Month: June 2015
When we were approached with an investment opportunity by Matt Van Horn and Nikhil Bhogal in 2014, they started with a single, lighthearted but thought-provoking question:
Why does your kitchen look the same as Don Draper’s?
There has been little significant innovation in how we prepare and cook food at home since the microwave oven. In recent years, we’ve been delighted by in-home products like those from Nest and Sonos which have tested the waters of the connected home market and proven that it’s there.
My TV, thermostat, light system, security cameras, and even my 3D Printer is a delight to use. But what about the kitchen? Amy and I continue to complain to each other about how miserable the user interfaces are on the very expensive stuff in our kitchen and the blinking 12:00 on my super high end Miele oven crushed my soul recently. Each year we expect to see something amazing at CES only to encounter proof of concepts from large companies that George Jetson wouldn’t even be happy using.
When we met with Matt and Nikhil a year ago, they gave us a vision for what could be done in the kitchen around the notion of the connected home. Their vision has come to life with their first product – the June Intelligent Oven, a computer-based powerful and easy-to-use countertop oven.
This thing works like magic. Except, of course, there is no magic involved, just computers and software and an awesome oven. Some of the biggest brains in hardware and software (from teams like Apple, Google, Facebook, Nest, and GoPro) as well as product designers and chefs, joined forces in a house in San Francisco and worked in stealth for a year. This week they are showing the world the June Oven.
You can pre-order to save a spot in line and they have a referral program to help you and your friends shave a little money off, but I’ll let you read more about that on their site. Also, use the promocode BRADFELD to get an additional $100 off the final shipping order.
This team is fearless. They put a camera in a box that heats to 450 degrees fahrenheit and made it safe to touch. It recognizes the mostly commonly cooked food you put in it and automatically configures itself. The cooking process is live streamed so you can watch and control the oven from the couch.
It’s just awesome to see it all come together. I just pre-ordered two of them. Join me in the fun.
I’m a huge fan of William Hertling. His newest book, The Turing Exception, is dynamite. It’s the fourth book in the Singularity Series, so you really need to read them from the beginning to totally get it, but they are worth every minute you’ll spend on them.
William occasionally sends me some thoughts for a guest post. I always find what he’s chewing on to be interesting and in this case he’s playing around with doing a Drake’s Equation equivalent for social networks. Enjoy!
Drake’s Equation is used to estimate the number of planets with currently communicating life, which helps us predict the odds of finding intelligent life in the universe. You can read the Wikipedia article for more information, but the basic idea is to multiply together a number of functions: the number of stars in our galaxy, the fraction of those that have planets, the average percent of planets that could support life, etc.
I’m currently writing a novel about social networks, and one of the areas that’s interesting to me is what I think of as the empty network problem: a new social network has little benefit unless my friend are there. If I’m an early adopter, I might give it a few days, and then leave. If my friends show up later, and I’ve already given up on it, then they don’t get any benefit either.
Robert Metcalfe, inventor of ethernet, coined Metcalfe’s Law, which says “the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n^2).”
Social networks actually have a more rigorous form of that law: “the value of a social network is proportional to the square of the number of connected friends.” That is, I don’t care about the number of strangers using a network, I care about the number of friends. (Friends being used loosely here to include friends, family, coworkers, business associates, etc.)
Drake’s Equation helps predict the success of finding life in the universe because it takes into account the rise and fall of civilizations: two civilizations must exist at the same time and within observable distance of each other in other to “find intelligent life”.
So there must be a similar type of equation that can help predict a person’s adoption of a new social network and takes into account that we’re only willing to try a network for so long before giving up.
Here’s my first shot at this equation:
P = (nN * fEA * fAv * fBE * tT) / (tB * nF) * B
P = probability of long-term adoption
nN = Size of my network (number of friends)
fEA = Fraction of my friends who are Early Adopters
fAv = fraction of those who have available time to try a new network
fBE = fraction that overcome the Barrier to Entry
tT = Average length of time people Try the network
nB = Average length of time it takes to see Benefit of the new network
nF = Number of Friends needed to see benefit
B = The unique benefit or desirability of the network
In plain English: The probability of a given person becoming a long term user of a new social network is a function of the number of their friends who also adopt and how long they remain there divided by the length of time and number of friends it takes to see the benefit multiplied by the size of the unique benefit offered by the social network.
Some ideas that fall out from the equation:
- A network that targets teens, who may tend to have more time and may be more likely to be early adopters, will have an easier time gaining adoption than a network that targets busy executives, all other things being equal.
- A network that has a benefit when even two friends connect will see easier initial adoption than one that requires a dozen friends to connect.
- A network whose benefit applies to distant connections is at an advantage compared to one that only offers a benefit to close friends (because N is larger)
- A sufficiently large unique benefit can overcome nearly any disadvantage.
- Social gaming is interesting, because it provides benefit even when connected to no one, the benefit increases when connected to strangers, and then increases even more when connected to friends.
What do you think?
The other day, Mark Suster wrote a critically important post titled One Simple Paragraph Every Entrepreneur Should Add to Their Convertible Notes. Go read it – I’ll wait. Or, if you just want the paragraph, it’s:
“If this note converts at a price higher than the cap that you have been given you agree that in the conversion of the note into equity you agree to allow your stock to be converted such that you will receive no more than a 1x non-participating liquidation preference plus any agreed interest.”
I also have seen the problem Mark is describing. As an angel investor, I have never asked for a liquidation preference on conversion that is greater than the dollars I’ve invested. But, I’ve seen some angels ask for it (or even demand it), especially when there is ambiguity around this and the round happens much higher than the cap. The entity getting screwed on this term are the founders, who now have a greater liquidation preference hanging over their heads than the dollars invested by the angels. Mark has a superb example of how this works on his blog.
We’ve been regularly running into another problem with doing a financing after companies have raised convertible notes. Most notes are ambiguous as to whether they convert on a pre-money or a post-money basis. This can be especially confusing, and ambiguous, when there are multiple price caps. There are also some law firms whose standard documents are purposefully ambiguous to give the entrepreneur theoretical negotiating flexibility in the first priced round.
If the entrepreneur knows this and is using it proactively so they get a higher post-money valuation, that’s fair game. But if they don’t know this, and they are negotiating terms with a VC who is expecting the notes to convert in the pre-money, it can create a mess after the terms are agreed to somewhere between the term sheet stage and the final definitives. This mess is especially yucky if the lawyers don’t focus on the final cap table and the capitalization opinion until the last few days of the process. And, it gets even messier when some of the angels start suggesting that the ambiguity should work a certain way and the entrepreneur feels boxed in by the demands of his convertible note angels on one side and priced round VC on the other.
The simple solution is to define this clearly up front. For example, in the Mattermark investment from last year, I said “We are game to do $5m of $6.5m at $18.5m pre ($25m post).” When I made the offer, I did not know how the notes worked, what the cap was, or what the expectation of the angels were. But when Danielle Morrill and I agree on the terms, it was unambiguous that I expected the notes to convert in the pre-money.
In contrast, in the Glowforge deal, which Dan Shapiro talks about in his fun post Glowforge Completed its Series A with an Investor we Never Met, I was less crisp. I knew that Dan’s notes were uncapped with a discount and I knew his lawyer well, so I didn’t define the post-money in this case. Since the notes were uncapped, I expected them to convert into the pre-money. But I didn’t specify it. The notes were ambiguous and we focused on this at the end of the process after docs had gone out to the angel investors. Rather than fight about this, I accepted this as a miss on my part and let the post-money float up a little as a result. The total amount of the notes was relatively small so it didn’t have a huge impact on the economics of the investment but we could have avoided the ambiguity by dealing it with more clearly up front.
Recognize that this is simply a negotiation. In Mattermark’s case where there were a lot of notes stacked up, I cared a lot about the post-money. In Glowforge’s case where the note amount was modest, I didn’t care very much. And, while I care a lot about my entry point as an early stage investor, I’ve learned not to optimize for a small amount in the context of a pricing negotiation.
I think we are just starting to see the complexity, side effects, and unintended consequences created by the massive proliferation of convertible notes over the past few years. I’m pretty mellow about them as I’ve accepted that they are part of the funding landscape, in contrast to a number of angels and VCs who feel strongly one way or the other. As derivative note vehicles have appeared, such as SAFE, that try to create synthetic equity out of a note structure, we’ll see another wave of unintended consequences in the next few years. As someone who failed fast at creating a standardized set of seed documents in 2010, I’ve accepted that dealing with the complexity and side affects of all of the different documents is just part of the process.
Fundamentally, it’s up to the entrepreneur to be informed about what is going on. I hope Mark’s blog post, and this one, are additive to the overall base of entrepreneurial knowledge. And, if Jason and I ever write a third edition of Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist our chapter on convertible notes might now be two chapters.
On Saturday, I polished off Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook. I started it last weekend at the tail end of my Weekend Reading on Startup Communities but four books weren’t in me so I didn’t finish it.
It was excellent and is now on my “all startup CEOs must read” list. My recommended book list for startup CEOs is very long, but there are only three books on the must read list.
- Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business by Matt Blumberg
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
and now #3: Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook by Dan Shapiro.
All three are from experienced CEOs. Each is a delightful mix of stories, advice, and experiences. They are all contemporary, highly relevant, and fun to read. Regardless of the number of times you’ve been a startup CEO, from having started ten companies to being an aspiring CEO/founder, you will learn a lot from each of them.
I don’t think I’ve ever physically been in the same place as Ben, but we’ve exchanged emails in the past and he was willing to allow me to republish his classic essay The Struggle in the book I wrote with my wife Amy – Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur. In contrast, I’ve known and worked with Matt since 2001 when I first invested in his company Return Path (well – it’s a little more complicated than just an investment – see my post Return Path Launches Email Intelligence from 2012 where I recounted some of the story.)
Return Path is an extraordinary company that I’m proud to have been involved with for the past 12 years. At our board meeting last week, Matt gave me and Fred Wilson our 12 year anniversary gift – a pair of red Return Path-branded Adidas sneakers. I still vividly remember the phone call Fred and I had where we cut a deal to merge two nascent companies – Veripost and Return Path – in what became Return Path. We cut a deal in 10 minutes – I offered up a 50/50 merger and Fred suggested he wanted a little more since Return Path had raised 3x the money Veripost had. I responded with “how about 55/45″ and Fred said “it’s a deal.”
Matt has become one of my best friends and I treasure every minute I get to spend with him.
Dan is a new friend. The first email I remember getting from him was from 9/3/13, titled My new project: Robot Turtles, and he acknowledges in Hot Seat that it’s the one time he spammed everyone in his address book. I don’t know why I was in his address book, so I asked Dan, and he dug up his very first email to me, which happened to be about the term sheet series that my partner Jason Mendelson and I wrote that lead to our book Venture Deals.
The first substantive email exchange we had was on 3/18/15, as a result of an intro from Ben Huh, the CEO of Cheezburger and another long time friend. We went back and forth on a rapid fire thread about Dan’s newest company Glowforge and the round he was starting to raise. We agreed to terms on a financing on 4/20/15 and closed a $9m financing with True Ventures on 5/8/15, at which point Amy and I went to Paris to celebrate (actually, we just went on vacation for one of our quarterly off the grid vacations.) There were a number of articles around the financing, but the best – and most thorough explanation of the company – was in Natasha Lomas‘s Techcrunch article Seattle’s Glowforge Is Building A Maker Machine To Challenge Amazon Prime.
Suffice it to say that in 75 days, I’ve gotten a good dose of Dan and am having an absolute blast working with him. He’s definitely got a healthy dose of evil genius combined with deep wisdom from being around the startup block a number of times. He’s tireless, intense, but delightfully funny and witty. He’s got extremely broad range as a CEO and entrepreneur, which comes through in his daily activities as well as his writing.
Which brings me back to Hot Seat. Like Matt and Ben’s books, it’s very fast paced. The chapters are short, written in first person, and easy to read. He’s not shy about calling things out clearly, including his own crazy experiences, especially the things he totally fucked up or had no idea about when he first encountered them. His examples are great, including some from mutual friends including Rand Fishkin and Ben Huh. The book is well organized and easy to dip in and out of. He flogs Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist, which I put in the flattering special bonus category. And – he’s got great footnotes in each chapter which give you a special dose of his sense of humor.
I hope to get to work with Dan for a long time on Glowforge. But, regardless, I know I’ll be regularly recommending Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook to every CEO I know.