Posts By / seth levine

The stupid things VCs say

Entrepreneur: โ€œYah, weโ€™ve talked with Ryan about thisโ€ Me: โ€œOh. So Ryan already sat through this presentationโ€ Entrepreneur: โ€œUm, yah โ€“ something like thatโ€ Oops โ€“ that wasnโ€™t what I really meant.

Modern day Pavlov

I made a simple change in my life a few weeks ago that ended up being much more dramatic than expected. For reasons extraordinarily practical โ€“ I wanted to keep my phone on at night when I was traveling without being woken up 30 times overnight with the โ€˜chripโ€™ of a new email โ€“ I turned off the email notification on my Dash. (I know โ€“ I could have created a new profile and programmed it to allow the phone to ring but I was in a hurry so I just modified my main profile.) A few days passed before I realized that I wasnโ€™t constantly interrupting what I was doing at any given moment to check new emails asโ€ฆ

Is your VC a rockstar?

I had two people at VC in the Rockies this week say that VCโ€™s were rockstars. I hope thatโ€™s not really what most VCs actually think. I always thought of entrepreneurs as rockstars. Weโ€™re just the groupies.

Venture Capital at Altitude

Every year the Colorado Venture Capital Association (soon to morph into the Rocky Mountain Venture Capital Association after combining with similar associations in a few neighboring states) puts on the โ€œitโ€ conference for Colorado venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and the lawyers, bankers, search firms, etc. that support us โ€“ Venture Capital in the Rockies. I love this event โ€“ itโ€™s a great chance to see the best of Colorado deal flow and it concentrates pretty much everyone in the region who has anything to do with venture in one place for the better part of two days with plenty of opportunities to connect, catch up, share ideas, gossip, etc (oh โ€“ and did I mention that the conference is in Beaverโ€ฆ

Delivering bad news

Letโ€™s say you have some bad news to deliver to your board/investors. For example, you lost a huge customer or your software has a major bug thatโ€™s going to set you back 6 months or your CFO just got arrested for cheating on his taxes, etc. Should you: Take out an advertisement in the Journal announcing this and then send out a note to your board with a link Rent one of those sign trucks and have it drive by your investors offices repeatedly Bury it deep inside a board book and hope no one notices it Donโ€™t say anything โ€“ your investors/board are too involved in your business already and ask way too many questions as it is Noneโ€ฆ

Clarity

I was on a call recently where I had to ask someone 4 times to repeat what they were saying using more exact terms.  Itโ€™s a major pet peeve of mine and so prevalent Iโ€™m losing my ability to be nice about it.  Perhaps itโ€™s a result of being a kinder, gentler society or maybe itโ€™s just because weโ€™ve all sat through too many PowerPoint presentations or maybe weโ€™re all testing our political-speak skills, but whatever it is the result is the absolutely maddening trend of people not saying directly what they mean and forcing the rest of us to play 20 questions to tease it out of them. Hereโ€™s an example: Direct description:  This is a red circle โ€œBusinessโ€โ€ฆ

When you know itโ€™s not right, it isnโ€™t

When you know itโ€™s not right, it isnโ€™t. A fellow board member said this to me the other day and I wrote it down as something I wanted to remind myself of every once in a while. She was referring to the human tendency to act slowly in the face of clear evidence and in particular to venture capitalistsโ€™ reluctance to be decisive. A good thought to ponder.

Children

I suppose this is a pretty obvious statement, but children really need (and deserve) homes. This hits close to the heart when you visit an orphanage and are immediately surrounded by kids yelling โ€œmommy? mommy? mommy?โ€ as they look up at you with their arms raised so you can pick them up. I wish I could find a way to explain in words what itโ€™s like to step out of a van into a sea of smiling children, all with their arms outstretched. Obviously my wife and I are inclined towards children, as we were there to adopt our daughter, but I think it would be hard for anyone to experience this and not want to leave with every childโ€ฆ

Who do I work for?

In a recent post I pointed out how autonomous the venture business can be. If thatโ€™s the case, then, who do I work for? Brad hired me and I spent several years working directly for him (i.e., supporting him in his investments). Heโ€™s still my boss, although we donโ€™t have a traditional reporting relationship (Iโ€™m a junior partner โ€“ a Principal in our nomenclature โ€“ and heโ€™s a senior partner โ€“ a Managing Director). I use him as a sounding board and advisor a lot but we donโ€™t really have much of a boss/employee relationship. To some extent I work โ€˜forโ€™ the other Managing Directors of Mobius but more in the same way someone at a company works โ€˜forโ€™ theirโ€ฆ

Why are VCs so indecisive?

Ever notice how indecisive many VCs are? Maybe Iโ€™m just quick tempered, but it bugs the hell out of me that so many of my venture colleagues canโ€™t seem to make a decision. Sometimes this shows up in overanalyzing a prospective investment (just to turn it down later for a completely unrelated reason which came up in the first week of their diligence); sometimes in the line โ€œweโ€™re waiting to see if any other investor is interested in this deal before deciding to pursue itโ€; sometimes in a delay taking an action with a CEO when its clear something needs to be done; sometimes in simply not having a definitive opinion on any issue โ€“ ever โ€“ until someone elseโ€ฆ