Simple pleasures that
helped get this issue out:
Thumbing through a new book on a lazy week
end; breathing in cool, foggy air in the early
morning; wine club memberships; a slow bike
ride to the ocean and back; homemade chili oil;
Thomas Jane’s weird hair in season 1 of The
Expanse; homemade soup that’s as delicious
as it is photogenic; biting my nails (don’t tell
Mom!); “Puppy Dog Bouncin (in the Box)”; jigsaw
puzzles with my son, absolutely no technology
involved; 3 am spoonfuls of cashew butter; a
showerhead without a flow restrictor; Orion’s belt;
snorkling off Playa del Amor; hotboxing a tree
house at a 57yearold’s birthday party; finding
City Cycle Werkes after losing Bavarian Cycle
Works; the dog giving an appreciative look back
during our walk; focusing on Neil Peart’s drums
while listening to “Tom Sawyer”; the apartment
might be small, but it is easy to heat; perfectly
brewed coffee; strutting around in my bright red
cowboy boots; Aesop hand balm after a hard
rockclimbing session; hot tea; the regulars at my
local neighborhood café waving hello on Sunday
mornings; walking on the sunny side of the street;
Billy—we’ll miss him.
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ted must be accompanied by a selfaddressed,
stamped envelope.under the umbrella of a Canadian group, FaithTech, and adopted
the name FaithTech Chicago, which now meets monthly.)
To Gutwein, all of these developments reflect how the “democ-
ratization of tech,” as the industry spills past its enclaves on the
coasts, may change some of the industry’s character as well. Slower
and less cutthroat than New York or San Francisco; perhaps more
collaborative too. In Chicago, Zuhlke says, those differences have
been draws for some coastal expats who have moved to the region:
Sure, there are fewer corporate perks like foosball tables and beer
taps, but there’s better work-life balance and fewer struggles to find
housing on a six-figure income. To Brunk, the culture of the Mid-
west—and the fact that the region is relatively underfunded—both
lead to a different sort of workforce. “People here are loyal,” he
says. “Most of my team has at one point or another taken a pay cut.”
This winter, Ocean welcomed its sixth class of startup entrepre-
neurs and has begun working on a curriculum it can put online.
But Unpolished is no more. The founders decided to subsume all
of their efforts under the banner of Ocean on the occasion of the
accelerator’s fourth Demo Day, on April 24, 2018.
That afternoon several hundred tech startup employees, venture
capital investors, and Crossroads parishioners gathered in the dark,
cavernous auditorium of Crossroads Florence, one of the church’s
several campuses in Kentucky. On three jumbo screens flanking the
main stage, a roiling seascape moved in stormy waves under the
logo for Ocean. Waiting in the wings were eight nervous entrepre-
neurs, about to take the stage for individual 10-minute pitch ses-
sions, where they shared the products they’d been developing for
the past five months. After the presentations there would be local
craft beer and artisanal ice cream served in the church atrium—as
airy and bustling as a midsize corporate headquarters—as well as
a side room where the Ocean entrepreneurs could meet privately
with investors. But first came the primary pitch, for Ocean itself.
Even with the Unpolished brand now defunct, plenty of the
original spirit seemed to survive. Metzner, the group’s chair at the
time, took the stage and told the audience how, when he quit a
job to start his own business, he realized he was unwilling to fol-
low the common tech entrepreneur narrative of putting his life on
hold for five to 10 years, ruining his marriage and friendships, and
having kids who didn’t like him, for the sake of business success.
The event’s featured motivational speaker, the entrepreneurial
podcast guru Dane Sanders, continued on the same theme, say-
ing that while the investors in the room were bound to be on the
lookout for gaps in people’s business plans, those entrepreneurs
should also be on the lookout for the gaps in their personal lives—
the places “where people blow their life up.”
There were other messages too, more in line with stereotypes
about both tech optimism and franchise churches: that they served
a creative God, that entrepreneurship was a leap of faith, that
through small-scale mentorship and support groups God would
unveil his plan for their businesses. But the more enduring mes-
sage, and the one the organizers and founders of the event
repeated, was that, in an industry that seems by nature to demand
imbalance in the lives of those who work in it, they hoped to find
a different way.
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KATHRYN JOYCE (@kathrynajoyce) is a journalist and the author
of The Child Catchers and Quiverfull.