Venrock – one of the oldest venture capital firms (40 years old and going strong) has released a magnificent book titled Shaping the Future: 40 Years of Innovation.  While self promotional, they’ve done it in such a clever and powerful way that all it does as you read through it is smile and get excited about the promise of entrepreneurship.    I encourage you to put it up full screen and take your time reading through it.

The focus is on 40 startups and the entrepreneurs that created them that Venrock has funded over the past 40 years.  Sprinkled throughout are some pearls from Laurance Rockefeller, the founding force behind Venrock.

Great stuff – and very nicely done.

I heard the phrase “a small set of simple moves” a few weeks ago from someone and it stuck in my head.  Since then I’ve been thinking about it regularly as a fundamental operating principle.

Building any company is hard, but when I look back on the success of many of the companies I’ve been involved in, it occurs to me that it is built on a small set of simple moves.  Now, these moves are rarely obvious, and are often hard to figure out, but once you nail it, you can do them over and over again all the way to greatness.

While running this morning, I was thinking about this in the context of running marathons.  I know exactly what I need to do to get in shape to run a 4:30 marathon.  Going from 4:30 to 4:00 requires a small set of simple moves.  Anyone that has run a marathon knows this, but also knows that it’s a bitch to knock 30 minutes off your time, even if you start from a base of 4:30!  The moves aren’t complicated but aren’t obvious to someone running their second marathon.  I’ve run 14 and have a coach so they’ve become pretty obvious to me.  Yet I’ve still never crossed the 4:05 mark.

The reason is that it requires conviction.  You now know the moves – now do them.  Over and over and over again.  Not so easy.  Especially when you get tired, have other things come up that get in your way, lose confidence, get distracted, or just get bored.  But – when you stick with it, execute the small set of simple moves, and then run the marathon in 4:00, it’s magic.

Just like building a company.  When I look at the great entrepreneurial CEO’s that I’ve worked with, they understood this innately.  They worked extremely hard to figure out the small set of simple moves that would work, and then just did them over and over again.  When they inevitably got distracted or bored their fundamental conviction pulled them back to the small set of simple moves.  Occasionally they introduced a new move into the mix, but only when they had conviction that it would be additive.  And – in a phrase that is trendy today – they “failed fast” on things that weren’t going anywhere.

I learned a phrase from my dad that I love – when I was a teenage he said “don’t make complicated mistakes.”  A “small set of simple moves” fits nicely with that.  If you are a CEO, have you figured out what your small set of simple moves are?

Everyone remembers their first "X".  Last Thursday, I spent the day in Cambridge at the TechStars Boston office.  It’s in Central Square, just down the block from where I lived for four years while at MIT (351 Mass Ave) and around the corner from my first office (875 Main Street).

Feld Technologies very first address was 7310 Hillwood Lane, Dallas, TX  75248 (the house I grew up in).  At some point the address changed to 351 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA  02139 (my frat).  I wonder how many other companies used that address at one point or another.  In 1987, my first real business partner Dave Jilk joined me and we decided we needed an office.  Somehow we ended up at 875 Main Street, directly behind our fraternity. 

Bill Warner took this great picture of me standing in front of it Thursday night.  We were on the fourth floor – the top left window that you can see in the picture was actually my window.

I can’t remember the length of time we had the office at 875 Main Street, but it was less than a year.  At some point we realized we couldn’t afford an office and Dave and I moved the company into our apartments (at which point Feld Technologies official address became 6 Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Boston, MA  02109 (at the time it was an executive office suite – we simply had a mailbox there). 

I’ve had many different offices since then, but I’ll always remember my first one.

I’m always happy to be “content.”  Following are a few interviews I’ve shown up in lately.

• Q&A with Brad Feld of TechStars: This is a nice short interview in Mass High Tech that happened at the Nantucket Conference a few weeks ago.  It talks about TechStars, Boulder, and some of the magic required to build a sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem.
• All About Venture Capital: This was a long one – 55 minutes of me riffing on how entrepreneurs should think about venture capital.
• Exit Outcomes: ACA’s John Huston: This is an interview with John Huston, the chairman of the Angel Capital Association.  Apparently I’m mentioned somewhere along the way (I have no idea if they say good or bad things about me – listen and comment!)  The topic is “Ever wanted to hear how angels think of the terms they offer and the returns they expect? And what will happen if the outcome is less than a complete success?”

I spent a day in Boise, ID last week at their annual Idavation Conference and had a great time – I’ve got a more thorough post coming on that (which is more than just a handful of links – but c’mon – the links are fun, aren’t they!)

I tried an experiment last week when I was in Seattle.  I did two of my “random meetings” in cars between things.

I had a full day (a run with TA McCann (the CEO of Gist), the Gist board meeting, and then the Impinj board meeting.  I had to catch a flight home to Denver at 5pm because I had a meeting first thing in the morning with one of our investors.  So – I didn’t really have any slack time in my schedule.

TA had connected with me David Conrad who runs Design Commission and did some of the early design work for Gist.  This intro was made and the meeting was planned a while ago.  I shuffled the meeting around at the last minute so that it was sandwiched between the Gist and Impinj board meetings.

After I tweeted that I was heading to Seattle, I received an email from Marcelo Calbucci who is the publisher of the Seattle 2.0 blog and recently put on the Seattle 2.0 Awards.  Marcelo asked to see if I had 15 minutes to talk about a couple of things. 

Now – I hate to drive.  I’m a shitty driver so when I travel I take cabs or have a driver take me around.  My assistant Kelly plus Taxi Magic on my iPhone take care of me so I don’t really worry about it too much.  So – I thought I’d try something different.  I asked Kelly to see if David would be willing to drive me from Gist to Impinj and if Marcelo would be willing to drive me from Impinj to the airport.  In exchange, they’d have me captive in their car for a meeting for however long the drive took.

Both agreed.  I got where I was going safely, we ended up having a face to face meeting (that otherwise probably wouldn’t have happened), and we each have a memorable shared experience.  Plus – I hope I was able to be a little helpful to them.  Finally, I didn’t spend any money on a car service and – as a special bonus – David had a Prius so we get to feel like we were actually being somewhat energy efficient.

I thought this experiment was a success and I’ll definitely try it again.  Pay attention to my tweets and/or TripIt account for where I’m heading – if you want to give me a “Random Ride” just holler.  And hats off to both of these guys for being great entrepreneurs and just “making it happen” when given the chance, no matter how random it might seem.

I have lots of short meetings.  I’ll try to meet with anyone that I can that is referred to me or seems to be doing something relevant to my world.  I’ll also meet with people I think are interesting or, in some cases, just to be polite.

Some of the most interesting things I’m involved in have come out of random meetings.  One of my favorite examples is TechStars.  David Cohen somehow ended up on my “random day” meeting schedule.  We had never met before and I had no idea who he was.  He came in, sat down, and handed me a first draft of a brochure he had created.  I asked him to tell me about himself and “TechStars.”  He did.  Five minutes later I looked at him and said “I’m in – let’s figure this out.”

I had two random meetings today (and I’ve got two more).  Each ended after 15 minutes.  I tried to be polite in both, but the people were woefully unprepared.  This makes me a little impatient as it’s so easy to do a little work in advance of our meeting to figure out what I’m going to be interested or not interested in. 

At the risk of sounding obnoxious and arrogant, following are some suggestions of things to do to prepare for a first meeting with me.  By the way, I think this applies to any first meeting, but I’ll personalize it since I know it works with me.

Search the web for me.  Google, LinkedIn, my blog, Foundry Group blog, Askthevc blog.  A little bit of research will save us both a lot of time.  I won’t have to tell you my story (which I won’t do anyway in a random meeting.)  You will know in advance what I do (and don’t) invest in.  You can also tune your presentation / our discussion to me.

Figure out the one thing you want to communicate with me.  I’m meeting with you to talk about you and what you are up to.  I can probably handle one – maybe two – things during our meeting.  So, get right to it and lead off with the one thing you want to accomplish with our meeting.  If we are two minutes into our meeting and I still have no clue why we are meeting, I’ll ask you “what do you want to get out of this meeting?”  That’s a hint to cut the chit chat and focus.  I’m not trying to be rude – just efficient – so we can make our time together useful to you.

Don’t make our meeting an endless stream of Planet Feld references: I want to talk to you about what you are up to.  Don’t try to connect with me by talking about my running, or my reading, or my house in Alaska unless it’s relevant to what you are talking to me about.  I can focus 100% of my energy on you for 15 minutes – help me make it count.

Have one thing in your head that you think I can learn from you: Regardless of the outcome of a meeting, I view it as a success if I learn one thing.  If our meeting isn’t going anywhere after ten minutes, you’ll notice a not so subtle shift as I move into “shit, I’ve got five more minutes left – I better get something out of this meeting.”  It helps, of course, if you know what you want me to learn from you, and it relates to what I care about.

Following are two other hints for during the meeting.

Don’t ask me to sign an NDA.  Please read this blog post titled Why Most VC’s Don’t Sign NDAs.  If you insist on having an NDA signed, don’t have a meeting with me. 

Pay attention to time. Our random meeting is likely scheduled for 30 minutes.  However, most of them only take around 15 minutes.  Don’t view this as a bad thing – if you are focused and get to the point, we can usually accomplish more in a 15 minute meeting than most humans accomplish in an hour long meeting.  If I’m really into what you are doing I’ll probably get it in 5 minutes and immediately shift into “let’s figure out what to do next” mode.  Sometimes it takes me longer and the aha moment hits me at minute 13, at which point we’ll go longer.  Please don’t feel the need to fill up 30 minutes or stretch things out, especially if you know I’m either into what you are up to – or that I’m not.  I’ll appreciate the extra 15 minutes you gave me back (to write blog posts like this) and remember our meeting more fondly!

Earlier this week Dave Lavinsky, who writes the Growthink Blog, interview me on How to Raise Capital as a First Time Entrepreneur.  Other than me doing a crappy job of answering the first question since I was distracted by something going on in my office, I thought Dave put together a great interview.  His post also summarizes three important points he drew out of me:

1. Your VC firm is your partner
2. Angel investors are the friend of the first-time entrepreneur
3. Don’t look for investors who are not a good fit

If you are a first time entrepreneur, wander over to Dave’s blog and have a listen.

Last night at the TechStars Boulder Mentor dinner I got into a conversation about what makes a better CEO of a new startup – an experienced entrepreneur who’s last company was a failure or a big company executive with a stellar pedigree who has never worked in a startup.

Give me the experienced entrepreneur whose last company was a failure 100% of the time.  The cliche “you learn more from failure than success holds true”, but more importantly the dude that just came off a failure and is ready to go again is super-extraordinary-amazingly hungry for a success.  It doesn’t matter how much money he’s made in his past companies – once he decides to go for it again he’s going to be ready to crush it.

Spend four minutes listening to Mark PIncus’s interview on Vatornews about his lessons from Tribe – fail fast.  Two great entrepreneurs that I’ve worked with before (and intend to work with again) sent it to me this morning with a note saying “wow – awesome – must watch.”  (n.b. each of them had one success and one failure before I funded their third company, which was a huge success.)

Mark is the CEO of Zynga (I’m on the board).  I love working with Mark – I’ve known him since the mid-1990’s and funds I’ve been affiliated with invested in his first two companies: Freeloader and SupportSoft.  Both were successes.  We didn’t (for a variety of reasons that I can’t remember) invest in Tribe which was a failure.  When Mark started talking about Zynga, it was an easy decision to jump on board and do the first round funding with Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures.

Mark amazes me on a regular basis – not only has he synthesized everything he learned from Tribe, he has developed unbelievable sense of self-awareness as an entrepreneur and a human that helps accentuate the things he’s great at while opening up for help when he needs it.

Note to everyone: check your pedigrees at the door – tell me about your successes and failures when we meet for the first time.  And fail fast.

Eric Norlin, producer of the Defrag and Glue conferences, has a phenomenal rant up today titled An Open Letter to Technology Startup Marketers.  We had an email exchange the other day about how self-limiting the phrase “I’m being cautious” is.  I put it in the category of “I don’t want to think so I’m just going to defer any decision and judgment, which I’ll rationalize as being cautious rather than passive.”

Eric took the idea and turned it into a nice rant.  I love a good rant and Eric’s is a doozy.  It starts off “There seems to be a refrain as of late amongst a great many of you, and that refrain is “caution.” You’re “cautious” about the economy. You’re taking a “wait and see” approach.  I say to those of you doing this: shame on you.”

Here are a few choice lines:

“You cannot afford to take a “wait and see” approach. I mean, wait and see WHAT exactly? How the Dow performs? Where the CPI numbers come in? What the President’s approval rating is? If you think that you (sitting in your little ole startup office) will actually *know* when the economy turns, you’re being foolish. You’re not gonna know until AFTER it has already turned. In the meantime, you’d better get your butt out there and land some business. If you “wait and see,” you’ll most likely just be waiting around to see exactly what date your termination notice is gonna come on.”

and

“Now, okay, your budget has been cut by your cautious CEO — I get that. That’s cool. But I guarantee your CEO didn’t say, “go in your office, cower in fear, pray that we get a ton of inbound sales leads, but above all else be cautious and wait and see.” Nope. Your CEO probably said something like, “monitor your spend as if every dollar was your own; and make sure we’re getting the maximum bang for our buck.” Of course, this freaked you out. And you got cautious. WRONG.”

and

“Here’s what you don’t wanna be: the Celine Dion of marketing. Here’s what you do want to be: the Kid Rock of marketing. People may hate Kid Rock and his music, but they damn sure know who he is. Why? Because he’s never been cautious a single day of his life. He left the office, got out, and made himself larger than life.”

Great rant Eric.  If you are in marketing in a tech startup, go read it!