The start-up office
I visited a company the other day that had a classic start-up office. One big room with a ¾ wall separating out two workspaces, two guys, plastic folding tables for desks and a bookshelf that served as the printer stand, kitchen, library and server rack. I love it!
March 6, 2007· 1 min read
The stupid things VCs say
Entrepreneur: “Yah, we’ve talked with Ryan about this” Me: “Oh. So Ryan already sat through this presentation” Entrepreneur: “Um, yah – something like that” Oops – that wasn’t what I really meant.
March 2, 2007· 1 min read
Modern day Pavlov
I made a simple change in my life a few weeks ago that ended up being much more dramatic than expected. For reasons extraordinarily practical – I wanted to keep my phone on at night when I was traveling without being woken up 30 times overnight with the ‘chrip’ of a new email – I turned off the email notification on my Dash. (I know – I could have created a new profile and programmed it to allow the phone to ring but I was in a hurry so I just modified my main profile.) A few days passed before I realized that I wasn’t constantly interrupting what I was doing at any given moment to check new emails as they came in – no longer a slave to the friendly ping of my phone happily announcing each new message as it arrived (like Pavlov’s dogs, I had lost my power to resist). …
February 28, 2007· 1 min read
Is your VC a rockstar?
I had two people at VC in the Rockies this week say that VC’s were rockstars. I hope that’s not really what most VCs actually think. I always thought of entrepreneurs as rockstars. We’re just the groupies.
February 23, 2007· 1 min read
Venture Capital at Altitude
Every year the Colorado Venture Capital Association (soon to morph into the Rocky Mountain Venture Capital Association after combining with similar associations in a few neighboring states) puts on the “it” conference for Colorado venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and the lawyers, bankers, search firms, etc. that support us – Venture Capital in the Rockies. I love this event – it’s a great chance to see the best of Colorado deal flow and it concentrates pretty much everyone in the region who has anything to do with venture in one place for the better part of two days with plenty of opportunities to connect, catch up, share ideas, gossip, etc (oh – and did I mention that the conference is in Beaver Creek?). The goal of the conference is to draw out of state venture capitalists and show off the best companies in the area that are currently raising capital. …
February 23, 2007· 6 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
Children
I suppose this is a pretty obvious statement, but children really need (and deserve) homes. This hits close to the heart when you visit an orphanage and are immediately surrounded by kids yelling “mommy? mommy? mommy?” as they look up at you with their arms raised so you can pick them up. I wish I could find a way to explain in words what it’s like to step out of a van into a sea of smiling children, all with their arms outstretched. Obviously my wife and I are inclined towards children, as we were there to adopt our daughter, but I think it would be hard for anyone to experience this and not want to leave with every child that they came in contact with (note: in most adoption programs you do not arrive at an orphanage and choose your child – you are matched with a child by your agency and travel to pick him or her up; this was the case with our adoption as well). I’ll post more about this soon, but these experiences made knowing how difficult (and expensive) the adoption process is even more upsetting (clearly it would be best if there was no need for adoption and every child in the US and the rest of the world had a loving home, but until this happens it sure would be nice if more of the tens of millions of children who need a home could find one more easily). …
January 26, 2007· 2 min read
Who do I work for?
In a recent post I pointed out how autonomous the venture business can be. If that’s the case, then, who do I work for? Brad hired me and I spent several years working directly for him (i.e., supporting him in his investments). He’s still my boss, although we don’t have a traditional reporting relationship (I’m a junior partner – a Principal in our nomenclature – and he’s a senior partner – a Managing Director). I use him as a sounding board and advisor a lot but we don’t really have much of a boss/employee relationship. To some extent I work ‘for’ the other Managing Directors of Mobius but more in the same way someone at a company works ‘for’ their board of directors or their investors. Certainly I work for our investors – my job is to return them more money than they gave us and I have a direct responsibility to be a good steward of their money and trust in us. …
November 29, 2006· 2 min read