[a version of this was originally posted at Unreasonable.is. i was thinking about it today and wanted to repost it here with some additional commentary. in light of some of what we’re reading about in the tech press it would seem that a remind about this is due] __________________________ This advice would seem obvious, if only more people followed it. I was attending a board meeting recently where a company put up the following as one of its core values: “Humility over pride” As I think about how often I interact with people who are so ego-centric and hubris; as I consider how seldom these people show any self-awareness or emotional intelligence; and as I reflect on how universally unpleasant…
Posts By / seth levine
Reading Your VC Pitch Meeting
I’ve come to realize that many – most – entrepreneurs suck at reading pitch meetings. Frequently what I hear from a company CEO is completely uncorrelated to what I hear from the VC they were pitching. In thinking about why this is, the answer is actually relatively straightforward: VCs are predisposed to give good meetings. AND By being equivocal at the end of a meeting they preserve maximum option value. Parsing this a bit further, VCs take a lot of meetings. And they do so with varied motivations. Sometimes they’re legitimately interested in a market space or even a specific business. Sometimes another VC or entrepreneur asks them to take a meeting and they’re trying to preserve a relationship. Sometimes…
Weighing in on Judge Gorsuch
A number of people have asked me to share my views on Neil Gorsuch in more detail. I’m sure the curiosity stems from the intersection of my personal relationship with Neil and my absolute disdain for President Trump. I am aware given the current political climate that views on this are very polarized. And while a SCOTUS pick will always stir up emotion, the combination of the hyper polarized environment along with the backdrop of Merrick Garland not getting even a hearing for the same seat I know many people who are very angry about the prospects of Trump filling what was Obama’s seat to fill. By way of background and to be completely clear, while I know Neal, I don’t want to…
You can be much more productive. Here’s how.
I wrote a post a few days ago about 2 productivity hacks that I’ve been using that have transformed my work life. I got a great response to that post with a number of people asking me what other tools I’ve found that help make my world more productive. Micah, who works with me at Foundry, put together a list of the tools we’ve been using (or at least experimented with) that I wanted to share. Let me know if you have ones of your own you think I should add to the list. TextExpander – store frequently types phrases/notes across all devices Wunderlist– To Do list on all your devices – supports team collaboration Trello – collaborative task list for Teams, works…
2 Productivity Hacks That Will Change Your (work) Life
I’ve been putting a lot of effort into enhancing my productivity. I actually hired a coach to help me with this (more on that in another post) and have changed around a LOT of my work life in an effort to free up time. I’ll write a longer post on a handful of tools that I’ve found that have significantly increased my ability to get work done, but I thought I’d share some low hanging fruit with everyone about the 2 things I did that have most changed my life. #1 – Know Who You Want to Meet With I was going to title this “Say No More” but lots of people have written about that. And what I’ve found…
There is no middle ground
While I’ve been very vocal on my Twitter feed for months about Trump I haven ‘t put up any long form content here about it. Maybe it has just been easier to shout into the Twittersphere than it was to really sit down and talk about the challenges ahead of us. Maybe I wasn’t ready to put it into a format that exceeded 140 characters. And for some time I had hoped that maybe things would moderate and calm down. They haven’t. And in fact they’re getting worse. Like I suspect many of you did, I woke up the morning of November 9th pretty upset. I jokingly called it the trifecta of crap: 1) I was tired, having stayed up…
Free Money | Supporting Entrepreneurial Non-Profits
At Pledge 1% our mission is to encourage entrepreneurs and companies to give back to their communities through the donation of equity, product, profit and time to non-profits. We launched this program less than a year ago we already have over 1,000 members of our community. And it’s growing quickly. As entrepreneurs ourselves we’re always looking for new and innovative ideas that help us achieve our mission. Today we’re announcing a major new idea in connection with SRS Acquiom, EscrowUP. The idea behind EscrowUp is as brilliant as it is simple. When companies sell, buyers typically set aside a portion of the purchase price (often 10-15% of the total deal value) in case unexpected expenses come up. For simplicity sake these escrows are…
Taking a deep breath
Below is a note I just sent to our CEOs. While I’m dismayed at what happened last night, now isn’t a time to be reactionary. And the US needs a strong and vocal counterbalance to the hate and bigotry we just empowered. For many of you, as well as for us, it was a deeply disappointing night. And it’s easy to wake up today with a sense of fear and foreboding about the future of our country. That’s understandable. And while we share that fear we also continue to share an optimism about the greatness of our country and our future. America is a resilient country and we passionately hope that resilience will temper the hate and vitriol that’s been…
Supporting Cliff Avril and New Story
Earlier this month Seattle Seahawks defensive end Cliff Avril announced that he would support building homes in Haiti – devastated most recently by hurricane Matthew. For every sack Avril gets this season he’s donating $6,000 which is enough to build a home that is both hurricane and earthquake proof. The charity that Avril is doing this through – New Story – is one that my wife and I know well. It is actually a Y-Combinator company (was the first non-profit to go through the Y-Combinator program) and has developed a very impactful (and novel) model for supporting housing development in areas of need. Greeley and I have been supporting it for a few years. And, in case of funny coincidence, it…
Shadow Boxing
There’s nothing I value more about what we’ve created at Foundry than the relationship I have with my partners. Brad, Jason, Ryan and I are not just business partners, but best friends. This relationship affects everything that we do at Foundry and I think shows in the way we run our firm and the way we work with the entrepreneurs in the Foundry portfolio. It’s been an interesting transition over the years to get to this point and one that we’re constantly working on (we’ve often used an organizational consultant to help with this; we also spend a day a quarter off site to work on Foundry as a firm, the portfolio and our relationships with each other). We each have…