A few weeks ago I enabled the MyBlogLog Community feature on my blog – I just put it up higher on the left hand side.

I’ve been using MyBlogLog for about a year for link tracking – they’ve got a very good inbound and outbound link tracking system.  If you’ve ever hovered over a link on my blog (or someone elses) and seen the “N Clicks Today” message box, that’s MyBlogLog in action. 

Recently, they rolled out a Community feature.  Now you can see who is actually visiting my site.  In addition you can come join my community.  Also, some “community groups” are starting to form, such as the VC Neighborhood.

Help me experiment with this – come join my community.  Over the past year, I’ve enjoyed talking to Eric Marcouiller (one of the founders) and suggesting features; his technical co-founder Todd is clearly a wizard.   They are iterating quickly on feedback, so offer it freely, either by email or via comments. 

I’ve given a number of interviews on Work Life balance since the post I wrote about it a year ago.  Eric Bergman interviewed me the other day – it’s a short 10 minute piece that I think he did a good job with.

Fred Wilson has a good answer up to a question that was posed to him the other day about VCs and fees.

Our startup company recently started seeking funding and the first firm we presented to has shown some interest. However, they have now sent us a Due Diligence Agreement and are requesting a “one time good faith due diligence payment of $9,000”.  Is it standard industry practice to charge the entrepreneur a fee for the due diligence? We are obviously short on cash – paying $9k to every VC who shows an interest in us sounds counterproductive.

The short answer is “no.”  Fred’s longer answer is great and the first comment nails it.

John Funk, an entrepreneur (I’m an investor in John’s newest company – Evergreen IP) and friend has a innovative proposal up concerning changing the rules on the current patent system.  I’ve been on both sides of the patent aisle with John – we like to joke that early on in our relationship John’s company sued one of my companies (and then my company sued John’s company back) for patent infringement (the companies settled several years later for a cross license and $1 – much to the delight of the lawyers who got all the bucks.)  Fortunately we got past all that crap and have developed a nice friendship.

John’s proposal is straightforward – let’s change the rules so patent applications get published after six months and – before the patent is granted – there is an open debate using a Wikipedia (or Digg-like) system that helps surface all the prior art and blow up stupid patents for obviousness and prior art.  This would be a real debate – online and out in the open – that the patentee would be able to engage in.

While I’m sure all the patent lawyers in the world would groan at this, it’s certainly better for them than my proposal, which is to simply do away with software patents altogether.  We certainly have the technology to implement this – say – in 24 hours.  I wonder who will try to patent that?

Anil Dash – who I only know through his blog – has an awesome post up this morning titled “Making Something Meaningful.”  If you are a blogger, it’s definitely worth reading.

I got an interesting question from one of my friends / readers that applies to both athletes and entrepreneurs.

Can you share with me what kind of mental “training” you undertake before, during and after competing in a marathon? I understand that training for a marathon involves a lot of physical training. But how do you mentally prepare to run 26.2 miles? And how do you maintain your mental “stamina”during such a long run? Finally, how do you mentally “cool down” after competing?

Anyone that knows me, or has worked with me, knows that in addition to being able to cover a wide range of things simultaneously (dare I use the overused phrase “multitask”), I can also go very deep on one thing for a long period of time.  It’s this second trait that I think is so important for both serious athletes as well as great entrepreneurs.

I’m not really sure how I’ve “trained” for this.  I’ve always enjoyed going after stuff with great intensity – often single-minded – although the normal ebb and flow of most of my life has always involved numerous interesting things going on at the same time.  Being able to quickly shift between the two modes – and recognize which one I’m in – has always been relatively easy for me.

The “pre-event” training seems straightforward – I spend deep, isolated time on my running.  I usually run alone (although I’ll do some long runs with other people), I have a routine I go through before each run, and I set my goal in advance and stick to it.  Building up consistency is key – when I’m resting from a marathon I just run whenever I want to.  When – like now – I’m in a training cycle (I’m running a marathon on Labor Day) – I do my pre-determined schedule whether or not I feel like it.  Occasionally I’ll find myself punting on this schedule – whenever I do I think hard about why and adjust accordingly.  Being rigorous, consistent, and deliberate, while studying any deviations, is the basis for my mental preparation.

Leading up to the race, I have a ritual that I’ve now settled into.  Unlike a baseball batter tapping the plate in the same place (or – if you are a tennis fan – Nadal adjusting his underwear between every point) to focus his concentration, I try not to have them become obsessive tasks that I repeat over and over again.  Instead, I focus on the macro – Amy and I go to the city I’m running in at least four days before the race, we stay at a comfortable place, I eat pasta with marinara sauce and lots of bread for the two days before the race, we drive the course the day before the race, and we go to bed early – even if I don’t feel like it – the night before.

During the race, I break my run into four section – (a) miles 1–6; (b) miles 7–13.1; (c) miles 13.2–20; (d) miles 21–26.2.  Having run seven of these things, my experiences have become very similar.  Section (a) is uncomfortable – too many people, not warmed up, over excited – but I just get through it.  Section (b) is the best – I feel great, I’m warm, I’m happy, and I always feel like I’m in a groove.  Section (c) is the hardest – I’m lonely, I hate this part, I have doubt, my knee feels funny, why the fuck am I doing this again, man this is taking forever.  Section (d) is hard, but satisfying – I know I can run 6 miles any day of the week.  Defining the general parameters of the experience in advance takes away a lot of uncertainty for me – I can concentrate on doing my best within the parameters I’m used to.  And – when the unexpected invariably comes up, I can quickly shift my attention to it.

After the race, I just chill.  I don’t plan anything for two days, I don’t travel, I lay in bed all day the next day (if I feel like it) or I walk around and play with friends (if I feel like it.)  My recovery time has averaged three to five days – it’s getting faster with each marathon.  However, I’ve learned that I shouldn’t run a step for three weeks – I don’t lose any meaningful fitness and – when I start running again – I’m reading to go.

Entrepreneurship has a lot of similar characteristics.  It’s fascinating to watch (and work with) successful multi-time entrepreneurs – create a metaphor around what I’ve described above, stretch it out in time, and it maps pretty closely.  No wonder the cliche “entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint” is so popular.

I got several emails from folks at Microsoft in response to my post titled *#)$()@#$% Internet Explorer offering to help me with the problem I was having and suggesting solutions.  Several of these came on July 4th – within hours of when I wrote my post.  While I wish I hadn’t had the problem in the first place (and – as my first partner Dave Jilk suggested (and I summarize) – “hey Brad, it’s beta software – don’t bitch”), I was impressed by how quickly several folks at Microsoft responded, especially on their (and everyone else in America’s) day off.

Nice job guys.  And yes – I got IE Beta 3 working – thank you.

At dinner I was pondering the answer I gave on the post How An Entrepreneur Can Protect Himself Post-Funding.  Something was bothering me about it and I thought to myself “do I practice what I preach?” (Amy suggested that I should be bothered by my title of the post, which should have been “… Can Protect Himself or Herself …”)

My first reaction was that I had never had an employment agreement with any company that I’ve worked for.  As I thought about it a little harder, I realized that I’ve had a few employment agreements, but they never gave me much protection – in each case they protected the company I was working for more than they protected me.  In addition, these agreements were either tied to a non-compete associated with an acquisition or as part of my role in a public company.

In the one case where I could have enforced the employment agreement, I simply ignored it and told the person I was working for to do whatever he thought was fair (he did, and it was.)  In another case, I voluntarily gave up the consideration I was getting when the company I was involved was struggling financially.  Neither of these were cases of “altruism” – rather, I simply did what I thought was the right thing at the time.

There is a difference between an employment agreement associated with an entrepreneur in an early stage company and one associated with senior management post an acquisition (almost always when a non-compete is involved.)  My comments in How An Entrepreneur Can Protect Himself Post-Funding pertain to an entrepreneur in an early stage company; Jason and I covered some thoughts about the acquisition situation it our Letter of Intent series under the topic Employee Matters. 

My conclusion – after chewing on this more – is that I’m comfortable with my answer in the context of an early stage company.  And – yes – I think I practice what I preach – most of the time.

On this spectacular fourth of July (at least in Homer – it’s 60 degrees and not a cloud in the sky), I was enjoying disk 2 of Atlas Shrugged (I’m about 300 pages in) on my run today.  I’m deep into the section where all the competent people are quitting and walking off the playing field and the looters are ratcheting up the rules, which have the unintended consequence of destroying the world as they know it.  Hank is still fighting it out trying to hold everything together in an increasingly bleak world and Dagny is on her quest to find the inventor of the motor as she naively thinks that will solve everything.  The contrasts of the section I’m listening to lingered in my mind long after my run, especially as I pondered the state of affairs (good and bad) in our country 230 years after our birth.

When I sat back down at my computer, a question a that I got a few weeks ago from a reader jumped out at me.  The question follows:

If you are an entrepreneur leading a start-up, and you are negotiating investment with a strategic investor or VC, what are the standard or most desirable ways to protect yourself personally now that you have the potential to be fired?   Lets say they want to get rid of you in 6 months, and have the ability to do that, what type of parachute or provisions should the founder have on the front end to make sure they are covered in the event of being dismissed or benched?  Issues like whether you can be fired at all or just assigned a new role, severance salary/term and protecting your equity.  I have heard that covering yourself personally is among the most important terms to negotiate in a term sheet as the founder.    If by securing funding you are also unwittingly arranging your own personal demise, what precautions should you take. 

I might have answered this differently if it (a) wasn’t the 4th of July and (b) I hadn’t just listened to a particularly disheartening section of Atlas Shrugged.  While Jason and I covered the basics in our post on Vesting and part of our Term Sheet series, that only covers one aspect of the question – namely that of what is standard and fair in protecting your stock position.  While some VCs and entrepreneurs will try to negotiate employment agreements as part of a financing, I hate these.

If – as the entrepreneur – you are competent – it’s unlikely the premise above is valid.  Specifically, very few VCs invest in a company with the idea of firing the CEO in six months.  While many CEOs get replaced – and it’s often not pretty – it’s rarely because the new investor coming into a company thought – a priori – I want to get rid of this guy right after I invest.

As a result, I think the most effective approach for an entrepreneur is to punt completely on the employment agreement and issue of “employment protection.”  An open, direct discussion with the new investor is key – if the VC believes the entrepreneur should be playing a role other than CEO, get this out in the open in advance of the financing.  The entrepreneur should also do the leg work to understand the history of the investor – is this an investor that stands behind the entrepreneurs he funds or does he have a history of revolving door management?  When things don’t work out, how does the investor behave – is he fair and appropriate?  While you can’t always pick your investor, you certainly can know what you are getting yourself into.

I believe a combination of competence and transparency is the best approach.  If you are an excellent CEO, completely open with your investors about the good and the bad, diligent about trying to make the company successful, and completely open to feedback and constructive criticism, it’s unlikely that you’ll randomly get fired.  If the company isn’t performing, or you are struggling in your role, being open, honest, and proactive with your investors will almost always be much more effective than “employment protection.”  Occasionally you’ll run into “a bad investor” who has nefarious motives, but the world is small and life is short so this shouldn’t be that hard to figure out in advance.

While a cynical entrepreneur might paint this as an idealistic perspective, I’ve found that the real trust between the entrepreneur and investor is much more important than a legal agreement that immediately polarizes people before they’ve even started working together.