Should I quit my venture job?
Perhaps it’s just a sign of a bubble, but I’ve had several people (entrepreneurs, partners at venture firms and junior partners/senior associates) ask me in the past month whether I was thinking about leaving venture capital to join a company. Their thinking generally follows the logic that given the new Web 2.0 paradigm (presumably they mean the idea that you can build a net business relatively inexpensively, generate sometraffic and either cash flow it or sell it off) there’s a better chance to create wealth in the next 2-4 years by working on the operating side of the world than in venture capital. Given how difficult it is to land a job in venture capital (not to mention how fun the work is), it may sound strange that people are even considering this, but in the course of these conversations a number of examples always come up of sr. associate/vp/principal level colleagues who have jumped ship for what is perceived to be the greener pastures of the company side of the fence. …
June 9, 2006· 2 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
TypePad and Feedburner integration
Finally! FeedBurner and TypePad are now integrated. Before yesterday, if you had a TypePad blog (like mine) and burned your feed through FeedBurner you were only taking partial advantage of FeedBurner’s services (TypePad generates a number of feeds in different formats, and up to now, FeedBurner only captured one of these feeds). Not only will this give you a better view of your subscriber base and their behavior on your blog, but it will also allow TypePad bloggers to take full advantage of FeedBurners’s advertising and feed management services. …
June 8, 2006· 1 min read
Syndicate NYC Thoughts
Here are a couple of high level thoughts on the Syndicate Conference held a few weeks ago in New York (ok – I’m weeks late getting this up, but the next Syndicate conference isn’t for another 6 months, so from that perspective I’m early!). First – Here’s the conference website Next – Here’s IDG’s marketing spin post conference (which does highlight some of the announcements that came out of the week) Finally – Here’s the conference blog site My quick 3 take-away’s were as follows: …
June 5, 2006· 1 min read
What makes a great start-up market?
Here’s one take on that ubiquitous question (ubiquitous at least for those of us who live outside of the bay area). The simple answer is Nerds and Money, but the more complex answer is much more amusing. Link – http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html
May 31, 2006· 1 min read
Its just technology – comments
Andy had a good comment to my “its just technology” post, which I’ve been meaning to pull up to the front page. Here it is: I think this is a wider issue. I believe that most, if not all, early stage high tech companies suffer from the “what it is” versus “what it does” disease when selling their products. Only the early adopter prospect who “gets it” will respond to this sales approach. Many prospects that should be great targets may get excited about the hot technology but won’t understand how it benefits them or solves any problem they care about. They will relegate the offering to “nice to have” and won’t buy – often after pulling the salesperson through a several months-long sales cycle. I think this failure to move from product-centric to customer-business-problem-centric underlies the problem getting sales traction that a lot of new companies have – even though they are selling great technology. So, it’s a survival issue not only for new technologies but for the companies that develop them.
May 12, 2006· 1 min read
Syndicate – NYC
I’ll be at Syndicate NY next week. They’re actually giving me a speaking role (scary, I know – something about the future of Syndication . . .). Drop me a line of you’re going to be there too.
May 12, 2006· 1 min read
Feedback
There was a great article in last weekend’s New York Times Magazine by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) that talks about the role practice plays in becoming truly great at something. They walk through research that suggest that while people clearly have some natural level of ability or affinity towards certain skills, it’s the hard work and dedication they put into the practice of their chosen art that ultimately sets them apart. There’s a feedback loop here – people tend to work harder at those things that they are good at (because they enjoy it more). There was one paragraph in particular that struck me and it relates to something that I’ve been thinking about that every business does, but most in my view do poorly. Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task — playing a C-minor scale 100 times, for instance, or hitting tennis serves until your shoulder pops out of its socket. Rather, it involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome. If you believe this, then you have to scratch your head at how most businesses and managers offer feedback to employees – through annual or semi-annual reviews. There are two problems with this approach: 1) the feedback is stale (and negative feedback easily rationalized by its recipient as memory fades and more importantly the time for correcting poor performance or reinforcing good performance has long passed); and 2) its generally tied to a conversation around compensation – either an annual bonus, pay increase or both. Rather than limiting the majority of feedback to a review period, try giving more consistent feedback (both positive and constructive) on a more regular basis. Get out of a presentation – talk about what worked and what didn’t; finish a sales call or demo, figure out what seemed to resonate with the customer and what can be improved; feel someone in the company did an outstanding job with a task – let them know why it worked so well. Equally important, reviews should be about reviews (and what I’m describing above shouldn’t replace a more formal review process, it should supplement and feed into it). Comp conversations should be about comp. Obviously they are related, but its much more constructive to review an employees performance when the outcome of that meeting isn’t about money (but rather about the improvement of performance).
May 12, 2006· 2 min read
now that’s helpful
Someone started ordering chai for our cafeteria and of course I had to check it out. Having never made chai from a package you can imagine that I had some concerns about whether it would come out right – what would I do if it was too hot? what if it wasn’t creamy enough? Not to worry – thankfully the package contained exremely helpful instructions (click on the image below for a better view). …
May 4, 2006· 1 min read
parlez-vous blog?
Dave Sifry from Technorati put up another in his ‘state of the blogosphere’ series. This one has some pretty interesting data on the language of the blogosphere. Being a narrow-minded American I naturally assumed that English was the dominant language of the blogosphere (it certainly was by far the dominant language of the early Internet). It’s not. Not even by a longshot. English doesn’t have anything close to a plurality in the blogosphere. It’s not even the most common language of blogging (Japanese is). Hmm.
May 4, 2006· 1 min read