Syriana was one of my favorite movies last year – the Bob Barnes character captured my imagination completely. When I found out that Bob Baer’s books See No Evil and Sleeping with the Devil were the inspiration behind the movie, I immediately one-clicked them on Amazon.
I’m hugely cynical about the intelligence machinery of our government. I’ve been exposed to enough spin in my life to understand that the cliche “things are rarely as they appear” is deeply valid. In trying to understand my obsession with 24, I think I’ve concluded that it represents the “anti-me” – I get to spend one hour a week living in a parallel universe that isn’t in line with my values.
See No Evil was a delicious romp through this terrain by someone who lived this for twenty years. Baer’s writing is sharp witted and he takes no prisoners in his critique of the people he worked with and his increasing disillusionment with the CIA.
Next up is Sleeping with the Devil right after I knock off Supreme Conflict.
On May 15th and 16th leaders from over 100 distinguished universities, corporations and non-profits from across the country will attend the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) semi-annual meeting at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
I’ve been chairman of NCWIT for the past few years and am incredibly proud of what Lucy Sanders and her team have created. NCWIT is a capacity-building coalition working aggressively to increase women’s participation in computing/information technology (IT) – we believe that women’s participation is a compelling issue of innovation, competitiveness, and workforce sustainability.
On the evening of May 15th, at 6:00 pm, NCWIT and the ATLAS Institute at CU Boulder are hosting a reception on the CU Boulder campus (on the North Club Level of Folsom Stadium) at which you can meet these leaders and share ideas with them about the meaningful role women can play in technical innovation. If you are a member of the tech community in Colorado, I encourage you to come join us.
The reception is sponsored by NCWIT Investment Partners Avaya, Microsoft and Pfizer and we are honored to have State of Colorado Lt. Governor, Dr. Barbara O’Brien, and CU Boulder Chancellor Dr. Bud Peterson offer remarks.
I hope to see you there.
As I was turning the pages in the April 23, 2007 Forbes in the bathroom today, I came across The South Rises Again and a great map of the top metro areas in the US according to Forbes. One of the rankings was based on college degrees (percentage of adult population with bachelor’s degree or higher.) Boulder ranked at the top and the list of the top five was interesting.
Having lived in Cambridge and having spent a lot of time in San Francisco, it intrigues me how much I’m attracted to these three places. I guess I should go spend some time in Ann Arbor and see what I think. Since I don’t work for the CIA, I think I’ll pass on Bethesda.
By the way, the national average is 23.1%.
I hate almost all automated phone systems (except of course the ones created by Gold Systems.) Most suck and even though a little bit of effort could radically improve them, companies (and their customer service groups) don’t seem to understand (or care) about how their customers interact with them.
While I try to avoid picking up the phone and asking for help, it happens sometimes. I try to get a special magic phone number that reaches a human immediately (e.g. I fly United a lot and can get a person on one ring), but this is the rare exception not the norm.
Jason pointed me to the Dial A Human web site. This is a great site that lists the real phone numbers for customer support for a bunch of companies along with instructions to hack the phone system to bypass the menu prompts and get to a human right away.
I tried it on a few – it worked pretty well (I found one error and corrected it.) Obviously a wiki format would be great for this, but at least there is this.
I had a long phone call with a CEO of a company on Friday. He’s had an intense few weeks and was clearly stressed out. His summary was “my stomach hurts.” My objective view of his business is that it’s fine – lots of things are going well – but there are plenty of issues he needs to address and they don’t necessarily have a short term time horizon for resolution.
This reminded me of a question I received from another friend a few months ago:
I thought of you yesterday as I was speaking with a new business acquaintance. She was telling me about all her new business ventures, including a talk show concept. She has already made a connection with an industry source who is helping her fine tune and sell it. As I congratulated her on the progress she’s made, she said, “This is so new to me. I try to listen to my gut instincts, but the fear gets in the way.” Assuming that your entrepreneurs (particularly first-time entrepreneurs) are aware of at least some of the risks involved with starting any company, do you ever have to advise them how to manage their fear so it doesn’t get in the way of their potential success?
I have long believed that fear, anxiety, and guilt are useless emotions in an entrepreneurial context. When I get into an existential discussion with some people about this, they argue that there are contexts where these are useful emotions, but I still haven’t found them. So – my first advice is “let go of the fear and anxiety (and guilt) – immediately.”
In my first company I was an anxious entrepreneur. I felt the full burden of the business and even though I had a great business partner, I internalized all the ups and downs of the business. I pushed through the anxiety regularly, which I imagine impacted my current style (which I like to think of as intense/playful) – much of which was forged from my experience with my first company and some of my big successes and failures from the 1998 – 2002 time frame.
“Letting go of fear and anxiety” isn’t trivial – nor is it automatic – but it can be done. During my Friday afternoon CEO conversation, my friend acknowledged that he wasn’t panicked, but he felt close. It was clear he was physically and mentally exhausted from the effort he was putting into his company.
When I’m tired, things go to hell. My first indicator is that when something good happens I feel happy and when something bad happens I feel unhappy. I used to just accept this as part of my reality – now I know this means I need a break. Sometimes it’s just a weekend; other times it’s a week.
“Fear is the mindkiller” is my favorite quote from Dune (one of the all time greatest sci-fi books.) Fear – at least for me in an entrepreneurial context – almost always comes from fatigue. It’s really difficult to rationally address the issues that cause you fear when you are tired – which just makes the cycle more difficult.
I told my friend to take the weekend off. He should turn off his computer, don’t try to “catch up on email”, don’t try to “fix anything, let the thoughts about his business roll through his head, but spend time with himself and his wife. And sleep. As much as he wanted to (I got up at 10:24am this morning.) On Monday, he should come back refreshed, not anxious, and ready to address the issues that he’s facing.
Remember that fear is the mindkiller.
Boulder OpenCoffee Club (part of the network of OpenCoffee Club’s popping up around the world) now has its own website. The next meeting is at Vic’s Coffee at 1800 Broadway in One Boulder Plaza on Tuesday, April 24th from 8am – 9:30am. Come join us and hang out.
Andy Sack just had a successful OpenCoffee Club meeting in Seattle and is having another one next week at 8:30 AM at Louisa’s on Eastlake in Seattle. I’m not 100% sure of the date, but I’m guessing it was a week from yesterday (e.g. Tuesday.)
I love Wallstrip – it’s one of the funnest angel investments I’ve ever made. I wake up several times to a week to a five minute video of Lindsay being hysterically amusing about some public company stock that is at an all-time high. Today she takes on the Defense Industry and demonstrates why she is now comfortable with the military industrial complex (not really.) It’s a good contrast to my recent West Wing visit.
If you are new to Wallstrip and looking for a place to start, try Jack in the Box.
Jason and I have written extensively about 409A – a new tax regulation for pricing stock options in private companies that both of us think is fundamentally absurd. For the past 24 months we’ve been dealing with draft regulations which have made the problem of figuring out how to deal with pricing stock options in private companies both ambiguous, time consuming, and unnecessarily expensive (at least if you want to conform to the draft rules.)
The final regs have been released and Jason has sacrificed his brain by reading through him. His comments are over at AsktheVC.
I saw Paul Kedrosky deliver his Top Ten VC Lies. Priceless (and accurate.) I also met him face to face for the first time – we both commented on how weird that was since we’ve become good blog / email friends over the past two years.