One of my goals when I wanted to move to NYC was to start a company. With Gesture Theory I was able to complete that unattainable goal that I dared to consider many years ago. Gesture Theory lasted two years and we worked on projects that I had previously not come close to working on.
It all started with a simple conversation a couple years ago with Roy. We had worked together for a couple years prior at Daylife. When he asked me to consider leaving Behavior to start something, the first feeling that struck me was the same gut reaction when I decided to leave everything in Canada to move here. It was basically βhow could I not do itβ? I would never be able to guess what might come down the road and I knew I would regret the decision if I didn’t go through with it.
Gesture Theory started in January 2011. By the end of the first year we had a decent studio space in Soho, building products for some well known and respected clients, and building both products for our selves at the same time. I wouldn’t have traded it for anything in the world. There were challenges as there always is with running a business but there was something deeply satisfying knowing that things were on our shoulders to get the work done.
Learning from the first year 2012 exploded with business. I thought nothing could go wrong. I’ve learned now that when that type of emotion comes into play things could drastically change in an instant around a blind corner. That blind corner hit in the spring. Within a couple days I was informed that a new company was taking over the studio space and that Gesture Theory had thirty days to move. A couple days after that Roy let me know that he had accepted an offer from a colleague of his to move to SF to be in Y-Combinator and that he could no longer have an active roll in Gesture Theory. It was a kick to the gut that I never saw coming nor knew how to react to. If it hadn’t been for my former wife I don’t know how I would have survived those first couple of days.
The months after that seriously questioned why on earth I wanted to start a company. It didn’t matter what I did, things just went from bad to worse. What I went through and was feeling were things I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to go through. There was no option, I had to finish up projects so I could say goodbye to Gesture Theory. I wasn’t interested at the time continuing on by myself.
The summer was pretty bad but as fall was approaching things finally started to click. I ended up finding a great company that had more potential than I had ever seen before. Dataminr had access to Twitter’s firehose which in turn was focused on building products for the financial sector. The team was like no one else I had worked with. Really smart people that could be trusted. The UI needed a lot of work which excited me a lot. I could really help with building the next version.
I wanted to finally write this post about Gesture Theory as there’s a lot of stuff being released with Dataminr. Due to the competitive nature of the financial sector along with expanding into government and news I won’t be talking much about the upcoming products.
It was awful having to say goodbye but I would never had been able to create the experiences and learning lessons any other way. I still have a couple case studies that I want to write about the work at Gesture Theory. But for now I’m enjoying the time looking forward.
Posted in: Design
Hello
Michael is currently the Head of Design at Dataminr, the first real-time information discovery company for Finance, News and the Public Sector. He leads the UXD team and is responsible for the overall design and experience of the desktop app, mobile products (iPhone & iPad), email systems, internal products and external communications.
Recently he merged his passion for time pieces, technlogy and wearables by becoming an advisor to Nooka.
Since 2005 Michael has published his thoughts on design at Design Notes. Topics of interest range from people's daily experiences with technology to typography to photography among many others.
The 140 character version of what he's finding interesting can be found on Twitter at @MichaelSurtees. Photos are shared on VSCO, Flickr and Instagram.
When not designing, writing, or shooting photos, he loves cycling in and around the city. He can be reached at michael at michaelsurtees dot com.
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Michael – so sorry to see the end of GT, specially having talked through it a few times with you in NY just as it was starting. Am back in NY early summer, will drop you a line beforehand and we can catch up again. Hope all’s well and good to see you’re finding a positive way through.
Sounds like a plan Duncan