Yup – that’s a Gandhi quote that came from Om Malik’s great post What I Learned This Year. I encourage you to read it slowly and ponder it. With it, I begin my suggested Daily Reading for you, as Om has kicked it off with a “what”.
Holiday’s and Communication: Jud Valeski, Gnip’s CTO, gives us a framework for “why” people twitter and blog.
What does the BoulderTwits graph mean: Pete Warden helps with a “who” as he does a neat visualization on Boulder Twitters based on data he’s putting together. Boulder is aggressively pulling Pete toward it – I predict he’ll be here full time soon.
Making an IRS Section 83B election: If you are an entrepreneur, Dave Naffzinger explains the importance and process of filing an 83b election. I was involved in an acquisition in 2008 where the founders did not file their 83b’s (even though the lawyers provided them to file – they just blew it off) and I expect they will never start anything else again, including a lemonade stand, without filing an 83b.
Florida, the Next Hotbed of Venture Capital: Ah those professional writers at the WSJ have such clever titles. This is an article about the Florida Opportunity Fund, a $29.5m “fund of funds” that will invest in VC funds that commit to investing in Florado-based business. I’ve learned a lot of this through my relationship with the Utah Fund of Funds (one of Foundry’s LPs) which has done the state-based fund of funds correctly (compared to a lot of other states which has done this incorrectly.) I’ve been working, as part of my role as co-chairman on the Colorado Governor’s Innovation Council on putting together a plan for a Colorado Fund of Funds (similar to the Utah one). It’ll be interesting to see if they get it right in Florida.
The Editor Dilemma: Fred Wilson has a good post up explaining two things. First, he talks about why he doesn’t spend time working on spellin, grammer, and verbige on his blog. He then goes on to describe a product (or maybe just a feature (limited wiki editing on blog posts) that he’d like to see. In doing this, he explains (by demonstrating) how he uses his blog as flypaper to attract interesting entrepreneurs and discuss new ideas. Gracefully done Fred. I’ll take that feature to also.
Q4 vacation earlier this month was the site of my 43rd birthday (to those who wished me a happy birthday, thank you!) We spent the week in Cabo at the One&Only Palmilla my new favorite place to disappear from the world for a week. I hadn’t been reading much lately (no clue why – I just hadn’t been – maybe it’s due to the DDoS attack I have been under) so I reacquainted myself with one of my favorite things to do. As I’ve started my new daily book reading drill between now and the end of the year, I realized I hadn’t done short reviews of the books I read over Q4 vacation. Several were great; several weren’t. Here you go.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: Beautiful written and a great place to start. Haruki Murakami is a tremendous writer who has been running for the past 30 years of his life. He mixes personal philosophy, memoir, and treatise on running in a nice, appropriately size package. If you are a runner or triathlete, this is a must read.
Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race: This long history of the Cold War was really well done. For some reason I’ve become fascinated with the space race during the Cold War – maybe it’s a function of Sputnik’s 50th anniversary. Rhodes is a masterful story teller; this book was more like a novel than a history book. Coincidentally I saw an HBO Special on Sputnik and got to watch Ike and Khrushchev rail at each other, putting real faces to the whole thing.
Napoleon’s Privates: 2,500 Years of History Unzipped: Boring. I thought this was going to be interesting based on the teaser that it was a series of short vignettes on sex over history, pivoting around everyone’s favorite short French general. "Short" and "sex" are two words that should never go together in a teaser; this book lost my interest about half way through. A few of the stories were funny; most were just silly, stupid, vapid, or dull.
The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL: I’m the football widow in my family, but this book was dynamite. It was a combination an extended description of the highlights of the 1958 Giants vs. Colts championship game, biographic sketches of all the major players and coaches involved, and an extensive explanation of the evolution of football into the NFL. At some point I looked up and realized I’d been sitting in the same beach chair for three hours without moving. I guess some of y’all have this experience every Sunday in your living room – it appears to take a book about football to work for me.
Then We Came to the End: A Novel: Damnit, this should have been good. It’s a cynical novel about the contemporary workplace. I kept trying to get into it but couldn’t really care about any of the characters. I’d try again. Still no interest. I bailed at about the halfway point.
Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan To Organize Everything We Know: A fresh cut on the history of Google. Stross does a good job of organizing the story by chapter around specific Google products and their evolution. If you know a lot about Google, this book probably won’t be very interesting to you. If you think you know a lot about Google, but in you own personal quiet moment of honesty, you realize you probably don’t know as much as you do, this is a good book.
Rules of Deception: After that list of books, I definitely needed some mental floss. I was turned on to Christopher Reich in 2005 after writing a book review titled The Chairman (about one of Stephen Frey’s books). Reich is delicious – perfect mental floss.
Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World: Another awesome sports book. This one was about the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. Once again I get some geopolitics around the Cold War – this time with a direct intersection with a play by play history of the 1960 Olympic games. Russia vs. US Cold War stuff, Germany trying to decide if it is one country or two, Taiwan and China arguing over who is actually China, US athletes showing racial unification while the black / white split in America boils over, and a whole bunch of awesome and dramatic sports stories unfolding on a day by day basis, chapter by chapter.
Upbeat: I read a draft of Rajesh Setty ‘s newest book Upbeat. I met Rajesh at Gnomedex 5 and we’ve kept in touch since. He’s done a nice job writing a book that you can read in 45 minutes that has practical advice for entrepreneurs about how to deal with all the negative talk all around everyone right now.
Hot Mahogany: Stuart Woods is one of my favorite mental floss writers. Stone Barrington is a heroic character I can relate to. This was another fun one. Woods proudly says in his books that he’ll respond to all emails. I’ve sent him a few and never heard back. Nonetheless, I still enjoy his writing very much. Like a lot of mental floss, you’ll get a lot more out of it if you start at the very beginning, in this case New York Dead .
Divine Justice: David Baldacci is one notch above Stuart Woods. Divine Justice is another book in the Camel Club series and is the best one yet. Yummy.
Addiction to Perfection: The Still Unravished Bride: A Psychological Study (Studies in Jungian Psychology, 12): I was at a board meeting last month where we were discussing different entrepreneurial personality types. One of the board members suggested that we all read Addition to Perfection by Marion Woodman. I hunted it down and started working my way through it. After three chapters of Jungian philosophy, I had very little idea why I was reading it and bailed. I wonder if he was simply suggesting that we ponder the title.
Letter to a Christian Nation: Sam Harris has written a short, blunt, and extraordinary well reasoned book. Based on his assertions, I’m going to guess that about 50% of American’s will be completely offended by this book. That alone makes it worth reading and contemplating. And since I like reading both sides of the argument, I just one-clicked Letter to a Christian Nation: Counter Point.
I’m always amused at how many “lists” appear at the end of the year. I’m anti-list – I never read them and I no longer am willing to contribute to them. So – for some non-list reading for today, I present to you the best of what I read this morning on the web.
Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley: Michael Malone nailed it in this article. “If Mr. Obama is serious about getting the country out of this recession using something more than public make-work projects, he should restore the integrity of the new company creation cycle: rewrite full disclosure, throw out options expensing, make compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley rules voluntary, and if he won’t cut it, then at least leave the capital gains tax rate alone.”
Day 2 Giveaway 6 – iMenorah: It’s Hanukkah (how do you spell that again) and all good jews with iPhones need the iMenorah app. Dad – I knew there was a reason you should have gotten an iPhone instead of a Blackberry.
Keystroker V2: Drive your co-workers insane in 2009 (if they aren’t already insane). Thanks Ryan.
Introducing the BUGvonHippel! The gang at BugLabs has shipped the BugvonHippel module (named after MIT professor and my SM / Ph.D. advisor Eric von Hippel). I first wrote about this in January 2008 – it’s awesome to see it released.
Bristol Palin’s boyfriend’s mom arrested in drug case: Even though this is completely and totally irrelevant, I couldn’t help myself.
Windows Live Writer 2009: Release Candidate: I love Windows Live Writer – I’ve been using it as my blog editor for a while. The new RC is up on the web with fancy new UI and some fun features.
Will This Economy Finally Push the Toyota Way Into Software Development? Good short thought piece about Agile software development highlighting Rally Software. My friends at Rally have had an awesome year and I’m really proud of them.
More Companies Are Cutting Labor Costs Without Layoffs: Would you rather have layoffs or try some creative things like salary cuts, furloughs, four-day workweeks, elimination of 401k matches, and unpaid vacations? While large companies are aggressively pursuing these options, it’s worth pondering for smaller companies that are flirting with trying to be cash flow positive.
See – no lists. I didn’t even number these posts.
Today’s book was an easy one. When Kurt Vonnegut died in 2007, I decided to read all of his books. A quick trip to Amazon resulted in the purchase of 14 novels. I’ve read about half of them and am gradually tossing in the balance between more "challenging" books.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater wasn’t Vonnegut’s best (although he rated it a A in his review of all of his books in Palm Sunday), but it was solid. He wrote it in 1965, sandwiched between Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five – easily his two best books (at least that I’ve read so far.) So, the dude was on a roll around the year I was born (and in the 1960’s in general).
As I work my way through Vonnegut, my inner cynic is rewarded with gems from 40 years ago. For example:
Kilgore Trout (near the end of the book): "The problem is this: How to love people who have no use? In time, almost all men and women will become worthless as producers of goods, food, services, and more machines, as sources of practical ideas in the areas of economics, engineering, and probably medicine, too. So – if we can’t find reasons and methods for treasuring human beings because they are human beings, then we might as well, as has so often been suggested, rub them out."
Don’t try to understand it – it won’t really make any sense without the context of the rest of the book. But – if you want a good jolt, read the book. One thing is for certain: Vonnegut knows how to string words together in a magical way.
I think I’ve read every book that Michael Lewis has ever written going all the way back to Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street . While Lewis merely edited Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity , it’s a brilliant book and a good start to my year end "16 days of books" (where I read a book a day while I’m up in Keystone.)
Panic covers five modern financial crashes:
Each section has a perfect setup – a few articles preceding the actual crash followed by articles that are written as the crash is happening. Lewis finishes off each section with at least one post crash article. Taken as a bundle, each of the five crashes are very symmetric, generating a very cynical set of reactions from this particular reader about the nature of modern finance.
I stumbled on some interesting characters throughout the book at odd spots. My two favorite examples from The Internet Bubble section are Bernard Madoff (yup – the one everyone has been talking about for the past week) and Albert Vilar (yup – the one whose name used to be on the Grand Tier at the NY Metropolitan Opera and is awaiting sentencing on securities fraud charges.) And of course John Meriwether (Salomon Brothers, Long-Term Capital Management, and now head of JWM Partners) makes several appearances throughout and is one of the central characters in the Collapse of Long Term Capital Management.
Bernard Madoff: (1999) "The same volatility and heavy trading by individuals convinced a market veteran, Bernard L. Madoff, that his trading firm should stop making a market in four wild Web stocks. ‘You’re literally seeing hundreds of thousands of orders in the stocks,’ Mr. Madoff says. ‘That puts a strain on everybody’s systems. And on the way down, it’s always more extreme.’ To Mr. Madoff, "it was insanity. This thing was getting out of control.’ In January, his New York firm, which bears his name, dropped Amazon, Yahoo!, Infoseek and Egghead, even though trading in them had been very profitable."
If you lived through the Internet bubble like I did, you probably remember the Barron’s article by Jack Willoughby that came out on 3/20/2000 titled "Burning Up." In it, Willoughby listed the "months until burnout" of 207 Internet stocks. He specifically called out 51 that "are likely to run out of cash, according to year-end 1999 data. Some can raise more funds through stock and bond offerings. Others will be forced to merge or go out of business. It’s Darwinian capitalism at work." I remember this article (which Lewis reprints) like it came out yesterday – I was co-chairman of two companies on the list (company #15: Interliant and company #88: MessageMedia) and was an investor (via my VC investments – either in funds I was involved in or funds I was an investor in) in #5:VerticalNet, #31: ELoan, #33: Ask Jeeves, #48: Multex.com, #49: eToys, #67: Critical Path, #110: TheStreet.com, #118: StarMedia, #120: iXL Enterprises, #147: ITXC, and #181: Exodus Communications.) I probably missed a few, but I remember almost every company that was on the list.
Albert Vilar: (2000) "On Monday, March 20, many of the stocks on Barron’s list fell sharply: it was another bad day for technology stocks generally. The Nasdaq fell 188 points, nearly 4 percent, to 4,610. During the next few days, there was a predictable attempt to discredit the Barron’s piece. ‘I didn’t set my performance record, which is about the best in the business, with any help from Barron’s,’ Albert Vilar, head of the $700 million Amerindo Technology Fund, declared. Investors who avoided Internet stocks during the next five or ten years would miss ‘the biggest explosion of profits and growth ever seen."
Every crash has an index case (or "patient zero") equivalent. The Barron’s article was the one I remember most clearly from the Internet bubble. Even the dotcom advertising at the 2000 Superbowl fades like a distant memory. AutoTrader.com, Britannica.com, Computer.com, Epidemic.com (a Colorado-based startup), E-Trade.com, Hotjobs.com, kforce.com, LastMinuteTravel.com, LifeMinders.com, Monster.com, Netpliance.com, OnMoney.com, Oxygen.com, OurBeginning.com, Pets.com, Webex.com, and WebMD.com. Several survived, but most didn’t. When I reflect on the Barron’s article, it marked the peak for me.
I was a grad student MIT and running my first company during the 1987 Crash and remember listening to it on a portable radio in my Feld Technologies office at 875 Main Street. I then took the T home to downtown Boston with my business partner Dave Jilk. I didn’t really know what to make of it (Dave regularly reminds me that when I showed up at MIT in the fall of 1983 I made the insane statement that "real estate in Texas will never go down in value.") I’m sure I was unsettled by it, but I woke up the next day and went back to work (and school).
I remember each of these crashes and, with appropriate emotional detachment, rethought some of the lessons I’ve learned in the past 20+ years as I read Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity. Not "fun", but important stuff extremely well edited.
There’s nothing quite like reading a book about marathons on a weekend that you run a marathon. I carried My First 100 Marathons: 2,620 Miles with an Obsessive Runner by Jeff Horowitz in my bag with me and read it while I was laying around on Sunday recovering.
Jeff is a massive inspiration to any marathon runner. The book reads like a combination travelogue + novel + running philosophy treatise. I was really pleased with my Huntsville performance and – after reading Jeff’s book – was even more motivated to get up off the couch as quickly as possible and go run another marathon.
If you are a marathon runner, you’ll love it.
As I stall before I head out the door for an hour run in the cold, dark mountains outside my house, I thought I’d share some of the interesting stuff I read this morning with you.
Forrester Chief on What Not to Cut in a Downturn: I mostly include this since it’s so entertainingly short and substance-free. It links to a post of George Colony’s blog titled Why this tech recession will be different which is still short, has a little more substance, but seems painfully obvious. Maybe people will cut their Forrester spending in the downtown (oh, cynical me.) I hope no one at Forrester is using social media or any keyword alerts that catch this blog or else I’ll be in trouble with my friends at Forrester.
Where is Dubai? Jeff Jarvis has an awesome essay on his trip to Dubai. He’s also got some pretty pictures in the post.
Five Minutes with Angel Investor Dave McClure: I’ve done a few investments with Dave and think he’s dynamite. I went to Startup2Startup a few months ago when I was in the bay area and had a blast. Good stuff.
Harvard: ‘Nothing Is Fucked, Dude’: Drew Faust, Harvard’s president, writes a long email on the state of Harvard given the economic downturn titled "Harvard and the economy". In it she acknowledges the forecast that many college endowments will be down as much as 30% this year due to investment losses. Eek. Now’s a good time for my MIT friends to do some extra hacks on Harvard’s campus since there will be fewer security guards running around.
And now for some news from the world of companies that I’ve invested in.
How and Why We Made Glue: Alex Iskold has a long post up explaining the design choices behind the recent release of Adaptive Blue’s product. The product – Glue – is dynamite and the explanation of the design choices is really interesting.
Solution Spotlight: Soup.io is now using Gnip: Adoption of Gnip marches on day by day. Subscribe to the Gnip blog to see how more companies are using it.
Look Out Google Site Search, Lijit Says It’s Right On Your Heels: ReadWriteWeb analyzes Lijit’s Widget Statistics Revivial 2.0 and comes up with some interesting thoughts. Even more interesting (at least to me) are the kind and generous words they have about Lijit’s service. If you have a blog but don’t yet use Lijit for your blog search engine, you are missing out.
Ok – enough stalling. Time to get dressed and go running.
To celebrate today’s New York Marathon, I went for a hard and fast run in the mountains near my house. There’s nothing quite like grinding your way up a hill for three miles and then turning around and running down it as fast as you can. As I reflected on my run, I am kind of amazed at the range of thoughts that went through my head over the course of an hour.
Since I finished my run, I’ve been sitting on my couch, catching up on email and blogs, and getting ready to lose myself in Defrag for the next two days. Following are some of the great things I came across.
I’m hopeful that on Wednesday everyone in the United States wakes up, eats a big breakfast, and gets on with life.
If you thought the reason I haven’t been doing a Daily Reading post lately was because I didn’t feel like adding more to the endless stream of political noise, global economic crisis, and the impending extinction of arctic wolves, you’d be wrong. I simply forgot I was doing it. Oops. Here are a few good ones from today.
Off to spend the day with a top secret group of VCs discussing what we think of the future.