Shoulder Surgery

A couple of months ago I had a fall and I tore my rotator cuff.  This morning I am going under the knife in order to repair it.

Several years ago I had shoulder surgery on my other shoulder, so I know the drill.  I’ll be on pretty significant pain killers for perhaps as long as a week; use more moderate painkillers for a longer period; have to have my arm in a sling all of the time for 6 weeks (including when I sleep and when I’m at a computer – I’ll have to type 1-handed); and then have physical therapy for a long while.  I won’t be able to ski or bike for 5 or 6 months.

I’n pretty much dreading this.  The pain killers suck, being in a sling sucks, and being limited to one arm sucks.

I’ll start to return to my normal self soon enough.  Please be patient if I’m not as responsive to your emails as you’d like!

Posted in Personal | 6 Comments

Why Be A Mentor?

As I travel around the world helping communities to start accelerators, I’m often asked in various ways about the challenges of finding mentors who are willing to volunteer to help novice startup teams – and thereby contribute to the greater success of the accelerator.   After all, by definition, a truly good entrepreneur uses his time carefully, and has no shortage of valuable ways to spend his time, right?  Why would people whose time is so valuable give it away freely?

Yet, every good accelerator I’ve seen has ultimately got more expressions of interest from more good mentors than it can use.

In my discussions with mentors, I’ve discovered the following reasons why mentors are eager to get involved:

1. Giving Back:  Other than Gordon Gecko, everybody likes to give a little back every now and then.

2. “Keep the saw sharp”:  The good accelerators can be quite selective with the teams they admit.  This means that the entrepreneurs are unusually talented and/or the business ideas have unusually high potential, and these two factors, individually or often jointly, often make for a fascinating mentoring experience.  Mentors learn more from mentoring these talented teams than the mentees recognize.

3. Deal Flow:  Mentors are often potential angel investors.  They may not have formerly been actively investing, but generally they have the means to make occasional angel investments and they’re generally interested in doing so.  They just may not know how, or put the time into, attracting interesting deal flow.  Mentoring provides an opportunity to discover great investment opportunities.

4. Job Flow: Many mentors don’t need to work, but they’re bored not working.  If they’re between gigs, there’s a good chance that by mentoring, they’ll find interesting work opportunities.  This happens far more often than one might think.

5. Street Cred:  Telling people you’re a startup mentor has cache in the startup community, especially if the audience understands the learning that effective mentoring requires.

6. Networking:  Imagine debating strategy with other seasoned entrepreneurs.  There are many ways to skin a cat, and debating alternate strategies with other experts is a good way to learn from them and build relationships with them.  Since I’ve been mentoring, the growth in the breadth and quality of my professional network has been immense, and this has been echoed by many many other mentors.

7. Increase the quality of your life:  I believe that if you’re a successful entrepreneur, there’s a high chance that entrepreneurialiusm is a major passion in your life.  If that’s so, what could be better than being part of community that creates more and higher quality opportunities to spend time strategizing about exciting business opportunities with both talented aspiring entrepreneurs and accomplished end expert entrepreneurs?

 

Posted in Accelerators, Entrepreneurialism | 1 Comment

Startupbootcamp Demo Day is just around the corner!

Startupbootcamp is TechStars’ first Global Affiliate.  We’ve been long time fans of Alex Farcet, the Managing Director of StartupBootCamp, and have been more than thrilled to be working with him as he builds a world-class accelerator in Northern Europe.

On Tuesday, November 9 in Copenhagen, Startupbootcamp is having its annual Demo Day.  Alex has gathered 10 of the best startups from around Europe, immersed them for 3 months in deep mentorship with some extraordinary and experienced entrepreneurs, and prepared them to pitch at Demo Day.  I’ve spent some time mentoring some of the companies and have been pretty impressed.  I can’t wait to see all the teams put their best foot forward.

Demo Days are always inspirational to me.  They’re sort of like a revival for startup junkies.

If you’d like to join me, you can register here.  I hope to see you in Copenhagen!


Posted in Accelerators, Entrepreneurialism | 2 Comments

Working with TechStars

Over the last few years, TechStars has indirectly touched my life in many ways: I was CEO of IntenseDebate, a TechStars graduate; I have invested in a few TechStars companies; I have met some incredibly great entrepreneurs that I continue to mentor and interact with years after the first introduction; I have met a large number of other mentors, and been mentored by many of them; and I have become part of a vibrant community of entrepreneurialism.  The impact on me has been profound.

The demonstration of the power of a vibrant entrepreneurial community was not lost upon the rest of the world, either.  As news of TechStars, its results, and its community-transforming effects spread around the world, TechStars’ founder David Cohen began to get large numbers of inquiries asking if TechStars could help create something similar in their community.

At the end of last year, David asked if I would help lead the effort to help grow other entrepreneurial communities.  I thought about it briefly before giving a resounding “yes!” answer.  Here’s why I jumped at the opportunity:

  • I’m a believer in the power of TechStars and the value it creates.  I’ve seen it first hand, and talked to a lot of people that I respect that have also seen it.
  • The people involved with TechStars are some of my favorite people.  It’s fun, stimulating, and rewarding to work with these folks.
  • The people outside of TechStars that I’ll be helping are some of my favorite types of people: they’re entrepreneurs, both young (mentees) and experienced (mentors).  I’ll get to be both student and teacher, often at the same time and from the same person.
  • I believe deeply in the cause.  I’ll go more deeply into this in a future post, but the short version is that I believe that in the long run, enabling people to be more able to create more value is the best way to improve society.  From a macro-economic perspective, the world would be far better off if we were all better entrepreneurs.
  • Rarely in my career have so many things that I’m passionate about been so coincident in a single job, and I’m very excited about this opportunity!

    Bring on the entrepreneurs!

    Posted in Business, Economics, Entrepreneurialism, Personal, Philosophy | 2 Comments

    Criteria for My Next Gig

    We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
    -William Shakespeare

    As time marches on, I get increasing clarity about what’s important to me, increasing ability discern to benefits and drawbacks to various opportunities, and increasing pressure to choose wisely. I’m sure that these are all normal things that we all go through, driven by normal maturation and acquired wisdom and even the economics of our stage in life. I also think some progress through this more rapidly than others, with some small minority having a solid grasp on their life’s values and focus before graduation from college, while most learn it later in life, whereas yet others (like many entrepreneurs, including myself) make this journey last a lifetime.

    A while back IntenseDebate was acquired, and I found myself between gigs (again). As per usual, I took some time to introspect. I thought I would write down (belatedly) some of the criteria I thought about for my next job. As I read my list, I think it’s fairly predictable, and maybe the most interesting thing about it is what’s not on it. And I must say that perhaps if I’d listened to my mother would have arrived at this place some decades earlier.

    Without further adieu, here’s my current list of what’s currently important to me in a job:

    • I want my endeavors to make a difference. Life is short and mine is more than half over. No fooling around; get on with it.

    • I want my endeavors to make a difference in a way that’s consistent with my personal values. When I was younger, this was important, but perhaps less so than other job attributes such as compensation, potential for learning, and potential networking. As I get on in my career, these latter things are fading while the importance of personal values is becoming almost dominant. (This makes perfect economic sense to me – ie compensation and opportunities are more important when you are younger – so I have no regrets about my career to date.)

    • I want to work with people that I enjoy being around. I mean no disrespect to many of the awesome people I’ve been lucky to be around and learn from in my past; the list is long and I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate. However we all know that we spend an enormous amount of time at work with colleagues, and the “no assholes rule” is necessary but not sufficient. The bar is rising, and I increasingly want to enjoy and respect the people that I am surrounded by. (By the way, the Buddhist response to this is not lost on me – I do live in Boulder, after all!)

    • I want enjoy what I do. This includes parts of the above, the ability to laugh with others frequently, and it also means the endeavor has to have the capacity to earn respect (at least from my mom if nobody else). I’ve had jobs where there was lots of money to be made but no respect to be gained. (I’m not talking about being an investment banker, but rather about my own experience running a managed service provider). I’ve earned respect from investors, and that’s great and important, but, in my experience, it’s not nearly as cool as getting meaningful accolades from a colleague or especially a customer.

    Posted in Personal, Philosophy | Leave a comment

    “Oh oh it's magic” – Part Deux

    Sonos is remarkably well done. But in my mind it’s only the tip of the iceberg; Sonos is a very-specific audio implementation of the combination of three technologies:

    1. WiFi as the new household remote control standard – replacing infrared, X.10, and other standards. For $50, a house can get a WiFi access point that is not only the current and future standard for all things digital, but also is secure, reliable, free to operate, and covers the entire house. There is a whole new level of range, reliability, and flexibility with the adoption of WiFi.
    2. Invisible network appliances (NettApps): Sonos uses an invisible network appliance to invisibly deliver music. By invisible, I mean that I will never ever have to worry about it:
      1. The Sonos box will be hidden away and will be unseen by humans for years – it delivers music without being thought about. The functionality is provisioned by the NetApp, but the power resides entirely in the remote. And, we’re now at a place where the cost, utility, and ergonomics (size, power consumption, noise, location requirements) of NetApps are no longer a barrier to purchase/implement.
      2. I’ll never have to manage the box: there will be no concern about rebooting, upgrading the CPU or RAM, etc. Therefore, the Sonos NetApp will never become obsolete. (Okay, it will eventually break and need to be replaced.) The NetApp works; there is no room for thought about updating or upgrading; that is nonsensical, because the box already does everything it is supposed to. There is no “more is better” with this NetApp. Pause for a moment: can you say that about any other hardware you own?
    3. A multi-purposed handheld computer as an infinitely flexible remote control. The iPhone (or iTouch) is such an awesome platform that with some relatively easy coding you can build a remote control UX that far surpasses the UX of any other remote control you’ve ever had. Oh, and I already have one on my all the time anyway, because it’s a phone! By the way, although iPhone is remarkable, it’s only the first; there will certainly be other handheld platforms that equal and/or surpass it.

    In other words, I can now (or in the very near future), can:

    • Take any or all of my hand-held computers (iPhone et al) – think interchangeably, meaning whatever is most convenient or newest or coolest
    • Walk into any location ( home or office or restaurant or …)
    • Control all the devices that need to be controlled that I have access to.

    The future (tomorrow) is gonna be so cool!

     

    Posted in Business, Internet | Leave a comment

    “Oh oh it's magic”

    Oh oh it’s magic
    When I’m with you (Oh-o, it’s magic)
    Oh oh it’s magic, just a little magic (gotta be magic)
    You know it’s true
    I got a hold on you

    • The Cars

     

    I’ve got a lot of friends who have raved about Sonos for a long while. But because I’m a bit of a hack, I’ve always built my own audio & multimedia hardware systems, in part to keep in touch with bleeding edge technology. However, last week I broke down and decided to try the Sonos system.

    Opening the Sonos box, the first thing I saw was a card that started off by saying, “Thank you for your purchase. We want your experience to be pure magic.”

    In a word, it has been. Our experience has been so good that my girlfriend’s usage started immediately and without instruction and without hiccup. She declared it “totally cool” – the technological advancements are unimportant; the magically created convenience is the new bar.

    When a product works so well that it immediately, effortlessly, and subconsciously becomes habit, indeed it becomes an expectation of your environment, without any deeper examination of how or why, then you are in the presence of excellence.

    Well done Sonos.

    Posted in Business | 1 Comment

    The Economist: Best Books of 2009

    The best economics and business books of the year, according to The Economist magazine:

    Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial Systems–and Themselves. By Andrew Ross Sorkin. Viking; 624 pages; $32.95. Allen Lane; £14.99
    A riveting fly-on-the-wall account of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and what came afterwards.

    Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World. By Liaquat Ahamed. Penguin Press; 564 pages; $32.95. Heinemann; £20
    A history of the generation that invented the modern central banker. Winner of this year’s Financial Times/Goldman Sachs business book of the year award.

    How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities. By John Cassidy. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 416 pages; $28. Allen Lane; £25
    A sharp look at the roots of the financial crisis that turns into an excellent history of economic thought, by a British writer at the New Yorker.

    Poorly Made in China: An Insider’s Account of the Tactics Behind China’s Production Game. By Paul Midler. Wiley; 256 pages; $24.95 and £16.99
    A useful analysis by a consultant who advises Western companies on what to do about China’s manufacturing problems. Many laboratories protect their reputation by hiding, rather than revealing, what they test and whistle-blowing is punished rather than rewarded.

    (re-blogged from Paul Kedrosky)

    Posted in Business, Economics | 1 Comment

    Microsoft caught acting like Microsoft, 2009 version (aka Silverlight)

    TechCrunch has a nice post about the history and drivers of MS’s browser innovation (or lack thereof). Rather than playing nicely with the exciting development of HTML 5, MS instead is dragging its feet and trying to push people toward its latest trojan horse, which is called SilverLight.

    I wonder if, in their strategic planning, MS considers the long term damage to their brand caused by such consistently “evil” behavior. Even amongst non-technical folks, there is a not-so-subtle quiescent level of distaste for all things MS. It feels to me that as technical superiority and/or barriers to switching for the cash cow products erode, MS will find sales of these cash cows increasingly difficult to maintain.

    Posted in Business, Economics, Internet | Leave a comment

    Identifying and Evaluating Entrepreneurial Opportunities

    Here’s the deck for the talk I gave last night for WinterInTheBunker.  There were lots of good questions, and some comparisons and contrasts to Paul Berberian’s excellent talk on the same subject last week.

    Posted in Business, Entrepreneurialism | 1 Comment