Patent sanity
Brad has a nice series running on patents which I’ve enjoyed a lot (I think the existing patent system is completely hosed, totally ineffective and open to blatant abuses of power – see this post from Jason for the perfect example). Well today, there’s a glimmer of hope that change may be on the way as the administration and it’s head patent policeman Jon Dudas announced the intent (note the gap between intent and action, but at least it’s a first step) to reform the patent system. While I generally like the idea of requiring patent filers to include more information on why their invention is ‘novel’ the gem for me in today’s announcement is the idea of opening up patents to more of a peer review. What a novel idea – have people who are actually in a particular field help determine whether an idea is truly novel and therefore patentable. In a system where the average patent is looked at by an examiner for about 7 hours before being approved (and where the default behavior seems to be “assume this is novel until proven definitively otherwise) far too many patents which are both obvious and not particularly original are being issued. …
June 6, 2007· 2 min read
$1
Would you work for $1? Here’s a few people who do.
May 10, 2007· 1 min read
Delivering bad news
Let’s say you have some bad news to deliver to your board/investors. For example, you lost a huge customer or your software has a major bug that’s going to set you back 6 months or your CFO just got arrested for cheating on his taxes, etc. Should you: Take out an advertisement in the Journal announcing this and then send out a note to your board with a link Rent one of those sign trucks and have it drive by your investors offices repeatedly Bury it deep inside a board book and hope no one notices it Don’t say anything – your investors/board are too involved in your business already and ask way too many questions as it is None of the above This won’t come as a surprise to regular readers of this blog, but my suggestion (strong preference, actually) is that the companies I work with be direct about news – good and bad. If you’re just before a board meeting, include the news in your CEO letter that prefaces the board material (see my post on running better board meetings for more detail). If you’re not, either call your board directly or send an email around updating everyone. Better yet – do both. …
February 13, 2007· 2 min read
Clarity
I was on a call recently where I had to ask someone 4 times to repeat what they were saying using more exact terms. It’s a major pet peeve of mine and so prevalent I’m losing my ability to be nice about it. Perhaps it’s a result of being a kinder, gentler society or maybe it’s just because we’ve all sat through too many PowerPoint presentations or maybe we’re all testing our political-speak skills, but whatever it is the result is the absolutely maddening trend of people not saying directly what they mean and forcing the rest of us to play 20 questions to tease it out of them. …
February 3, 2007· 1 min read
When you know it’s not right, it isn’t
_When you know it’s not right, it isn’t. _ A fellow board member said this to me the other day and I wrote it down as something I wanted to remind myself of every once in a while. She was referring to the human tendency to act slowly in the face of clear evidence and in particular to venture capitalists’ reluctance to be decisive. A good thought to ponder.
January 26, 2007· 1 min read
Quote of the day
“Successful people spend the majority of their time on major things. Unsuccessful people spend the majority of their time on minor things.” Relayed to me by my good friend Chris, who is dutifully following this advice…
October 3, 2006· 1 min read
Fire Fast
My last post generated a bit of harsh comment (a few on the site, but many more in private e-mail and on a few other sites that picked up the theme). Apparently I came off as pretty insensitive (perhaps ‘jerk’ would be an appropriate description) in how I described my approach to some of the “can I get 30 minutes of your time?” meetings that I seem to have a difficult time saying no to (note to commenters: I do see value in the meetings and as a general rule spending time getting to know as many people as possible. Hey – at least I TAKE the meetings . . .). Trying to roll with that theme, I’ve been thinking recently about how companies get rid of non-performers. I have a lot of visibility into the performance of most of the executive teams of the companies I work with and some visibility down the ranks. One thing I’ve observed over and over and over again is that companies tend not to fire fast enough. I understand that US employment law can make this difficult (I am NOT giving legal advice here, so don’t take this as such in any way shape or form), but regardless, companies tend to hold on to people too long. This is true both in terms of mass lay-offs and more disturbingly in the case of non-performers. This is true almost 100% of the time and often in the face of extraordinarily clear evidence that supports the decision to ask someone to leave. …
July 27, 2006· 2 min read
Why are we here again?
I should probably do a better job of controlling my meeting schedule. I don’t and as a result end up with too many ‘networking’ meetings (i.e., where I’m on the receiving end of the networking). I have two observations about these interactions: Left to their own devices, people tend to ramble . . . ramble . . . ramble. The conversation lacks focus, direction and purpose. Sometimes this is fun; most of the time it’s a waste of time. 2) Most people don’t seem to know what they want to get out of meetings like these. This clearly contributes to the rambling – there’s no focus because there’s no clear end point or goal. To speed things along a bit, I’ve been starting these meetings of late with a simple question: “What do you want to get out of this meeting” Turns out this isn’t something that most people come prepared to answer, which I think explains why I was encountering the two problems described above and reinforces the need to start meetings this way. I’m starting more and more meetings with this question (or the answer to it if I’m the one initiating the interaction) – not to be callous, but to get things started with an outcome in mind. Plenty has been written about how to make meetings more efficient, but for me, other than skipping them altogether (which tends to make them much more efficient – at least for me), this has worked better than just about anything I’ve tried to speed things along. Especially those pesky “networking” introductions . . . This post reminds me of my Networking 101 post from last year. Worth taking a look at if you haven’t read it yet. See point 3 for another description of what I’m talking about here.
July 10, 2006· 2 min read
TLAs
In a recent note Bill writes: I love your blog, but if you’re going to use TLAs (three letter acronyms), you need to spell out the first reference so the uneducated (like myself) know what you’re talking about. When you write about NOLs, us neophytes from Colorado think you’re talking about spending three days alone in the wilderness. 😉 He’s right. I sometimes forget how insular venture/finance/technology can be. In one of my very first ever business experiences – a training session at Morgan Stanley – I spent an hour listening to a Morgan associate (who happened to be the assignments associate from the group I was about to start working with) talk about the “Morgan way of doing DCF analysis” all the while thinking “I’m totally screwed. There are 100 people in this room and I’m the only one who has absolutely no clue what DCF stands for, let alone whatever subtlety he’s talking about that is the ‘Morgan way’.” (Turns out DCF stands for discounted cash flow analysis – something I have gotten intimately familiar with over the years). …
July 6, 2006· 1 min read
What DON’T you do?
Companies – and start-ups in particular – spend a lot of time working through market analyses, product positioning and the like, trying to figure out how to tell the world what it is that they do (and differentiate that from what everyone else does). It is, of course, a very worthwhile and important effort. One thing few companies spend much time on, however, is the opposite question – what do you NOT do. Not the broad question of what you don’t do (we don’t make toasters is not very helpful), but focusing in on the gray areas between what you clearly do and clearly don’t do and deciding where you draw the line. I watch companies struggle over decisions (product extensions, sales targets, delivery methods, etc.) or get slowly pulled off track as they chase down revenue and partner opportunities that are just a little bit off track (enough to reap havoc across an engineering or delivery organization, but not enough to be clearly out of bounds). Have the conversation first – know what’s in bounds and what’s out of bounds and how to tell the difference.
June 8, 2006· 1 min read