Forwarded from my partner Chris Wand. 

An Investor’s Rendition of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (by Travis Cocke)

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the land
Not a banker was lending, not even “Gold-Man”
Foreclosures were hung by the courthouse with care
In hopes that Hank Paulson soon would be there.

The Bankers were nestled all snug in their beds
While visions of bonuses danced in their heads.
And my teachers in their offices and me in my room
Had just settled an argument about the depth of the gloom

When out on Wall Street there arose such a clatter
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter
Away to the computer I flew like a flash!
Started up the ticker, and threw up some cash…

The i-banks on the brink of another bad blow
Sell all your stocks and look out below!
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear?
Green on the screen as the Fed interfered

With the same old chairman, so ready to lend
I knew in moment it must Big Ben
More dovish than Greenspan, his governors they came
And he printed and lended and called them by name!

“Now Lockhardt! now, Lacker! now, Evans and Plosser!
On, Geithner! On, Fisher! On Yellen and Krosner!
To the Treasury! To the Mile High Mint!
Now print away! Print away! C’mon now print!”

As credit spreads that before defaults do fly
When they meet with an obstacle, they drop green from the sky
So up to the Capitol the governors they flew,
With a chopper full of money, and Rick Wagoner, too.

And then, in an e-mail I read from a friend
Capitalism was dead, and this was the end
As I sold my last stock and started to cry
On the TV came Buffett and he said “Time to buy.”

He was bullish on stocks, from Nike to CVX
And his portfolio was tarnished with options and CDS
A bundle of buyouts he had flung on his back
And he looked like a genius, just following his knack

His stocks how they fell! His returns how scary…
Yet his cash-how it swelled! And His letters so merry…

He was chubby and cheerful, a right jolly investor
And I smiled when I saw him, despite my dreadful semester
A twinkle in his eye and the use of his cash
Soon gave me the know that stocks wouldn’t crash

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work
Shoring up balance sheets, and buying preferreds
And laying his finger aside of his nose
And giving a nod, UP & UP Berkshire rose!

He sprang to his NetJet, to his pilot gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, as he drove into the sky,
“Happy Trading to all, and to all a good buy!”

The last couple of months have been tuff ones for me. I've felt constantly behind (thus the lack of blogging consistency) and most days consisted of running from one meeting to the next (typically 10 minutes behind). This has contributed to my feeling both burned out and feeling that I was letting too many things fall through the cracks.  This was evidenced by 1) my inbox growing most days, not shrinking; 2) waking up at 5am to try to work on #1; 3) an over-reliance on multitasking (walking to a meeting, on the phone while responding to email); 4) my wife never being able to reach me during the day; and 5) generally feeling stressed and off-balance.

My week off for Thanksgiving definitely helped clear my head. But now I'm back to my old pattern (I'm writing this on a flight to NY where I'm running around from breakfast through dinner for two days and then catching the late flight home in time to get back for another set of meetings).  I was talking about this with Greeley the other day and we came up with some ideas for how to break this cycle.  I'd love to hear from others on how they do this as well. Here are a few key ones I'm going to work on in 2009

1) Take fewer meetings. Duh. Obvious, I know, but clearly the #1 thing I can do to clear space on my schedule. I make this resolution ever six months or so and get better for a few months before faltering. In 2009 I'm going to guard my schedule more diligently and push back on meetings that just fill space.

2) Schedule email time. This may sound crazy, but I'm blocking off time every morning next year (that I'm not traveling, that is...) for e-mail, phone calls, research and the like.  With rare exceptions, no meetings in 2009 until 10:00am.  Rather than starting my day running around, I'd like some solid time to get work done and start my days getting ahead rather than behind and feeling like I constantly need to catch up.

3) Take more vacations. I mentioned this in my post about going off-grid - I did a crappy job of taking time off in 2008.  The lack of time to recharge definitely weighed on me towards the end of the year.  Not so in 2009 - we've already planned our spring break vacation and are working on several others blocks of time to take off.

4) Work out more.  This may not seem like a good plan for time management, but for about a month this summer I got into a great pattern of riding my bike up Flagstaff mountain (a "hill" near the office) several times a week.  Not only did I feel great exercising consistently, but was a consistent time to just clear my head.

Thoughts?

I just returned from a full weeks vacation "off-grid", by which I mean that I neither checked voicemail or email, took any work related calls, etc. I was reachable, but made it pretty clear that this was for emergencies only. No nightly checks of my email, no popping upstairs for a quick conference call, no calling into the office "just to check in".  Having zero willpower when it comes to this sort of thing I aided my quest to be off-line by leaving the laptop at home and turning off the data feed to my cell phone (I couldn't imagine resisting the temptation of taking a peek at the hundreds of emails that were piling up if I saw them sitting in my phone cue). Without these interruptions I let my mind run where it wanted to, quickly forgot about the 50 "urgent" things waiting for me upon my return and focused on relaxing and having fun with my family.

I don't know why I don't do this more often - it had been about 18 months since I spent any amount of time off-grid.  And while before the vacation I probably would have told you that I really didn't need to go to this extreme and that the time I had taken off earlier this year (but where I checked in daily, took probably 2 hours of calls per day and had one full day of meetings in the middle of my trip) was sufficient. With hindsight I realize that I was deluding myself. I needed the time away to clear my head and I was stupid to run so long without doing so.

I look around me at colleagues and friends and see very few that truly take time away to recharge. It's a shame that we live in a society where "connectedness" is prized above all and I think every so often (but certainly more than 1x per year) people should buck the system and just go dark.  Maybe for a week, maybe just for a long weekend, maybe the 3rd Saturday of every month.  Give it a try - you won't regret it!

It's a VC cliche that great management trumps a great idea.  In this case there's a lot of truth to the cliche. Over the course of my venture career I've been exposed to all combinations of teams and ideas and am constantly reminded of not only the power of great teams, but also of the pitfalls of poor ones.  We've thought about this a lot at Foundry and have pushed each other hard on investing only in people we're ecstatic about as entrepreneurs (and resisting the temptation to "fix" management teams that are not A+ or fool ourselves into believing that an outstanding idea is more important than the people who implement it).  This last point is often missed on our industry - I think there's an incorrect belief that a mediocre team can push their way through a great idea. While certainly there are cases where a company manages to a great outcome with a sub-par team, my own experience has been unequivocal.  While I've had a handful of cases where - with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight - the idea we were pursuing was only fair but where a fantastic management team has managed to guide a company to a good outcome, I've had almost no cases where we've placed a company in the hands of sub-par managers and reached a happy ending (as I mention above there are some edge cases where mediocre teams manage to a happy place, but to me these are just lucky exceptions). 

It's tempting at times as a VC to get behind an idea you're really excited about with a team that you take on as a "project", just as it is easy to fall into the "here and now" trap when hiring a replacement CEO (or deciding not to replace an existing one who has grown a company as far as they can realistically take it).  Doing so is a mistake.  Bad management = bad outcome.  Not to mention that life is too short to work with people who aren't great...

One of the companies I work with is in need of some first class UI help. Ideally we'd like someone who has a great design aesthetic and who also can code that design in Ruby or PHP.  However for the moment we can use someone with the former talent (who can wire frame up their work which we can then get coded) since we're looking to get our basic prototype up and running. The company is based on Boulder, but the designer doesn't necessarily have to be local.  Email me directly if you're interested (or know someone who is).

For me the greatest impact of Barak Obama's historic victory yesterday is the generational shift that it enables. I'm not talking about his generation, although there's clearly a passing of the baton from the 60's generation (people born in the 40's) to the 80's generation (people born in the 60's).

I'm talking about his kids (and your kids and my kids) generation.  About the millions of children who woke up this morning with real possibility - with the realization that there are truly no limitations on their ambitions. 

I'm talking about the son of my best friend - about as aryan looking as one can be - who now likes to wear white shirts because he thinks they make his skin look darker and who laments that his blond, straight hair isn't black and curly "like Barak's". Or my own daughter whose eyes light up when she talks about she and Barak Obama having the same skin color.

Barak Obama ran a campaign of hope and change.  But really it was a campaign of possibility.  For us. For our kids. For the world. Whatever your politics, I hope you'll stop to think about the amazing impact the events of the last 24 hours will have on generations of Americans who will follow us.

If you've read this blog for a while you'll know that Sonos is one of my favorite all time inventions.  For those of you living in a closet, Sonos is a system that allows for wireless streaming of music throughout your home with the ability to separately control dozens of music "zones".  You can easily stream music from various online sources (or your own music library) and their controller makes it easy to create play-lists, cue up music and play different tunes in different parts of your house.  If you have ears, you should own one of these.

Last week Sonos announced a bunch of new features - free integration with Pandora (I was already paying for this - it my be the single best feature of the entire system), more internet radio options, integration with Last.fm and ... the ability to turn your iPhone into a Sonos controller (seriously cool).

Awesome!

I find it strange that Google felt the need to send the following note out to their publishers (are we going to stop writing/publishing because we fear the bottom has fallen out of the CPC market?!?).

Dear Publisher,

We understand that the recent economic turmoil has created a lot of uncertainty in the lives of AdSense publishers. During these difficult times, we're continuing to invest in innovations that improve publisher monetization and advertiser value in the content network.

We're focusing on further developing our product offerings and boosting ad performance for publishers. We recently announced advancements in AdSense for search and experiments to make ads more effective. We're bringing DoubleClick technologies to AdSense publishers, and we'll continue to launch new products and features. We're also continuing to improve our offerings for AdWords advertisers, making it easier for them to target the Google content network. Features for advertisers, such as the new display ad builder, are designed to improve ad performance on AdSense publisher sites.

We'll keep driving technological progress, but our best asset will always be our publisher partners. The strength of AdSense lies in the value of the content you bring to users and the quality of the sites you bring to advertisers. Our success is tied to yours. We look forward to partnering with you for the long term, and remain dedicated to helping you succeed.

A recurring theme in venture circles these last few weeks has been "Back To Basics" with VC pundits boldly prognosticating about the current state of the markets, talking about the infamous Sequoia deck and trying not to make people wince as they lay their claim to how they saw all this coming (I'm not immune to this myself and offered what I hoped was some practical advice in a recent post).

All of this gets me thinking, however - why is it that companies got away from "the Basics" in the first place. Every time people think the rules have been rewritten and that somehow "this time will be different" they are wrong.  So if we take anything away from this current crisis, for me it should be a reminder that most successful businesses are built carefully, over several (if not many) years and require a steady and disciplined approach.  At the core if this process is being realistic about what you can accomplish in any given period of time and not letting costs get ahead of where you are in both your business cycle and access to capital (see my take on that from last year - all of which still holds true).

Building businesses is in large part about the basics - let's not get too far away from them next time.

I really do try to stay away from politics in this space (with the somewhat recent exception of my post on attending the Democratic Convention, although even that post didn't discuss policy).  However I can't seem to hold myself back this time.  I'm completely frustrated with some of the rhetoric coming out of the Republican party.  Specifically the notion that there is a single "right" point of view on any given issue and that if you disagree with the Republican position, you're simply not a real American.  It's part of the view Bush laid out several years ago that you're either "for us or against us" and precludes the possibility of any real conversation or debate.  It's complete bullshit.  I understand that campaigns can be nasty and that in this campaign both candidates (and their proxies) have at times stretched the truth (although certainly McCain has run a significantly more negative campaign than Obama).  But I'm sick of being labeled "un-Americain" or "un-Patriotic" because I don't support the Republican platform. I want a president (Democrat or Republican) who supports and governs all Americans, who sees and embraces the diversity of opinion in our country and understands the nuance of policy differences that results from that diversity. If we've learned anything in the last 8 years it's that presidents who see nothing but black or white, who apply simplistic heuristics to analyze complex situations and who refuse to live anywhere but in their own bubble, are destined to fail - and to do so miserably and completely.

The real reason the Republican message is falling short this year is because they've made it clear that in their view they are there only to support "real Americans" and unfortunately for them, most American's apparently aren't their kind of "real".  It's sad, too - I had some respect for John McCain in the past and would have seriously considered voting for him back in 2000 (when he was truly a centrist and closer in politics to Bill Clinton than he was to George Bush).  No longer....