Last week on the Today Show they featured a group of women, who don’t look like your typical scientists and engineers. The self proclaimed, Nerd Girls are out to prove beauties can be brainy. I’m all for breaking the typical stereotypes and showing the younger generation of girls that it is cool to be interested in Math and Science and that they can be successful nerds!
All I have to say is … You go Nerd Girls!!
For the third summer in a row, we spent last weekend at Lake Winnipesaukee, with friends. Its become sort of a mini tradition for us. We always have a great time, but no one has a better time than Kobe …
It is a nightmare to keep him OUT of the water. Its just not possible. He such such a water dog … a better swimmer than I am for sure! He would wake us up at 7:00am each morning, with a quiet whine, as if to say … can we get up and go swimming already?!!
It is almost sad when we have to take him home at the end of the weekend. His walks with the dog walker, boat days on the harbor, and play groups at the park, are obviously not enough. We are completely depriving him of what he was meant to be …. a lake dog.
Maybe someday … Kobe. Until then, you’re just going to have hang in there and enjoy the city dog life!
I continue to enjoy my book, Founders at Work. A few nights ago, I read through the interview with the founder of del.icio.us, Joshua Schachter. One of his comments (pp 230) really leaped off the page, grabbed me, and shook me with both hands ….
I have never had a great deal of trust for people who don’t execute on core ideas. I understand the value of needing someone to deal with that kind of stuff — someone’s got to do the VC pitch and there’s got to be a CFO, etc. But the guy who says, "I have a great idea and I’m looking for other people to implement it," I’m wary of — frequently because I think the process of idea-making relies on executing and failing or succeeding at the ideas, so that you can actually become better at coming up with ideas. It’s something you can learn. It’s a skill, like weightlifting. That failed; that worked; continue. You begin to learn how to make ideas. So if you are someone who can’t execute and all you can do is come up with ideas, how do you know if they are any good? You don’t really know if it’s a good idea until you’ve executed it. You need to understand the cost of execution and so on.
I probably liked this quote so much, because I can identify with it. I have an idea. I know how to implement it. So, here I am, giving it a shot, executing, and time will tell if it is any good or not. Remy is actually not the first idea I’ve executed on either, and in previous attempts, I’ve learned how to quantify what it really takes to put a project together. The time it takes, the skill level involved, what to think about, etc. I can definitely see how past experiences have influenced my execution this time around, in a positive way.
On to the chapter about Ann Winblad Cofounder, Open Systems and Hummer Winblad. It’s nice to see some women founders being interviewed. I’m always curious to see what their perspectives have been and if they differ from their male counterparts. The other female interviewee I’ve read so far is Caterina Fake, cofounder of Flickr. That was a really interesting chapter because Flickr started eons away from where it is today. In the interview she describes an experience where her cofounder, who happens to be her husband, was told not to bring ‘his wife’ to VC meetings. Lovely.
As the fireworks wrapped up at 11pm, it was the usual mad dash, for hundreds of boats, back to the locks. The last barrier before the locks is the train bridge, and chaos ensued because only a few boats sit low enough to be able to go under the train bridge, without it opening. It became a bottle neck pretty quickly, as boat after boat piled up in complete disorder. We watched about 25 minutes worth of trains go over the bridge, before they finally opened it up, and as many boats as possible rushed through. We made it through that night without incident, unless you count my sister dropping her cell phone into the water, while trying to fend off the bow of a boat coming up on our stern, but that was only traumatic because she couldn’t make any long distance phone calls for the next few days. Anyway, you would think if something dramatic was going to happen in the boat, on the Charles, the 4th of July would be the night …. wrong!
Last night, we took a leisurely cruise down the Charles with some of the IT Guy’s friends from work. We made it out of the locks and onto the river pretty smoothly. We had to wait a few minutes for the train bridge to open, but the evening was young and we were patient. A lovely picnic dinner and blackberry mojitos followed (just like regular mojitos, but muddle blackberries into the mint … delish!!), and we started to head back to the locks a few hours later. We get back to the train bridge, and by this time, its sort of late and we are all a little ansy. Two long sounds, and two short sounds of the horn produces no movement from the bridge. We wait as 1 train goes by, and are starting to wonder if we could possibly *squeeze* under. The water level says we have about 6 feet of clearance. That is cutting it pretty close, but we decide to give it a shot. We take the bimini top down, and decide to inch forward … just to see how she fits. The closer we get, the more it feels like this is a bad idea. The heavy iron of the bridge is massive and daunting, and looks like it is going to just crush the boat. El Capitan forges ahead. We get almost all of the boat under the bridge, and then we hear a loud, metal on metal, scraping noise. Large gasp. We look around, and realize that we took the Bimini top down, but we did NOT take the tall, stern light pole, off the back of the boat! IDIOTS!!! So now we are under the bridge, moving forward, but the stern light has been bent and is scraping against the bottom of the metal bridge. I jump into action, and try to yank the pole out of the back of the boat. I struggle for a second, and a split moment of panic encompasses the boat. I finally get it free, hit the deck, and we begin to move forward again under the bridge. In the distance, we can hear a train coming, and we do NOT want to be under the bridge, inches away from the train tracks, when the commuter rails passes over head. Just as we are coming out on the other side, the train plows over head, but it is okay, because we made it … we are free! Huge sigh of relief! I am still cowering, with my hands and knees flush against the deck. El Capitan turns around and asks what am I doing?! I am just reacting … that’s about it.
I had read the book, Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur, by Dermot Berkery, while still at IBM, but I didn’t want to raise any "red flags" at the time, so I kept it quiet. Aside from the fact that the word "serious" in the title cracks me up, as if to say, if you are not "serious", you are wasting both your time and the authors by reading this book, it was an excellent read! Well written, especially for the reader coming from a completely different place, technology, versus having a business background. I would highly recommend it as a first read, just to sort of get your bearings on the whole process. The content was unassuming, and everything was explained from the ground up. I have to admit, I was drawn right into this fascinating, strange, new, world of venture capital, and actually thoroughly enjoyed it as a beach read during the last vacation to Puerto Rico. It was recommended to me by a friend that works at a VC firm, the author and this friend are both Harvard Business School graduates.
I’m glad I read it with a highlighter in hand, so now I can go back and quickly look at points or ideas I found important the first time through. There are some good case study examples, which is helpful in thinking about how to apply those concepts to what I want to do. There is also an entire section on valuing an early-stage venture, where it describes the difficulty in applying the traditional valuation techniques and gives perspectives on how valuations are decided in these cases.
Pick it up if you are a *serious* entrepreneur … or even just a programmer, with an idea, and you want to learn what the whole VC funding process is all about!
I am loving this new book that I picked up. Founders at Work, by Jessica Livingston, is a collection of interviews with the founders of some of the most famous technology startup companies. I am about 1/2 through the 472 pages, and my favorite stories so far have been about how Paypal and Hotmail got started. At the end of chapter 1, after reading the following quote by Max Levhin, I knew I had picked up a good read:
I think the hallmark of a really good entrepreneur is that you’re not really going to build one specific company. The goal – at least the way I think about entrepreneurship – is you realize one day that you can’t really work for anyone else. You have to start your own thing. It almost doesn’t matter what that thing is.
Yep, you could say that struck a cord with me! It has been interesting to hear the stories how some of these companies happened by accident. Hotmail for instance was started with a completely different context in mind, and then they needed a way to share emails and data while one of them were still at work … hence, webmail was born. It is also fascinating to hear about these brilliant teams of people that have come together, all with different skill sets, strengths, and weakness, and that is what helped them to succeed.
Having started at Iris Associates in 2001, it was interesting to hear about the "old days" from the words of Ray Ozzie. Having started just before IBM aquired Iris Associates, the original founders had already moved on, yet their names and stories continue to be spoken legend around Westford 5.
I am really enjoying the interview style format, where in each chapter Livingston talks with a founder from a different company. It makes it a quick read, and one that you can put down and come back to quite easily. I am getting a lot out of this book, overall. Not only is it inspiring to hear stories of these great successes, it is helpful to hear about the bumps in the road they hit as well, and to try to gain perspective from their experiences. Big Blue always placed much emphasis on its mentoring program, and this reads like an entrepreneur’s mentoring manual. Livingston asks the good questions, and I am soaking up as much as possible!
By a 14 year old girl who stormed in, made a b-line for the couter, took a quick glance and then started in with an
Oh shit … oh shit … oh shit …
As if she was about to have a panic attack. A complete hot mess ensued …
Are you <F – BOMBING> serious? You are out of jelly donuts? Fine … I’ll take a boston cream then …
Was she serious?