Kirsten Osolind who blogs the re:invention marketing blog recently memed me. Like her, I have not posted in a number of days and may soon go dark for another week as I board a cruise with my family tomorrow morning. The venture business is supposed to be sleepy from Thanksgiving and New Years, but not this year. The last time it was like this was in 1999…hmmmm.
In keeping with the Meme Code, five things you don’t (might not) know about me:
1) Born in NYC, raised in La Jolla and live in Chicago. I guess this makes me a former surfer with an attitude that likes cold winters…
2) Spent my summer after sophomore year at Williams at McDonald’s. Worked my way up from burger flipper and fry guy to bin supervisor. Must have been the fine job I did in my burgundy polyester uniform with the trash pooper scooper outside the store on Prospect Avenue (La Jolla’s Rodeo Dr).
3) Was a confused youth as I played 4 varsity sports yet spent many hours playing Dungeons & Dragons, taught Pascal and programmed the original TRS-80 and Apple. I can remember the days when you stored your programs on a cassette recorder back then.
4) I spent my junior summer working on Wall Street where my mother made me wear a stripped sear sucker suit on my first day. My packed NYC subway broke down between stops during a 99 degree day. Luckily my suit was able to absorb the sweat from the two heavy set passengers crushed up against me. I had to walk around for 30 min in my building’s air-conditioned lobby to dry out before going up to meet my new boss. The suit went to the thrift shop very soon there after.
5) Would most like to be like Irving Harris (passed away a couple of years ago). He amassed a fortune from a series of successes (Green Goddess salad dressing, Toni Curls, Pittway, Harris Associates, etc) but his lasting mark was on early childhood development. He created new ways and new institutions to address old problems including the Erikson Institute, the Ounce of Prevention, Zero to Three, the Yale program for Early Childhood, the Harris School of Public Policy at the Univ of Chicago. He was the embodiment of venture philanthropy and showed how those with means & success have a responsibility to help others.
I usually blog either late at work or in my boxers at night (have to check Kirsten’s post above for the relevance here…).
We also had a busy Thanksgiving to New Years in our office, plus several of our B2B clients said that the anticipated slowdown of activity during the holidays never came. I thought this might be a good thing until reading your scary comparison to 1999!