Rachel

2024 New Year's Eve Letter

Dear family and friends,

I’m writing this letter from Cochin, Kerala in India, where I’m about to depart on the long journey back to Austin.  Cochin, or more commonly called Kochi today, is an appropriate place for me to close out the year as a Jew.  It’s home to the oldest synagogue in India, founded in 1568, and is a symbol for the deep ties between the Jewish community and Indian community for thousands of years.  India is now the largest country in the world with 1.46 billion people, surpassing China in 2023 as the most populous country on Earth.  And Indian Americans form the most financially successful minority group in the US, with many giants such as Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft) at the helm of some of the most important companies in tech that will set the pace for humanity’s ultimate invention of AI.  

What drew us to India?  Our first Indian wedding - in Mumbai.  It was a three-day event and did not disappoint!  There were over 1,000 people in attendance to see Sanjana and Ishaan wed and the preparations were absolutely extensive and beautiful.  Rachel and I will never forget it (Debra and Levi stayed home for an easier, no travel stress, end to 2024.)

Wow, what a year 2024 has been!  From the re-election of Trump to the breathtaking pace of AI to the historic military achievements of Israel over terrorists throughout the Middle East.  It’s been dizzying, to say the least.  To be clear, we didn’t campaign for Trump and thought Harris would be a competent choice but I get it at the same time.  From our economic and border challenges to Biden’s cognitive decline and the last-minute candidate switch, the people have now spoken.  Republicans will control the Senate, Congress, the White House, and even the Supreme Court (which hopefully will do their best to not politicize that last bastion of independence).  Debra and I remain committed to our independent political views, finding policies to like in both parties and looking for common ground.  And we’ve doubled-down on No Labels going into 2025, which will continue to work for that path with the Problem Solvers Caucus and more.  No Labels’ CEO, Nancy Jacobson, is a true force of nature and has become a friend over the years.

On the family front, our big highlight of the year was our summer trip to Japan. 

An unusual, but beautiful, method of forming your company's values

I've got the Conscious Capitalism Summit on my mind as I write this.  Specifically, the main Summit (in Dallas this year), which my daughter, Rachel, and I are leaving for tonight.  Rachel is one of the keynotes and I couldn't be more proud of her.  She will be speaking about the process of writing her first book, Guardians of the Forest, which has been her dream since she was eight-years old and just happened this past January, after a year of work and years of saving up to pay for it (she paid 100% of her savings to the illustrator, Ryan Durney).  My good friend, John Mackey, will be introducing her on stage.  He has been a mentor to me for years and most recently her, for her book.  There are many good lessons for living a fulfilled life in her book and she is certainly an emerging conscious capitalist.  You can see all of the speakers here, and in the spirit of the post I wrote at the beginning of this year on continuous learning, I highly recommend you attend this Summit in the future (or the CEO Summit if you qualify).

But I've got the Conscious Capitalism Summit on my mind for another reason, and it is because of what it has taught me as an entrepreneur.  Last year, at the CEO Summit version of their events, I heard a CEO say on stage, "If you want to learn something amazing, just ask each of your employees to share with you the core values that they bring to work each and every day."  This immediately resonated with me as I had been thinking about how beautiful our culture was becoming at data.world but yet we hadn't written our core values down yet.  This isn't that unusual, BTW.  We didn't write down our core values at my previous startups, Coremetrics and Bazaarvoice, until we were around this age.  You want to get some operating history and some significant team build-out going before you do this exercise or it is just aspirational with no real resonance for how you've actually been living your day-to-day business life as a collective.

On community and courage: The story of Nachshon ben Aminadav

This past weekend was a very proud one for me and Debra as parents.  Our daughter, Rachel Leah Hurt, became a Bat Mitzvah on Saturday.  Her Torah portion, Parshat Beshalach (Song of the Sea), was an especially challenging one and she read it just perfectly.  This took her hundreds of hours of study in 2017 (and she had an amazing teacher in Nancyellen Seiden).   Alongside this study, she also wrote her first book, Guardians of the Forest, which also took hundreds of hours in 2017.  It is a truly beautiful book for children ages 6-14 and I know she would appreciate it if you bought a copy at that link.  And, during all of this, Rachel made all top grades at her middle school (including in all of the AP classes that she can take).  I truly consider my most important job in life to be a good parent.  I have had many influences in this regard, including my own parents (Lucky7 is named in tribute to my mom), Debra's parents, and even my friend Michael Dell, who has had a hugely positive influence on his children, including the one I know best, Zachary (watch him become an extraordinary entrepreneur one day).  I'll write a blog post on parenting one day, but I certainly don't want you to think I've got it all figured out.  In many ways, to be a good parent is more challenging than starting a company and I'm certainly trying my best.  It requires constant work (and innovation), but I digress.

I woke up this early this morning, around 4:40am, thinking about this past weekend.  There were some good leadership lessons in this Torah portion, especially the one given by Nachshon ben Aminadav.  Nachshon is certainly a lesser known figure in the Parting of the Red Sea, especially as compared to Moses.  To that end, I would love to share with you a portion of Rachel's speech, given by her after she read from the Torah.  And I would love to hear your stories of where either you've been a Nachshon or you've seen someone close to you be a Nachshon.  We all know the stories of Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, MLK Jr., and many other incredible leaders throughout history.  But who are the lesser known figures that took the first actions to show the rest?  Please share those much lesser known stories with me (and all of the Lucky7 readers) in your comments below - it would be a lot of fun to get a dialogue going about this.