The role of company advisors (Part II)
Part II of a series of guest posts by Gerald Joseph on the role of company advisors. If you missed it, see Part I here. There are various types of advisors with differing skill sets and motivations. The key is to work with Advisors that have skill sets that help solve your company’s current and near-term problems. Here is a fractional categorization of the various types of Advisors Startups usually encounter in the Venture community. …
June 6, 2008· 3 min read
7th Annual Bard Center Business Plan Competition
I’ve been on the board of the Bard Center at CU Denver for several years now. One of the things I enjoy the most about my work with the organization is our annual business plan competition (in fact it was through judging this competition that I first connected with the Bard Center). Each year six finalists are selected to present to a panel of judges and $25k is awarded among the 6 finalists (in addition to prizes for 1st-6th place there are also cash awards for the top plans in specific categories (bio-science, non-profit, etc.). The event will take place on June 11th at the Hyatt in downtown Denver (finalist presentations from 8:30 – 12:00 and the awards lunch from 12:00 – 1:30). …
May 31, 2008· 1 min read
Jason Mendelson Blogs!
I know what you’ve been saying to your self: “Self – I’ve been looking to read a blog written by a reformed drummer, software guy and lawyer who is now a venture capitalist. Where can I find one of those?!?” All joking aside, I’d encourage you to check out the blog that my partner Jason Mendelson (who is all of those things and many more) has just started. Jason is actually a long time blogger – writing regularly on Brad’s blog and as one of the founders of and main contributors to AskTheVC. Mendelson’s Musings will have a more personal flair (although will continue to cover investing and venture capital topics as well). Along those lines be sure to check out his music page for great new music suggestions. There are many things I admire about Jason – he’s an extremely interesting and creative guy (especially for a former lawyer!). He’s also an excellent writer. I think you’ll enjoy what he has to say.
May 27, 2008· 1 min read
Grandpa
My grandfather passed away 5 years ago today (I can’t believe it’s bee that long…). I think about him a lot, but especially today on his Yahrzeit. I wrote a post a few years ago on one of my favorite sayings of his here. Today I’ve been thinking about the approach he took to his career. I recently wrote a post offering some suggestions about getting a job in venture capital. While I think its great to have career goals and an eye toward the future, my grandfather is a great reminder that sometimes the right path involves following the path that lays out in front of you. He left school to help raise money for his family during the great depression (he was one of 11 children and a first generation American) and never returned to finish high school. Eventually he enlisted in the air force and served for years overseas in WWII. Grandpa had an eclectic career – one that included selling vending machines, owning a mens clothing store, working for an auto dealer, selling check-writing machines and repping children’s toys. Not exactly a straight line path (although most of his jobs were related to sales in one way or another) and certainly not something he sat down to think about when he was in his 20’s to figure out what he wanted to do with his career. He didn’t have the luxury and in any event I don’t think for him laying out a 10 year career path was in his DNA. It’s so easy to get caught up today in where your career is headed and whether you’re “on plan” or not. Sometimes the right thing is to just go where life leads you.
May 27, 2008· 2 min read
Guest Post: The role of company advisors (Part I)
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!). …
May 22, 2008· 5 min read
Your company should have a blog
I participated in a panel presentation last week on corporate blogging. While each of the panelists brought a slightly different perspective, the overall message to the group of a few hundred local small business execs that were in attendance was that blogging can help their company. Specifically blogging can allow them to participate (or lead) conversations in their industry; increase significantly the meaningful content on their site; provide a way for them and their key customers to evangelize their products; help their search rankings across their site; allow a platform for talking about corporate culture (to both an internal and external audience) and in many cases save hard dollars spent on press releases and certain marketing activities. Here are a few ideas from the panel on how to get started: …
May 22, 2008· 2 min read
Saying "no" can be hard to do
At the risk of opening myself up to a landslide of snide comments expressing sympathy for the “difficult” job a VC has saying no to so many potential investments, but in the interest of being open about the experience of venture capital from the inside I offer up the following thoughts: Sometimes it’s very easy to decide to decline a company’s request for financing (and we see literally thousands of plans a year, so we’re pretty well practiced at it). Many times the company simply isn’t a fit for our investment focus (we get a few “invest in our [pick one] manufacturing/car wash/custom painting/etc business” requests ever year). Or the business plan is clearly off base (my personal favorite from this genre was the company that planned to colonize the moon for the purpose of reducing the cost of launching satellites – which they were going to build from materials they were to mine from the moon). Lots of others are potentially interesting but for one reason or another just don’t make the cut. The ones that pique our interest we start a dialogue with, which typically involves several meetings, background due diligence, etc. Some of these businesses we will relatively quickly decide are not a good fit and they fall off the list. Then there are the ones that we really dig into. While we pride ourselves on moving quickly through our investment process, being quick doesn’t mean not being thorough – we do a lot of work looking into investment opportunities before we make our final decision to invest. …
May 20, 2008· 3 min read
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. …
May 10, 2008· 1 min read
Working at the Caribou in downtown Denver before a board dinner tonight
I remember loving Caribou when I lived in MN (and they were a “local” coffee shop). Haven’t been in years, but just had a very tasty latte. Should keep me awake through the board dinner and my drive home later tonight…
May 8, 2008· 1 min read
Looking for embarrassing blogging stories
I’ve got some great corporate blogging use-case stories for my panel presentation on blogging next week. Now I’m looking for some embarrassing ones. They can be personal or corporate related. Feel free to leave them in comments (if you’re ok with the world seeing them) or just email me directly.
May 7, 2008· 1 min read