Introducing: The startup SH3PHERD
Welcome! Come on IN!
Meet Tank and Rocket, the first two unofficial "employees" of SH3PHERD. They don't actually do any real work, but they do provide me with a good reason to actually get up from my desk during the day, walk around, stretch, and take a short mental break, which is important. I'm the type of person who can get so lost in work that I'll even put off getting up to pee until I absolutely can't stand it (which is a really bad habit, especially if you want to avoid wearing diapers in old age).
Tank and Rocket are Shiloh Shepherds. If you google "Shiloh Shepherd" Tank actually shows up as the first picture in an image search, and Rocket shows up in the top 10.
I won't bore you with the history of Shiloh Shepherds, but you can see that they are related to GSDs. Regardless, Tank's full name is Gen. Ulysses S Grant and Rocket's full name is Gen Don Carlos Buell, who are two of the Union generals who won the Battle of Shiloh. Yes I am a big dork.
Anyway, when I created my logo for my personal consulting business (H3ATHER.tech) I wanted to pay homage to Tank and Rocket, so I got the idea of incorporating a robo-shepherd in the logo.
And
then
when I decided to create my original blog, I needed to come up with a good name. Tying it to the Tank and Rocket theme didn't occur to me initially and I actually used ChatGPT at first and it came ujp with a bunch of craptastic suggestions.
The only passable suggestion was "The Product Whisperer" but I'm sure that was probably taken and it's also kind of trite.
But then it occurred to me that product management is a lot like herding cats. If you are unfamiliar with the origin of that term (or at least the origin of the term's mainstream popularity), it was from a Super Bowl XXXIV commercial in 2000 for EDS, which was an IT consulting company. This was back when tech companies were throwing money at everything and everyone and trying to outdo each other with the best Super Bowl ads. It was also the year I became a product manager for the first time
It was only after I considered naming my blog "The cat herder" that I realized that the perfect name was staring me right in the face, and so "The Product Shepherd" was born. But then I decided to expand my personal business to provide a variety of other services besides just product management and
SH3PHERD turned out to be the perfect name.
Early startups founders don't need more executives. They need guides. They don't need people who just tell them what to do to get to where they want to be. They need people to guide them on their journey along the path to success and to protect them from taking the wrong path, or taking useless diversions that waste time, so they can get from 0-1 in the most efficient and effective way possible.
Photo: Warner Bros.
