We’re going to the mats.

Clemenza:  That Sonny’s runnin’ wild. He’s thinking of going to the mattresses already.

Sonny:  No, no, no! No more! Not this time, consiglieri. No more meetings, no more discussions, no more Sollozzo tricks. You give ’em one message: I want Sollozzo. If not, it’s all-out war: we go to the mattresses.

—The Godfather

It’s time for 42Floors to go to the mats.  We’re hunkering down.  It’s go time.  My loving girlfriend has approved this.  My friends understand.  My family is supportive.  Getting a startup off the ground takes an almost superhuman effort.  It takes obsessiveness.  It takes 100% time commitment.  It takes tremendous focus.

For the past 9 months, I’ve been living the good life in San Francisco.  I’ve been working hard on 42Floors, but not obsessively hard to be honest.  I actually lead a fairly balanced life with a daily workout, reasonable hours and weekends mostly off.  That’s not bad.  I’ve done a few extracurricular activities, most important of which was helping create NFTE Launch.  During this time, I’ve gotten my broker’s license and learned a ton about my industry.  I’ve met with 100s of entrepreneurs and spoken by phone to almost everyone that contacted me through this blog.  It’s a been wonderful time.

But it’s time to go to the mats.

When we started FlightCaster and Openvote before that, we had to live with each other…because we didn’t have enough money to afford separate rent.  We look back fondly at those times when 5 of us were living in a 3 bedroom apartment.  Yeah, we had no space.  Yeah, some of us slept on the floor.  Man, we worked our asses off during that time.  There’s something magical that happens when you devote yourself to something with such intense focus that the rest of the world is forgotten.  It’s not sustainable.  It may not be healthy.  But it’s the single best way to launch a company.

So, the 42Floors crew talked this over and we all agreed that we wanted to go to the mats.  We’re moving out of our respective apartments.  We’re all switching to a Maker’s Schedule.  We rented a house in Redwood City for 5 months for all of us to live in and work out of.  

We can’t fucking wait.  While it’ll be hard work and the intensity will get to us at times, we also know what makes going to the mats so special.  It’s really an opportunity to perform at our absolute highest levels.  When’s the last time you’ve done your best work?  How many times in your life have you worked at peak capacity?  How many hours a day are you really productive?  This will be the most productive time in our lives.  It’s pretty cool.

You know what else is cool?  Our sweet-ass startup house!

When I saw this place on Craigslist, I knew that it was just made to be a startup house.  Check it out:

Pretty sweet, eh?!  Startup life may be really hard…but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be fun.

Find discussion of this post on Hacker News

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And please come check out my new startup, 42Floors

We’re fixing commercial real estate.  Forever.

Sign-up to learn more at 42floors.com, and like us on Facebook, and follow us on AngelList, and follow us on Twitter.

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I’m Jason Freedman.  

I’ve got a sweet-ass new company: 42Floors.  

Previously, I did FlightCaster.

I welcome connections on Linkedin,  FacebookAngelList and Twitter.