As an investor in an RSS aggregator (Newsgator – far and away the best of the reader platforms out there; although I suppose I’m biased) I pay attention to how people use syndication services and how they use, manage, manipulate and read their news and blog feeds. I’ve played around with some of the different technologies in the space – most of which are variations of the same theme (very effective for reading individual posts, not as effective for sorting through large amounts of information).

Today Adam Rentschler sent me links (here and here) to a couple of sites that use RSS feeds (and a Google-like measure of what certain news sources are reporting on) to create a visual map of the news and events that are being reported on/talked about. The technology behind this was created by the Hive Group.

To borrow from Adam’s note to me “creative data representation is cool stuff”

True, but what would be even cooler would be the ability to create custom data representations. What if you could pick the source data for the honeycombs (The Hive Group’s term for their way of representing information)? Have one for your favorite news sources. Another for blogs. Better yet, one for the hundreds of blogs that you want to read but never have the chance to. How about a map of all the speech in the blogsphere (Dave S? Howard K?). It’d be a fast and effective way to see what people are talking about.

Yup – that really would be cool . . .

This is the 4th post in my Designing the Ideal Board Meeting series.

I hope this series so far has helped you think a bit differently about how you approach the lead-up to your board meetings. By the time you walk into the meeting you should have a clear agenda that everyone has agreed to, one or two areas of the business that you plan to dive more deeply into, prepared materials that are of a style, length, detail and consistency that efficiently and effectively brings your board up to speed on the business and have been communicating with your board regularly so that there aren’t any big surprises in store for them when they get to the meeting. Here are a few things to consider in setting up the meeting itself:

How long should your meeting run? This is one of the most common questions I get with respect to board meetings. CEOs are obviously sensitive to the time commitment their board (and their team) has made in preparing for and traveling to a board meeting. And as a result they want the meeting to be substantive and feel like the length is sufficient to have justified everyone having come out for it. That’s understandable but to me the key here is quality not quantity. Substantive board meetings aren’t measured by time in the board room and I think a CEO’s first and highest priority should be to create a meeting that is high on substance and information and low on filler. As a general rule for most companies that are reading this something in the 3-4 hour range makes sense for how long your board should be meeting. In my experience meetings that run longer than that (and I’ve been in plenty of 7 hour board meetings over the years) ramble, are not focused, are actually light on substance (much of which gets missed because of all the filler) and tend to devolve into the Exec Team meetings that I warned against in my last post in this series. Less than 3 hours feels too short to cover substantive issues. Obviously there are times when it’s important for a board to meet for a longer period of time. Similarly, as companies grow they often need to add a little time to their board meetings due to the sheer complexity of the business and volume of what needs to be covered.

Include your team. Another common question is whether the exec team (or others) should participate in board meetings. My general view is that it’s positive to have the executive team in the board room. It helps establish a relationship between the team and your board, allows the board to see you in action a bit as a CEO interacting with your team and allows for clear communication back to the team on the board discussion. I’ll talk below about reporting and it’s important to talk to you team ahead of time about what their role is in the board meeting. It’s also important to note that just because an exec is in the room, doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be asked to give an overview of their functional area. Along the same lines, I generally don’t suggest that teams roll in and out of the meeting and only participate in “their” section of the board discussion. If your team is going to join the meeting they should be there for the full general session (and likely, but not always depending on the topic, participate in the deep dive sessions as well).

Board business first or last? The blunt answer here is that it doesn’t really matter (assuming you can stick to the agenda and time table). Some CEOs (I’d say most) like to get the board business out of the way at the start of the meeting. Some prefer to start with the team in the room for the operational review and reserve the end of the board meeting for board business. The former is nice because you won’t be rushing to approve minutes, option grants, lease approvals or whatever else it is that you need done as “official business.” The latter is nice because there are often other topics that are board business related that you’ll save for the end of the meeting (say an HR or legal issue) that you don’t want to talk about prior to the business update. Keeping to your agenda and time schedule is important here. So is understanding priorities. If you have a messy legal issue you need to talk about and that’s the most important piece of board business, make sure you don’t short-change it by either leaving too little time at the end of your meeting or by letting the business portion of the meeting run long. It’s always better in my view to sacrifice reporting for items that don’t lend themselves well to virtual meetings. Be smart about how you organize your meeting and be sure you have time to cover the most important material. This sounds easy, but I’ve watched it go wrong many, many (many, many, many) times. This typically manifests itself with a CEO wanting every member of their executive team to have air time in the board room, not taking control of the agenda and timing and subsequently letting things run too long thinking they need to cover everything in their board deck vs. prioritizing key items. There are times in a board meeting when the CEO (or board chair if that’s a different person) needs to step in and say “we’re going to have to push the engineering discussion to next meeting; I need us to stick to the schedule.

Discussion item or decision item. If you take nothing else away from this series, I hope you’ll remember this paragraph. Boards are fiduciary bodies and have authority over a number of key decisions made by a company (for a venture backed business many of these are outlined in the company’s governing and investment documents, in fact). BUT the reality is that the vast majority of topics covered in board meetings aren’t ones where the board is making the decision. One of the key functions of a board is to hire and fire the CEO. Most decisions are delegated to the CEO and management team. Boards are not operating bodies – they don’t run your business. In my experience both boards and CEOs consistently mistake the board’s role. You operate your business. If the board isn’t happy with the decisions you’re making they can fire you. But they don’t run the business through you. One way to help you avoid mistaking the board’s role is to be clear from the outset of a topic whether the item you’re talking about is a discussion item or a decision item. Often in a board meeting I’ll stop early in a discussion and ask that question – are you asking us to make a decision here? – in an effort to clarify this. It’s best if you do this from the outset. There are, of course, some items that the board has specific decision making authority over (buying another company, increasing the option pool, signing leases of a certain size, etc.). There are other items that are important enough to the business that you may want to come to a group decision as a board (including you) but where board approval isn’t explicitly required (expanding into a new market, making a critical product decision, etc.). Be clear when you’re asking your board to help you decide something, vs. wanting to have a dicusssion and take input from the board but where the goal isn’t to ceed your decision making authority.

Invite opinions and don’t be afraid of disagreement. Early in my venture career I was on the board of a company run by a CEO who was very command and control oriented. Our early board meetings were reporting heavy and, frankly, pretty boring and generally a waste of time. We finally ended up in a meaningful and heated discussion about product direction debated for about an hour. No conclusion was reached but it was by far the best discussion we had as a board to that point. I stayed after the meeting to debrief with the CEO. He was extremely uncomfortable and told me that it was the “worst board meeting” he had ever had. As we talked, I realized that he had a specific outcome for that conversation he was trying to forcefully guide us to (this wasn’t entirely lost on me in the meeting itself) but more importantly he was totally uncomfortable with the idea of a free form discussion in the meeting (he was also the kind of CEO who called each board member before the meeting so he could have the meeting in advance and control/anticipate the actual meeting itself – something I wrote earlier about not doing). Don’t be that kind of CEO (unsurprisingly, he didn’t last long as CEO of that business). Your board should have opinions. They certainly have different experiences to draw from. Conflict is good and you should seek out board members who won’t be shy with their opinions, who are up for rigorous debate, but who won’t hold grudges if what you ultimately decide isn’t what they advocated for (more on that last point in my next post).

Why, not just what. Going into the board meeting your goal shouldn’t be to simply report what’s happened since your last meeting. It should be to interpret the data you’re showing and describe why the numbers are how they are and what you think that means for the business. This is critical to pass along to your management team as well but was hopefully set up already by the pre-materials you’ve put together where you’ve prepared a board letter (and perhaps your management team has as well) that talks about exactly this question. This is one of the reasons I didn’t like the trend to send around board decks in Google Doc, answer questions in the comments to the doc and then start board meetings with: “does anyone have any further questions about what we sent around?” This is a poor way to ramp into a meeting, doesn’t invite any discussion and absolves you and your team of the important exercise of analyzing and interpreting the company’s progress as part of a group discussion with the board. To be clear, it’s not that all reporting in board meetings is bad. Of course you are going to repeat some key reporting items – to make sure everyone understands the numbers; to highlight a key trend you’re seeing but may not have been obvious; etc. But by focusing on the why you’ll have a much more substantive conversation with your board than if you simply report on the what.

Take a few planned breaks. This should be obvious except that it seems like in many cases it’s not. Include in the agenda specific breaks. For lots of reasons people don’t like to sit in a room for 4 hours straight, focused only on your board discussion. I actually once sat through a 7 hour board meeting with no planned breaks. We were on our own to step out and take a restroom break (presumably offending whomever was talking at the time). It was ridiculous. It’s nice to include these in your agenda so everyone knows they are going to happen, when they’re going to happen, and that the time for them is baked into the agenda. They should be long enough for people to go to the restroom or do a quick check of email, but not so long that you lose flow (5-10 minutes is appropriate here).

Every meeting should have an executive session. It’s helpful to plan time in every meeting to have the non-executive board members meet. 15 minutes is typically sufficient. This is a chance for the board to talk without the CEO or executive team members present. It’s important to have this as part of every meeting – when it’s ad hoc it sends the wrong message to CEOs. After every meeting someone from the board should be tasked with following up with the CEO so there’s feedback from this session every time (which can range from: “sounds like things are going great; we don’t have anything critical to follow up on” to something much more substantive). This last part is key – no CEO should be left without feedback from the closed session.

Take notes on follow-up items. Ok – last item as this post is getting a lot longer than I anticipated. Be sure to take clear notes on any follow-up items that come up in the meeting. Ideally you’d review these just before you step out for executive sesssion and make sure everyone is in agreement as to what they are. These aren’t board minutes – these are your private notes/to-do list post meeting. This will help make sure you actually follow up on what you’ve agreed to, keep your board in the loop on speficic items they’ve asked for more information on and to do so in a thorough and timely manner before you get distracted by the next 100 things that come up in your role running a fast moving business.

Ok – next up will be board meeting conduct: some thoughts on how board members should comport themselves in your meetings and what expectations you should have for their engagement and follow-up.

One of the things I enjoy the most about writing this blog is the discussion I engage in with readers – both through blog comments and in direct emails.  Over the past month I’ve had a particularly enjoyable exchange with Gerald Joseph.  One of the topics we’ve discussed is the role of advisors in the life of a start-up.  I generally think of advisors as non-paid "friends of the company" and as you’d probably guess, advocate a pretty deliberate organization and use of advisors.  Gerald’s view is a little more expansive as he thinks of "advisors" as the larger ecosystem that surrounds (or should surround) a start up company – one that includes people you pay (attorneys, CPAs, etc) and the people who pay you (your angel investors) in addition to the business and industry experts that are the typical "advisors" to young companies.  I like this line of thinking and offered Gerald the chance to put his thoughts into a post.  He took me up on that idea and came up with a four part series on the topic that I’ll put up over the next few weeks.  After the final post I’ll summarize some of my thoughts as well as comments from readers (and please – comment away!).

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Is an Advisory Board or Advisors necessary?

Well, Advisors and Advisory Boards are not an absolute necessity for all startups. Their usefulness and necessity has to be evaluated on a case by case basis. Having Advisors or an Advisory Board is a completely voluntary decision. Advisory Boards are not legal entities like the Board of Directors.

Many experienced entrepreneurs keep their Advisor relationships very private and informal. They have plenty of Advisors that they speak to whenever the need arises and no formally declared Advisory Boards.

Successful serial entrepreneurs usually have a network of influential friends who are greatly interested in their personal success. They do not need formally declared Advisory Boards. Serial entrepreneurs often have the luxury of receiving assistance from their Advisors irrespective of the merits of their ideas and without the promise of equity.

However, this is not the case for your average Startup Founder. Many Founders are recent grads, college dropouts, or young professionals with no track record, no network, and a good idea in need of a supportive environment to germinate.

In these cases, Advisors help "round out" the strategic thinking/planning of early stage Startup Founders and C-level managers.

Capacity building is sporadic at best in early stage startups. It is very difficult for startup founders to train themselves and get up to speed on every critical issue concerning a startup company’s development. Good Advisors can fill this gap by lending their skills to solve problems that fall outside of the Founders areas of expertise.

What do good Advisors do?

Well, essentially good Advisors do what needs to be done. If your startup is operating in a complex market with plenty legal entanglements such as IP drama, then your startup would benefit greatly from having a Venture or Patent Attorney as an Advisor to draft legal strategy, contracts, and act as an in-house repository of legal info.

In addition to completing a specific scope of work, good Advisors usually do most of the following:

Reduce or eliminate the risks associated with "blind spots"

– startup founders usually lack knowledge in numerous areas not related to the technical development of products/services. The implementation and management of financial systems is customarily a significant "blind spot" for most entrepreneurs. This is a complicated area where advisors with finance expertise can roll up their sleeves and implement standard practices that make it easier to track the company’s financial well-being. A CFO or CPA with venture experience can be invaluable as a Finance & Accounting Advisor working on a part time or flex time basis until the operational budget allows for the hire of a fulltime CFO.

Provide "actionable" advice

– it is critical that Advisors provide straightforward, down-to-earth information. This info must be readily digestible and easily implemented into the existing operational infrastructure of the company. Advisors should present startup Founders with ideas or information that is fully fleshed out and easily applied to their unique situation. An Advisor’s idea for a new revenue model or product feature should be presented in an easily understood format illustrated with pertinent industry forecasts, assumptions, metrics, risks, and projected results.

Make important introductions

– Advisors introduce Founders to reputable prospective investors, employees, partners, and customers. The evolution of a startup from concept to seed stage to exit is partially dependent on the quality and reliability of the Founders’ network.

Make ‘way too early’ investments

– often in early stage Startups, Advisors and Angel investors are one in the same. It is not uncommon to see a CEO/Advisor relationship crescendo to include a significant pre-prototype investment of cash and non-cash resources (servers, office space, etc.). In many cases, Advisors are investors of first resort during the early conceptual phase of a startup when very few VC’s or Angel Investors are usually interested.

Provide informed consumer-centric validation of core value propositions

– in most cases, Advisors are current or prospective prime consumers of the company’s products or services. One of the most significant perspectives that many advisors bring to the table are strategic thoughts and usability innovations based on their informed experiences as consumers and/or analysts within the Startup’s target market.

I think it is always best for Startup Founders to actively pursue relationships with prospective Advisors and Mentors. Building a network of confidants is an ongoing endeavor that reaps long-term rewards before, during, and after the lifespan of your association with your Startup.

One thing that we all seem to overlook is that there is life after a Startup. Especially for serial entrepreneurs who go from one startup to another, building relationships with influential people that you like, trust, and can learn from is essential. Your network will work for you personally and professionally for a lifetime

I recently asked my friend Daniel Benel if he’d consider contributing to my M&A series. Daniel was a banker with Lehman Brothers (in NY and Tel Aviv) an  is now a corporate development exec at Verint Systems (NASDAQ: VRNT). Despite having never bought one of my companies, he’s a great guy with a smart corporate development mind (rim shot). I thought he could add a corporate development perspective to the series. I’ll make sure he gets copies of any comments that get sent back, or feel free to reach him at the hyperlink attached to his name above.______________ Below are three topics on my mind related to acquisitions from a corporate development perspective (perhaps the beginning of a series): The Hockey Stick Projections – Hockey Stick Financial Projections did not die with the bubble’s burst. Perhaps they were put away in the back of the garage for a while alongside other unloved sporting equipment like that confusing lawn bowling set or the ambitious NordicTrack. Unfortunately, some mischievous banker found the darn things, had them shined up and sent out to technology companies near and far. It is more likely than not nowadays, when I receive a book from a banker selling a technology company, that the financial projections show jaw-dropping out-year growth. The most noted reason for the turbocharged numbers: The Market. The Market is hitting a “sweet spot,” or the company is in a sweet spot and the market is about to develop a sweet tooth. These saccharine solution sellers expect, of course, to be valued off of forward numbers. My common response to wild growth projections is to advise the company not to sell. If management of a selling company believes that they can accelerate growth dramatically over the next 12 months, why don’t they prove the business plan and come back to the merger market with a significantly higher value? At this point in a discussion some sellers choose to revise their outlook. Other sellers claim that the projections are based on “what the company can do on a pro forma basis,” that is, when combined with “your more significant resources.” (I’ll discuss that in the “We Don’t Pay for Synergies” section.) Companies whose sales are truly going to accelerate dramatically, and are selling for a defendable reason, need to back up projections early on with a real sales pipeline/backlog (not a Frost & Sullivan report). Sharing pipeline/backlog data will immediately trigger competitive concerns in the mind of the seller, which is fair and will be discussed further in the “Overboard Competitive Concerns” section. We Don’t Pay For Synergies – Often stated as an acquisition truism, but not always true. In general, it is synergy that motivates an acquirer’s interest in a given target to begin with and not something for which a buyer is willing to pay extra. Synergy is a value that the transaction itself generates and is not produced by a company on a standalone basis. Depending on the transaction, each side may lay philosophical claim to a greater share of this value, but this debate will not affect the standalone valuation an enterprise can demand and is usually a losing negotiation point anyway. That being said, the more synergy a given business combination offers to a buyer, the more that acquirer is able to pay for a business. While an acquirer may not admit to paying for synergies, in a competitive acquisition process, the acquirer with the most significant synergies (all things being equal) could write the bigger check. Sellers should negotiate accordingly with this knowledge in hand. Overboard Competitive Concerns – Acquisitions often occur between competitors. This is natural, particularly in early stage markets that are in a consolidation phase. It is important to recognize that the time it takes to sell a company is correlated to the speed of information sharing. I am not referring in this case to the relationship-building phase that can take months or years, but rather to the moment in a transaction when there is a meeting of the minds between seller and buyer and perhaps a non-bindingMemorandum of Understanding (or other term of art) in place. At this precarious juncture, just when you are tempted to think that some of the hard work has been done and you can put your Blackberry down for the night, sellers can become frozen with fear that all of their competitive secrets will be stolen during the diligence process and somehow abused. Sometimes this happens when they receive a buyer’s diligence request list and it is longer than the federal budget. Sellers must recognize early on that they will have to accept the risk of sharing sensitive competitive information with potential acquirers in order to get a deal done. Some data, though, may be deemed so sensitive that particular work arounds need be put in place in order to make diligence acceptable for both sides. Sometimes a two-stage approach to diligence (deferring highly sensitive material to when the deal feels more certain) can resolve concerns. In this case, it is important to first determine how critical a particular piece of sensitive data is to the buyer’s diligence process. It may be, for example, that the seller believes his source code is something that can’t be revealed to a buyer early in diligence and he therefore stymies a process, when in reality the acquirer might be far more interested upfront in a customer list than in source code (and would be willing to delay source code review to just before signing).

Sometimes competitive concerns kill a transaction, or at least slow it down to a degree that momentum is lost, which is a topic to be discussed in a subsequent post entitled: “Don’t Lose Momentum.”

I’ve been re-reading my Occam’s Paradox post as well as the comments and trackbacks (which are excellent – please click through them if you have a minute).  I fell a little short of really saying what I originally intended for the post, which was that I think that we have a tendency not only to make things more complicated than need be, but also to focus on too many things (and therefore the wrong ones).  As a result we try to assimilate too much data to make decisions (not recognizing the massive diminishing returns on this effort) and try to pay attention to too many things.  I wrote a post a while ago about trying to cram too much information into financial models that argued that more complex models are not necessarily better or more accurate.  I’m realizing now that I’m connecting the dots here that this is exactly the type of behavior I’m talking about in Occam’s Paradox. [By the way, there’s an entire post to be written about how VC’s play into this in their decision making (how many customers do we need to talk with, how many models should we run, etc before we make an investment decision?) – but I don’t think I should go there in this post].

I came across two posts that I wanted to bring your attention to that speak to this general subject area and that are both worth taking a look at. The first is “Decision Making” by my fellow VC Blogger Will Price (be sure to click through this blog to the link for the Bastardi and Shafir paper – On the Pursuit and Misuse of Useless Information).  The other, Focus is the New Black, is by Paul Kedrosky.  The title speaks for itself – it’s a great read.

Please keep the comments (both public and private) coming – I’m enjoying this thread very much.

A recent Nielson/NetRatings poll (story here) showed a huge gap between the have’s and the have-not’s. Specifically they asked respondents about their usage of RSS and found that 66% either hadn’t heard of RSS or didn’t know what it was used for and that only 11% of web log readers used RSS to monitor blogs (less than 6% of users overall use RSS according to a Pew Research study from January). There are definitely some implications for those (increasing number) of us who are investing in and trying to grow RSS related businesses (and we’re clearly still in the early stage of the adoption curve for RSS enabled technologies – see Bill Burnham’s great post on the subject here)

That is not what I want to talk about here, however. What I want to talk about is something much more basic about how we are looking at the emerging industry that is building around RSS. I want to talk about “42”Those of you who grew up in the 70’s an 80’s (or who saw the recent movie) might recognize 42 as the much anticipated answer to the ultimate question in Douglass Adams’ classic Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Not exactly what the universe was expecting and most of the 4 part Hitchhiker’s trilogy then chronicles the search for THE ULTIMATE QUESTION. The point being that sometimes the answer we get is because we didn’t understand the question.

I worry about this with RSS. RSS is a technology – not an industry, not a service, not an application. It’s a (somewhat) standardized format for shipping around XML content. Not particularly interesting by itself – it becomes much more interesting when you lawyer something on top of it (access to your favorite blog or podcast; information about your upcoming trip to Aruba; updates on the top accounts you are working on in your SFA or CRM system, etc.).  Techno-geeks understand what you mean when you say things like “what’s your RSS strategy” and “how are you implementing RSS” – just like they understand that SMTP underpins e-mail or that SOAP is what facilitates communication for apps using web services. Everyone uses e-mail – very few people know what SMTP is. Most people make use of .NET or web services enabled applications – I’d guess that most have never heard of SOAP outside of the bathroom.  Both are important technologies, but for the most part behind the scenes.  We need to raise the level of conversation (and action) around RSS.  We can turn “RSS” from a description of an enabling technology into the common name for accessing information through feeds in a central repository (in the same way that successful companies turn their names into verbs), but we need to focus on what RSS does (and building stuff on top of the technology), not just on the technology itself. I’m not at all surprised when I read stats like the one above – we’re still in the early stages of building an industry around a new technology; still early in the hype curve; still figuring out the potential.

As the saying goes: “It’s not the technology . .  it’s what you do with it that counts.”

I’ve been enjoying Scott Austin’s Venture Capital Dispatch. It’s a great source of information, easy to read and is a great summary of information for those of us who don’t have time to read the Journal every day. Thought it was worth a pointer.

This post is part of my ongoing series about mergers and acquisitions. You can take a look at the rest of my m&a posts here. So – you have a term sheet/letter of intent/memorandum of understanding fresh off your e-mail from the other party (this could for be an acquisition, partnership,  join venture, financing, etc.). Now what? If you follow standard operating procedure you’l  call your lawyer, mark up the draft and send some kind of response back to the other side. Sounds logical, but you’re missing a key step. I wrote a post a few months back about the importance of listening when you are around the negotiating table.  The same is true before you even get to that step, however. Perhaps the most important step in any transaction is calling up the party you are dealing with and asking them to walk you through their term sheet. You’ll be tempted to start negotiating on this call, but don’t. Just listen to what they have to say. Sure they may position a little bit or try to get you to agree to certain terms (don’t do that, by the way – tell them you’re just here to listen so you fully understand the deal they are offering), but you’ll get lots of great information about what’s important to them and what is less important. Perhaps they’ll even give on some terms (a very common occurrence).

You will almost always be in a better position after this call to formulate your negotiating strategy. Remember – all information is power in a negotiation. And knowing where you are starting from serves as the framework for the entire process.

I’ve received a few lengthy emails recently that contained the following:

IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE READ THIS SECTION

While I suppose one could argue that this encourages the reader to skip over the rest of the email, I disagree.  I think it’s brilliant. Each email was full of information – the kind that takes a good chunk of time to parse through and think about. They were the kind of email that ends up in your “read later when you have time” folder which would have been fine assuming that you 1) got back to it at all and 2) got back to it in a somewhat timely manner – they each required a response. The “READ THIS NOW” section was a single paragraph that summed up the information that I could now go through at my leisure as well as the action required in response to the email. Well done!

As promised in my last post on adoption, below are some of the amusing, crazy and occasionally insulting things that people have said to us over the years about adoption. I generally give my friends a lot of latitude around this stuff since they all mean well. So please don’t think I’m singling you out (or mad at you) if you’ve said one of these things to me (other than the Bradgalina one – that does universally annoy me) <g>. My hope in posting this is to raise awareness just a bit and make people think a bit more before they ask these questions. Language and intent really do matter here…

“What do I call _____”. First a few thoughts on adoption terminology since a lot of people ask me. Our daughter by birth is our biological daughter (“bio” in adoption slang vs. “adopted” for our other kids, although we don’t often refer to our children by any modifiers – our son, our two daughters…and leave it at that). Our adopted kids biological parents are their “first family” (this is preferred over “birth mom/dad” – which implies that they had only one task in this arrangement). We’re their “forever family” (although again, only really in context since we’re just “family” like any other family). Our kids were at a “Care Center” before we brought them home – generally a preferred term over “orphanage” which is more of a permanent facility (i.e., kids grow up there, they aren’t there waiting for their forever families).

“Why was your child put up for adoption? What happened to their mom and dad?” We’ve shared this information with some of our close friends, but when you think about it, this is a deeply personal question and both my wife and I don’t feel comfortable outside of our immediate circle of friends talking about it. It’s not that we’re embarrassed about our kids history or even that we don’t want to share it, but we (and many adoptive parents) feel that ultimately this history belongs to our kids and it’s up to them to decide when and how to share it (they’re clearly too young to decide that for a while). When someone who we don’t know well asks us this we typically make some very general statement so as not to give away too much information (and both my wife and I have literally been asked this question by completely strangers). Best not to ask unless you’re close friends with the family.

“[insert name of adopted child] is so lucky”. This is by far the most common thing people say to us about our kids and I’m 100% certain that everyone who has said it meant it as a compliment to my wife and me (i.e., we’re good parents and we’re in the fortunate position of being able to provide a good life to our kids). I say that because I really do want to be clear on this one that no one has hurt my feelings in any way by saying this. But I don’t agree with this sentiment and here’s my chance to say why. Clearly the world would be a better place if adoption wasn’t necessary – if parents could take care of their kids and provide at least a basic life for them. I feel truly sad for my kids that they’ve lost the part of themselves which is their connection to their first family and their country of birth. I get that they are “lucky” in the sense that by world standards they now live in a wealthy country with parents who can provide to them things that their first families weren’t able to but I don’t really believe that this life is better than a life where they had been able to stay with their first families. I’d also point out that our biological daughter is similarly lucky (which is often lost in the equation) and that even more so, my wife and I are truly the lucky ones by getting to have such great kids in our lives.

“When did you get him?” To be clear, the issue here isn’t people asking how long one of our adopted children has been home, it’s the “get him” part that just doesn’t sit right. The kids aren’t a new car or a handbag – and we didn’t “get” them.

“Are you going to tell them they are adopted?” Just a quick comic interlude in an otherwise serious post. I really did get asked this question (once – by Ross, our Director of IT). When I just stared back at him blankly he quickly figured out that brown-skinned kids with pink-skinned parents will probably figure it out…

“How much did you pay for him?” Ok – back to serious stuff. This one really irks me and we actually do get asked it on a regular basis. Adoption does cost money (as does giving birth, I might point out) – there’s money to the social worker who does your homestudy, money to take state-required parenting classes, money to the government to get fingerprints taken, money to the foreign agency to provide care for kids, money to travel, money for visa and more paperwork . . . you get the picture. In none of this is anyone “paying for” a child any more than when you give birth and pay the doctors, ultrasound technicians, nights at a hospital, nurses, etc. are you “paying for” your bio child. If you’re interested in adopting and are curious or concerned about the costs, say that exactly (even when people ask in a nicer fashion about the costs of adoption I typically respond with “why are you asking?” so I understand the context – I generally don’t discuss my finances with friends or strangers, so if the person is simply curious rather than asking a question as it relates to their own decision to adopt I will typically blow it off).

‘"You guys are just like Brad and Angelina!” Seriously? Is this the most original thing you can think of to say? I’m actually shocked at how many people have said this to us (usually strangers, often at a party or some similarly casual event). I typically respond “wow – I haven’t heard that one before!” and leave it at that. While I don’t actually know Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie personally, it sure seems from the outside that they are good parents who care about their kids. I get that these days it’s somehow seen as trendy to adopt a child, particularly one from Africa and I’m sure that some celebrities and non-celebrities alike have gone into adoption influenced by other famous people who have adopted. In fact, we know several people who have adopted in part because they were familiar with our family and our experience. So maybe Brad and Angelina are just following our trend! (I actually can’t recall if they had already adopted when we started our process or not)

I could go on, but I think that’s a pretty good start. I’d love to hear from some of my readers (a number of whom – I learned from my last post – are also adoptive parents) about their experiences, both good and bad.