How We Got Here & Where We Are

Another question both Larry and I get asked regularly is how we came up with this whole idea. The answer to that isn't exactly short, but then, neither is most of what I write.

First off, we've both been in the film & television business for a decade a piece. We were there because it was the ultimate place to chase passion for great stories. We got to work with interesting people and do interesting things from time to time.

When it worked well, it was the stuff of movie making magic.

However, the further up the food chain of the business I got, the less it became about "good business" or even "good story" and with the current upheavals of business models etc., it became much more about protectionism and a lot of people who have been around a long time doing whatever was politically necessary to maintain positions of power.

Short way of saying it? Not all that much joy in it given the current business climate.

So Larry & I sat down one evening over a bottle of wine and the conversation went about like this.

Larry: "You know, making movies and stuff just isn't as much fun as it used to be."

Me: "Yeah I know... so... um... what else do we like?"

Larry: (pauses for a moment, then raises glass) "Well, I like wine."

Me: "Hey, me too!"

And the rest is history.

Actually, there is more to it than that (of course).

And out of Rajesh Setty's blog about knowing the "story" of your business (or at least not being ignorant of it) here's the rest of it.

We've both had years of acquiring wines, really enjoying the opportunities to share great bottles with friends, and the challenges that have arisen as our collections have grown.

Over the years, we've both had some really disappointing wines that probably didn't start out that way, and it took a while to realize that many of them had probably gone bad while being kept in a proverbially hot California apartment kitchen instead of the 55-58ish degrees wines cellar best at.

When Larry finally got to the point where he put three large wine refrigerators into his home, it looked like he, at least, had the problem solved.

Until he got his first post-refrigerator installation electricity bill.

And he ran out of room to store new bottles.

And the compressor on one of the units went out.

And trying to go through Excel spreadsheets of wines to find something he knew he had, and he could "see the label" in his head, but couldn't find it on the sheet.

All of this adds up to tremendous time and expense that takes away from the experience most wine enthusiasts like having with their wines.

We love wines and winemaking and we love learning about different varietals, how they differ from each other, and we love talking with other people about wine because everybody has a story about their favorite wine experience, either a wine itself, or a vineyard, or something they were celebrating when they found a new discovery.

More than any other aspect of our new business, that is what we really love about wine - it is the social interaction and sharing of stories and discoveries that we really, really enjoy.

As of this moment, every storage and asset management support service for wine enthusiasts out there does not provide an experience that is commensurate with the overall experience of the product that those services are supporting.

The storage is storage, the asset databases are asset databases. They are functional.

But they do not capitalize on the natural context and accompanying stories that come with enjoying and sharing wines.

Our vision at Vino Veritas is one of making a perfect match between social context, technological context, and enabling wine enthusiasts to get even more enthusiastic about their finds and creating memorable places they can share them with their friends and families.

It's about creating consistent, appropriate and inspiring experiences that parallel all the things that go with enjoying great wines.