"We're here to put a dent in the universe"
Erik Severinghaus sent over this hilarious xtra normal video on Stupid Questions VC’s Ask that has been floating around the internet. Erik is an awesome, serial entrepreneur and I’m certain has had more than his share of these fine interogations. Since I focus on showing entrepreneurs behind the VC curtain, here you go:
Rishi Roongta works with me at New World and is omnipresent. He is curious and tests just about everything under the sun. He came across a new restaurant that redefines both Paying Forward and restaurants in general. As he writes:
“Karma Kitchen was pretty awesome. I was a “waiter” and served tables for 4 hours.. gives a good appreciation for the job! And really gets everyone that comes into the doors to think about what giving truly means. Every meal ends with a check for $0 so it really makes people think how much they want to give for the next person. Anyways, I enjoyed it a ton and will definitely do it again.”
The concept is simple but ground breaking. Every meal has a $0 bill. You choose how much to give towards the next person who eats there. Truly, you pay it forward. It is also a roundabout crowd sourced pricing model. Additionally, you can volunteer to be a waiter there. Thank goodness, there is more traditional control around the cooks:)
The entire concept is built upon people’s inherent desire to give back to others…to prove that people are inherently good and caring. I plan not only to eat there but to also volunteer. There is one in Berkley, DC and Chicago.
You can learn more at: http://www.karmakitchen.org/
Talk about a value meal!
Joseph Campbell is the most influential person to have impacted my life. He was the world's leading mythologist and had an amazing capacity to show the common threads that cut across all religions, movies, books and stories. An awesome movie just came out about him and The Heroe's Journey that I have mentioned to everyone I know. Everyone of them has referred it onto their friends. It's that moving and insightful. For anyone trying to launch a business or to find their bliss or in a life transition or…, this is a great movie to see. You can buy/stream it at www.findingjoethemovie.com. Below is the trailer for it:
I think I need to take a day off to get going on my blog posts again. I apologize for my absence and will work on getting some pearls of wisdom out soon. Lot of travel and deals make Jack a dull (& postless) boy… In the interim, here is my day off…parody of the great Chicago movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". Being the value added VC that I am, this is the extended version not seen on TV…
I am out at the annual DFJ CEO Summit. Tim kicked off the event with his eight rules for company success based on 26 years in the business. They are:
Eight rules for success:
1) Test your product and get it out into market…see if the dogs will eat the dog food
2) Don't run out of cash
3) Eliminate human friction…one button on iPod, simplicity, simplicity
4) Focus…what is the most important thing to customer and what you can do to uniquely solve it.
— and eliminate items on fin statement like WC, anything not critical to key customer need
5) Leadership: you are the meme…you are on a mission but everyone picks up what you eminate…Sun always used the term Awesome (from McNealy), Job's culture. You are the leader of organization: take care of self, employees will also. You are the brand and heart of culture.
6) Think Big…go after things that count, one life to lead and go after big problem, change society
7) Have fun: get the endorphines firing, lots of little stupid things…leads to creative solutions
8) Partner and work with as many people as possible
David Rosenblatt of DoubleClick fame added:
9) Accountability: clear owner of each item who goes to bed focus and worried about it.
10) Transparency: avoid layered bureaucracy and heavy processes that obscure. Keep employees informed of all the company's tentacles, challenges and opportunitities
I'm looking to withdraw a little from my Karma bank here. My son just led his high school team to the Illinois State golf championship. This is big deal for his small school (60 kids per class). It is the first state title in any sport in the school's 60 year history. He also finished second at Regionals and second at Sectionals. He's worked incredibly hard over the past years for this.
The Chicago Tribune has nominated him as one of six athletes to possibly win High School Player of the Month. He is second right now against others from much larger schools who are getting out the vote across their schools. I'm clearly biased but you can decide for yourself who to vote for. I would love to see as many of you as possible go to the Tribune HS Player of the Month site and vote for Nicholas McCall and help send him past the larger schools (plus his is the only State Championship in the group:). Thanks in advance!!!
In 2000-2001, I remember reading negative article after negative article on Amazon. It was burning money quickly, e-tailers were going under left and right and brick & mortar stores were re-asserting themselves. People kept a diligent death watch for it after the demise of Webvans ($1b) and others. In reality, what was going on was a rationalization of the e-commerce space, a pruning of the weak. As scale effects kicked in and they offered new services, suddenly the company swung to profitability and the rest is history. Using Google, I can't even find articles from those days.
I have a similar feeling about Groupon. I have been amazed by the manic swings in public opinion on Groupon that we have seen over the past year. Lately, it has all been gloom and doom. The company goes public at $20/share ($2 above targeted range and trades up 30-50%. First headline I see: "Groupon gets a pop–but not the 1999 kind". Come on guys…enough with the dramatic trash talking.
I'll be the first to admit that I have no crystal ball about the future of Groupon nor an in-depth knowledge of its solvency. However, $700m will certain give them a nice runway to work things out. There are several high level factors that people seem to be ignoring about the company.
1) like all e-commerce spaces, when they rationalize, everyone suffers and, in the end, it is usually the top 2-3 companies that come out dominant. The number of daily deal sites has already dropped from 300 to 180 and continues to fall rapidly. There is scale advantage to being large in everything from online acquisition costs to logistics to call center efficiencies to branding. These grow with time.
2) everyone wrote off Amazon around 2000 and 2001. Eventually, the company fully leveraged its economies of scale, tightened its cost structure, got to break even and then rolled out new products/services. You now have everything from Amazon stores to Amazon private labeling online service & fulfillment for other large retailers to all of its cloud infrastructure (AWS). Groupon will follow a similar path. It will grow, it will get to breakeven and it will innovate. We have not even seen the services yet that will eventually drive profitable growth for the business in the future.
3) why has no one been commenting on the incredible talent in the firm. First, if you give Eric, Brad and Andrew opportunity to iterate, they will figure out solutions. They are quintessential entrepreneurs. $700m buys a good amount of runway for them. Second, they have hired folks like senior data experts from Netflix to figure out preferential targeting and a former Amazon finance exec as CFO. There is a lot of top talent there.
4) does the world expect 10-15 of the largest, most connected venture firms in the world (as well as the two top investment banks) to allow anything to happen to this company? I think it is safe to say that Groupon is well buffered.
So, enough Groupon bashing and enough Groupon hyperbole on the other side. Let this team innovate, grow and take full advantage of the $700m they just raised. I can't guarantee that things won't end in tears here but I can say that they have a lot more going for them than the press/analysts have been willing to admit.
Even in death, Steve Jobs connects us and reminds us of something greater. It is amazing the impact that Steve's death has had. Nearly everyone I know seems saddened almost at a personal level. It's as if we all realized this special, creative presence has now moved on…communal loss. Very interesting. I think some of us almost viewed him as immortal given his many recoveries. Others realized that his creativity and entrepreneurship reaffirmed our connection to something greater than ourselves. Most feel a tangible loss. He was the ultimate embodiment of innovation and entrepreneurship…how it inspires and raises us to a greater plane.
I've reposted his 2005 Commencement Speech (over 15m views) which I first blogged about 5 years ago. Steve, we'll miss you 🙁
When you've been in the venture business as long as I have, you have seen your share of dysfunctional, poisonious board/management situations. None of these needed to occur. They all fall into the "life's too short" category. Understanding, alignment and unification (leave your ego at the door) are the key elements of avoiding this.
For those of you that have read my favorite book, the Tao of Pooh, this may seem familiar…Pooh is the Uncarved Block and just is. It talks a lot about misalignment occurring when we fail to see things as they really are but as we would like them to be. I'm a novice here but seems also common with Buddha's core philosophy around how desiring things (versus seeing/accepting what is) leads to pain and suffering.
With all of the activity at work over the past 18 months as well as a host of mid-life course corrections, I have been negligent in feeding the blog gods. With Maria Katris's kind encouragement at Built in Chicago, I thought I would start posting more often.
One topic that comes up with increasing frequency these days is around managing one's future or career. In addition to all of the bubbly successes, there is a growing amount of stress and angst. Every entrepreneur and VC, at some point in time, has had one (if not many) gut wrenching, anxietal periods. Like a bad night at Texas Hold 'em, the cards keep coming up weak and you begin to question both your sanity and why you are doing what you are doing. Sometimes this is because others are hitting winners in the new SoMoLo (social, mobile, local) wild frontier while you watch and sometimes, it's because you are simply struggling to keep your head above water (dealing with debt, personal issues, non-scaling business, etc). Worse yet, you extrapolate out from today towards a draconian future. It's a terrific formula for sleepless nights (that or writing late night blog posts…).
In all my years, somehow, that draconian future never seems to hit like people think. While they don't get what they want, they often get what they need (thanks, Mick, for the words). So, when things just don't seem to be going your way and others seem to be passing you by or your future is opaque (and driving you nuts), what should you do?
My friend Carter reminded me of a Lincoln tale. When asked how he dealt with setback and issues he recounted a tale about a king who sent his wisest sages out into the world to find out how to live a content and fulfilling life. They returned, huddled and came back with a common finding…the words "This too shall pass".
In my favorite personal blog post, The Significance of the Karma Bracelet, I discuss my own journey down such a path during the last Bubble apocalypse. And again, in the past two years, nearly every aspect of my life has changed and one thing that has kept me balance and moving forward optimistically are these four words. Another friend once said, when you find yourself reinforcing your stress by linearly projecting the present, stop…don't think out more than 2 days and focus on what you have the ability to change not the phantom ghosts you can't. Things will change, synchronicity will come into play and life (or company) will right itself. Nearly all great start-ups have to nearly dance with death at least once and you haven't earned your stripes if you have not found yourself lost at sea in a foggy mist. As my partner, Ed, once said, it is a lot harder to kill a company than you think.
That said, what have you found to be helpful in handling adversity, setbacks and stress?