When other kids were dreaming of being superheroes or astronauts, Alex Lassiter could never pick one career — he wanted to do everything.
“Doing just one thing is like my idea of hell,” says Lassiter. Fresh out of UNC Chapel Hill with a business degree in 2010, he worked at a Seattle start-up, followed by a couple of years at consultants Bain & Co. in Atlanta. Then, he had a “life-altering” interview at a venture capital firm in San Francisco.
“The VC partner told me, ‘Your whole career has been around taking the least risky choice,’ and that’s when I realized I had to do something irrational. I had to get off of the path I was on and explore.”
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In early 2012, he and a buddy, Nicholas Miller, founded their first company, Frequentr, a software project that didn’t take off. “We would have an idea, run with it, and get absolutely zero traction,” he recalls. “It reached this point where I’d say: ‘I don’t know what success looks like, but I definitely know what success doesn’t look like.’”
