Robi & the Flickr Hoodie – A We Make Seattle Story

One more thing…

When Scott interviewed founders, makers, and creatives for We Make Seattle, we ended up with many amazing stories that did not fit the structure of the main film we had in mind.

One of those came from Robi Ganguly, the Co-Founder and CEO of Apptentive, who I met when Bootstrapper Studios lived in the basement of Founder’s Co-op in South Lake Union.

Robi told a story about what it was like to wear a hoodie around Seattle that he had gotten from the Flickr team – A story that really captures what makes Seattle such a welcoming place for people who make awesome things.

So we decided to pull in the team from What Now? Exactly! (Bootstrapper’s sister animation studio) to create an animated short around Robi’s story.

So here’s a surprise bonus from the We Make Seattle team – Robi & the Flickr Hoodie…

(more, after the video below, on why the trait Robi describes in his story is key to how Seattle is great at building big sustainable businesses…)

Seattle makers are not averse to $$, we just prefer to be sustainable when we make it

So, before anybody gets offended…

The Blue Shirt in Robi’s story is a caricature of someone entering a conversation who is primarily driven by what they are going to get out of it.

This is what I call a #getfirst attitude.

To a #getfirst driven person, Flickr is more about MBA’s playing poker than it is about biz folks, engineers, designers, and marketers solving real problems or making things people love.

Not all Blue Shirts are like this, but enough have been in the past that this is a funny satirical caricature.

It is also worth noting that Seattle makers are not averse to making $$. We just tend to be driven by a bigger picture when we do it.

This is why you see so many big companies birthed out of the Seattle that are not #getfirst driven.

Whether it’s the living wages of Costco and Starbucks or the retail co-operative of REI – We have an inordanant amount of companies that have no problem generating great profit without being pwned by it.

The kind of genuine collaborative interest Robi notes is exactly what I experienced when I finally discovered my nerdrepreneurial tribe here in Seattle at the first Mind Camp in 2005.

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* Hat tip to my pal John Scrofano for the poker analogy.