Gobble Gobble
Last week a few of us played a little joke on our colleague Chris by putting a 6 foot tall inflatable lighted turkey in his driveway for him to find late one night as he came home. He returned the favor a few days later by leaving it on my desk (fully inflated) early one morning. See the pictures of what we’re now calling the ‘giant turkey’ below. Img_0133Photo_57_1 …
November 23, 2005· 1 min read
M&A Part IV – Timing
When I worked at Morgan Stanley in the mid 90’s we used to have a joke about the relationship between VP hours and analyst hours. The ratio of these hours was in the neighborhood of 7 to 1, so when your VP asked you to do an analysis or create something for a pitch book and said something like “ok – I know its 10pm, but this should only take you about an hour” you knew that you’d working until about 5am, give or take. I’ve found this relationship to be true of many lawyers as well (as in “I’ll get you this document in a few hours,” which typically translates to “I’ll get you this document at 11:59pm tonight”). I have the same problem on sell side M&A deals, which is to say that I’m always forgetting that they take longer than I expect them to. Mostly I forget that while I can control my side of a deal (at least to some extent), I can’t control the other side of a deal. Particularly when I’m working on selling a business, I tend to be more motivated to move quickly than the buyer (who obviously wants to do careful due diligence, may have other deals they are working on, etc.). While one still needs to push so a deal doesn’t drag on forever, I’d probably stress myself out if I remembered that deals always take longer than when I map them out in my head (ALWAYS) and that each deal has a different flow (most of which have some variation of a sine curve in terms of activity level, but each of which has both a different amplitude and frequency) and that sometimes one needs to just go with the flow rather than swim up stream. …
November 22, 2005· 2 min read
The downside of technology
Brad sent me an article a few days ago that described the very unplugged world of Warren Buffett (according to the article the most technologically advanced device he has in his office is a telephone, which he uses sparingly). It’s a pretty amazing read and reminded me of another article that was sent to me recently – this time by Dave Jilk – describing how technology is changing (negatively) the way people work (too distracted, shortening our attention span, ruining our vacations, etc.). …
November 16, 2005· 2 min read
In your mind’s eye
I love the way the mind works. I spent years studying cognitive psychology, which was my college major (I was the psych geek who paid you $3 to sit in front of a computer for 10 minutes and take a test where what I told you I was testing for was not what I was testing for . . . ). My dad sent me the following link, which is pretty fun. …
November 11, 2005· 1 min read
Treat capital raising like a sales process
I’m involved in a lot of capital raising conversations – companies looking for money. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how narrow minded many companies are in how they approach this process. Forget the obvious stuff about doing research on local VC firms and their investment focus to make sure you are a match before sending them your “next generation toaster oven/microwave” business plan (yes – I actually received this plan) or targeting VCs that are particularly knowledgeable about your industry or have made money investing in businesses with similar characteristics – I’ll assume (wrongly) that most people already do that. I’m talking about treating interactions with potential funders as relationships – listening to what they have to say in response to your pitch, taking notes about what whatever it is that’s on their mind when you’re meeting with them and then creating some kind of database to capture this information and plan regular follow-up. Many entrepreneurs treat a VC pitch as a one shot opportunity rather than the potential start to a relationship. Since the typical result of these meetings is a turn-down the relationship starts and ends there – perhaps taken up again when its time for the next round of funding or if you happen to bump into each other somewhere. This is a huge mistake. David Beisel correctly points this out in his recent post on the things smart entrepreneurs do when interacting with VCs. The kind of periodic follow-up that David talks about in his post almost never happens in my experience. It’s a shame, too, because some of my fondest entrepreneur relationships have started with me turning down an investment in their company. Venture deals can take time to come together and someone who turns you down for round 1 may be in a position to invest in round 2 (or in round 1 itself if it takes a while to come together). Reaching out to VCs that showed interest in a way that is meaningful (and as David points out aren’t overly intrusive) can only lead to positive outcomes. …
November 1, 2005· 3 min read
Getting to No
My wife and I live with a toddler and as a result are becoming more familiar with the concept of “NO” – which, incidentally, I can now assure you can contain anywhere between 1 and 5 syllables, depending on the desired effect and emphasis. It got me thinking about a VC pet peeve of mine which is how shitty a lot of VCs are at turning companies down. I’m not talking about the form e-mail that VCs send out to pass on something that they don’t want to take a look at (we all send out these e-mails, don’t we ?!?) – I’m talking about companies that we spend some amount of time with (say at least one meeting, but often several) and decide not to invest in. I’ve experienced this from the other side of the table with some of our portfolio companies, much to my frustration. I probably go too far on this one, but when I turn a company down I typically like to have either a phone conversation or a face-to-face meeting (depending on how much time I’ve spent with them) and outline exactly why I’m turning them down. I don’t break-up on e-mail or by voice-mail. More importantly, I try to give a real reason, not the VC bullshit reason, why I’m not interested (which is to say that I’m never “not comfortable with the market size” or “don’t invest in early stage deals” for example; and certainly never simply avoid phone calls so I don’t have to have the conversation at all). This has led to a few awkward conversations (telling founders that I didn’t think they were the right CEO for a business for example) and plenty of push-back from entrepreneurs who didn’t agree with my analysis of their opportunity/product/way of going after a market. But I’d rather that than honing my bs skills and coming up with new and creative reasons for not investing in something. …
October 27, 2005· 2 min read
If I Only Knew
By all measures my “date” with Ben Casnocha was great (see my original post here, his here). As he points out, you skip a lot of the get-to-know you bs when you’ve had such rich interaction before actually getting together (particularly reading each others blogs, which really do provide nice insight and context). If you’ve ever read Ben’s blog, you already know that he’s light-years ahead of most high school students and remarkably well rounded and thoughtful. From the start this was all pretty apparent (he actually bought my coffee, which sounds like a small thing, but I can assure you probably wouldn’t have crossed my mind when I was in high school). We had a wonderfully wide ranging conversation (which interestingly included a bunch of “I wrote about (or read about) this on my (your) blog . . . “). Of particular note was the concept that perhaps Ben should give ‘life college’ a try rather than going to a school for four years. Not sure his parents are into this, but it’s a great idea and, while I was definitely jaded by my own experience (which leads me to believe that people should probably go to college but skip business school, perhaps because that’s the route I took), I actually think that given Ben’s goals this may be a pretty interesting concept. …
October 26, 2005· 2 min read
George Bush Sings!
Bet you didn’t know that he had it in him. Enjoy! http://www.thepartyparty.com/ (thanks to Chris for the link)
October 24, 2005· 1 min read
My first internet date
I’m going on my first internet date tomorrow. Well – it’s actually not technically a date. For starters, I’m married and on top of that, neither of us is gay. Still, we’re meeting for coffee after many months of e-mailing, reading each others blogs and one or two times talking on the phone. I say this all in jest, but I’m actually pretty stoked to finally meet Ben Casnocha in person. I’ve talked about him on my blog before (here), and am a big fan. …
October 16, 2005· 1 min read
Bookends
I’ve had a couple of experiences in the last month that have alternately made me feel good about the human condition or wonder why people can be such jerks. First the positive experience which essentially involved two strangers going out of their way to help me out. One in particular was pretty inspiring. My car battery managed to die i the parking lot of the Safeway up in Fraser on a recent Sunday night. I had just picked up a carpet steam clearer (the kind that doesn’t work very well, but I still feel compelled to rent every once in a while). I was in the process of walking this up the hill back home when I was passed by a car who turned around to see if I needed help (it was pretty dark out – god only knows what he might have thought I was dragging behind me). This guy drove me (and my steam cleaner) back to the Safeway and jumped my car. He then gave me his card (he’s a retired Delta pilot) and told me to call him in the morning if the car wouldn’t stat again for another jump (all this after I told him that I was planning on leaving at 6:30am to get back to Denver in time for work). Pretty amazing (incidentally, the 2nd stranger in this story was the guy who ended up giving me a jump in the morning when, as I was not very surprised to learn, my battery was still dead). I’m sure many of you saw the movie Pay it Forward and I feel a little sappy saying this, but I’ve actually been looking to try to pay back this man’s kindness by helping someone else out in need. In my book its all karma. …
October 16, 2005· 3 min read