firstnamedotlastname

Living the good life

I’ve had more than my fair share of fascinating experiences and am truly fortunate to have a number of great/interesting relationships with people of all stripes.

I reconnected with a great friend Jamie Corroon this week.  Jamie is one of those people that its a pleasure to spend time with.  He’s arguably one of the smartest guys I know and has had more than his share of business success.  He changed his life trajectory a few years ago.

Jamie embodies something that most will never do, but allows (at least me) to live vicariously through him.  If you really want to have fun, amazing experiences, and enjoy the ride, you have to ask yourself ‘the question’.  Once you do that, there is no going back.

Venture Capital Triage

An article this morning on the front page of the WSJ Marketplace talks about VC firms performing ‘triage’ on their portfolio companies.  The article profiled a small bay area firm Claremont Creek and my friend and MD at the firm, John Steuart.

Too bad the article was dumb.  It could’ve gone in a much more interesting direction about the types of new businesses that are succeeding in this market and why.  Instead it focused on the culling of the herd.  It strikes me that one of the ‘benefits’ you get from VC money is a laser focus on results and a discipline of constant investor activism.  The gist of the article was that in these tough times VCs are placing their bets in “A” companies rather than “C” companies.  Shocker!  Sort of sounds to me like what VCs should always be striving to do.  Just goes to show that no crisis goes un-wasted.

Thanking the firefighters at the Altona Grange

Altona Grange hosted a ‘thank you’ event last night for the firefighters that worked so hard to save so many homes during the Boulder fire.  Jenn and I volunteered to help and we had a great time, met a ton of neighbors, and collected donations.

I’m pretty sure the Grange was never meant to house so many people.  It was wall-to-wall with likely 300-500 people packed in upstairs and down.  Way more than enough food, beer, sodas, and a good amount of donations for both the woman that lost her home and the firefighters fund.

Mostly, people just milled around and said their version of ‘thanks’ to the 50 or so firemen and women that showed up.

Some company rules

#213 Family members in a company never work.  At least in investor-backed, fast moving, companies.  It never turns out well.  I’ve seen enough husband-wife, brothers, Father-son, debacles..  I always hear the same “we’re different” excuse.  It never works.  See also, rule: #214 intimate relationships in business never work.

#107 Doing just your job will eventually get you fired.  Its never enough just to work hard.  Anyone that tries can work hard. Even really really hard.  Its about going outside your comfort zone and doing something that helps the company go faster, get bigger, or do something more than just your job.

#23 If I don’t hear from you, it means things are not going well.  This goes for nearly every situation I’ve ever been in.  If I don’t hear from a CEO where I’m on the board, it means something is wrong.  If I don’t hear from a product manager it means the schedule is slipping.  If I don’t hear from a sales exec it means she is going to miss her number.  No communication = bad.

#589 No one is ever too busy to return an email.

#961 Early adopters who absolutely fall in love with your product will kill your chances of success.  Listen instead to those that are frustrated, hormonal, and want to be loved.  They give you the best feedback.

#11 Despite our best intentions, no one ever hires a generalist.  It sounds great, and I’m all about the true business athlete.  Problem is: it’s a mythical role.  People get hired to do certain things.  You have to be really good at some ‘thing(s)’ in order to be a great generalist.

My experience at the recent fire in Boulder

I’ve never had an up close and personal experience with a real wildfire.  I generally try and avoid stuff like that.. A few days ago, I got the unfortunate chance to get up close and personal with a fire.  It’s taken me a few days to digest what happened and, to be honest, at the time I was pretty freaked out.  A week later, I can sort of reflect on what happened.  Here is my experience.

Timeline:

1:00pm – I get a call from my wife begging me to come home from the office right away .  She says there’s a fire close by and the winds are hitting nearly 100 mph.  I do the “calm” thing and check the web..  no real news.  I tell her that I’ll keep checking and she should call me if things get worse.

1:05pm – I feel anxious and leave the office to drive home and check it out.

1:20pm – roadblocks on all major streets leading to my house.  We live just outside the city limits of Boulder on a 10 acre horse property, so many of the roads around us are dirt/rural.  I navigate my way around the roadblocks and finally get home around 1:45pm

1:50pm – The smoke is all around us, and the wind is whipping with gusts ~100mph.  Its obvious that we are smack in the “fire zone”.  Jenn is loading 2 of our horses into our 2-horse trailer.  She tells me to stay behind at the house and if the fire comes to let the other 2 horses out of the pasture.  At least they would be free to run down the road and away from the fire.  Not exactly a comforting notion.

1:55pm – a friend shows up with a 4 horse trailer!  He loads the other 2 horses and we all evacuate.  I had the chance to grab a coat from our house and that was it!

2:30pm – we drop the horses off at a friends house 15 miles away.  After getting them somewhat settled into a paddock, we jump back in our respective trucks and head back into the fire zone.

This entire time, Jenn is fielding a constant stream of phone calls and text messages from all the other horse owners and barn managers.  People are desperate for help.  I call my dad who has a 2 horse trailer and he goes in to help at one of the larger horse facilities.

3:15pm – we get past the roadblocks going back in.  We have horse trailers and there are people trying to evacuate their horses on foot.  The fire is way worse, the winds are crazy and the smoke is like a thick blanket of fog.

3:25pm – we see a horse and owner running down the road towards us and away from the fire.  We u-turn and load the horse on the trailer.  The owner starts talking about how her dogs are in her car which she had to leave behind.  I offer to go in and rescue the dogs.

3:26pm – I jump into someone’s (no idea who) truck that is headed back into the core of the fire.  Jenn goes the opposite direction with the horse.

3:35pm – we enter the real part of the fire.  Flames on both sides of the road.  Smoke so thick that you literally can’t see the front bumper of the truck at times.  No idea why we get past 2 fire checkpoints.  We drive by our house.  The fire is immediately across the road and burning the pastures, trees, bushes and fences.  Flames are 10 feet high.  This is some scary shit!

4:00pm – I plead with a couple of firefighters to save our house.  I figured that if I could somehow personalize it, they would try harder…

4:15pm – found the dogs.  2 Dobermans.  Awesome!  I jumped in the car to drive out of there.  No keys.  Shit!

4:16pm – call Jenn on her cell.  “come f**king get me out of here!”

4:18pm – Jenn pulls into a driveway of someone’s house 4 miles away.  Asks to leave the truck, trailer, and horse in their driveway – and borrow their car.  They (amazingly) agree.

4:55pm – Jenn arrives to rescue me (and the dogs).

Later that night we watched the news from a friends house.  The roadblocks clamped down after we got out and the fire was raging all around where we live.  Jenn and I were forced to track whatever news we could and hope that our house survived.  The reports are all over the place.  2 houses lost, no 4, no 7. actually 6.  In the end it was only 1 + several barns/outbuildings.  At one point the news reported a house had burned right where our house is.  We spent the night wondering if we had just lost everything.

6:00am – the next day.  We circumnavigated a police roadblock and got through to our house.  It was still there!  The fire stopped less than 10 feet away from our property.  Those firefighters saved our home.

Later that next day, there was a fire burning in the core of an old cottonwood tree across from our house.  This is a picture of the tree when they blew it up.

Structures, methodologies, and tools

If there was one best way to set up and manage an organization all companies would be set up and managed the same way.

I've recently had this funny feeling when I started to hear the Agile software methodology religion. We just started a rollout of Rally Software.  A great company with great leadership, BTW.

It occurs to me: its not the methodology (Agile) or the org structure (Matrix), or the SFA tool (Salesforce.com).  Its the people, culture, trust, competency, and the common desire to accomplish great things, succeed and win.  The other stuff just helps streamline communication, responsibilities, and "agility" of the potential that already exists.

Back to my "one best way" comment above.. My experience suggests that most people/companies approach things exactly backwards:

1. Start with an org structure or chart (matrix) - or - a methodology (agile) - or a tool (salesforce.com).

2. Next, go about determining what people need to do (tasks), by when (dates), and how they should use (processes) their shiny new matrix, methodology, or tool.

3. Then, they put people in.

What we ought to do is go the other way around:

1. Starting with getting the best people possible around the table (or on the Bus as Jim Collins would say).

2. Stand in the successful future (this is a mindset thing)

3. Once you have an idea of what you want to be possible, then you can begin to break it into goals, dates, tasks, processes, and yes, structures/methodologies/tools.

My problem with a Matrix, Agile, or even Salesforce.com is that they all have just as much promise as they have the potential to obfuscate and insulate.  Its not the tool's fault, its the people using them and the way they're used that makes the difference.

Why not just start things off right?

Want a great start to the New Year?  Try this:

1. Go to Walk Score
2. Type in your home address
3. Check out all the places you can walk to that are within 1 Mile

Did you know?

• That is takes less than 15 mins to walk a mile?
• That it takes less than 6 mins to ride your bike a mile?
• A 2001 National Household Travel Survey revealed that 41 percent of all trips in 2001 were shorter than two miles and 28 percent were shorter than one mile.

Here's an example from our old house on 11th Street in North Boulder:

The site also lists each of the local business and services along with their distance.

If you're looking for a really basic and easily attainable New Years resolution, including one that has real impact on your health and the environment, take 5 minutes and check out your own Walk Score.  You'll be amazed.

Check out the Carbon Trace blog post for more on the background, details, and where the idea came from.