Relationships

Recently, a friend of mine told me about the experience of giving his kid his first cell phone (I think around age 11.) As part of the experience, he decided to write up a contract with rules of engagement. He went through it with his kid in detail and they both signed it. I had stored this away to blog and thought of it yesterday as I was walking to dinner from Harvard Square to Central Square. The number of people walking down the street staring at or typing on their phones blew my mind. While many of them were college-aged (given Harvard and MIT), some were older. I know some of this is the density of the city (vs. where I live), but the dynamic surprised me, especially since it was a beautiful early fall evening. ...

I love the concept of Binary Stars. Ian (my co-author) and I are using it in our upcoming book The Startup Community Way which should be out in the second half of 2019. Amy gave me a New Yorker article titled Binary Stars: The Friendship That Made Google Huge . It’s the story of the partnership between Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat whose pair programming approach in the early 2000s changed the course of the Google and the Internet. ...

In a vox with my partner Seth recently, he said something that stuck with me. “Relationships are 100/100, not 50/50.” He was referring to a business dynamic between two people, but it applies to any relationship and any number of people. It’s a simple idea, but a great one. When I consider my relationship with Amy, it’s 100/100. Sure, we have plenty of conflicts, but we are both 100% all in on the relationship. ...

To all the lovers and soulmates out there, today is a great day to reflect on your partnership. Amy and I have been together for over 26 years and she’s sitting next to me as I type this. Whenever I’m near her, I feel amazingly grounded on this planet, regardless of my mental and emotional state. A few months ago, my long time friend (and founder of my very first VC investment – Career Central) Jeff Hyman asked me if I’d do another video interview with him for his Strong Suit interview series. I did a very early interview in the series for him (Jeff thought it was #1 – it looks like it was #4). I was quick to agree, especially when he asked if I’d do one on Love, Relationships, Entrepreneurship. ...

I’ve had a powerful exchange via email with Mario Cantin over the past few days. He pointed me to a post he recently wrote titled Empathy is feeling *with* others and an amazing three minute RSA Short video on The Power of Empathy by Dr Brené Brown. It’s stunning crisp and enlightening. Amy and I are huge believers in empathy. In our book Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur we come back to this idea over and over again as one of the biggest challenges in communication between people. ...

After spending most of the day at littleBits yesterday, I finished it with an annual tradition that is one of my favorites. At 6:45pm Amy and I met Joanne Wilson , Fred Wilson , Matt Blumberg , and Mariquita Blumberg at Marea for dinner. Fred and I are both on the board of Return Path , the company Matt has been running since he co-founded it in 1999. For over a decade, we’ve been having an annual dinner as a group when Amy and I are in NY, usually in the fall. ...

Amy and I take a week off the grid every quarter. It is one of the things that has kept me sane and us together over the past 14 years. This morning I saw a great short clip from the Today Show that got forwarded around on the US becoming a no vacation nation. They include an interview with Bart Lorang discussing FullContact’s Paid PAID vacation policy . It also shows an iconic picture of what stimulated this, which was Bart checking his email on his iPhone while riding on a camel with his then girlfriend / now wife in front of some pyramids. ...

Nope – Amy and I aren’t moving to Homer. While we have a home in Homer, where we will be for the next three weeks, we still call Boulder, Colorado our home. But we came very close to moving to Homer in 1995. We were living in Boston at the time. I’d sold my first company, Feld Technologies, in 1993. By the end of 1994 I had a staff job, reporting to the co-chairmen of AmeriData where I travelled all over the US helping with acquisitions and generally causing trouble. At some point Amy and I realized we could live anywhere and we knew that Boston wasn’t home. During one of the long conversations we had at the time about our future, we started talking about calling it quits and moving to Homer, Alaska. ...

I just got back from a much needed vacation – the sort of vacation you kind of think you need and then on day three of 14 hours a night of sleep you realize you really needed it really badly. We got home yesterday after a solid week off the grid and I was having trouble sleeping so I got up early to spend some quality time with my computer. ...

My exploration into meditation continues. I started on February 5th when I wrote the post Learning To Meditate . Since then, I’ve been practicing every day, read a few books on meditation, talked to a lot of people about it, and explored several iPhone / web apps. The impact on me has been awesome. After talking to Jerry Colonna for a few hours about meditation on the snowy Sunday after I started, he recommended I take a look at Headspace . I signed up that night and started doing the Take10 meditations. For the first few days, I did it once a day, but then quickly starting practicing twice a day, once in the morning and once before I went to bed. Occasionally I’d toss in another session at lunch time, although sometimes I just did a silent meditation instead for 10 to 15 minutes. ...