Unto The Breach!

Working with TechStars

Tom — Mon, 10 May 2010 04:11:36 +0000

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!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Criteria for My Next Gig

Tom — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:00:00 +0000

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.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

“Oh oh it’s magic” – Part Deux

Tom — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:38:33 +0000

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:

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.
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?
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!

“Oh oh it’s magic” Oh oh it’s magic When I’m with you (Oh-o, it’s...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

“Oh oh it’s magic”

Tom — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:42:55 +0000

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.

“Oh oh it’s magic” – Part Deux Sonos is remarkably well done. But in my mind it’s...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The Economist: Best Books of 2009

Tom — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:33:19 +0000

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)

Microsoft caught acting like Microsoft, 2009 version (aka Silverlight) TechCrunch has a nice post about the history and drivers...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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

Tom — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:58:17 +0000

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.

The Economist: Best Books of 2009 The best economics and business books of the year, according...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Identifying and Evaluating Entrepreneurial Opportunities

Tom — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:01:18 +0000

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.

Evaulating Business Opportunities

View more presentations from Tom Keller.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Whatever it is, begin it now…and enter the Cave of Pain!

Tom — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 20:51:32 +0000

“The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decisions, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”
- Goethe

Never mind that this quote might not actually belong to Goethe…it is nevertheless the spirit with which I entered the Firecracker 50.

I’ve done this event for the last 2 years, and use it as a warm-up for the Laramie Enduro. I always register in the winter, well before serious training is underway., to avoid getting shut out because of a sell out. This year, it was only months later, in May, that I realized how uncommitted I was to preparing for this race, and I started looking for a partner so I’d only have to do ½ of the distance. Or, perhaps I’d sell my entry and bag out entirely.

A few days before the race, a friend of mine, damn him to hell, encouraged me – in the spirit of Goethe’s above quote – to just go for it. Go for it, he said, and you’ll have a ball! He was right, I erroneously thought, and I committed to do the race solo.

I noticed Goethe at work: instead of ambivalence, there was focus. I was not afraid, I was excited. I paid attention to my nutrition, rest, and sleep. I reviewed old race notes. I gained confidence: I was going to kick some ass. Commitment was cool.

The first 25 mile lap was good. I completed it in 2 hours 50 minutes, 10 minutes faster than my previous best. This was especially remarkable since I’d only put in about 10 hours on my mountain bike all season.

However, I knew I was in trouble, as not only had I not been training much, but also I’d thrown up a bit during the lap and just couldn’t force any nutrition down. Nutrition is the cornerstone of any endurance performance. And sure enough, I bonked at the beginning of the second lap, and spent the next three hours suffering. I thought only about some variation of one of the following themes: “I’m so bonked”; “Damn this is hard”; “I should just quit”; “If I were going any slower I’d be going backwards”. Not once on the second lap did a positive thought such as “this is fun” or “I feel strong” or “this sure is a pretty ride” enter into my head.

I’ve never been deeper into or more alone in the Cave of Pain. The second lap was the hardest 4 hours – yes 4 hours! – I’ve ever spent on a bike.

Perseverance is good, but it’s not so good to be the last one on a sinking ship. The morning after, I’m not sure if I’m a stud or an idiot for finishing.

In any case, for the rest of the weekend, I’m committing myself to eating pizza and ice cream. Bring it on, Mr. Goethe.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

More on the death of cable TV

Tom — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:22:46 +0000

Recently I upgraded an old computer with an HDMI-capable video board and a wireless keyboard to make it my home theater PC (“HTPC”). I plugged it into my TV, sat on the couch, and happily experienced Windows 7 on a 52″ screen. Two weeks in, my experience is:

- Zero time watching cable TV any more. Zip. Nada.

- Hulu rocks! Colbert etc. – not available with my skimpy cable package – is now available when I want.

- Some time browsing the web from my couch. It works OK, but the experience is inferior to a laptop, so this won’t be a heavily used application of my HTPC

- Music rocks! I can now play music on my home stereo using my favorite PC software and/or Pandora. It’s incredibly easy to use, ie a a great form factor, and the sound quality is as good as your home stereo. I believe that HTPC’s are a serious competitive threat to Sonos et al.

- Photos rock! This was the biggest surprise. Remember your father’s slide shows? This is the new shiznit, and photos look spectacular. It’s a significant upgrade in experience from looking at photos on a PC.

My anecdotal experience agrees with my thinking (here and here) about the decline of the cable industry.

Oh, and Henry Blodget has a nicely written post on the topic as well.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Financial Analysis of a Lemonade Stand

Tom — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:28:28 +0000

I’m in business analysis mode. This parody of a business analysis of a lemonade stand made me laugh!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.