The End of Intelligent.ly
Balter’s Essays of Mostly Acerbic Witticisms
What happened with Intelligent.ly?
Oh you wanna know? Do you really wanna know?
Sure sure, I can write about it, but there may be grounds for a (moderately amicable) divorce. I suppose that's unlikely because Sarah and I have a wonderfully tight marital bond - or so I keep telling myself?
Then again, some room for hope: Besides risking marriage, I've crafted this piece to hold a whole boatload of thanks, a bit of long overdue apologies and even a dilly dally of appreciation. Shouldn't that count for something?
Ok, well, Sarah and I can agree on one thing: Intelligent.ly, well, she was the one that got away.
It began as a total unabashed side hustle, sometime around 2012, right in the thick of a magical moment in the Boston tech ecosystem - TechStars, DogPatch, MassChallenge were all newly realized and thriving; companies and entrepreneurs were leaching out of the woodwork. Every night there was a spontaneous get together of startup energy. It sounds friggin' cliche but, well, Sarah and I wanted to give something back.
We had some empty space at 500 Harrison and so began by inviting proven leaders like Mike Troiano and Katie Burke to come tell stories, helping newbs learn how to build and scale. We sought a name, and so Aaron White plied us with boozy drinks at Mini Bar - casually selling us a nifty URL for $5K.
Darwin has nothing on how companies evolve, and so evolve we did as a consistent drumbeat emerged: In every company, across every domain, HIPO (high performing) Individual Contributors often squawked and flailed like headless chickens as they became Managers.
So a cohort based peer-to-peer learning system blossomed. Groups of 15-20 "New Managers" across multiple companies would come together in short bursts for supportive learning sessions with trained facilitators. Intelligent.ly was a profitable business, with zero outside capital. And by 2017 more than 1,900 leaders across 115 Boston companies went through the program.
So what did we do? What the hell do you think we did? We shut it down. That's right. End of story. Many thanks for reading.
(Wait. Wait, what? For real?)
Yeah, no, really, we did. Right? Terrible. Ohhhh, you wanna know why?
Well, I suppose my bitterness has long been forgotten, so I'll attempt to give it a bash.
The story begins with magic: People were learning and connecting and growing at a truly electrifying pace; their appreciation and unstoppable momentum all gummed up into a mosh pit of too many things to do and not enough time to do them in.
And so a team formed. First, inspired mission-driven superstars like Aaron Lumnah and Scott Seiffer, then, soon our first Executive Director in Dana Artz. She stood up the foundation, then passed the reins to Abbie Weeks who built the frame, so to speak. So Sarah and I...
...Wait...
<Goddamn it. Ok, Sarah will remind you that she was really overseeing most of the day to day at Intelligent.ly while I was just galavanting around doing whatever it is I probably do in a day. Fine fine. I'll have you know I sprinkled plenty of goodness, but she did a lot of the heavy lifting. I'll say it, with total preesh. Ok? Sarah? We good?>
Anyway, our evolutions continued and the game-changing Gabriela Serret-Campos joined in the Executive Director Seat - to proverbially put the roof on and decorate things. During her tenure, clients signed on left and right; they expanded their utilization, learners gushed about the value to their leadership, and leadership noticed the dramatic shift in their talent's capacities.
Then, one day, out of the big ol' blue, Gabriela tells us she's leaving. What in holy hell and super frakky fahk, everything is so good, and great things for great people and we're just getting started. No, this can't be?
She informs us she was recruited by Drizly, Boston's Uber for Booze. Drizly, who happened to be - get this - one of Intelligent.ly's long time customers. And, to pile on, at the offering end of the stick was Drizly's Ryan Durkin, one of Sarah and my close startup pals.
This was in a slightly more petulant and anger-driven phase of my spiritual journey and so, well, after a rebuffed diving save for Gabriela, man did I make it tough on her. Her career was blossoming, so who's to blame her for taking a huge opportunity like this? I think I managed to be frosty for three long years or so before we buried the hatchet. Yikes.
The challenge, though: without an Executive Director, there was little opportunity to keep Intelligent.ly going. Sarah and I were deeply overworked elsewhere, and after attempting to find the right replacement - and a small process to try to sell this amazing, profitable "do good" endeavor - headless, without leadership - we just made the decision to let it go.
As for Durkin. Oh Durkin. He was the inaugural true believer. After our very first class, Durkin's words were simple yet astute: "People come in nervous, but full of excitement as if it's the first day of school." He reminded us that we need to help people settle in, to introduce them, offer them snacks, and to create a vibe of comfort.
Anyway, if memory serves, after Gabriela informed us of her departure at the hands of Durkin, I called him and absolutely lit into him like a July 4th fireworks display. I literally blamed him for killing the company. As if how we ran our business was his issue - and clearly Durkin wasn't intentionally aiming for malice. But I couldn't admit that and, sadly, this grudge was held for longer than the statute of limitations - so long that it's hard to even remember all the whys; and I don't think our relationship ever fully recovered. Terrible, unfortunate, real shame. Sorry Durkin, for real.
In it's final days, I remember distinctly the very moment Sarah and I decided to wind Intelligent.ly down. It was in our kitchen, where reality struck; I implored Sarah to keep it going, to continue to hold it together. I knew it would fall mostly on her shoulders. There were tears (mostly Sarah's - I feel sadness but am challenged by the actual act of crying) and the immediate foreboding of loss and regret.
Looking back, Intelligent.ly was a hallmark of good; it transformed people and companies and taught all of us countless lessons. It brought our community together. It created measurable outcomes. It did good for the world.
They say the journey is the destination.
They say if you love something you have to set it free.
They say if you feel something, then it must be true.
In this case, I can't argue with any of it: the journey, the destination, the love or the feelings - or, even, the bittersweet nature of all of the achievements, even if sometimes, given its way too-early demise, it just feels like a failure.
