New Book: Founder’s Dilemmas
This book looks good: "Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the pitfalls that can sink a startup". I came across it in the "Startup Lessons Learned" Blog, which may be the best blog about leann startups.
This excerpt talks about a common scenario with startups, where the founders assume that they way they chose to split equity on day 0 will continue to work for them as time goes on:
"How should founders deal with such developments? In short, by assuming when they do the initial split that things will change, even if the specific changes cannot be foreseen, and therefore structuring a dynamic equity split rather than the static splits used at Zipcar, govWorks, and many other startups. As important as it is to get the initial equity split rightâby matching it as closely as possible thefoundersâ past contributions, opportunity costs, future contributions, and motivationsâit is equally important to keep it right; that is, to be able to adjust the split as circumstances change." (fromFounder's Dilemmas: Equity Splits)
I think I will be getting the book.
p.s. not to be a scrooge, but shouldn 't the title be "Founders' Dilemmas"?
Must See: “Luck of the Irish” at the Huntington Theatre
If you are a theatre fan I strongly recommend a play I just saw last night. It's called "Luck of the Irish". From a review on Boston.com:
"… It's one of numerous instances in Greenidge's superb, beautifully realized new play -- now receiving its premiere in a Huntington Theatre Company production directed by Melia Bensussen -- that illustrate the playwright's sure grasp of the nuances of race and class and her insights into the complexities of human nature." (from Boston.Com)
Run, don't walk to see this play at the Huntington Theatre in Boston!
New York Times Grammar and Style
Listen, I love the New York Times. I read it cover to cover (or pixel to pixel) every day and have it delivered in dead-tree format to my doorstep each morning.
But so often I come across an awkward sentence which I have to read and re- read several times to understand.
I've been noticing this for a long time now and it makes me wonder whether it's a stylistic thing or a that they have had to lay off their best editors.
At any rate, I don't have the same impression when I read he Wall Street Journal (which I admire but don 't love.)
Here's a recent example:
"LAGOS, Nigeria -- In a quarter-century, at the rate Nigeria is growing, 300 million people -- a population about as big as that of the present-day United States -- will live in a country roughly the size of Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada." (from NYT)
What do you say, am I crazy?
How far does idealism get you
David Brooks of the New York Times, in an article about (my interpretation) the limits of idealism:
"It’s hard not to feel inspired by all these idealists, but their service religion does have some shortcomings. In the first place, many of these social entrepreneurs think they can evade politics. They have little faith in the political process and believe that real change happens on the ground beneath it.
That’s a delusion. You can cram all the nongovernmental organizations you want into a country, but if there is no rule of law and if the ruling class is predatory then your achievements won’t add up to much." (from "Sam Spade at Starbucks")
My favorite line from "The Maltese Falcon" (from memory, so paraphrased): "Loose a son, you can always get yourself a new one, but… there's only one Maltese Falcon. "
Anyway, that's off topic.
This article makes the case that if you are not happy with the ways "things " (the world, your town, your company) are run, you can't make fundamental change other than engaging with "the system ".
Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.
Ok, I don't agree with all of "Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone":
"Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself."
but there are some good lessons and reminders in it:
"Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working."
I think it's worth reading.
Do you finish books?
I love this article. It's by an actual author talking about whether it matters if a reader reads a book through to the very end.
He starts with the basics, claiming that serious ('mature ') readers don't feel self-imposed pressure to read a book to its very last syllable:
"It seems obvious that any serious reader will have learned long ago how much time to give a book before choosing to shut it. It’s only the young, still attached to that sense of achievement inculcated by anxious parents, who hang on doggedly when there is no enjoyment. “ (from Why Finish Books)
Agreed.
He then gets into much subtler ground: what the experience is of the author or writer in deciding whether it's time to wrap things up and bring the story (and the book, not always the same thing) to it's conclusion:
"Kafka remarked that beyond a certain point a writer might decide to finish his or her novel at any moment, with any sentence; it really was an arbitrary question, like where to cut a piece of string, and in fact both The Castle and America are left unfinished, while The Trial is tidied away with the indecent haste of someone who has decided enough is enough.“ (from Why Finish Books)
The article has several other neat scenarios and examples and ends with this, from the point of view of the author himself:
"And finally I wonder if it isnât perhaps time that I learned, in my own novels, to drop readers a hint or two that, from this or that moment on, they have my permission to let the book go just as and when they choose." (from Why Finish Books)
If you like reading, you will like reading this article!
Why You Want To Be A Learn-it-All
A provocatively titled article (Why Youth Has an Advantage In Innovation) argues that to innovate you have to be an omnivorous and promiscuous consumer of new stuff. Try this list on for size, does it fit?
- When a new device or operating system comes out do you rush out to get it as soon as possible – just because you want to play with the new features? Or do you wait for the dust to settle so that you don’t make a mistaken purchase. Or because you don’t want to waste your time.
- Do you use LinkedIn for all of your recruiting, or do you mistakenly think that LinkedIn is only for job seekers? How many connections do you have? Is your profile up to date? (When Yahoo announced Carol Bartz as CEO, I did a quick search on LinkedIn. She was not a registered user.)
- When you heard that Zynga’s Farmville had over 80MM monthly users, did you immediately launch the game to see what it was all about, or do you make comments about how mindless it is to play such a game? Have you ever launched a single Facebook game?
- Do you have an Android phone or do you still use a Blackberry because your Chief Security Officer says you have to? I know many “innovators” who carry an iPhone and an Android, simply because they know these are the smartphones that customers use. And they want exposure to both platforms – at a tactile level.
- Do you use the internal camera app on your iPhone because it’s easy, or have you downloaded Instgram to find out why 27mm other people use that instead?
- Do you leverage Twitter to improve your influence and position in your industry or is it more comfortable for you to declare, “why would I tweet?,” before you even fully understand the product or why people in similar roles are leveraging the medium? Do you follow the industry leaders in your field on Twitter? Do you follow your competitors and customers? Do you track your company’s products and reputation?
- How many apps are on your smart phone? Do you have well over 50, or even 100, because you are routinely downloading each and every app from each peer and competitor you can to see how others are exploiting the environment? Do you know how WhatsApp, Voxer, and Path leveraged the iphone contact list for viral distribution?
- Do you know what Github is and why most startups rely on it as the key center of their engineering effort?
- Have you ever mounted an AWS server at Amazon? Do you know how AWS pricing works?
- Does it make sense to you to use HTML5 as your mobile solution so that you don’t have to code for multiple platforms? Does it bother you that none of the leading smartphone app vendors take this approach?
- When you are on the road on business, do you let your assistant book the same old car service, or do you tell them, “I want to use Uber just to see how it works?”
- When Facebook launched the new timeline feature did you immediately build one to see what the company was up to, or did you dismiss this as something you shouldn’t waste your time on?
- Have you been to Glassdoor.com to see what employees are saying about your company? Or have you rationalized why it’s not important, the way the way the old-school small business owner formerly dismissed his/her Yelp review.
Other than the obnoxious title the article does make some good points. I do believe this:
"f you want to stay “young” and innovative, you have no choice but to immerse yourself in the emerging tools of the current and next generation. You MUST stay current, as it is illusionary to imagine being innovative without being current." (From Why You Want to Be A Learn-it- All
Americans Elect: Another Opinion
A month or two ago I read an article by Thomas Friedman introducing Americans Elect, an innovative concept for bringing a third major presidential candidate to the table for this year's Presidential contest. I liked it so much I wrote about in on my blog.
So it is with great interest that I came across this recent article by Gail Collins totally hating the Americans Elect concept:
"But it's too dangerous. History suggests that this election could be decided by a small number of votes in a few closely contested states. You do not want it to turn on a bunch of citizens who decide to express their purity of heart by tossing a vote to Fred Website.
Plus, the whole Americans Elect concept is delusional, in a deeply flattering way: We the people are good and pure, and if only we were allowed to just pick the best person, everything else would fall into place. And, of course, the best person cannot be the choice of one of the parties, since the parties are … the problem. (from Time to Elect the Worst Idea)
Wow. I admit that a little while ago I started having misgivings about Americans Elect. The reason was that I could see no candidates there that I knew or liked. And those that were doing well seemed very conservative. It got me wondering whether I had been tricked into donating my $25 to Republican or Tea Party front. I have no evidence of that, but for sure my enthusiasm has dropped quite a bit.
Email Rookie Mistakes
I've watched some people struggling with some email blow ups and frustrations over the years and I was just thinking about some of the ways I've developed to avoid them. I am not going into the best salutation or the best conclusion but more touchy-feely things. Here are my guidelines:
- Write the email as if it might show up on the front page of the paper tomorrow morning. Because it might. Or it might be forwarded to the wrong person. Or you may accidentally send it to the wrong person. Worse, to a long mailing list of the wrong people. Don't include anything that you would be embarrassed or worse, ashamed, to have to explain.
- Realize that the other person may not have the same email habits as you. They may only check emails once a day. Or they might receive 200 messages per day and habitually not answer many of them. They might even have a hard time typing (yes there are some.) So don't be offended when you don't get a response when you think you should have gotten one.
- Keep it short. People skim and scan. Don't tell your life's story. Focus on what the outcome is that you would like of the email you sent and indicate that up front. Or if you don't expect an answer, then sometimes it is helpful to say that too ("No response is necessary") Write your email like an article in USA Today. Start with the most important thing and go from there. And make it short.
- Remember that you can call or talk face to face. For most delicate, personal or heavy topics, it is often better to talk. This is self evident and yet I often see people who should know better opting for an email and getting into major fights, misunderstandings or hurt. And even if you go down the email route and things seem to be spinning out of control, remember you can still help by switching to a phone call or face to face conversation.
- Be careful about public forums, mailing list and Facebook. Remind yourself about all the people seeing your sarcastic comment or ironic statement or personal attack. Without the context and the relationship who knows what impression they get.
These guidelines may or may not apply for you. I learned them through personal experience and have the scars to prove it!
[GEEKY] Sublime Text surpassing TextMate?
I've been doing some more coding these days in Ruby.
I've had great success and fun (especially when debugging) using RadRails, which is an Eclipse based IDE for Ruby and Rails. It's quite nice.
With introduction of RVM, bundler, and so on, I've gotten a feeling that RadRails maybe too much. It seems to get contexts confused and create more hassles. I am not sure yet, but it's caused me to go back and use TextMate, which I've always had in an honored spot in my toolset.
Poking around forums and other resources there seems to be some frustration that TextMate 2 has not been completed yet, having been 'in development' for I think over two years. Also there seems to be more and more talk of Sublime Text 2 as a great alternative to TextMate. So… Here I go. I will report back.