Month: July 2011
If you walk in my office, you’ll notice a lot of art on the walls. Amy and I are huge art collectors and are always on a quest for new and beautiful things. Over the years we’ve tried to collect photographs and sculpture in addition to contemporary art – I view us as complete novices as collectors in these two domains.
However, Amy has always been a great photographer. She carries a Nikon D-100 around and captures amazing pictures. I don’t have the eye she has so when I snap things on my cell phone they always feel ordinary to me. But I love to scroll through the endless stream of photos Amy has taken.
Recently, I got an email from Abhi Lokesh, the CEO of Fracture. He reached out in response to a post I had written (What’s Your Product Cadence). We went back and forth a few times on email, I answered a few questions, and he offered me a free Fracture. The awesome Alaska Brown Bear above is the photo I used (from an Alaska trip in 2004) and it’s now hanging on the wall in my office next to my couch.
Fracture’s goal is to inspire a renaissance in photo products and printing, replacing cheap frames and overpriced services with a practical alternative that helps you tell your life’s story visually . When I asked Abhi how he came up with the idea, he said:
“We actually came up with the idea while doing field work in Africa during the summer of 2008 for a non-profit that we created in college. It was a life-changing experience in innumerable ways. I was on my way to med school, and my partner was heading to PhD engineering school. But hey, we’ll never have less to lose and more to gain than right now, and we decided to go for it.”
Fracture is tackling the retro challenge of manufacturing and shipping a real product along with creating a digital experience and platform that makes it dead-simple for anyone to Fracture an image. My experience with the service was great, and when the Fracture arrived the packaging was well thought out, minimal, and included everything I needed to hang the Fracture on the wall.
I encourage any of you who have a favorite digital photo to give Fracture a shot.
I had two similar experiences last week where I heard from employees of two different companies that I’m on the board of. In each case, a senior exec said something like “I heard the board wants us to do blah.”
I was in each board meeting and the board most definitely did not say “we want the company to do blah.” Rather, in each case there was a discussion about the topic in question. In one of the cases consensus was reached quickly; in the other there was a robust discussion since two of the board members disagreed and the CEO wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. Ultimately in that case as well there was consensus.
In each case I asked the executive what he’d heard back from the CEO. I got two versions of “the board had a discussion, there was a lot of disagreement, but the board wanted us to do blah.” I then asked, as non-politically as I could, “Do you think CEO wants to do that?” In both cases, the answer was “I’m not sure, but he knows the board wants that.”
I think this is a brutal communication mistake on the part of each of the CEOs. I’ve seen this many times over the past sixteen years since I stopped being a CEO and started being a board member. In each case the CEO is abdicating some responsibility for the decision. In the worst situation, the CEO is blaming the board for a decision and ultimately setting up a very negative context if the decision is an incorrect one – as in “see – I didn’t want to do this but the board did – so it’s not my fault.”
I’ve come to believe that the only real operating decision that a board makes is to fire the CEO. Sure, the board – and individual board members – are often involved in many operational decisions, but the ultimate decision is (and should be) the CEO’s. If the CEO is not in a position to be the ultimate decision maker, he shouldn’t be the CEO. And if board members don’t trust the CEO to make the decision, they should take one of two actions available to them – leave the board or replace the CEO.
In one of the cases, I asked the executive “if I told you the CEO was strongly in favor of the decision, would that impact you.” The response was a simple one: “yes – I’d be much more motivated to make sure we did it right.” I smiled and reinforced that the CEO was in fact supportive, which I think was a relief (and motivator) to this particular executive.
In my leadership experience, people really value when a leader takes responsibility for a decision, even if it turns out to be an incorrect one. CEO’s – don’t be the guy who says “the board made me do it.”
On my run today I was thinking about GP – LP interactions. This line of thought was prompted by a contrast between two interactions, or rather one interaction and one non-interaction, that I’ve had in the past few days.
The interaction was I had with one of my LPs over the last 24 hours. They emailed asking for a reference on someone who indicated they knew me and had invested with me. I didn’t know the person, but knew a few people who did, and quickly sent emails getting addition info for my LP. With a small amount of effort I was able to generate some useful feedback, including triangulating on the deal he was suggesting we were investors in together (it was a true statement prospectively as it’s something I’m working on.) I was also able to get some specific one degree of separation feedback for my LP.
I contrasted that with the non-interaction that I’d recently had. I’m an investor in about 30 VC funds (so, in addition to being a GP in my funds, I’m an LP in a bunch of other funds.) I’m a very easy LP – I basically try to be available for the GP whenever they want, be supportive, make my capital calls on time, and be low maintenance. I invest in VC funds for several reasons, including my belief that long term it’s a good investment (and my overall performance across this category of investment bears this out.)
In the case of the non-interaction, I made an intro between an entrepreneur and the GP. I do this sparingly (per my Don’t Ask For A Referral If I Say No policy) – I’ll only do this if I think the fit is a good one. I think most of the people I’ve invested in and work with know this, but who knows. Anyway, in this case I haven’t heard anything back from the GP. When I thought about this, I realized there were several GPs I’ve invested in that are terrible at responding to me. Now, this might just be me, and not their LPs in general, but my guess is that the dynamic is a typical one given my knowledge of their individual tempo and work patterns.
I realized as I was thinking about this that I have very little respect for this type of behavior. I think you should treat your investors with the upmost respect, be extremely responsive to them, and to go out of your way to try to be helpful when they interact with you. When I reflect on the interactions I’ve had with my investors over the last 25 years, I always tried hard to be responsive, even if we had a disagreement, difficult conversation, or difference of opinion.
I tried to come up with a rationale for blowing off an LP. None of the obvious ones – I’m too busy, it’s not a priority, it’s not what I’m paid to do, I’m not interested – made any sense. And I couldn’t come up with any non-obvious ones that did either.
In every GP / LP relationship I’ve ever been involved in, there comes a moment in time when the GP needs something from the LP. This is true at the beginning of the relationship when the GP is asking the LP for an investment. It seems incredibly short sided to me for GPs to forget that they will once again need something from the LP and, instead of being responsive through the life of the relationship, only pay attention when the GP needs something.
Amy and I have had a great first week in Paris. The weather has been amazing, the food has been incredible, and the cell phone experience has been abysmal. Here are a few things that I’ve learned.
- Running on the Champs-Elysees at 4pm sucks. Go to the Bois de Bologne instead – it’s great.
- I need a lot of sleep. Sleeping until 13:00 is fun.
- It’s not worth the effort to get a local SIM card.
- Being a vegetarian at lunchtime is tricky if you like hanging out at a brasserie.
- French women often forget to put pants on under their short frilly nightgown-like tops.
- Smart cars are everywhere which makes Amy laugh.
- Nespresso coffee is delicious. So delicious that you should have four each morning. Wheeeeeeeeee.
- Balconies rock. At least the one we have does.
- Amy rocks. But I knew that already.
- We need to work harder at picking sushi places. Conveyor belt sushi is mediocre.
- No one seems to be paying attention to the Tour de France here. At least we aren’t.
- Paris is more ethnically diverse than Boulder.
- French people are nice if you say “Boujour, je ne parle pas francias.” They smile and then speak in English.
- You can buy pajamas at the Monoprix.
- Lots of fun Americans came to Paris this week including @fredwilson, @kimbal, @jason, @johnmaloney, and Cliff Shaw.
- FNAC is not the train station (something I’ll be able to tease Amy about for a long time.)
- There are a lot of paid porn channels on the TV which I may have accidentally subscribed to while trying to get the Wimbledon final on TV.
- There is less dog poop on the street than a few years ago.
- Everyone here smokes at night and outside. They are about a decade behind the US on this front.
- 16 degrees C is the right temperature for me at night in the bedroom.
- I kind of like walking up six flights of stairs several times each day.
- Two glasses of wine at lunch is too much for me but a bottle at dinner is just right.
- Google Voice doesn’t work in France. But who needs a phone anyway.
- It’s smart to bring backup glasses with you if you can’t see very well for when your glasses break.
- French is a hard. I give you poison and poisson as an example.
- Lunch takes two hours here. That’s a good thing.
Overall we’ve spent of our time in the 8th and 17th – just hanging out, getting acclimated, writing, and living our life. I expect we’ll explore next week. And no, I am no longer carrying around my cell phone because who fucking a needs a cell phone that costs $17 a minute to use.
Trada is no longer doing Codespace – they’ve filled up the area with other companies. However, if you are looking for office space in Boulder for your startup, take a look at PivotDesk and give it a try.
When developers come through Boulder, I regularly get asked if I know a place for them to camp out and work for the day. There’s now a great solution – Codespace – hosted by Trada.
Boulderites know the local coffee shop / sushi scene where wifi is abundant. However, you now have a dedicated, free co-working space for developers on Walnut Street right in the middle of downtown (in the old Daily Camera building, now home to Trada). The Codespace philosophy is a simple one:
Code is free, so should be the space you create it in. If you’re in the neighborhood, come over and hang out – for an hour or the whole day. Enjoy some free wireless, scrawl on the whiteboards, rack up on endless caffeine, and enjoy hanging out and working with the smartest development talent in Boulder.
In addition to daily free options, there are a few dedicated spaces that you can apply for. Go check out the Codespace page or my partner Seth Levine’s longer description about Codespace. Most importantly, go check out Codespace. And please thank the gang at Trada for providing this for the Boulder entrepreneurial community.
A few weeks ago my dad said “Brad, you have to read the book I Am John Galt: Today’s Heroic Innovators Building the World and the Villainous Parasites Destroying It. You’ll love it.” That’s all the recommendation I needed – it went to the top of my Kindle reading list.
I read it the other night in a jet lagged haze on my couch. I was wide awake at 2am without the book, but it had me consumed for a few hours. The author, Donald Luskin, is polarizing, as evidenced by his wikipedia page and entertaining conflict with Paul Krugman (who he skewers in the book).
If you aren’t an Atlas Shrugged fan, this book isn’t for you. But if you are, go grab it now – you’ll love it. Luskin does the biography of the following nine men by lining them up with characters in Atlas Shrugged. He does a magnificent job of deconstructing the people in the context of the Altas Shrugged character, while writing an original narrative on the character and biography on the person being referenced.
- Steve Jobs – Howard Roark
- Paul Krugman – Ellsworth Toohey
- John Allison – John Galt
- Angelo Mozilo – James Taggart
- Bill Gates – Henry Rearden
- Barney Frank – Wesley Mouch
- T.J. Rodgers – Francisco d’Anconia
- Alan Greenspan – Robert Stadler
- Milton Friedman – Hugh Akston
My only disappointment was that he didn’t tackle a character for Dagny Taggart.
I can’t remember when Angela Baldonero joined Return Path, but she’s been there for as long as I can remember. I invested in Return Path eleven years ago at the very beginning of its life. Today it is a profitable, 250 person company that is growing quickly, dominates its market segment, and is an awesome place to work. Angela has been a big part of both hiring many of the people and orchestrating the culture of the company so I very much value her point of view on interviewing. I hope you do also.
Everything is data. The candidate’s responsiveness during the interview process, how the candidate treats the admin staff, and the candidate’s ability to communicate is data. Are you interviewing someone for a tech leadership role who doesn’t have a skype account? Data point. Do you fly a candidate out for interviews who then nickels and dimes you on expenses? Data point. Does your candidate send a thank you note? Data point. Is it well written and specific or a lame generic note? Data point.
Give the candidate feedback and see what she does with it. People are wiggy about feedback. Someone who is self-aware and mature will take it in and own it, then makes sense of how she had that impact. An immature person will get defensive or refute it.
Never sacrifice your culture. Highly qualified yet bad attitude hires wreak havoc with your culture, suck up a ton of management bandwidth and ultimately don’t get anything done. It doesn’t matter if the candidate has cured cancer or invented Jell-o. An asshole is an asshole. Fiercely protect your culture.
People can’t help but be themselves. The interview process is flawed. People are “acting” in order to get a job. You want to know how this person really is to see if they’re a good fit at your company. Interviews take time and people can only fake it for so long. If they’re “putting on a show” in the interview process, that will eventually be revealed.
Give you candidate something to do. This creates a bit of productive stress and shows you what they’re made of. For example, ask a sales person to do a presentation. We’ve axed many sales people because they fell apart during the presentation.
Finally I solved my Paris Internet Mobile 3G SIM cell phone nightmare poke my eyes out scream at my phone problem. It was remarkably easy, once I knew the magic trick, which I found on the site Pay as you go sim with data wiki (thanks Toby Ruckert – lunch is on me tomorrow.)
Here are the steps (as of 7/6/11) for an unlocked Android phone and a Gmail user.
1. Go to an Orange store. Ask for a Mobicarte. Do not explain anything. Do not show them your cell phone. Just buy a Mobicarte (it’s a SIM card that is Orange’s prepaid plan.) It’ll cost 9€. Then get some additional credits – I got €25 just because I never want to have to go to the Orange store again.
2. Go home and find yourself a safe place to do phone surgery.
3. Insert the SIM card into your phone and turn it on.
4. “Recharge” your phone. Mobicarte comes with 5€ but you need at least 12€ to activate Internet Max. It’s easy to recharge (since you bought the extra 25€). Go to the phone dialer and type #124*phone_number# where phone_number = the magic phone number on the Evoucher Web Services form they give you when you buy the extra credits.
5. Now you want to follow the instructions for Internet Max on the wiki I referred to earlier. The menu options had changed from the wiki – here are the ones I had.
6. Dial #123#
7. You get a startup menu showing the credit on your prepaid account. You need enough credit on your account to buy the data plan.
8. Choose 2=Menu
9. Choose 4=Vos bons plans
10. Choose 3=Votre multimedia
11. Choose 4=Option Internet Max
12. Now you get a description, choose 1=Suite
13. Then choose 1=Souscrire (Subscribe).
14. Finally, choose 1=Valider (Confirm).
15. Turn off your phone and wait a couple of hours. The instructions say two days, but everything seemed to be working fine about an hour later. Scream with delight as you surf the Internet from your phone while watching your email stream in.
16. To figure out your phone number, go to your SMS app. You’ll have a little txt that says something like “Bienvenue chez Orange, votre numero mobicarte est le your_phone_number” where your_phone_number will start with 06. To have someone call you from Skype, they merely type +336 and then the rest of the number. I have no idea how much phone calls actually cost, but I do know that I have free unlimited Internet for the month.
Now, these instructions are for an Android phone with Gmail. If you have an iPhone, or something else, I have no clue if this will work for you. And no, Google Voice will not work in France.
Many of the companies I’m an investor in are hiring a lot of people right now. For a current view, take a look at the Foundry Group jobs page. I’ve interviewed and hired a lot of people over the year and I’ve developed my own perspective and philosophy on the best way to do this. However, I don’t feel like I have all the answers so I asked a few people that I respect a lot (and fit in my definition of VP of People) to weigh in with their thoughts.
Ring Nishioka from BigDoor is up first. I’ve loved working with Ring over the past year as he’s helped grow the BigDoor team from five people when I first invested to the 20 or so people it is today. Ring totally gets it, has a great interviewing philosophy, and also has a fun blog called HRNasty. Enjoy.
Interviewing sets the tone of the culture to everyone that comes into the company. This is the very first exposure to the company. It can be an effective tool to use to not only set the culture with new hires but to reinforce the culture to existing hires involved during interviews. If you want a culture of teamwork, reinforce that during the interview process. If you want a culture of “always closing” reinforce that. Ring the bell during an interview and let the candidate know you celebrate closers.
I believe that everyone who comes into contact with a candidate should go through interview training. Even if the person doing the interviewing is a senior person, they should hear from the HR department what the company’s interviewing philosophy is. Just because they understand the Microsoft interviewing philosophy and conducted interviews there for 10 years doesn’t mean they know how to interview at a small startup, or what that start up is looking for. Interviewers should understand exactly what the company is looking for in the position, what specific questions need to be asked and how to represent the culture. If your company uses Behavioral Interviewing, that should be shared.
The candidate should have a consistent experience between interviews. Interviews hopefully consist of the following:
- Introduction from the person doing the interview including name, role, and tenure, and what they like about working with the company.
- Offer of a beverage and the opportunity to use the restroom.
- Explanation of what will happen during the interview. (We have some questions for you, I’d like to be able to answer any questions you have at the end, HR will tell you what your next steps are)
When I worked in Corporate America, we would dedicate an entire day to interview training through an interviewing class. A long time you think? This is the vehicle that will vet out the folks that you are going to pay 1000’s of dollars a year, maybe 100’s of thousands. Why wouldn’t you invest a little time into interview training? This will be way too long for most startups, but again, interview training can reinforce the culture. We had a lot of exercises including mock interviews in this class. We wanted folks to complete six mock interviews before letting them loose on our next potential candidate and chasing them to the competition. At BigDoor, I spend about one hour explaining our philosophy and then follow up with candidate specific training.
Even if the candidate is not qualified, you don’t want the candidate walking out of the interview feeling crushed, dumb, or stupid. Even if they are dumb or stupid you want them to walk out of the interview wanting to work with your company. Sometimes, when folks are not able to answer an interview question, the person doing the interview feels like they are wasting their time and body language conveys this. There is nothing worse than feeling put out while going through an interview process.
If the candidate isn’t a fit now, they may be a fit for another position in six months or two years. You want the candidate feeling like your company is a great place to work and remembering the experience as one of the best, especially if they made it through a few rounds. You want them telling their friends and family about your company, your openings, your products and especially your team. Just like we all share are car buying stories, we all share our interview stories. This is free advertising and the person that you are interviewing probably has friends with similar interests.
Most of our initial interviews are at a local coffee shop. I am trying to create a situation where the candidate is a little less nervous, and it is a more of a personal atmosphere. I want to create a personal connection between our company and the candidate. This isn’t something that most recruiters at the larger companies will do, and can set us apart. I want to see the best in a candidate; I don’t want to see their “nervous worst.” Some folks will feel like if they aren’t able to perform in a job interview, they won’t perform in the work environment. I believe that if you have the support of your peers, you know what is expected of you, you will perform better. You don’t have either of these in a sterile interview room.