Ascend Founder Profile: Matt Meyers - Yesler

This is a series of real talk blog posts meant to let founders share a bit about themselves and their companies without the marketing jargon and “killing it” puffery of most tech startup profiles.

What does your company do, for who, in plain English please!

Yesler is a marketplace plus tools for sellers and buyers of bulk lumber (truck and railcar quantities).

What's a typical day like for you, from wakeup ‘til bed?

Up by 5 (lumber trades early) working from home watching the GYM (Go Yesler Marketplace, our internal slack channel to monitor marketplace activity), prepping for customer calls or creating new GTM ideas to share with the team. In office by 8 or 9, customer meetings/demos, internal meetings, zoom, whiteboarding. Late afternoon ideation with other team members as the day slows down around 3 or 4. Water taxi home. Run. Cook dinner for the family or drive a kid to soccer training. Work from the car or home on the couch cleaning up from the day's email or uncompleted tasks. Wordle and NYT Spelling B with my 12 year old around 9pm. Asleep by 10. Repeat.

What keeps you up at night?

Whenever I sense: 1) Lack of urgency/intensity 2) Lack of creativity or grit at roadblocks 3) When the team is asking what to do, instead of doing and telling me what they have done. Why? These indicate that the culture has crept toward command and control, instead of empowered, entrepreneurial, supported.