Mattermark

After all these years, I’m still a heavy RSS user. Every morning I click on my Daily folder in Chrome, open it up, and spend whatever time I feel like on it. The vast majority of what I read is in Feedly and includes my VC Collection as well as a bunch of other stuff. It’s almost entirely tech related, as I stay away from mainstream media during the week (e.g. no CNN, no CNBC, no NYT, no WSJ, no USA Today, no … well – you get the idea) since I view all this stuff as an intellectual distraction (and much of it is just entertainment anyway, and I’d rather read a book.) ...

Two words: Mattermark Daily When I started blogging in 2004 I think I was the third VC blogger after David Hornik * and Fred Wilson (if you were, or know, of another pre-2004 VC blogger, please tell me so I can update my historical recollection.) I remember lots of people asking me why I was doing it. I heard plenty of trash talk from other VCs, especially second hand, such as “He doesn’t have enough to do”, “He’s not spending his time doing his job”, or “What a waste of time.” I didn’t care, as I was doing it – like Fred often said – to help me think out loud in public, learn about different things, and get a conversation going around topics I was interested in. In retrospect, it was also helping me “practice writing” and without all the practice, it’s unlikely I would have ever gotten in the rhythm of writing a book a year. ...

The other day, Mark Suster wrote a critically important post titled One Simple Paragraph Every Entrepreneur Should Add to Their Convertible Notes . Go read it – I’ll wait. Or, if you just want the paragraph, it’s: “If this note converts at a price higher than the cap that you have been given you agree that in the conversion of the note into equity you agree to allow your stock to be converted such that you will receive no more than a 1x non-participating liquidation preference plus any agreed interest.” ...

We are in a cycle again where how much you raise is the story. It’s what the press likes to write about (e.g. Company X raised Y from A, B, and C). Now that everyone is overly focused on unicorns, the headline number on the valuation (e.g. Company X raised Y at a valuation of Z from A, B, and C) has crept into the story on big rounds. While this makes for press release fodder and ego gratification, it’s of very little use to entrepreneurs. There’s no real story there. No understanding of the human dynamics behind the financing. No understand of what actually went down. No underlying metrics that drive the financing. No real perspective on how people thought about things and the choices they made. Just happy talk focusing on the dollar raised. Zero educational value around anything. ...

I’ve been to a gazillion board meetings. I’ve written a lot about them including a book called Startup Boards: Getting The Most Out of Your Board of Directors and piles of board meetings posts on this blog . I still do a lot of them, but I’ve definitely been on a quest the past few years to (a) figure out what works best and (b) try to organize my world around more effective board meetings based on what I’ve learned. ...

Do you remember your first board meeting? I do. Well, I sort of do, kind of, maybe. Danielle Morrill of Mattermark memorialized her first board meeting on the web in her post Post Series A Life: Reflecting on Our First Board Meeting and What It’s Like Working with Brad . It’s a detailed view of her expectations leading up to the first board meeting we had along with the blow by blow from her perspective of the board meeting. ...

I just spent around an hour shrinking my Facebook friends list from 1,500+ to 535. I ignored another 2,000 friend requests. I made my entire Facebook feed from the beginning of time private, which eliminated 33,000+ followers (dear Facebook followers – you really meant to follow me on Twitter , that’s where all the public fun is.) I turned off all my email notifications. Hint – if you want to do stuff like this, use the iOS app instead of the web app – it’s so, so, so much faster. Last night I tried to do this on the Facebook web app in front of the TV. It was a total fail – every few unfriends caused the page to refresh and I had to start scrolling all over again. This morning I was pleasantly surprised with how much better / cleaner / faster it was with the iOS app. ...

There is a moment during the exploration of a new relationship where a switch flips and the answer is “I want to do this.” With Mattermark , I remember the moment clearly – I was at The Kitchen in Boulder with the founders (Danielle Morrill, Kevin Morrill, and Andy Sparks) and my partner Seth. I had just put a garlic french fry in my mouth (if you’ve never had them at The Kitchen, they are epic) and looked over at Seth. He looked at me and gave me that “yeah – we should do this” look. And that was it. ...