Buttons, Money, Lint

Don't be a banker. (part 1)

In his recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Tom Perkins claims that "Too often, there is confusion between investment banking and venture capital." It's hard to argue with that statement, but it's investors like Tom Perkins that deserve the bulk of the blame for this confusion. Perkins says the difference between VC and Investment Banking (IB) is that "venture capitalists work with entrepreneurs to start new companies from the ground up". I'm not sure how Perkins defines "the ground", but I'm pretty sure I'd need to take an elevator to get up there.

Perkins' firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has certainly done its fair share of early investing. They became famous for being early investors in homerun deals like Amazon and Google, but even in those cases, they weren't in 'from the ground'. When they invested in Google, for example, Google already had 11 employees. That may seem really early considering the number of employees Google has today, but it's really late compared to Andy Bechtolsheim's investment a year earlier. He wrote a $100,000 check before there were any employees and before the entity was even filed!. That's ground level investing.

More importantly, KPCB (and most of the other Sand Hill Road crowd) get most of their exposure from the massive returns they generate when one of their portfolio companies IPO's. The returns are phenomenal (KCPB's Amazon investment produced about a 55,000% return), so I can't blame them for focusing intently on these opportunities. But, please don't whine about the confusion with IB when taking companies public is your MO. For more evidence of this attitude, look no further than Sand Hill Road's disappointment in the measly 5x return that Aaron Patzer produced for his mint.com investors.

The confusion is furthered by VC's who openly offer 'Founder Liquidity Stage Investments". I've received calls this year from some of the most recognizable VC's on both coasts telling me about these types of offerings, but apparently it's been happening for a while. This is a really awesome thing for founders, because it allows them to realize a payday without dealing with the nightmare of taking a company public. But these VC 'investments' are nothing more than a clever way to buy options in an imminent IPO. Gee, I wonder why that would cause confusion.

Every investor loves the 'no-brainers' that produce certain returns, and every investor loves revenue and clear exit opportunities. Even traditional banks will finance many of these types of opportunities.  If some of us don't step up and make pre-revenue investments based solely on our faith in the idea and the people involved, the bankers won't have any 'no-brainers' to consider. Unfortunately, this banker-mentality investing has infected more than just the big VC's. In Part 2, I'll talk about how some prominent angel investors are giddy about later-stage, fixed-return, low-risk, loans. Some of these guys should call themselves 'Angel Loan Originators'.

Keeping Your Momentum

This post originally appeared as a guest post on Larry Chiang's blog at BusinessWeek.

It's an intense experience to create a business plan, build your initial product, and find a way to fund it. Managing a company once you gain traction presents an entirely different set of challenges. Here are a some tips to remember as you make the transition from founder of a startup to CEO of a growing company.

Don't stop pitching.
Travel. Meet people. Share your vision with anyone who will listen. Every successful entrepreneur will tell you stories of chance encounters that became turning points for their businesses. Just because you found your first round of funding doesn't mean you can stop pitching. You probably haven't met the partner, customer, adviser or employee that will be the catalyst for your success, and you'll never meet that person from behind your desk. Telling your story also helps you refine your plans. It may be the 247th time you give your pitch that you finally hear how stupid some part of it sounds, or how profound another part is. Traveling also gives you a chance to escape the urgent and think about things that are important. This blog post would not exist if it weren't for a long flight home from San Francisco.

Get a great secretary.
I don't mean a receptionist. I mean a corporate secretary - someone with a knack for documentation and organization, someone who takes great notes, a great writer. This might be a young assistant or it might be a seasoned executive. It doesn't matter who it is, but every organization needs at least one. Technology makes information easy to retrieve, but that doesn't necessarily mean easy to find. Your policies, procedures, product info, training, and marketing materials must be easily understood by people you never meet. Yes, you can probably explain these things better in person, but if your company is growing, you won't have time.

Don't just treat your employees like owners, make them owners.
Not phantom stock, not bonuses, not profit sharing. Give them equity in the company. Let them know exactly what percentage (or fraction of a percentage) of the company they own. Let them know when they get diluted. This is the only way they will see the big picture. Remember, employees care about process more than value, but owners care about creating value first.

Get the generic version of everything except people.
Expensive furniture and equipment won't make your people more productive if they are unskilled. Buying them fancy dinners and first class flights won't motivate them if they're bored and unchallenged. Truly productive and creative people enjoy doing more with less. Give them a comfortable chair and a flat surface with a computer that doesn't crash, and watch the magic happen. If it doesn't happen, replace them quickly. Never hire the slightly-less-impressive-but-quite-a-bit-cheaper candidate. If you can't afford the candidate you want, wait. Hiring always seems urgent, but remember: when you need to hire someone real bad, you'll probably make a real bad hire.

Let your personality show in your products and your workspace.
There are lots of ways to do this, but it starts with your product names and logos. Don't let anyone talk you out of a name that is meaningful to you, as long as it's telling your story. Stay away from acronyms and inside jokes, but don't worry too much about 'what the industry will accept'. Focus on being meaningful and memorable.  It's not a bad thing if people are asking where the name came from, as long as they are spelling the domain correctly. Your workspace should do the same. If impressionist art doesn't inspire you, don't hang it on your walls. If you like action figures, keep a few on your desk (not in your desk, on display). There is nothing more exhausting and conflicting than hiding your true identity. Remember: Peter Parker and Clark Kent are broke, and Bruce Wayne is fictional. Besides, he inherited his money.

Share your vision for tomorrow, but sell what you have today.
This is similar to 'under-promise and over-deliver', but it goes further. You'll need to convince people that your product - even in its incomplete state - is better than their current solution. Don't integrate with their legacy system, replace it. Persuasion will usually cost less than integration, and it will always be faster. Selling features you don't have gives your sales people control of your entire organization. That's usually bad because sales is about instant gratification rather than long term value. You need to have a plan for attacking the market and stick to it. Overselling takes you off of this plan.

Why am I still using Posterous?

I was sooooo excited when I first discovered Posterous. I thought the simple email posting was going to be the thing that would actually allow me to fit regular blog posts into my busy schedule. This is my first post in 4 months. So much for 'regular'.

The truth is that it's not the posting that takes any amount of time. I'm sitting in front of a computer most of the time, anyway. Besides, almost every blogging system has some sort of mobile interface now. What really takes time is organizing my thoughts into a coherent post. I've got a list on my G1 of blog post ideas that is a mile long (somewhat ironically, this one isn't on the list).

The real reason that I never get posts completed when I'm away from my desk is that email clients are crappy text editors. Sure, I can save a draft if I don't complete a post. But how often are you reminded of the drafts you need to complete? I usually ignore anything in my drafts folder because it's chock full of half-written messages that were auto-saved when I went through a tunnel or stepped into an elevator.

A text editor with a reminder system or a better drafts interface might help, but probably not much. I could make time in my day to write a blog post if I really wanted to. The underlying problem is that blogging has never become a part of my communication system or my branding strategy. And Posterous is partially responsible for that. I don't even attempt to drive traffic to my blog because it's nothing to see. It looks just like every other Posterous site. I think I could fill it with interesting thoughts, but there's nothing visual to draw you in. I can't even put my logo on the page!!!

Seriously, Posterous, even Twitter has some level of visual customization. Aren't you a yCombinator company? You should be at least a little bit agile in this regard. If you made a strategic decision for complete uniformity to be your differentiating factor, fine. It seems a bit contradictory, but we'll just agree to disagree. If you just haven't gotten around to it yet, then shame on you. SproutBox's latest project, online reservation engine ScheduleThing, includes visual customization for provider pages, including logos and custom color schemes. It took our dev team about a day to develop and implement the groundbreaking technology shown below.

Oh, wait. I'm posting from the web, so I can't even add a photo to this post. I guess I'll make another post via email where I'll actually show the screenshot. Please don't get me wrong. I love Posterous as a company. There is definitely a market that needs this product. I'm just not sure I'm part of it. I've got to go now, WordPress and Tumblr are calling.

What does it take to bake a business?

Startups need things. Lots of things. You can't bake a company with a recipe alone. You need utensils, ingredients, an oven, a mixing bowl, and some counter space. A complicated recipe might even require an assistant chef. Some of these things are easy to find. Some of them are more elusive and expensive.

Luckily, startups have something they can barter with to acquire these things: equity in a potentially appreciating asset. In any good transaction, the startup will trade some of that equity for something that will accelerate its appreciation. The startup gets what it needs, the other party gets an instant increase in theoretical value and a shot at a real-life profit. For years, entrepreneurs and investors have been trading these things back and forth. The trade has traditionally taken the same form: Investor gives money to startup, startup gives equity to investor. This works out OK, because money is one of those things startups need and, with enough of it, they can buy all the other stuff.

But, how much sense does it really make for cooks to leave the kitchen to go shopping? Nothing is baking while the cook is at the store. Nothing is getting mixed. The oven isn't even pre-heating. That equity isn't appreciating. There are probably two types of entrepreneurs: those who will spend more and make quicker decisions so they can get back in the kitchen and those who will take their time to find the best deals. Since time is money, both are a waste.

But there is a bigger problem for real startups than for our analogous cooks. These cooks might make a trip to the store to buy ingredients before each baking project, but they wouldn't buy a new rolling pin or a new bread pan every time, and they certainly wouldn't buy new cabinets and appliances for each new loaf of bread. But this is exactly what happens in the startup world! Investors' money goes to buy new computers, lease new office space and buy new furniture for every new startup they fund. They spend money recruiting and re-locating new staff and paying lawyers to draw up new legal entities and operating agreements.

Luckily, a new breed of merchants have shown up, ready to barter with a new currency. Rather than simply trading money for equity, we deal directly in the tools and ingredients, eliminating the trip to the store so the cooks start mixing faster. Better yet, some us have learned to trade in the use of our counter tops and ovens (and even our assistant chefs), rather than trying to trade those items themselves. By reducing overhead, re-using staff and space, and recycling designs and code, we get businesses baking faster, and create a whole lot less waste.

 

 

 

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first art post

I stumbled onto a great flickr album of street art from around the world. This album is mostly pics of pieces by the same crew, but it's pretty impressive. If you look through the album in chronological order, you'll notice a couple of commissioned pieces thrown in. It paints an interesting picture of the life of modern street artists, periodically working for money so they can follow their passion around the world. Sorry for that terrible pun. Enjoy.
 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/heavyartillery

Blogging

OK, so I'm going to start blogging. I've had grand plans for my personal website for years, but it looks like this blog is going to have to do for now. The nice thing about this format is that I can keep this blog active, even if I do someday get around to creating a more complete website. I'll be posting about startups, art (mostly street art), politics (mostly local, some national), technology, and anything else that I think would be interesting to the very few people who are likely to visit here. I'm sure I'll mention stuff about SproutBox and the businesses we help launch, but this is not a marketing or self-promotion tool. I'll genuinely try to make the content relevant and interesting. Promise. Really.