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Bloomsbury Bloom

London. 1907.

Thick rugs. Low chairs. Endless tea.

Books stacked on mantels. Cigarette smoke curling.

The Bloomsbury group was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers, and artists who gathered in cafes to share their work.

Among them:

• Clive Bell, art critic

• Vanessa Bell, post-impressionist painter

• E. M. Forster, fiction writer

• Roger Fry, art critic and post-impressionist painter

• Duncan Grant, post-impressionist painter

• John Maynard Keynes, economist

• Desmond MacCarthy, literary journalist

• Lytton Strachey, biographer

• Leonard Woolf, essayist and non-fiction writer

• Virginia Woolf, fiction writer and essayist

Big names. They influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, economics, and modern views on feminism, pacifism, and sexuality.

They weren’t a company or an official org though.

They were (just) a friend group.

Genius seldom strikes alone.

I stumbled upon something magical within the UW entrepreneurship scene.

Not in the classrooms, but in the community.

Alumni, both recent and those whose names were on the walls, gathered in cafes to pass on their learnings to the students.

My mentor always said “real learning is done at the dinner table.”

As a freshman, I wandered into one of these office hours. People were bouncing business ideas off each other, ranting, chanting, scheming, celebrating.

One of the grey-hairs called us together for a group photo. “Better grab a pic now before you all become famous.”

I thought it was a joke at the time.

Looking back on those who were in that room and who they are today, I can't help but think there might’ve been some truth to his words.

How did he know?

Maybe he’d seen it before.

Maybe he was in one of those groups.

In these groups, we found our cofounders and business partners, mentors, life-long friends, significant others, and even rivals.

And it was here, too, that we sharpened our iron. We brainstormed, debated, argued with one another for hours. We also cheered louder than anyone else.

That’s the magic of community.

Critique hard, support harder.

Join the Cherrytree cofounder community → waitlist open (21/50 spots left).

That’s all for now,

BTW — Grab yourself some dumbfound coffee. Our grind fuels yours.

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