Brad Spirrison has a nice article in the Chicago Sun-Times titled Feedburner’s investors have its technology at their fingertips. Among other things, he highlights that three of the FeedBurner investors – me, Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures, and Matt McCall at Portage Ventures are active bloggers that use FeedBurner’s services regularly.
While the notion of your investors using your product is a tricky one for some companies (say an ERP software company or an optical switch company) , it should be a no brainer for a consumer or Internet company. I just did a quick check and I’m an active user of all but two of the companies I sit on boards of. I’m also a user of many of the other Mobius companies products – even when I potentially have other choices – so that I can provide deep and regular product feedback. While my role isn’t “product manager” or “beta tester”, I can provide much more comprehensive feedback, better understand the product cycle, really have a perspective on competitive products (since presumably I can use them also), and provide insight into other things that I’m seeing that directly relate to the company’s products. Plus – it’s a lot of fun for my inner nerd.
If you have a product that normal humans can use, ask your investor (or potential investor) if they’ve used your product, how they use it, and how frequently they use it the next time you talk to them. At the minimum, the answer will help you frame their level of understanding of what you are creating.
Having seen a few bears up front and personal (think “20 yards away”), I know how incredibly intense they are. Chris Wand send me this link from a set of photos of Alaskan bears that one of his friends took recently. My favorites are Chocolate Eating and Brothers with Fish. As a special bonus for the nerds in the crowd, it shows off Google’s Picasaweb.
While I was on vacation, my friends at FeedBurner wrote a long post describing their stats methodology in detail, using the popular TechCrunch blog as the example (with the permission of Mike Arrington, of course.) If you are a publisher / blogger and want more insight into what’s actually going on in the various calculations, why reach matters, or why just checking your server logs doesn’t really tell you much, this is a post you’ll enjoy reading. In addition, there’s a little teaser at the end about where BlogBeat fits in.
I was at lunch last week with a friend and his business partner – my friend is an ex-technology VC who is now running an interesting blend of a public / private technology-focused hedge fund. Both my friend and his partner are technology savvy, reasonably current on what is going on, but focused more on the gap in public / private valuations (especially among small-cap tech companies) than on new software innovation.
After covering all the obvious stuff around SaaS, webapps, user-generated content, the consolidation of the enterprise software business, and the dramatic impact of broadband on consumer-based computing, we started talking about “what’s next.” As I described a number of the companies I’ve done seed / angel investments in the past year and what they are working on, my “new friend” (the business partner) started to rhymically nod his head (I’m going to assume it was out of comprehension, not boredom.) We started bouncing use cases around – especially around modifications of the stuff that currently exists today.
Not surprisingly, some of it was around the problem I’ve labeled (at least for myself) “dynamics of information.” These two guys are massive information junkies and have the same well described problem that I have – information is so broadly available that it regularly “swamps the boat.” It’s not just an issue of tuning the sources, or the filters, or what you pay attention to. Rather – it’s something much larger that takes into account the intersection of many of the technological themes – such as social networks, feeds, attention, user-generated content, identity, relevance, and a few other things tossed in for good measure. And – because of our friend Mr. Broadband – it now includes audio and video in addition to text.
As I was driving to my next meeting, I kept rolling around some of the ideas in my head. I thought about the new companies I was working with – along with the large number of things coming out of the release cycles of my existing companies – and felt there was a major software innovation wave coming. While it’s always a good time to be alive (I never really understood why someone would prefer the alternative), it especially seems exciting as we head into the tail end of 2006.
Amy and I have been supporters of KidsTek for the past several years, even since we were introduced to it by Pat Maley when he was the CEO of Dante Group (Mobius was an investor / I was on the board.) Amy and I are big supporters of education – especially in Colorado – and when Pat described the KidsTek mission to me, it was a no-brainer.
KidsTek works closely with Colorado youth (ages K-12) service providers in underserved communities to provide the keys to successful technology education, including:
On October 12th, from 6:30pm to 10pm at The Denver Aquarium, KidsTek will be having their 6th Annual Tech Leader’s Dinner. In addition to being a super fun event with plenty of unique stuff (for example, CEOs of the companies that are the table hosts actually serve dinner and compete for the “best waiter award), KidsTek will be honoring Amy and I with this years “Phil Award” which is given to leaders in the technology industry who have made a difference through philanthropy.
Come join us, have some fun, and help support a great organization.
I just stumbled upon an outstanding presentation that Tom Coates (who writes plasticbag.org) gave last week at the Future of Web Apps conference. In addition to being excellent content, it’s short, sweet, and graphical. Thanks Andre for sending it to me.
While I was on vacation, I got an email from someone much more “in the know” than I am that it is highly unlikely that the final 409A regulations will be finalized in time for them to be effective by 1/1/07. Daniel Hogans – attorney-advisor in the Treasury Office of Tax Policy – stated during a speech at the American Law Institute-American Bar Association’s meeting last week that the proposed regulations’ effective date of Jan. 1, 2007, is “increasingly unworkable at this point.” People can “reasonably expect to see additional guidance” on the effective date issue. Hogans said he did not expect structural changes in the final regulations, but there will be changes in the details.
As Jim and I continue our Board Meeting series, we’ve decided to address a question that we are often asked – “How Many Board Meetings Should A VC-backed company have?”
Our general answer is “as many as you should for the stage of the company that you are.” We define stage loosely, where you evaluate the company’s revenue performance, the rate of growth of revenue, the headcount of the company, and the strategic issues the company faces. If you – dear reader – are a rational person – you should be responding with the thought “thanks guys – not helpful.” Stay with us – we’ll try to be more prescriptive, but – having been involved in lots of companies, with lots of different boards (and board dynamics) – we know there is no simple and correct answer.
Our experience suggests a private, venture-backed company should have between 8 and 12 meetings a year, with at least half of them face to face. As a company grows and matures, the number of in person meetings will logically decrease, but should never fall below one each quarter, preferably in the first month of the quarter so the performance of the previous quarter can be reviewed while it is still fresh and current.
If you’ve just closed your first round and it was a seed or Series A financing, expect that you will likely to have monthly board meetings. Yep – you heard us – expect to have 12 meetings per year – and it’s best if these are in person. Try to have your meetings set up on some recurring monthly basis like “the third Thursday of every month”. This helps schedule the board and increases the likelihood that board members can actually attend in person. Also, a monthly meeting which shifts from month to month (for example – the third week one month and the second week in another) may not allow enough time to elapse in between meetings.
Your early stage investors and board members will want to be (and you should want them to be) actively engaged in the company. You’ll be dealing with a huge range of issues in the startup phase – frequent, substantive, and open discussions will help keep all the board members up to speed on what is going on and engaged in the decision making process. Since a lot of significant events transpire at a rapid pace in a company at this stage, these regular meetings help the board maintain a level of awareness that enables them to engage in the activity of the company. In addition, a young board needs to learn how to work together – the best way to do this is “to work together” – regular meetings will reinforce this.
Additionally, CEO’s of venture backed companies (or any company with a board of directors) should expect to have fluid and candid dialog with board members in between meetings. Board member styles differ – some (like me) are email guys, some are face to face types, and some are phone call update types. We recommend understanding how each of your board members works best and make sure you spend time with them in between board meetings discussing issues, updating them on the business, and learning how to work together.
Some of this is preparation for later in the life of a company when a board has to make critical and substantial decisions, whether around a financing or M&A event, major change in the direction of the business, leadership change, legal issue, or something else that requires hard discussions. Spending time building working relationships, learning how each other think, work, and act, and developing personal rapport early in the life of the company helps makes dealing with these situations a lot more effective.
Some entrepreneurs have resistance to this level of oversight. If you’re someone who has a negative reaction (e.g. “12 meetings a year – no way!”) we encourage you to re-think your interest in a pursuing a model to build your business that includes venture capital, or for that matter your interest in having a board of directors.
Finally, while it is common that as a company matures, it will reduce the frequency of formal meetings (to say 6 meetings per year), the board will encounter periods of time where they will meet more often then once a month. This can happen when a company is approaching the end of a fund-raising cycle or during key times in the company’s life where substantive strategic actions are being managed (for example – an acquisition.) During these critical times it is common for a board to have formal – but short duration – meetings, both in person and over the phone.
David Brin has an outstanding article up on Salon titled Why Johnny can’t code.
I’ve been the chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology for the past two years and have learned an enormous amount about the sociology of computer science, especially among women and kids. This summer I decided to “practice what I preach” by teaching my Alaskan 14 year old neighbor Eric how to program. I received a bunch of interesting comments and eventually settled on Ruby – which we are making ok progress with.
However, Brin’s article smacked me over the head. I learned how to program on an Apple II using BASIC when I was 13. I eventually learned Pascal, but did most of my programming – until I was in college – in BASIC. When my best friend Kent came home with a prototype for the first TI PC in 1982 (his dad – ultimately one of the early Compaq guys – was the TI project manager for the PC) we programmed a complex Yahtzee game in BASIC (the TI graphics were incredible – I learned a lot about abstraction manipulating them.) In my first real job (in 1983) at a company called Petcom I wrote two sophisticated commercial programs in Basic (PC-Log – Oil Well Log Analysis; PC-Economics – Economic Forecasting for Oil and Gas projects). Lest you wonder how sophisticated this could get, I also contributed to an Oil and Gas Accounting System (PC-Accounting) that ultimately used Btrieve as the database engine and probably could have been a competitive stand-alone accounting system in the 1990’s if the company had evolved that way.
So – when I read Brin’s article, I longed for the simplicity and beauty of BASIC as a teaching tool. Yeah – I know – it teaches you “all the wrong stuff”, but as I’m working through basic looping with Eric, I’m not sure objects and methods are the right way to learn this stuff. Maybe I’ll hop on eBay and buy Eric an old Apple II.