I usually sleep in on Sunday’s but I’ve got a 16 mile run and want to meet Amy at the end of it at 10:30 for brunch. So – good morning 5am and my normal daily reading routine. I ran across a lot of intriguing stuff this morning that I thought I’d share with you. I encourage you to trade your TV watching time for a handful of clicks.
Will Google’s Purity Pay Off? If you have engaged in the “yes Twitter is cool, but how will it make money” conversation I encourage you to read this BusinessWeek article from Pearl Harbor Day in 2000. And I quote: “LIMITED BUSINESS. But how will Google ever make money? There’s the rub. The company’s adamant refusal to use banner or other graphical ads eliminates what is the most lucrative income stream for rival search engines. “
Are We Home Alone? Sometimes Thomas Friedman nails it and sometimes he doesn’t. Today, he nails it. I completely agree that Obama (who I voted for) completely blew it on the AIG bonus thing. Per Friedman:
“President Obama missed a huge teaching opportunity with A.I.G. Those bonuses were an outrage. The public’s anger was justified. But rather than fanning those flames and letting Congress run riot, the president should have said: “I’ll handle this.” He should have gone on national TV and had the fireside chat with the country that is long overdue. That’s a talk where he lays out exactly how deep the crisis we are in is, exactly how much sacrifice we’re all going to have to make to get out of it, and then calls on those A.I.G. brokers — and everyone else who, in our rush to heal our banking system, may have gotten bonuses they did not deserve — and tells them that their president is asking them to return their bonuses “for the sake of the country.” Had Mr. Obama given A.I.G.’s American brokers a reputation to live up to, a great national mission to join, I’d bet anything we’d have gotten most of our money back voluntarily. Inspiring conduct has so much more of an impact than coercing it. And it would have elevated the president to where he belongs — above the angry gaggle in Congress.”
Dov Seidman, the CEO of LRN (I’m an investor) summarizes it well: “Laws tell you what you can do. Values inspire in you what you should do. It’s a leader’s job to inspire in us those values.”
Tit for tat: TomTom sues Microsoft for patent infringement: The Microsoft / TomTom patent suit battle is heating up. This is an important one to watch for a variety of reasons including it’s one of the few offense patent litigations from Microsoft to date.
SpringStage goes live: A year ago, David Cohen (TechStars co-founder and author of the ColoradoStartups blog) told me about the idea he had with Alex Muse for creating a national network of startup blogs. SpringStage now has over 30 startup blogs in its network. Pretty cool – take a look.
Concur’s stock sinks after CEO admits he didn’t earn degree: I have never, ever understood why people lie about graduating from college. The reputational effect (and general ease) of getting caught – especially today – far outweighs any benefits. For the record, I have an S.B. (bachelors degree) and S.M. (masters degree) in management science from MIT and was in the Ph.D. program for three years before I got kicked out. I do not have a Ph.D. My dad is Dr. Feld, but I am not.
Investing in open source hardware: Eric von Hippel – my MIT advisor and professor that I worked with (before getting kicked out of the Ph.D. program) has been researching user driven innovation since the 1970’s. He invited me to come talk at his annual MIT Innovation Lab seminar last week about open source hardware from a VC perspective. I wasn’t able to make it to Boston, but suggested Bijan Sabet from Spark Capital talk, as Bijan is an investor in BugLabs and Boxee and has a point of view about this stuff.
What Is A Good Venture Return: Fred Wilson digs a little deeper into what makes a good venture return on the heals of the PE Hub article asserting that the $590m acquisition of Pure Digital by Cisco was a decent return for a middle-of-the road VC firm, but “for big name backers Benchmark Capital and Sequoia Capital that’s pretty much a dud.” Fred decomposes this more and concludes “It’s an investment that worked out well for the investors and I am sure they are quite happy they made the investment and with the returns.”
Try, Try Again, or Maybe Not: I guess I have to go read this paper by Harvard professor Paul Gompers, Anna Kovner, Josh Lerner, and David Sharfstein. In it, they claim to have determined that the answer to the question “Does failure breed new knowledge or experience that can be leveraged into performance the second time around?” is “In some cases, yes, but over all, he says, “We found there is no benefit in terms of performance.” Mark Pincus and Zynga (I’m an investor) are highlighted in the article. I’ve been an investor in two of Mark’s successes and missed one of his failures; my experience is that the lessons he learned from his failure have been extremely well integrated into his brain. My own anecdotal experience runs counter to the study – I love working with entrepreneurs that have both success and failure.
Ok – I’ve stalled long enough. Time to go run.
I’m back in Boulder from my Q1 vacation with Amy. We spent the first few days at our ski house in Keystone with the Wilson Quintet (Fred, Joanne, Jessica, Emily, and Josh). We then went to Paradise Island in the Bahamas with our Boston friends Warren and Ilana Katz. We had a great time chilling out, enjoying our friends, sleeping a lot, eating at Nobu (twice), reading, and being completely off the grid.
I read five books on vacation. All of them were great; two were incredible and highly relevant.
The first was an economy themed book. John Bogle’s Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life was one of the clearest books I’ve ever read about the difference between investment and speculation. Bogle is the founder of The Vanguard Group and is a tireless advocate of the superiority of index funds over traditional actively-managed mutual funds. I’ll follow up with a longer post on my view of the difference between investment and speculation; suffice it to say that I think America (and the world) needs a lot more investment and a lot less speculation. Bogle also does a great job talking about what matters in life (yes – “enough” has several meanings in this book.)
The second was a foreign policy themed book. I learned more about how to think about foreign policy in the context of the US government by reading Madeleine Albright’s Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America’s Reputation and Leadership than I’ve learned cumulatively from all other sources I’ve been exposed to over the past decade. She writes plainly, with a clarity of thought that I find unique to books like this. Brilliant.
If you are a leader of any organization, you should read both of these books. They will help you realign your principles with our current reality while giving you a clear context to consider what has gone wrong with the US economy and US foreign policy. While you probably won’t agree with everything written, both books will cause you to pause and think, which I always find to be a good thing.
Lest you think it was a completely serious vacation, I can assure you that President Will Lee once again saves the world in Mounting Fears by Stuart Woods (and yes – the wordplay in the title is delicious) and Nicholai Hel holds up well as the protagonist in Trevanian’s classic Shibumi, although it took me a while to get into it this time around (my fourth I think).
Finally, I started the week with Dean Karnazes 50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days — and How You Too Can Achieve Super Endurance! . Karnazes is a remarkable athlete, human being, and story teller. If you are a runner or endurance athlete, Dean never disappoints.
I just read Howard Lindzon’s book The Wallstrip Edge: Using Trends to Make Money — Find Them, Ride Them, and Get Off. It’s a really fun book – 200 pages of the inside of Howard’s brain. There are so many things about Howard that I love including:
I could keep going but you get the point. If your path hasn’t intersected with Howard, you are missing out. Howard will engage in a conversation with pretty much anyone, including my dad, so go for it. And grab his book – it’ll give you a fresh perspective on public (and private) market investing.
Don’t take my word for it – take Fred Wilson’s. On the back cover he says “When I first came across Howard, he had a blog called PutzOrYutz.com. But he is anything but a putz. He’s among the smartest investors, both in the public and private markets, that I know.” Howard also wrote nice things about Fred in his book, but Fred (and I) both gave the publisher our back cover quotes before we read the book.
Yup – Fred and I are card carrying members of the Howard Lindzon Fan Club. Lindzonville is a terrific and endlessly hilarious place.
I view it as a good thing when people start writing about solutions rather than problems. Here are several good ones for you today.
Remain Aggressive: Will Herman is a long time friend (we’ve known each other since 1984), a fantastic CEO, and a dynamite board member. He’s also a huge Patriots fan so his Belichick quote: “If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse” is expected. He also reminds us of the old Warren Buffet standard: “Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.” If you are a CEO, read carefully.
Focusing the Organization: I got to know Bill Flagg pretty well through the sale of RegOnline to Active. I wish I’d gotten to know him earlier – he’s got a great brain for business. He also makes a very strong case for “short, sweet, focused, and achievable” quarterly goals.
What is school for? I’m a daily reader of Seth Godin’s blog and a huge Seth fan, even since I met him at Yoyodyne in 1996. #15 is especially charming (“defang the proletariat”) as is #27 (“make sure the sports teams have enough players”). It’s vintage Seth in the path in which it takes your brain.
And – to end with some humor, here’s mega-endurance-man Dean Karnazes with When All Else Fails…
If you read one book in 2009, read Daemon.
It’s unusual for me to recommend a book so early in the year. Daemon is only my fourth book of 2009. It’s a first novel. And it’s mental floss. But it’s as close to flawless for a book of its genre.
I first heard about Daemon in December from Rick Klau. I got to know Rick at FeedBurner; he’s now at Google running Blogger. Rick told me that I had to read this book. He pointed me to a blog post he had written in 2007 about it.
“I can remember the feeling I had, sitting in the audience as the credits rolled after seeing The Matrix on opening day. I knew I’d seen something that was different, important, and something that I’d want to see again. And again. When I finished Daemon this afternoon, I had that same feeling. Daemon is to novels what The Matrix was to movies. It will be how other novels that rely on technology are judged.”
I immediately one-clicked it on Amazon. It wasn’t available for the Kindle so the hardcover showed up a week or so ago. I devoured it this weekend. Rick’s assessment was correct – this is by far the best techno-thriller I’ve ever read.
The author – Daniel Suarez (also known as Leinad Zeraus) describes himself as “an independent systems consultant to Fortune 1000 companies … An avid gamer and technologist, he lives in California.” He doesn’t mention that he is a magnificent writer and brilliant storyteller.
I won’t ruin any of it for you. It’s got everything you’d expect in a fast paced book that will appeal to anyone that likes Crichton, Brown, Clancy, or my newfound friend David Stone. The tech holds together well and is completely accessible to non-nerds and nerds alike. It’s a page turner with very little wasted plot or character development. And it sets up the sequel (Freedom) superbly.
Yum.
Amy is in Mexico on vacation with her sisters and I’ve been spending most of the weekend in bed. Sleeping. I twisted my ankle running on Tuesday and had an intense week so I think I’ve come down with a strange sleeping sickness that I’ll call “the ankle twist.”
I did manage to read through my RSS feeds this morning and found some good stuff for you.
Forecasting Sales in 2009: Will Herman is a semi-retired spectacular entrepreneur and CEO. He’s also an old friend who has put up with me since 1984. Whenever he writes something on sales (or selling) I read it carefully. So should you.
Creating Silos: Eric Norlin is blogging up a storm around his ideas for the Glue Conference. His latest post talks about the endless proliferation of application and data silos in the enterprise and on the web – and what can be done about it. Glue is happening on May 12-13 in Denver, Colorado – get sticky and register now – it’s only $395 (use the code “early1” and get $50 off.)
Some Company Rules: Walter Knapp, the COO of Lijit, espouses some rules for managers and non-managers. I particularly like #589: No one is ever too busy to return an email.
Don’t hide behind your board: David Cohen talks why a CEO should never start any sentence with “The board said …” or “The board decided …”
WordCamp Denver (Feb 28th, 2009): WordCamp in coming to Denver for the first time, on February 28th. Matt Mullenweg will be keynoting. Alex King, one of Colorado’s WordPress developers extraordinaire, will be presenting on the Carrington Theme Framework.
What makes a great salesman? Pete Warden is most of his way on his migration from LA to Boulder. While he’s quick to state that he “really suck(s) at selling”, I think he’s protesting a little too much. He has a great expose on why Ron Popeil (the “I can sell you anything infomercial guy”) is so good at selling.
It Doesnt Take Much: Micah Baldwin explores whether or not the Boulder tech scene is like high school and – if it is – what you can do to break into the clique of your choice. One option – just email me. Remember Walter’s rule #589.
Now I’m heading back upstairs to try to finish reading Daemon before I fall asleep again.
It’s 2009, people are getting ready to get back in gear, and there’s a lot of good stuff floating around the blogosphere this morning. Here’s some of it.
Economic Recovery Plan: Philip Greenspun has some prescriptive ideas about what the US needs to do to dig itself out of the ditch. I agree with some of it and disagree with some of it, but it’s all stimulating.
Another Resume Tip: Whenever there is a downturn, the number of resumes that flow through my inbox increases dramatically. Many of the companies we’ve invested in, including most of the Foundry Group investments, are growing so I’m happy to get these. If you are a software developer, Joel Spolsky has a superb suggestion about how to shape your resume so I’ll pay attention.
Putting The Band Back Together: Fred Wilson has a nice post where he hypothesizes that when times are tougher, serial entrepreneurs tend to swarm together around the best opportunities. The music metaphor of “putting the band back together” applies nicely. Fred’s got some good hints about how to think about equity in these situations. We are seeing this regularly also – one of our recent seed investments and another that we are closing early in January are cases of “getting the band back together.”
Google, why are you tracking links in my Gmail message? I’m not sure I care about this, but Dave Taylor does and I know that a bunch of other people, especially those of you that haven’t given up on your privacy, probably do. It’s an interesting issue.
Why Government Investment in Broadband Is Justified Now: I hope one of the legacies of Obama is a real national broadband infrastructure in the US that is better than anywhere else in the world. So does Tom Evslin; he has some good suggestions around it.
The $100 Fund: The crazy cats at VC Wear are giving away $100 in t-shirts for the stupid Twitter apps you can come up with.
My Holiday Project: A Twitter Search Engine Built on Windows Azure: Dare Obasanjo isn’t going to win a t-shirt from VC Wear for this one. He explains his experience building a cloud based app for Twitter on Microsoft Windows Azure.
Burnout: Jon Fox of Automattic / Intense Debate realizes he was burned out and does something about it. Are you burned out? I hope you aren’t anymore and did something like what Jon did over the holiday break to recharge.
TechStars Meetups soon in NYC, Boston, Boulder, Paris, and more all the time: TechStars 2009 is starting to get rolling. There are lots of pre-application meetups happening – follow the TechStars Meetups page if you are interested.
It’s too windy and cold to run outside today so I think I’ll go do my 1:45 run on the treadmill while watching The Matrix. I always take the red pill.
I rang in the new year with some mental floss. I found David Stone’s The Echelon Vendetta on one of our bookshelves in Keystone as I was looking around for a palate cleanser after my run of serious books last week.
Last night I got about 80% of the way through it. At around 11:20, long after Amy had gone to bed, I actually got scared reading it. I hadn’t figured out the end game yet, so my brain was whirring around a lot. The book was taking place mostly in the Rocky Mountain West (Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado) and I suddenly had an image of the bad guy stalking me from the giant open space behind the two story picture window I was lying in front of.
I rarely get scared reading a book – the only thing that really gets me is when bad stuff is happening in a setting near me. For example, I had to stop reading Dry Ice by Stephen White because of the Boulder setting.
So, that was it. I closed the book, got a glass of water, went up stairs to sleep, and woke up around 10:30 am. Yum. Welcome to 2009.
I just finished off The Echelon Vendetta and it’s easily one of the best spy / CIA / conspiracy / thriller that I’ve read in a long time. Stone’s bio says it’s “is a cover name for a man born into a military family with a history of combat service going back to Waterloo. Stone, a military officer himself, has worked with federal intelligence agencies and state-level law enforcement units in North America, Central America, and South East Asia. Retired now, Stone lives in an undisclosed location with his wife, photographer and researcher Catherine Stone.”
It shows. I just bought Stone’s other book The Orpheus Deception on my Kindle – given my poor impulse control I expect I’ll read it next.
Disclosure: If you click though the link on this book, I get paid a small amount from Amazon (approx 6% of the purchase price) based on my affiliate code that I put in the link. Please read the post I wrote titled The Dynamics of Full Disclosure for more on this. I don’t plan to put this disclosure note on any more book posts this year – hopefully this will be satisfactory for anyone that cares.
I’m still roughly on my “book a day diet” through the end of the year. The last few were really good, with one exception. Here are my quick reviews in case you are looking for something to read soon.
Things I’ve Learned from Women Who’ve Dumped Me: This was hilarious. I’ve only been dumped a few times (since I’ve only had a few girlfriends) so I mostly got to live vicariously through the people telling these stories. There are some good life lessons, some excellent rants, some brilliant writing, and some really nasty breakups. I’m glad I hadn’t read this book when I was in junior high school or else I probably would have become a monk.
Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement: Bill Duggan was the keynote speaker at Defrag this year and was dynamite. Everyone got a copy of his book Strategic Intuition; I finally got around to reading it. The book was a good as his presentation as is one of the best “medium format” business books that I’ve read in the last few years. Duggan’s notion of Strategic Intuition is a fresh view on how strategy works for anyone that’s been living in the Porter five forces and value chain world for the past 20 years.
Imagining MIT: Designing a Campus for the Twenty-First Century: Whenever I think of the architecture of MIT, the things that come to mind are the Infinite Corridor, The Great Dome, The Green Building, Kresge, and Building 20. William Mitchell, who was the Dean of Architecture and the special adviser to MIT’s President Chuck Vest during the great MIT building boom of the 1990’s and early 2000’s, has written (and illustrated) a beautiful book describing the history of MIT’s architecture going back to the inception of the Institute. He then goes deep in his descriptions of the creation and the architecture of five new buildings: Zesiger Sport and Fitness Center (by Kevin Roche), Simmons Hall (by Steve Holl), Stata Center (by Frank Gehry), Brain and Cognitive Sciences Complex (by Charles Correa), and the new Media Laboratory (Fumihiko Maki).
Shopping for Porcupine: A Life in Arctic Alaska: My wife Amy is from Alaska and we spend a lot of time there. I’ve only been north of the Arctic Circle once for a disastrous canoe trip on the John River in the Brooks Range, but I’m been north of Fairbanks a couple of times and get a sense of both the massive scale and the emptiness of Northern Alaska. Seth Kanter has written and illustrated one of my favorite books of 2008 about his life growing up and living as an adult in the far northern reaches of Alaska. All I can say is “wow.” If you think you know wilderness living, buy this book.
The World Without Us: I had forgotten how this book ended up in my infinite pile of books to read until Amy reminded me that she had bought it, along with several others, for one of our Life Dinner dates earlier this year. It has an interesting premise; what would happen to “the world” if all humans vanished overnight. I got about half way through it and got bored with the longwinded explanations. Another book that if was was half as long would be twice as good.
I’m definitely starting to feel the need for some mental floss between now and the end of the year.