Ice Ice Baby

It’s bittersweet to write this email but my FanDuel chapter is coming to an end.  As many of you may know my last day at FanDuel is Tuesday May 2nd.

It’s been an incredible two and half years. Not sure how to exactly navigate a goodbye email so I’ll let Vanilla Ice’s lyrics from the “Ice Ice baby” guide me:

For your listening pleasure: https://youtu.be/rog8ou-ZepE

Stop, Collaborate and Listen
There's a tremendous amount of teamwork here and FanDuel truly embraced the We Are One Team spirit. Collaborating with so many great people has been an absolute joy for me.  I know it’s a bit cheesy to lean into platitudes like #oneteam but hey, I’m saying this as I type up a goodbye email referencing Ice Ice Baby, I’m all in on this.

But truly, the collaboration here has been amazing. We've grown from "maybe our teams should work together" to  “collaboration is part of our culture and in our DNA.” This doesn’t happen without amazing individuals like yourself.

If there’s a problem yo I’ll solve it
There’s no shortage of problems and I’m blown away at how we rallied together as a team to solve them. Blown away by how so many of you have been proactive in stepping up and take on extra responsibility and go the extra mile to create the best product out there.

It’s much easier to tackle problems with a great team. Through the ups and downs, back-to-back-to-back zooms, sketch sessions, design reviews, process updates, shipping product, keeping up with waaaay too many Figma comments and even more slack channels, you all made every day here a good one.

Yo VIP - let’s kick it!
One of the best parts of my time here has been building close personal relationships with many of you.  So many talented, interesting, and just cool people. To all you who I connected with on a personal level, huddled for hours when I asked, “got 5 min for a chat?”, helped me navigate this weird world of leadership,  listened to me rant, called me out on my BS,  went on coffee chats through Madison Square Park, and were there for me when I needed help … (dramatic pause)… thank you. You helped me grow, become a better manager, leader, and person.

Ice is back with a brand new invention.
I couldn’t be prouder of all the new product and features we shipped. From huge swings like launching Faceoff to making small tweaks to the drafting experience and everything in between.  It’s remarkable how much we’ve done. I was fortunate to find myself in this unique place with so many great people creating and building product to shape this wonderful industry we’re in.  It’s given me a unique experience I won’t forget, and it leads me to the next lyric:

Anything less than the best is a felony
The quality of the work is fantastic. It’s not possible without a team of great people demonstrating great teamwork.  I know the road wasn’t always a smooth one but you all should be proud of what we have shipped. It’s damn good work.

No good lyric for this next part so I’ll just say it:

To my Fantasy UXD team, I’m proud of you. You’re a super talented bunch and it’s been a true pleasure working with all of you. I’ve been doing this design stuff for longer than I’d like to admit, and this is the best design/research/content team I’ve been a part of. The work you’ve done is amazing, you all are fantastic human beings, and FanDuel is lucky to have you. We’ve accomplished more than I ever thought before I joined FanDuel and am honored to be part of such a great group.

Thank you for putting up with my non-sensical slack channel names, random Dua Lipa lyrics showing up in Jira boards, ever changing processes, FAM meetings, google slides, terrible Gartic phone drawings, random figma comments that don’t really help, subjecting you to Ice Ice Baby lyrics for the second time, and all my other nonsense.

Most of all thank you for showing me things in myself that I didn’t see. Each one of you helped me become a better leader and I’ve grown so much because of you. Thank you.

I’m a roll it’s time to go solo

✌️

I bust a left and I'm heading to the next block, that block was dead Yo, so I continued to A1A Beachfront Ave Plug Uglies

If you’re in NYC we’re heading to Plug Uglies on Tuesday May 2nd at 5pm. Come get a drink with ya boy.

For those not in NYC or if you can’t make it,  I’m still around until May 2nd if you wanna catch up.

Coleman
K.I.T., Don’t ever change, let’s hang this summer
Fanduel Class of ’23