I had a bizarre request earlier this week to send in original signatures to some board documents that I had signed (a lender to the company in question wanted them). I regularly send around scanned documents – for everything ranging from board resolutions to investment documents (and shred the originals). I can’t think of the last time I actually had to provide an original signature. Strange . . .
Archives / January, 2008
Why I don’t sign NDAs
An entrepreneur started a meeting with me a few days ago by asking me to sign a non-disclosure agreement. I politely declined and thought I’d back that up with a post on the subject (I recall reading a few other VC blogger’s views on NDAs in past years – there’s certainly no lack of thought on the subject, although it does seem to consistently come up every year). VC’s, as a general rule, won’t sign NDAs. No – we’re not trying to steal ideas from entrepreneurs or pass confidential information along. We’re just not in a position to review, negotiate and keep track of literally thousands of NDAs that would result if we started signing them on a regular basis. …
Check the job boards
Finding information out about your competitors is something that all companies do on a regular basis. Trolling web sites, reading blogs, setting up news alerts for articles, talking to customers and prospects, trolling trade show booths and listening in on webinars are all pretty common occurrences in the business of knowing what you don’t know about your competitors. One great way to get a pulse on what’s going on down the street is to keep your eye on your competitors job board. The pace of hiring and the positions with open recs all give incredible (and generally overlooked) insight into the state of their business.
Apply early, apply often
TechStars applications for this summer are officially open and I’d encourage any budding entrepreneur with a half-baked (or quarter baked – or fully baked) idea they are passionate about to apply. For those of you who are not familiar with TechStars, it’s a program started by successful Boulder entrepreneur David Cohen that brings about a dozen promising start-up teams to Boulder for an intensive summer of work on their start-up business idea. You can read more about what the teams last year worked on (and some of the machinations they went through to get there) on both David’s blog and the TechStars web site. I was a huge fan of TechStars last year and worked closely with a handful of…
Clearing your bug log
From my partner, Chris Wand, describing a program one of his companies put in place over the holiday to encourage employees to clear a bunch of outstanding bugs in their backlog: Anyone that wanted to fix a bug during their holiday break could earn $50/$75/$100 (depending on the severity of the bug) for each known bug they fixed (the catch was that QA had to approve the fix). The person that fixed the most bugs also earned an additional bonus (I think it was $500). They managed to clear about 100 bugs off their list… It was so successful, they’re thinking of implementing it at other times (i.e. over a long weekend, etc.—of course making sure that they don’t set…
New look, same Seth
With thanks to Ross for actually pulling everything together, I’m launching a new look and a new site today. Seth Levine’s VC Adventure is now hosted on my own domain – www.sethlevine.com – and is sporting an updated look. My old TypePad site is still active (although I’m no longer posting there) and in theory (at least until it breaks) is redirecting traffic to my new site (and should be directly specific posts to their respective post here at sethlevine.com). Let me know if you find anything broken or in need of editing/updating/improvement/better design.
Digital Analog
A few years ago, my partner Brad Feld suggested that entrepreneurs “take a giant step back” and look for a non-technology based analog for describing their business/idea (the “analog analog“). Today at a board meeting we spent some time working out our analog as a way of describing our young company. It occurred to us that the best analogs were all technology ones, which made me think: Have we come far enough in technology that digital analogs are now acceptable (or even preferred in some cases)?!? Perhaps we’re enough generations along the technology curve (Web 3.0?) that it’s now ok to switch our analogs to digital ones . . .
Seat 14A to LaGuardia…
CEO Reviews
Probably the most consistently overlooked “best practice” in venture backed companies is the CEO review. In my experience most companies provide little, if any, structured feedback at the CEO level. Perhaps the board or the members of the compensation committee might provide the CEO with limited (and mostly ad hoc) feedback at the beginning of each year when/if a CEO’s bonus for the previous year is awarded. More often the CEO review is essentially a review of the numbers vs. the financial plan. While that step is important, so is a meaningful discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the CEO and ways they can improved their performance based on the collective input of the board and other mangers at…
Bill Gates last days
From CES. The bit with Bono is particularly amusing! Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr5w3X4R8b4