Month: March 2013
The chance to apply to win a slot to live in my Google Fiber enabled house in Kansas City are open for one more week – ending on March 25th at 17:00 CDT. Last week Google opened up Fiber access to the neighborhood my house is in and I registered for the $120 / month plan (which will be included in the house – no charge for that, or for rent, for the winners.)
I’m looking for entrepreneurs who are committed to living in Kansas City for a year who have a unique and novel approach to taking advantage of 1 gigibit Internet. The house is next to Homes for Hackers and down the block from KC Startup Village. The winners get to live for free in the house for a year and get to be kept warm by 1 gigibit Internet.
Apply now.
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My dad is one of my best friends. I’ve known him for 47 years and other than a few relatively brief moments where we have struggled with classical father / son stuff as I was growing up and separating my identity, he’s always been a buddy, mentor, friend, cheerleader, and confidant. I’ve learned an enormous amount from him, and continue to treasure every moment I have with him.
My mom arranged a 75th birthday this weekend for my dad in San Antonio. They live in Dallas so I’m a little perplexed why we ended up in San Antonio, but when you are 75 you get to decide where you want to celebrate your birthday. So me, Amy, my brother Daniel, his wife Laura, their daughter Sabrina, and my dad’s brother Charlie and his wife Cindy descended on the Eilan Hotel. As expected, there was no shortage of confusion when there were Felds in four different rooms, but we had our usual fun tormenting the hotel staff who tried their hardest to keep us all straight.
As part of the birthday, my mom asked us all to write some thoughts to my dad about our relationship with him. She has compiled them and has them waiting for him when they arrive back in Dallas, but I thought I’d spring my thoughts on him a little early. Here they are!
Dad – as I sit here at 6:46am on 3/11/13 pondering all the amazing things we’ve done together, I closed my eyes and thought back as far as I could to some memories from my childhood. As I get older, I find that the memories fade to snippets, rather than entire concepts, but here are a few that I remember when I close my eyes and let my thoughts drift back to when I was a kid.
– Reading a little green book on endocrinology in my bedroom.
– Being in your very white and organized office at Endocrine Associates looking at all the New England Journal of Medicine books on the wall.
– Driving past the KERA building downtown in the car on the way to something with you and mom.
– Running the 1.5m loop around our neighborhood early in the morning with you.
– Sitting at the round kitchen table in those painfully uncomfortable white mesh chairs eating dinner and talking about what happened during the day.
– Having you hand me the keys to mom’s Corvette while you said “Enjoy it – be careful – don’t kill yourself.”
– Going to a store in Addison to buy my Apple II computer – I remember it was in the shopping center near where Houstons used to be.
– Driving to Frito-Lay’s data center to play on Charlie’s mainframe.
– Sitting in your study at 7310 being extremely frustrated with Hebrew a few weeks before my Bar Mitzvah.
– Sitting in our living room with all my friends who were seniors figuring out how to redesign our high school schedule, and then creating a movement to change it, so that we weren’t stuck in school all day.
– Doing algebra with you. I loved learning algebra. That was probably my favorite time in school at any point in time.
– Walking around Concord, MA with you and mom in October of my freshman year at MIT and wanting to quit because I was homesick and lonely. You told me to give it a year. I did, and by the time a year was up I was fine.
– Being pissed off at you so much that you said something like “I think it’s time for therapy” at which point I let a few days pass and then decided I wasn’t pissed off any more. This was 7th grade or something around there. I remember walking on the 1.5m loop with you as you tried to get through to me.
– Getting a huge hug from you after missing a the final sudden death playoff kick where we lost. Scott Albers (wow – where did that name come from) missed his kick – he was the star of our team – and I let the last one go by me and I cried.
– Doing rounds with you at Presbyterian and hating the way the hospital smelled. Hating the bright florescent lights. And hating the beeping noises.
– Sitting in the back of Cy Arnold’s convertible on the way to a Dallas Cowboys game.
– Getting picked up from Camp Champions when you had gallstones and just hoping we could get home so you could be ok.
– Saying something totally dumb on the CB Radio on a trip to Big Bend that caused a big backlash. I think my handle was “Teddy Bear.” You calmed me down and were very nice about it. We were with the Segals I think.
– Mrs. Waters Chocolate Cake. That stuff was awesome. I think she put drugs in it.
– Having the flu in my old bedroom and puking for a few days during Chanukah. There was a big Hefty trash bag full of stuff involved somehow.
– The first night of every trip to see your parents in Hollywood. It was one giant food orgy.
– Playing tennis with you.
– Riding in your Porsche and thinking I had the coolest dad in the world.
I love you!
I’m in San Antonio, in a rush to go participate in the Global Accelerator Network monthly call, where I’m talking with Richard Florida (the brilliant creator of the concept of the creative class) about Startup Communities, followed by a full day at TechStars Cloud and – well – I need a shower because I got to my hotel room at 12:30pm and I smell kind of like Huck from Scandal.
So – today you get a short eight minute interview of me and Amy with Sandy Grason where we talk about Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur. It’s a really wonderful interview – Amy told me this was the first time she’s done something like this and I thought she was awesome.
Enjoy!
Quick Left is hosting a Startup Life event with me and Amy on April 25th at their office in Boulder. Registration is open – as of now there are 20 tickets left (it’s a free event). Everyone who attends will get a signed copy of Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur, get to hear us talk about how we manage our Startup Life, and ask questions / join in a conversation about how to manage through the madness of a relationship when one – or both – of you are entrepreneurs.
Amy and I have decided to do a number of smaller events around Startup Life as we travel around the world together in 2013. We like the smaller events as they are more intimate and allow for a deeper conversation, where we learn things also. If you want to see if our paths will intersect in 2013, feel free to email me. We know we’ll be in New York, Boston, Dallas, San Diego, Iceland, and London this year. And of course we are in Boulder and Denver plenty if you want to do something with us.
We’ve gotten incredible feedback on Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur. We are open to any and all thoughts – good and bad – anytime. In addition, if you have a special story of your own to tell, we’ve got a lot of guest blogs up on the Startup Revolution site – just holler if you want to add one of your own.
I’ve been on a lot of boards. I’m still on a lot of boards. And I’ve been thinking about boards a lot as I work on my next book Startup Boards: Recreating the Board of Directors to Be Relevant to Entrepreneurial Companies.
I used to think every board needed a chairman and early in my investing career I was often this chairman (or co-chairman). At some point I began feeling like the chairman role in a private company both undermined the CEO and sent the wrong signal to the employees of the company, and I preferred that the CEO be the chairman. I also started disliking being the chairman, as it seemed to create a view that I had some kind of ultimate power and responsibility for the company that I rarely had, and that almost always belonged to the CEO. So I stopped being chairman and in a number of cases refused to be called it, even when I played the role of it. The one exception I made was non-profits, where chairman seems to have a somewhat different connotation. And since I’ve decided not to be on public company boards, I don’t have to make a decision in that context.
Several years ago I started using, and encountering, the phrase “lead director” more frequently. Recently, I decided it’s the right one and have used it to replace chairman in my vocabulary. And, when asked the question, “does a private company board need a chairman”, I now say “no, but it needs a lead director.”
The lead director is responsible for working with the CEO to manage the board of directors. The lead director is always the most active director and in many cases represents the largest non-founder shareholder in the company when a company is private. The lead director is not the communication conduit to the CEO – every director interacts directly with the CEO – but the lead director gets involved in any conflict between a director and the CEO, any concerns that arise, and any conflicts between directors. And the lead director helps the CEO manage the board meetings.
The lead director should be the CEO’s board confidant, organizer, and conflict resolver. I sort of like the word consigliere, as used in The Godfather, a lot, although it has both obvious negative connotations and a different actual function in real life than the one represented in the film, so I’m searching for a better one.
When I look at the boards I’m currently on, I play this role in many, but not all of them. And the phrase feels correct to me.
Do you have a lead director on your board? How about a chairman? What do they do and how does it feel? And is there a better word than consigliere?
While FAKEGRIMLOCK and all of the humans he has let survive are hanging out at the TechStars SXSW party, I’m at home with Amy, buried in a snowstorm, reading. I haven’t read much this year – I’ve been overwhelmed with work and writing and haven’t had much energy for reading. Which is dumb, since I love to read, and it’s an important way I discover new things and think about things I’m interested in.
A copy of Clay Christensen’s new book How Will You Measure Your Life? ended up finding its way to me. It’s signed by Clay and his co-authors James Allworth and Karen Dillon so I assume someone sent it to me. I read it tonight. It was timely and excellent.
One of the chapters in Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur that was especially challenging for me and Amy to write was the one about children. We don’t have any, so we enlisted a bunch of friends to write sections of it. I’m proud of what they wrote and think it hits the mark, but it is an area I struggle to understand since we made a deliberate decision not to have kids. So I dug into the middle section of the book where Clay spends a lot of time talking about children in the context of measuring one’s life. I learned a lot from it that I think I can apply to my interaction with children that are not my own.
Clay very deftly uses business concepts to set the stage for a deep discussion of how to think about your life, your values, and how you operate. The one I liked the most was his discussion of the theory of good and bad capital. It’s very nicely linked to the Lean Startup methodology (without realizing it). The theory is that early in their life, companies should be patient for growth but impatient for profit. Specifically, they should search for their business model, and long term strategy, before stepping on the gas. This is good capital. Bad capital early on will be impatient for growth ahead of profit.
When companies accelerate (search for growth) too early, they often drive right over a cliff. However, once the business model and strategy is figured out, then companies should switch modes to be impatient for growth but patient for profit. Invest like crazy when you’ve got it figured out.
The section that follows is awesome. You need to read it to get it, but imagine the notion of how you invest in friendships, in your children, and in yourself. At any particular time are you focused on growth or profit? Do you have them sequenced and allocated correctly? Clay’s punch line is:
“There are two forces that will be constantly working against [your investments in relationships with family and close friends.] First, you’ll be routinely tempted to invest your resources elsewhere – in things that will provide you with a more immediate payoff. And second, your family and friends rarely shout the loudest to demand your attention… If you don’t nurture and develop these relationships, they won’t be there to support you if you find yourself traversing some of the more challenging stretches of life.”
I’ve just had one of those stretches – I spent the past three months struggling with depression after having a bike accident, wearing myself out travelling for two months, and then ending up in the hospital to have surgery to remove a kidney stone. I’d made the right investments in my relationships so it was easy to cash in on a bunch of them, and I appreciate greatly everyone who invested energy and support in me. I came out of the depression around February 14th and I appreciate more than ever the value of investing in these relationships. I now have a powerful business analogy – that of good and bad capital.
There’s a lot more in How Will You Measure Your Life? It’s a great companion to Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur and very easy to recommend to anyone who is trying to live the best life they can.
I’m not at SXSW this year. I sort of miss it, but not really. Last year I cancelled at the last minute (the day before – I was already in San Antonio at TechStars Cloud) to come back to Boulder after Amy fell and broke her wrist. This year I just didn’t feel like I had enough extrovert reserves in my tank to deal with it. I stayed home and am hanging out at my house in Eldorado Canyon enjoying what looks like at least 12 inches of snow in the last 12 hours. And yes, I’m heading out later for a very quiet and transcendent run.
I got an email this morning from Ethan Duggan who is at SXSW in the #VegasTech booth with his dad Rick. I met Ethan when I was in Las Vegas in January for CES – he came up to me at the VegasTech event I did and showed me the beta of LazyHusband. It’s a cool app, but what’s even more awesome is that Ethan is 12. I met his dad Rick the previous year at CES at a breakfast we had talking about the Las Vegas tech community and how they could use some of the principals I was working on at the time around building Startup Communities that have since shown up in Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City.
I loved Ethan’s demo energy. He literally forced me to go through all the options while a crowd of people were waiting patiently, and respectfully, to talk to me. I think they were just as amazed as I was that a 12 year old was so enthusiastic about he app he’d created. And, out of the corner of my eye, I saw his proud dad smiling and thought of my dad. I started programming at the age of 12 (my first language was APL on an IBM mainframe in the basement of a Frito-Lay datacenter) and my dad – and my uncle Charlie (who was the VP MIS at Frito-Lay at the time) supported my enthusiasm for computers.
Ethan – I’m psyched for you. I just downloaded LazyHusband. Enjoy SXSW. And for all you out there at SXSW, go check out #VegasTech and see what Ethan is up to. If you are a husband (or a boyfriend) it’ll help you out!
UberDenver and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick are hosting a rally at Galvanize after the Colorado Public Utilities Commission holds a public hearing on proposed rules changes that could shut UberDenver down.
I’ve had a number of private conversations since I wrote my post The Colorado PUC Trying to Shut Down UberDenver. I continue to think the whole situation is insane especially given our state government’s strong position on advancing innovation in Colorado. The PUC’s behavior is clearly protectionist, anti-innovation, and undermines many of the efforts of entrepreneurs in Colorado to advance and amplify innovation here.
Apparently, the FTC agrees. I just read the FTC comments on the proposed rule changes and they do a very direct job of addressing 6001(ff), 6301(a), and 6309(d) which are the things I called out in my original blog post on 1/30/13. The punch line from the FTC memo is “FTC staff is concerned that these three proposed changes may significantly impair competition in passenger vehicle transportation services, including innovative methods of competition enabled by new software applications (“applications”) that allow consumers to arrange and pay for services in new ways that they might prefer, and thus harm consumers.”
Given that the PUC’s stated mission (on their website) is to “serve the public interest by effectively regulating utilities and facilities so that the people of Colorado receive safe, reliable, and reasonably-priced services consistent with the economic, environmental and social values of our state” I’m hopeful the PUC comes to its senses and serves the public interest in this case, rather than try to create new rules that protect entrenched and incubent companies.
I’ve been told in the private conversations that I’ve had that this will be resolved soon in a way that makes sense. Until then, I continue to encourage anyone in Colorado who is pro-innovation to support Uber’s efforts here and, if you are around Monday, head down to Galvanize between 6pm and 9pm for an UberRally.
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I’m spending the day working at Yesware. I’ve been an investor from inception and love what this company is doing. I also love the culture – I wrote about it in my post The Monastic Startup. If you use Gmail and Salesforce and are not also using Yesware, take a look at email for salespeople right now.
It’s an atypical day for me. I was supposed to be in DC all day today and tomorrow. I had full days of meetings, including two Startup Communities related events – one with the World Bank and one with a Congressional Caucus on Innovation. I had a few company meetings along with some stuff I was exploring. And I was going to drop in on 1776 and check it out.
Congress decided to shut down for the week because of the pending snow storm so the two events I built my trip around (the World Bank and the Congressional Caucus) were cancelled. So I decided to punt on going to DC and stay in Boston. I decided to have a “work at one of the companies I’m an investor in” day and get caught up on some stuff.
Last night before dinner I had a phone call with someone who gave me a great metaphor about “filling up your gas tank.” We were talking about the introvert / extrovert dynamic and how always being in “give / support mode” drains an introvert like me. He suggested that I make sure I do things on a daily basis that fill up my gas tank. Yup – that makes sense. But then he said something that was a new thought to me.
“Encourage everyone you work with to put some gas in someone else’s tank every day.”
It’s totally consistent with my give before you get philosophy, but it’s got a nice twist. Rather than being random, be deliberate about doing it, but random about how you do it.
For example, when a friend of mine had testicular cancer last year, I called him every day for 60 days during his chemo regimen. While I only talked to him every two or three days, I always left him a message. I was filling up his gas tank a little each day.
Another example is that I try to randomly call a different CEO of a company I’m on the board of every day. I don’t manage to do this every day, but I try. These are short calls, often voice mails that just startup with “Hey – thinking of you – no need to call me back.” I then often offer up an observation about something positive I see going on.
I like to be impulsive when I’m on the road. After lunch (I took out the Yesware team and yes, I paid) I stopped by Kinvey‘s new office on 99 Summer which is around the corner from Yesware. Kinvey went through TechStars several years ago and while we didn’t participate in their venture financing, I love the company and especially the CEO Sravish. I surprised him, gave him a hug, got a tour of the place, grabbed a few tshirts and some stickers, and headed back to Yesware. He sent me a link to a new post they just did titled The Boston Startup Map: Visualizing the City’s Tech Scene so I could do more random drop ins if I wanted.
These aren’t programmed, scheduled calls in that I’m being deliberate in advance. They are just me filling up someone else’s gas tank with some random positive feedback in the midst of an otherwise chaotic life. And it makes me feel good.
So – go fill up some gas tanks today. And tomorrow.