A bunch of good blogging occurred during my Q1 vacation. I’ve scanned through most of it and landed on a highly relevant story for any obsessive entrepreneur to start their morning with. Will Herman – a long time friend, super successful entrepreneur, and “retired” person – has a great post up titled Work:Life Balance II – A Story. It’s a nice follow up to his earlier post titled Work:Life Balance – It’s a Perspective Thing and nicely compliments my Discovering Work Life Balance post that I wrote in 2005 and first discussed my Qx vacation concept.
I’ve never understood daylight savings time. My run this morning was borked as a result of my lack of comprehension of how it works, my 7am conference call with someone in Europe didn’t happen because I’m sure he (rationally) thought it was an hour later and – while most of my computers are set to the correct time because of the incredibly diligent efforts of Ross-the-IT-guy – my Cisco IP phone at home still says DST+1 (I’m sure the one in the office is set to DST.) I can’t even begin to imagine the amount of GDP that was just wasted preparing for this and the lost GDP that will occur today due to missed / rescheduled meetings. It sounds like Yahoo Mail also had a tough weekend – maybe they can blame it on daylight savings time.
There was much Guitar Hero playing last night. Those who were there know who they are and should now bow before a real master. 475,402 and a 425 note streak (hang in there until minute 7 if you want to see some amazing stuff.)
I bet this dude is really good at Tempest. Of course, I’m not the master – I’m frustratingly stuck on medium and still get excited when I break 50,000. Yeah – I know it’s kind of weird to be watching Youtube videos of people playing Guiter Hero – Alex and Eran are giggling.
Thanks Jake for the reminder. 4 8 15 16 23 42 to you.
One of the great things about the exponential growth of web-based content (both professional and user generated) is that it enables you to quickly get deep insights from amazing people that were previously hard to find.
Two examples beat me over the head this morning. I wrote about Lijit search yesterday – today Stan James (Lijit’s CTO) keeps the rhythm going with his Not All Links Are Created Equal post.
Earlier this week, I was part of a Silicon Flatirons roundtable at CU Boulder Law School that Phil Weiser and I have organized in the spirit of the Union Square Ventures Sessions. We spent a few hours with an awesome group of people discussing the implications of Sarbanes Oxley on innovation and entrepreneurship. The intro video was Sam Zell’s 2006 Holiday Card (MMVI) which is a damning indictment on the pox that is Sarbox (except of course – to the accounting industry – which loves it and the fees it generates.) I wanted to show it to Amy this morning and didn’t know where to find it so I hoped on Youtube, searched for Sam Zell, and found his 2005 Holiday Card (The Theory of Relativity) which is even better!
I then poked around for another 37 seconds and found the “Year End Gifts” site which has videos of all the cards going back to 1999 (The Emperor Has No Clothes) – which of course is completely brilliant and prescient.
Just add a “.com”, Tom
Front your name with an “E”, Lee
Start auctioning toys, Roy
And set yourself free
Pay on the come, son
Don’t need to make money, hon
Just set up a site, Mike
And price yourself right.
We end the morning with a presentation from David Rubenstein – the co-founder and managing director of The Carlyle Group explaining The Similarities & Differences Between The Tech Bubble Burst of 2000 & The Current Private Equity Markets: Are We On The Verge of A PE Bubble Burst? thanks to a short article from Dan Primack titled LBO Boom = Tech Bubble? (ok – I saw this a few days ago but just got around to blogging it.) With leaders of private equity firms on the covers of every major business magazines and Sam Zell selling Equity Office in one of the largest PE deals, is someone trying to give us a message?
When I first met Dick Costolo – the CEO of FeedBurner (well before I had invested in FeedBurner), he had a blog called SomethingICantRemember that had a hysterical “what would I do if I was CEO of Disney” post. Over the last three years we’ve become really good friends and business partners. I’ve learned a huge amount from Dick and his partners – and not just about feeds.
Relatively early on in our relationship, Dick stopped blogging. He’s a classic always working entrepreneur and blogging quickly fell to the bottom of the pile as FeedBurner started its incredibly rapid growth curve. Amy and I have had a few nice dinners with Dick’s wife (who I’ve nicknamed Tiffany – hi Tiffany) and I can only imagine her rolling her eyes whenever Dick says something (at 2am) like “I really should start blogging again.”
Apparently the effort that Jason and I have put into Ask the VC has motivated Dick to start a blog named Ask the Wizard. If you know Dick, you get the sarcasm here and – if you don’t know him he gives you a hint with in his Welcome to Ask the Wizard post where he says “and it also brings to mind the Wizard of Oz, in which unsuspecting Dorothy only realizes too late that the Wizard is just another jackass with stage lights.”
If you are an entrepreneur (at any stage – including an aspiring one), wander over to Ask the Wizard and subscribe. At the minimum Dick will have you chuckling whenever he posts and says something like absolutely correct like “If you find yourself reading this and thinking “There’s no way I can pitch everything about my product in only 8 slides”, I assure you that you are wrong. Nobody wants to sit in a room and read data-packed powerpoint slides with pull quotes from Gartner Analysts that describe your market as being a 9 bazillion dollar industry in 2012. Get a short pitch deck together that tells a story.”
Yum. Snowcrash anyone?
Paul Kedrosky has an excellent summary of Mark Gilbert’s theories of modern finance using the two cow metaphor. He ends with his own special version for the venture capital industry.
I’ve written about Discovering Work Life Balance in the past, but when I came across Jim Citrin’s article titled Tapping the Power of Your Morning Routine I realized that I left out an important part of the dynamics of work life balance for me.
Some people are early birds; some people are night owls. I’ve always been an early bird. In Citrin’s article, he talks some of the common characterists of key CEOs that he admires. As a morning person, it was fascinating to see what people do when they get up.
I wake up, get out of bed, drag a comb across my head. Skip that last part about the comb. I try to get up at 5am on Monday to Thursday, regardless of where I am (every now and them I get hosed on travel and sleep in – if I get less than six hours of sleep I have a rough day.) The next sequence is very predictable.
I give myself until 7am for this. I then run from 7am until “whenever my run is over” (I’m in maintenance mode right now so my workouts last an hour – in the summer when I gear up for my next marathon it will be longer.) Shower. Eat breakfast. “Start the rest of the day” (usually before 9am.)
Occasionally I have to do a phone call before 9am – I optimize around this. I’ve stopped doing breakfast meetings – I want the first four hours of my day to myself.
It has taken me a while to figure out this rhythm. While my morning routine might not work for you, I’ve found the notion of a morning routine to be a critical part of my work life balance. Think about your morning – tomorrow.