Most startups spend plenty of time working on things like their product plans, requirements docs, market studies and the like. They are important aspects of running their companies and the kind of things that improve with collaboration and varied input from as well as from the iterative and inclusive process they typically require. You’d expect to find documents related to these sorts of activities on an intranet or company wiki and you’d expect that they’d be included in the occasional board package and discussed with advisors. I’d suggest companies add something else to this list: a detailed overview of how they conduct hiring. Most start-ups will tell you that hiring great people is one of the most important determinants of…
Category
General Business
AdBurner, FirstDocs and our 2008 investments
First off, happy 2009 to you all! I’m looking forward to a little more frequent blogging this year (if not exactly a resolution for 2009 since I think those are a bit cheesy, at least a goal for the year). A few items of note to start off the blogging year: Today NewsGator, AdMeld, Technorati, Gigya, Medialets and Tremor Media announced AdBurner – a partnership that is designed to optimize the management and monitization of network traffic for large publishers. NewsGator is providing the distribution platform through their widget network and existing publisher relationships and the remaining companies are the key partners for monitizing that traffic – whether that traffic is a diverse media type, on a mobile platform, etc….
what’s a company to do?
Now that I’ve received a link to the Sequoia "Holy Shit" presentation about 30 times along with about a dozen emails asking "what do you think?" it’s probably time for a post. My partner Jason has a great post up on the subject (with a more general discussion of how the current markets effect our business – definitely worth reading) and Brad has some practical advice up this morning on his blog as well. There’s no question the markets have changed dramatically in the last few weeks and that there are serious short and long term considerations for investors and companies. Here’s my 2c. 1. Don’t panic. Markets are cyclical. While everyone knows this, it’s hard to keep perspective in…
MSFT still has it…
I spent last Thursday at Microsoft for their annual VC Summit. While there are plenty of ways that the company can improve, I walked away with the very distinct feeling that the "market" underestimates the innovation coming out of Redmond and the ways in which the company is clearly changing and adapting to the new technology world. Specifically, the products and people I encountered were forward thinking – clearly moving well beyond the OS and embedded software mentality that is the history of the business – and significantly more platform agnostic than they are given credit for (both product demos I saw included at least one Mac and other non-Microsoft based products). And then there’s Google, which in many ways…
Move to Boulder!
A handful of Boulder companies are pooling resources to bring 100 software developers to Boulder (see Boulder.me). If you’re interested in a chance to come out and see what we have to offer, take a look at what they’ve pulled together (my partner Chris Wand is heavily involved and has a post up about the event on the Foundry blog). Not only is Boulder a beautiful place to live, it’s a fantastic place to work and build successful companies (see Ryan and Jason’s view of moving from the Bay Area to Boulder here and here). To quote from the "Boulder Wants You" post: In the last several years, Boulder has been named #1 in Forbes’ “Smartest Cities in America”, #1…
Life without email?
For most technology professionals (really most professionals of any kind) email is so integrated into our work that we can hardly imagine life without it. Sure, it can be a distraction at times and – especially if you carry a wireless device – hard to escape from. But it also greatly enhances productivity, allows us to communicate quickly and effectively and to have asynchronous interactions with a great number of people. I know in my own work life I send and receive between 200 and 300 emails a day. And since I’m already tied up on the phone or in meetings for at least 5 or 6 hours in any given day, email allows me to be significantly more productive…
Your chance to play designer
If you’re like me, you spend most of your days pining away for the life that would have been had you followed your true passion into product management and design. Ok – I’m being flip, but we all have opinions on the way the sites we visit look, feel and work. So here’s your chance to weigh in on an important design decision and help out a Foundry investment in the process. Lijit is coming out with a new thumbnail feature in their search results (very cool) and can’t decide how to best lay out those results with the picture. So they’ve tossed it out to their user base (and other interested – or at least opinionated – parties). So…
Know your audience
I don’t know what it is about the last few weeks – maybe the change of season; maybe something in the water – but I’ve been absolutely amazed at how often people have showed a complete lack of comprehension for who was in the room with them. This may sound more calculating than I intend it to, but I think its a good practice to always consider who you’re talking to before you start in on a conversation. This is especially true when you’re negotiating for something, making a request or otherwise trying to drive to a specific outcome. I’ve witnessed several pretty amazing examples of a complete lack of thoughtfulness around this notion of late. From making idle (and…
How I don’t travel
We have a great partner dynamic at Foundry. We’ve all worked together for at least 7 years (in some cases over 10 years) and are close friends as well as colleagues. We also have pretty varied styles and opinions. Case in point – Brad’s recent post on his travel habits. I couldn’t be more different in how I approach travel. Heading to the west coast, Brad likes to get up insanely early and take the 6am flight to SFO so he can start his meetings at 8:30. I’ve done that about a dozen times and finally realized that I just can’t deal with the 22 hour day that results from it. I was doing it a lot on Mondays and…
Sharing practical experience
My partner Ryan related amusing story about leaving his brand new MacBook Air on a recent flight. I had a similar experience myself last week, which unfortunately didn’t end up quite as happily (although fortunately didn’t involve a $3,000 piece of technology). I left the office for a meeting on Friday afternoon with my hands full: I had my computer bag in one hand and was carrying my jacket and a garment bag in the other. In addition I was on my phone as I dragged all of this down to the parking garage. I managed to get everything in the car without disrupting (or dropping) my call and drove off. After a few blocks, I noticed that my phone…