Hi Steem! Excited to Share My Dream of Building Sustainable Homes

Hello Steemit! My name is Jimmy Gorham, 31, a gambler/entrepreneur/real estate developer from Los Angeles, California. When I saw the Steemit video intro I was intrigued; when I read through the whitepaper I was absolutely amazed with this concept! I am exceedingly grateful to join this budding community and hope that I can contribute valuable content to help and entertain you.

In this post I’ll give a bit of background information about who I am and how I got here, explain through example why I believe Steemit is uniquely positioned for success, and layout how I plan to contribute to this community. I hope to spark a dialog so I better understand what this community is interested in and how I can best participate.

Background

The poker boom of 2003 coincided perfectly with the freedom of a college lifestyle, and I never looked back. I was incredibly fortunate and through hard work and good timing I was able to put myself through university by playing poker, and then continued as a professional for 5 years after. I learned a lot, made some money and had great fun, but after flirting with poker’s darkside for a bit too long I realized I had to move on.

Poker is a great game as it teaches rationality, the nature of random independent events, emotional control and non results-oriented thinking, but the darkside of compulsion is very real. I’ve witnessed six figure swings regularly, seen people lose their homes, families and businesses, and even seen someone burn through a $1.5 million inheritance in a weekend. As a professional poker player I was very isolated, rarely collaborating with others and making only marginal contributions to society. I had to “retire” to save my soul and start giving back to others, but I am immensely grateful for the skills I learned in this time period.

After poker I went to grad school to help build the skills I would need to add value to society. I started a couple (failed) businesses and have worked with a few early stage startups, primarily in the tech and gaming spaces. I learned through these experiences that my best assets to offer to a team are attention to detail, strategic thinking, objectivity, and an understanding of the business needs of various stakeholders. As a result I’ve landed squarely on the operations and project management role.

My Steemit Vision

When I was first learning how to play poker I benefited immeasurably from the 2+2 web forum and poker community. We were a group of like minded individuals trying to understand the game and improve by making good decisions. On a daily basis I could interact with Nate Silver, Scott Seiver, Vanessa Selbst and other top minds to analyze decisions and prepare myself for competition. Expert information was flowing freely and I benefited as a reader and as a participant.

Unfortunately 2+2 was ultimately a victim of its own success. As word circulated that the best dialog was happening on the forum, more and more users joined. Over time the signal:noise ratio grew in the wrong direction, and experts got less and less from their participation. Gone were the days when posters knew each other personally, and new users tended to be loud and often hostile. Top players began to guard their knowledge and trolls become kings of the site.

After witnessing the rise and fall of this community I wondered if this trajectory was inevitable for any top online community. Without restricting access, how could there be incentives for experts to continue to participate once the community grew to a large size? How could a handful of conscientious users concerned with the long-term protect against the short-term interests of a troll just wanting to shout? When I read Steemit’s whitepaper I felt like I was seeing for the first time a community model built to solve these problems, built to promote kindness and community, and built to persevere and grow even as membership expands.

My Contribution

I am very excited to share that I am currently starting a new business venture with my wife to pursue our dream of building sustainable homes in Los Angeles. She is an architect and is handling the design and planning side while I am tackling the finance, development and operations side. For now we are a firm of two looking to contribute to our community through the creation of new homes.

Los Angeles is a crowded market full of houses built 80 years ago. While many of these old homes are wonderful, many others have fallen into disrepair and need substantial renovation or demolition. At the same time LA is facing an affordable housing crisis as the housing stock can’t grow quickly due to a lack of undeveloped land and zoning restrictions that make high-density housing impossible.

Our solution is to build under an ordinance allowing small lot subdivisions. We will buy lots with a single family home, demolish it and build three brand new sustainably focused homes on the lot. The new homes won’t share common walls and will be sold individually with the land they sit on. Though the lots will be small, our homes will compete on the basis of sustainability designs such as solar panels, grey water recycling and green roofs, and with a very efficient use of vertical space to achieve optimal lighting and private outdoor spaces.

We will both be regular contributors on Steemit, blogging about our venture and the challenges/opportunities that we encounter from our different perspectives. We’ll share designs, explain features, and engage in a dialog as we go through our projects from planning to construction. We are excited about the venture and thrilled to share it with all of you on this remarkable platform. I hope that over time we’ll establish a dialog and be able to respond to the requests of the community. Steemit is going places and we’re grateful to be a small part!