Month: June 2020
I woke up thinking “this has been the strangest quarter of my life.”
I used to think in days, weeks, months, quarters, years, and decades. I stopped doing that around the time I turned 50 because I was exhausted from the rhythm.
I’ve been thinking about Q2 the last few days, which has been the Covid quarter. March was pre-quarter insanity as March 11th through the end of the month was completely disorienting and chaotic. I wrote the Three Crisis post on March 31st, which meant that I had gotten my mind, at least at a high level, around what was going on. Near the end of the post, I wrote:
Finally, this is not just going to “be over.” That’s magical thinking. There will be many different phases of this, but if you prepare for a long-term experience, you’ll be in a much healthier emotional place. I personally believe that April is going to be an awful month in the United States as the true extent of the health crisis finally hits in our country. The actions we are taking right now will determine whether April is the worst of it, but know that May will be rough, and the summer will be unlike “a normal summer” as, even in the best case, we being existing in the context of meaningful long-term societal adjustments.
April was awful. When it was finally over, Amy and I joked that April had 92 days in it. We ushered in May together on a Friday night with Life Dinner at home and then proceeded to have another miserable month with 57 days in it. I took a week off the grid in the middle of May, just as I was about to break.
On May 25th, George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis. A fourth crisis, one of racial equity, was added to the mix, and while June only felt like it has lasted 43 days, it has been exhausting.
Unfortunately, I’m incredibly pessimistic about July. For the last 30 days, our country has engaged in the magical thinking I worried about at the end of March, and the Covid caseload has exploded. I get that it is summer, people can’t handle being cooped up in their houses, and everyone wants life to go back to the way it was before the emergence of Covid.
I simply don’t think that is going to happen. Ever.
Q2 sucked so much worse for so many people other than me. I’m healthy. Amy and I are safe. We are isolated in a comfortable place and enjoy being together all the time. I’m able to work from home without any significant challenges. Amy loves me, and my dogs love me. I’m aware of my privilege and thankful for it.
I fear July is going to be awful, just like April was awful. I hope I’m wrong. I really want to be wrong. I’m usually optimistic. I want to be optimistic at this moment. But I don’t see any signals anywhere that I should be. So, I’m emotionally prepared for a really rough month.
When I reflect on that, I realize that what weighs on me are mostly things I can’t control. So, as I’ve been doing for the last three months, I’m going to continue to put my energy into things I can impact, be available to many who I can help and support, and try to affect positive change. But, unlike the past three months, I’m going to take better care of myself.
And that starts now, with a run in circles around my 40 acres.
I’m continuing my weekend reading goal of a book on racial equity. Last week was Kingonomics: Twelve Innovative Currencies for Transforming Your Business and Life Inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by Rodney Sampson who I’m partnering with on the #RacialEquityEcosystemPledge.
Yesterday I read Ijeoma Oluo’s So you want to talk about race. It was excellent.
My goal with reading these books is to bring a beginners mind to racial equity, allow myself to feel uncomfortable while reading, and let the impact of what I read over the summer accumulate, with a hope that I can personally eliminate many of my unconscious biases, unhelpful behavior, while unlearning (or challenging my own) perspectives that I’ve built up over my 54 years as a White person in America.
Several of my Black friends recommended Ijeoma’s book as one that I should read early on. As book #3 on my weekend reading, I’m glad I put this at the front of the list. It has 17 chapters – each which answers a very specific question about race. Following is the list.
- Is it really about race?
- What is racism?
- What if I talk about race wrong?
- Why am I always being told to “check my privilege?”
- What is intersectionality and why do I need it?
- Is police brutality really about race?
- How can I talk about affirmative action?
- What is the school-to-prison pipeline?
- What can’t I say the “N” word?
- What is cultural appropriation?
- Why can’t I touch your hair?
- What are microaggressions?
- Why are our students so angry?
- What is the model minority myth?
- But what if I hate Al Sharpton?
- I just got called racist, what do I do now?
- Talking is great, but what else can I do?
A day after George Floyd was murdered, I called a Black friend and asked, “what are two things you are involved in that I can immediately support with time and money.”
He had a response that I then heard echoed in slightly different ways in several conversations. The composite is below:
Thank you so much for approaching things this way. I’m so tired of explaining to White people what I’m going through, what I go through every day, and why so many things in America are horrible when you aren’t White. It’s not my responsibility to do that anymore, and I’m glad you are trying to get involved, rather than ask me to explain what’s going on.
Ijeoma’s book was extremely clear and enlightening on all of these questions. Near the end, there was a paragraph in the chapter “Talking is great, but what else can I do?” that really hit home.
“Talk. Please talk and talk and talk some more. But also act. Act now, because people are dying now in this unjust system. How many lives have been ground by racial prejudice and hate? How many opportunities have we already lost? Act and talk and learn and fuck up and learn some more and act again and do better. We have to do this all at once. We have to learn and fight at the same time. Because people have been waiting far too long for their chance to live as equals in this society.“
I strongly recommend Ijeoma Oluo’s So you want to talk about race.
Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images
My first reaction to this photo was “you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” My next reaction was the title of this post, “Humans Just Don’t Understand Complex Systems.”
The Covid crisis is a complex system. I’ve had my head deep in complex systems for the past year as I worked with Ian Hathaway on our new book The Startup Community Way. We never anticipated that the framework we used for the book around complex systems would broadly apply to the world beyond startup communities, but we find ourselves in the middle of a moment where, as a species, our lack of ability to understand how complex systems work is causing accelerating misery all over the world.
We are about to launch the pre-order campaign for the book (if you are interested in it, now’s the time to go preorder The Startup Community Way) and I spent the morning finishing up some content that our PR firm asked for.
A few of the things I wrote jumped out to me in the context of the above photo. One of the phrases was:
“As complex systems, these communities go through tipping points or phase transitions, where the overall state suddenly goes through a radical transformation. Seemingly small actions produce dramatic success but are the result of the infinitesimal, often unseen changes happening over time.”
Sound relevant to this moment? It’s framed in the positive, but applies equally to the negative, where “Seemingly small actions produce dramatic failure but are the result of the infinitesimal, often unseen changes happening over time.”
I’ll end with my answer to the question: Why do we need startup communities now more than ever?
Sustainable economic growth has slowed in many parts of the world. The income and wealth divide within many countries has been dangerously accelerating, and with the Covid crisis, massive global economic dislocation is upon us. Entrepreneurship is the means for upward mobility and wealth creation. Startup communities are critical for improving the impact of entrepreneurship in local geographics and dramatically increase the probability of success of positive economic growth over a long period of time.
In this moment, I’ve decided to create a Startup Community community—a global network for anyone interested in or involved in startup communities around the world. I just spun up a Mighty Network community to experiment and see if that’s a good approach, vs. a Slack community or something else. If you are game to engage as an early alpha user to give me feedback, please jump in and join the Startup Community community.
Don’t forget to pre-order The Startup Community Way. And, the 2nd Edition of Startup Communities is coming out at the same time, so if you want a refresh, pre-order it also!
If you are a venture capitalist, I strongly encourage you to join the Valence Funding Network to provide Black founders with direct access to VCs. I’ve joined along with a number of my peers.
Kobie Fuller at Upfront Ventures started Valence in the fall of 2019. Valence launched our beta platform to provide a digital home for Black talent to connect, access opportunities, and aggregate their power. Valence exists to change the dynamic where Black founders receive a disproportionately low amount of venture funding (today – just 1 percent).
Kobe’s quote in the press release kind of says it all:
“For years, Black entrepreneurs have been told that Silicon Valley is a meritocracy, but at the same time most haven’t had access to the top networks, the warm introductions, and the mentorship that underpin lasting success in tech. Valence is upending this completely by bringing the top VCs to Valence to compete for the best Black founders.” said Valence CoFounder and General Partner at Upfront Ventures, Kobie Fuller. “We want to even the playing field with the goal of exponentially growing the number of Black-owned startups that get funded.”
The 27 VC firms who are inaugural members of the Funding Network have a cumulative $60 Billion+ under management and now have direct access to Valence’s membership base of ~8,000 and growing Black professionals.
One of thing I’ve committed to is the “Boost feature” which allows any member on the network to request a 30 minute meeting with me to pitch what they are doing. I’ll honor all the Boost requests and, at the minimum, provide constructive feedback and any introductions to my network that I think would be helpful.
If you are a Black professional, I encourage you to join the Valence community. And, if you are a VC, please join also and engage as part fo the Valence Funding Network.
Misty Robotics’ goal is to create a robot platform (hardware and software) that any developer can use to build useful and immediately applicable robot applications.
A number of early customers have started building solutions. When the Covid crisis hit, companies started to realize that to be safe, checking people’s temperature on entry into a building would be a powerful preventative measure. So, Misty decided to build a specific application for temperature screening.
It took about 30 days to go from idea to beta application that is validated in office environments. The application includes:
- Automated, contactless, and touchless temperature screening
- Interactive health question survey with configurable screening questions
- Customizable greetings
- Immediate pass/fail result determination and recording
- SMS or email notifications/alerts
- Web-based administration and reporting
- Choice of 25 languages
- Polite and engaging interaction experience
I think it’s an awesome alternative to the approach of having a human being do the screening. The idea of having a human greeter temperature screen people on entry into an office environment just sounds like an unsafe, tedious, and uncomfortable job to me right now.
Misty is in beta with this and already has several paid beta customers. If you are interested in learning more, sign up for a demo.
Oh yeah. That Covid thing is still around. And in the US, it’s getting worse again because it never went away as much as our magical thinking hoped it did.
I’m an optimistic worrier (like Madeleine Albright, who explores that concept with Tim Ferriss in this wonderful podcast that I listened to while running in loops around my 40 acres.)
This morning I read Joanne Wilson’s post Where Are We Going? and nodded my head up and down all the way through it. She starts off with “There is so much change going on that it is hard to pinpoint where we are going? One thing is for sure, we are chartering new territories.” Then, she covers COVID-19, Trump’s Tulsa Rally, Protests, Facebook, Hydroxychloroquine, Juneteenth, Bolton’s book, Voting day as a holiday, the Senate, Healthcare, Consumption behavior, anger, incompetence and wraps it up with
“There is no doubt we are living in a changing world but the bigger question is “where are we going?”
Yup. All those same things are wandering around inside my brain.
And then CovidTennis. Djokovic thought playing unprotected and horsing around was a good idea. He’s not the only one. It will be informative to learn how well athletes recover from Covid and if there are any lasting downstream effects. Generally, I’m a big Joker fan, but c’mon.
If you are looking for podcasts to listen too, following are a pair from Brian Hollins, a founding board member of BLCK VC.
The first is one with me where Brian is the interviewer titled Brad Feld (Foundry Group) on never having “fake days”, how to be a better ally, the impact of second order effects, and the failure of warning systems to warn you when they are failing.
The other is from The Full Ratchet and is an interview with Brian titled Breaking into VC; Excelling at Goldman Sachs; and the Origin of BLCK VC (Brian Hollins).
Brian did a great job with both of them.
Today, I participated in the Juneteeneth 4.0 Celebration that was hosted by OHUB, ThePlug, and Living Cities and led by Rodney Sampson. In addition to being part of a panel, I made several commitments as part of the #RacialEquityEcosystemPledge. Here’s the fact sheet released by OHUB today.
I’ve agreed to:
- Do a monthly podcast called Equity.District with Rodney on racial equity in entrepreneurial ecosystems and other issues around racial equity in entrepreneurship.
- Help organize and co-host a Racial Equity conference inclusive of Rodney’s network, my network, and anyone else who wants to participate.
- Make a meaningful financial contribution to the OHUB Foundation from the Anchor Point Foundation. If you are able, I encourage you to donate as well.
- Make a meaningful financial contribution to at least two more Black-led ecosystem building organizations recommended by OHUB.
- Work with Rodney and the OHUB team on an ongoing campaign to raise money for Black ecosystem builders, funds, and founders.
The entire event is below. There’s a lot of awesome stuff in it.
In addition to the awesomeness, I made a mistake. Right after I spoke, I got a text from a White friend who is an entrepreneur I’ve invested in who watched the event live.
I immediately sent Rodney an email under the heading “I apologize for the microaggression.”
Apparently in my closing comments I said that you were “articulate” (I wasn’t aware that I used the word.) While I hadn’t seen this NY Times article I know that “articulate” is viewed as a microaggression.
So, regardless of whether it was intended, or you heard it, or anything else, I want to simply apologize.
You are incredible. You inspire me.
Rodney quickly responded:
Thanks for this. Tell your friend they are right. Apology accepted. However, in this case, I know that you meant “vocal in my leadership”. 🙂
We’ve got a lot of work to do. I’m up for it.
When I make a mistake, I try to own it, apologize, and learn from it. I’m far from perfect here, but Rodney’s response, by acknowledging my mistaking, quickly accepting my apology, and getting back to work with me motivates me even more to work with him!
I’m going to participate in the Juneteeneth 4.0 Celebration tomorrow from 1pm – 4pm ET. It’s being hosted by OHUB, ThePlug, and Living Cities.
I’ll be part of a fireside chat with Rodney Sampson (CEO, OHUB) and Ben Hecht (CEO, Living Cities) where, among other things, we’ll discuss the introduction of Racial Equity Pledge.
Rodney is one of the dozen or so Black colleagues that I reached out to and talked to over the last two weeks to learn more about what I could get involved in and immediately support with time and money. Ohub is one of those organizations and I’ve already learned a lot from Rodney, such as several different ways to think about changing the equation around racial inequity in tech. A framework I got from him that I immediately related to is his Economic Development Pyramid.
Rodney did an interview with CNBC several weeks ago that lit me up with enthusiasm for working with him.
Foundry Group is closed on Friday in celebration of Juneteenth. We had an email thread go around yesterday among the entire team discussing what we are doing tomorrow, which includes attending a number of Juneteenth events, along with reading and reflecting on racial injustice.
If you are available and interested, please join us for the Juneteeneth 4.0 Celebration.
I have a few minutes each morning between when I wake up and when I go downstairs to meditate. I do two things during this time: (1) basic hygiene stuff and (2) let whatever thoughts are in my head roll around.
This morning I had the following thought.
It would be nice to just fast forward to 2025.
During some of my recent public talks, I’ve described how the Covid crisis has accelerated work and technology change in a dramatic way. While I’ve said that “when this is over, we are going to wake up in 2025”, I then have to explain what I mean by “wake up in 2025.” My idea of simply fast-forwarding to 2025 emerged from that.
The Covid crisis has generated four crises – health, economic, mental health, and racial inequity – that are intermingled. Each individual crisis is complex, not new, and ebbs and flows in the forefront of our collective societal mind.
I recently had someone question me about the idea that the economic crisis was continuous. They asked, “Haven’t we had a bull market for a decade?” My response was, “Income inequality, the occupy movement, Venezuela, European Debt” and they interrupted with “Ah, I get it.”
Usually one of these crises is front of mind for a period of time. I was on sabbatical with Amy when the Ferguson Protests occurred after the Michael Brown murder. We talked about it for several days, explored our own feelings, but didn’t take any meaningful action other than a few philanthropic contributions after the moment passed.
After I had a six-month depressive episode in 2013, I put energy into trying to destigmatize depression and mental health issues, especially in tech and entrepreneurship. While my effort here has been consistent, the impact is slow and often invisible.
Remember #MeToo? Gender inequity in tech has lessened, but it’s still a major issue.
It goes on, and on, and on. Yet, right now, these issues, and others, are all colliding in the foreground, with incredible intensity, interwoven in a way that makes an already complex system extremely difficult to navigate.
And then there’s technology. In January, no one would have said “the vast majority of the office-based workforce around the world with be working from home, doing video conferences all day long.” Or, “business travel will be largely non-existent.” Or, “the only restaurant meals you will eat will be takeout or home delivery.” Or, “telemedicine adoption will make a decade of progress in four weeks.” Each of these activities is dramatically impacted by the technology we have today and enabled in ways that technology providers might have envisioned, but that mainstream society didn’t expect to adopt broadly until it suddenly had to.
I recognize that most of us are processing an enormous amount of stimuli in real-time. That’s incredibly challenging and ultimately exhausting.
I fully expect several other crises will emerge this year. If you wonder what else could possibly come up, I’ll just remind you that it’s an election year in the US, which is just another massive input into a very complex system.
I’m not a prognosticator or a predictor of the future. Instead, I like to pretend I’m in the future, look backward, and try to figure out what to do in the present. While I’m living in the moment, I’m going to simultaneous pretend that I fast-forwarded to 2025.