Both Sides of the Table
JUNE 15, 2010
I have always believed in the saying, “It’s better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission.&# It’s a way of life. It’s not about abusing situations but about knowing when to push the boundaries. It’s about knowing that the overwhelming number of people in life are naysayers and “no sayers&# and sometimes you gotta just roll the dice and say WTF.
This is going to be BIG.
JUNE 30, 2010
When Luke Skywalker had to drop a proton torpedo into a reactor vent shaft, he had one shot. Failure was not an option. Startups, on the other hand, have lots of little failures and successes over time. Growing a company is a process with lots of little iterations over time--just like fundraising. Just ask Dennis Crowely. He’s done it twice. The first time around, his meetings with Union Square Ventures didn’t result in a check—not until a little nudge got Fred thinking more ab
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Berkonomics
JUNE 28, 2010
One of the most obvious observations I make with growing company CEO’s is that planning for a new office is done with an optimistic view of the future, incorporating planned space that compromises only slightly the measured needs for the next three or more years as outlined in the financial forecast. The result, signing a lease for space enough to handle the growth called for in the plan, is a predictable group behavior I’ve come to label “The tyranny of the new office.
Both Sides of the Table
JUNE 8, 2010
I’m typing this from the lawn of Alan Patricof’s “Greycroft” home in East Hampton – my first time in the Hamptons. Greycroft is Alan’s venture capital firm that recently raised its second fund ($130 million) with offices in both New York and LA. We learned this weekend that it was named after his East Hampton home. We’re here for Greycroft’s CEO Summit – a gathering of the CEO’s of their portfolio companies with guest speakers covering topics including how to build your team, PR, customer deve
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Both Sides of the Table
JUNE 3, 2010
Paul Graham and the folks over at YCombinator have done much to reenergize early-stage entrepreneurship and encourage the creation of many new and innovative startups including DropBox, Posterous, Loopt, Justin.TV, Scribd and many others. They also gave us Hacker News , which for me was a welcome addition for discovering tech stories. HN and Techmeme are the main two tech aggregators that I frequently skim.
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This is going to be BIG.
JUNE 16, 2010
“Being bored is a precious thing, a state of mind we should pursue. Once boredom sets in, our minds begin to wander, looking for something exciting, something interesting to land on. And that's where creativity arises. My best ideas come to me when I am unproductive. When I am running but not listening to my iPod. When I am sitting, doing nothing, waiting for someone.
This is going to be BIG.
JUNE 17, 2010
You've heard the arguments before--Wall Street sucks up all the best talent in NYC and that's why its so tough to recruit here. They've been able to outspend on any good candidate and that's also why things have eased up lately--because the financial industry just isn't what it was and the jobs aren't there anymore. It's also why there's a fear that when the economy turns, so will Wall Street, and so will the giant sucking sound from the south (of Manhattan).
Both Sides of the Table
JUNE 28, 2010
Here is the link to this week’s TWiVC with Mike Hirshland. I apologize for the audio quality – we did this in a rush because we found a last minute studio and recorded in San Francisco. But you can see & hear the entire interview well and I think it will be well worth your while. One of things I’ve loved the most about doing now 11 weeks of This Week in VC is a chance to have an hour-long recorded conversation with investors.
Both Sides of the Table
JUNE 18, 2010
To see the video of This Week in VC click on this link. What a pleasure that I got to spend an hour talking with both Om Malik (whom I’ve always respected his views) and Paul Jozefak , a venture capital partner at Neuhaus Partners in Germany (and formerly the head of Europe for SAP Ventures). We spent the first 45 minutes or so talking about industry trends (in this order): The history and background of True Ventures, one of my favorite early-stage VC’s (and the one with whom Om is
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Both Sides of the Table
JUNE 12, 2010
We had a special edition of This Week in Venture Capital this week shooting out of the Next New Networks offices in New York. Our guest was Mo Koyfman of Spark Capital. Spark Capital is relatively new to VC (founded in 2005) yet has become one of the hottest new VCs having invested in Twitter, Tumblr, AdMeld, Boxee, KickApps and many more companies.
Both Sides of the Table
JUNE 3, 2010
This was really a fun week at TWiVC because we decided to have an entrepreneur come and talk about raising capital rather than having a VC come on. We had Farb Nivi , who is the founder & CEO of Grockit , a website that enables online group learning. It’s always such a pleasure for me to spend time with Farb because he has all of the enthusiasm and energy you love to see in entrepreneurs.
This is going to be BIG.
JUNE 2, 2010
I’m not even going to bother downloading Venture Economics data because I know it’s going to be garbage—most angel rounds aren’t tracked very well. That being said, is it me, or do more and more entrepreneurs seem to out there in the market essentially skipping the 500k-ish angel round? It’s a question I seem to be getting more and more often—why bother raising 500k if you can just grab a million or a million and a half?
This is going to be BIG.
JUNE 8, 2010
Last week I went to a Girls in Tech talk about women entrepreneurs and venture capital. There was a comment made in the crowd about why women seem to lag men when it comes to networking. The comment, made by a female, was essentially that women look to build and rely on deeper relationships and are less likely to use their loose connections for networking.
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This is going to be BIG.
JUNE 22, 2010
One of the things I pride myself on is knowing a little about a lot of things. I can generally strike up at least a brief conversation with anyone—which helps a lot when your job is basically to talk to strangers. I do, however, have a huge amount of respect for anyone who has deep expertise in an area—who has found something they want to focus on and done the deep dive.
This is going to be BIG.
JUNE 14, 2010
Did you catch Paul Carr’s latest piece on Techcrunch ? In it, he mocks New York for being a “content town”. What does Carr do for a living again? Oh, that’s right… he’s a writer. On top of that, he writes for the company who took it’s latest conference, Disrupt, to a town trying to “stay relevant” as he puts it as the west coast internet companies are “bleeding it try”.
Both Sides of the Table
JUNE 14, 2010
Over the years I collected (or thought up) a series of short-hand phrases to remind me of life’s lessons that are applicable to business. One of my favorite ones is “what you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail.&# The definition is kind of obvious. We’re all biased by our backgrounds and tend to put forward solutions that our backgrounds suggest to us.
Both Sides of the Table
JUNE 23, 2010
There are two things that have really surprised me in my years in “management&#. 1. How few people give their employees real feedback on a regular and formal basis. 2. How much employees crave this information, whether positive or negative. So my message to you if you work in a position where you have people reporting to you – don’t sweep feedback under the rug – even if it’s negative.
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Both Sides of the Table
JUNE 17, 2010
Last September I was on a panel with Guy Kawasaki talking about Twitter. He said at the time that he Tweeted 4 times for every story that he wrote. FOUR TIMES! The exact same Tweet. I couldn’t believe it. His rationale was that he found that his audience was tuning into Twitter at several different times during the day and he found that four was the optimal number to convert enough of the people reading his posts into traffic back to his website.
Berkonomics
JUNE 15, 2010
Do home-based employees work with the same dedication and productivity as those in office cubicles next to each other? That depends upon the management as much as the employee. I have a friend who is a CEO of a recruiting firm who “virtualized” her company after a decade of maintaining a fixed office location. She organizes morning conference calls, has each employee tweet the others in their department when starting work and ending the day, creates the feel of closeness with e
Both Sides of the Table
JUNE 2, 2010
I sent out a Tweet tonight asking whether anybody uses Google’s Buzz product independently of Twitter. I got a pretty luke warm reaction. The overwhelming majority of people who responded gave one of three answers (paraphrased): It was turned on by default by Gmail. It’s annoying. I don’t get it? I use it to communicate with some Gmail friends who aren’t on Twitter (this was the minority).
Berkonomics
JUNE 2, 2010
How about incentives for employees all the way down the line and through the corporation? How do we align them to the goals and strategies of the enterprise? Obviously for the appropriate individuals, a bonus program aligned to the department’s goals is appropriate. But how about awarding stock options to all employees? . Tech companies, particularly early stage and startups, still award options aggressively.
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Berkonomics
JUNE 20, 2010
Avoid long-term commitments. It is statistically true that at least half of the young companies funded by angel or venture investors will not survive three years from funding to demise. The greatest burden of either a growing company or one needing to retract and reduce expenses is the office lease. Although payroll is almost always the greatest cost, companies have flexibility as to how to handle both rapid growth and rapid decline in the personnel arena. .
Berkonomics
JUNE 7, 2010
Allowing small problems to escalate into big ones is simple. Just ignore the signs for long enough and the job is done. It takes far more energy to review regularly the key performance indicators you’ve established for each individual and yourself. But a small excursion caught early and corrected saves massive corrective resources later.
This is going to be BIG.
JUNE 11, 2010
In the days right after the BP oil spill, the CEO of BP blamed the builders of the well. In fact, it’s taken nearly a month for the company to announce anything even resembling a taking of responsibility. In the meantime, the image of the company—which had undergone a massive “green” rebranding just a few years ago—suffered irreparable damages. Most notable is the parody Twitter account BPGlobalPR , which has hijacked the #bpcares hashtag and cut the company down to size.
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