, and learning to surf at camps, without all the inherent pressures of team sports, was both rewarding and an eye-opening experience for Type A parent like myself.
Turning realization into action.
With these insights crystalizing in my head amidst my own professional uncertainty, the genesis of Hence was born—a platform to showcase people doing soul-enriching and noteworthy things in the outdoors and the greater outdoors’ ecosystem. Hence’s mission is to more effectively connect content creators, athletes, and brands to tell their stories to the growing outdoor community in an impactful and enduring manner. And in doing so, inspire others to get outside.
Our small but talented team of industry veterans view adventure sports and the outdoors as a forum for personal development and physical and mental wellbeing that can span a lifetime. These endeavors (biking, climbing, hiking, running, skateboarding, skiing, snowboarding, surfing, you name it) provide the freedom to progress at one’s own pace, without the constant measurement of performance versus one’s peers. Outdoor adventure also provides the opportunity to take calculated risks in a supportive community, where everyone encourages one another to push through their personal limits, tackle new objectives, try new tricks, or just get out there to take that next step. Most notably, these pursuits force us to be truly present in our surroundings, momentarily put aside our struggles, thoughts and fears, and connect with nature and others in a heightened manner during and in the afterglow of their offered states of flow. These benefits are vital for everyone, but especially our youth and young adults struggling to find their way in the world.
“Tomorrow always presents new opportunities—you just have to put yourself out there—figuratively and literally.”
Life is clearly hard, but we view these endeavors as opportunities and tangible examples demonstrating that you are never defined by where you currently are in life—whether in your relationships, work, faith, or personal pursuits. Tomorrow always presents new opportunities—you just have to put yourself out there—figuratively and literally.
The sale of my prior company closed and hopefully all my efforts will be rewarded someday. And, my wrist healed. Like most things in life, adversity brings opportunity. And it has set me on a path to build a business that aligns with my personal passions and with a mission to improve peoples’ lives. In the days ahead, Hence will be announcing exciting details about the platform we’re creating to empower people to equally pursue their passions, transcend their current challenges, achieve their dreams, and most importantly, keep moving forward. Stay tuned.
See you tomorrow.
We are a platform for many voices and perspectives to share and inspire.