Ten Characteristics of Great Investors Fred had a great post today called Ten Characteristics of Great Companies. This link includes the comments, which numbered over 70 when I last looked. Great discussion overall, especially for Fred’s having come up with the list on a 15-minute subway ride. Fred used to write a series of posts about VC Chiches, and I would periodically write a Counter-Chiche post from the entrepreneur’s perspective. This post inspired me to do the same. So I’ve taken 15 minutes here, pretended I’m on the subway, and here is my list of Ten Characteristics of Great Investors, in no particular order: Great investors know how to give strategic advice without being in the operating weeds of a…
Category
Entrepreneurship
Book Short: Go Where They Ain’t
Book Short: Go Where They Ain’t Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant, by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne isn’t bad, but it could literally be summed up by the title of this post. I think it’s probably a better book for people who aren’t already entrepreneurs. That said, there are two chapters that I found pretty valuable. One is called “Reconstruct Market Boundaries,” which is a great way of thinking about either starting a new business or innovating an existing one. It’s a strategy that we’ve employed a few times over the years at both Return Path and Authentic Response. It’s hard to do, but it expands the available territory you have…
Techstars Roundup: Why I Mentor Other Entrepreneurs
Techstars Roundup: Why I Mentor Other Entrepreneurs Yesterday was Demo/Investor day at Techstars in Boulder, Colorado. A lot of people have written about it – Fred, Brad, and a great piece by Don Dodge on TechCrunch listing out all the companies. My colleague George and I co-mentored two of the companies, SendGrid and Mailana, and we really enjoyed working with Isaac and Pete, the two entrepreneurs. I posted twice earlier this summer on the TechStars experience. My first post on this, Where do you Start?, was about whether to be methodical in business planning for a startup or dive right into the details. My second post, One Pitfall to Avoid, was about making sure you don’t create a whizzy solution…
Self-Discipline: Broken Windows Applied to You
Self-Discipline: Broken Windows Applied to You Just as my last post about New Shoes was touching a bit of a nerve around, as one friend put it, "mental housecleaning," my colleague Angela pointed me to a great post on a blog I've never seen before ("advice at the intersection of work and life" — I just subscribed), called How to Have More Self-Discipline. Man, is that article targeted at me, especially about working out. I think the author is right — more discipline around the edges does impact happiness. But it also impacts productivity. Not just because working out gives you more energy. Because having your act together in small ways makes you feel like you have your act together…
New Shoes
New Shoes This isn't really a post about new shoes, I promise. Remember, I live in the world of pattern matching and analogies. But I did go running yesterday morning — my first run in a new pair of running shoes. I usually get new running shoes every 3-6 months, depending on how much mileage I'm logging. And I find the same thing every time: I may not realize I'm uncomfortable running in the old shoes, but the minute I put the new ones on, I realize just how far the old ones had deteriorated and just how much better life is in the new ones. Same model shoe – just a fresh pair. And I run faster, stronger, and…
Techstars: One Pitfall to Avoid
Techstars: One Pitfall to Avoid George and I met with our Techstars “mentee” companies again yesterday. As was the case with the last meetings, the sessions were energizing and fun and great to see new companies unfolding. One lesson I was reminded of yesterday with both companies is a timeless one, since at least the beginning of the commercial internet: Don’t create a “solution looking for a problem” I call this the Pointcast problem, after the mid-90s service that pulled headlines into screensavers and clogged corporate networks until the fad passed. One of the companies we’re working with has this challenge looming in front of them. They have a very cool concept and technology. It’s clear that it solves some…
Poking a little fun at VCs
Poking a little fun at VCs Fred posted a great slideshow this morning of “things VCs will never say.” I can’t tell if the show is meant to be serious or not — some of the things would be great to hear from VCs, some would be terrible — though Fred’s comment at the bottom leads me to believe he thinks it was serious. At any rate, it reminded me of the brilliant and hilarious “VC Calendar Calisthenics” post of Dave Hornick from 5-6 years ago, which you can see here. Even if you’ve read it before, it’s worth a refresher.
First day at Techstars: Where do you start?
First day at Techstars: Where do you start? I’m a new mentor this year at Techstars, a program in its third or fourth year in Boulder (and this year also in Boston for the first time) that provides a couple dozen companies with seed capital, advice and mentorship, and summer “incubation” services in a really well conceived for-profit venture started by David Cohen in Colorado. Yesterday was my first day up there with my colleague George Bilbrey, and we met with three different companies, two of which we will tag team mentor through the summer. I won’t get into who they are at the moment, mostly because I’m not sure what the confidentiality issues are offhand, but I’ll make the…
Book Short: Entrepreneurs in Government
Book Short: Entrepreneurs in Government Leadership and Innovation: Entrepreneurs in Government, edited by a professor I had at Princeton, Jim Doig, is an interesting series of mini-biographies of second- and third-tier government officials, mostly from the 1930s through the 1970s. The book’s thesis is that some of the most interesting movers and shakers in the public arena (not elected officials) have a lot of the same core skills as private sector entrepreneurs. The thesis is borne out by the book, and the examples are interesting, if for no other reason than they are about a series of highly influential people you’ve probably never heard of. The guy who ran the Port Authority of New York for 30 years. The guy…
Education and Entrepreneurship
Education and Entrepreneurship Fred posted his thoughts the other day that you don’t need a college degree to be a successful entrepreneur. He is clearly right in that one CAN be successful without it. Gates, Zuckerberg, Dell have proven that. I’ve always said that I didn’t think an MBA was a prerequisite for a successful business career. That’s easy for me to say, as I don’t have one despite many years of applying, deferring, cancelling, reapplying and general hand-wringing over whether or not to go in the mid-90s. An MBA is probably a positive on a resume for the most part (hard to argue it’s a negative), but it’s not a prerequisite. Every time I see “MBA preferred”…
New Email Blogger Extraordinaire
New Email Blogger Extraordinaire My good friend and co-founder George Bilbrey, Return Path’s President, is now blogging. His blog, Monkey Mind Labs, is aptly named in part after Return Path’s long-standing but little-known corporate mascot. His first few posts are up. My guess is that his blog will be a bit like mine in that it will cover topics about email marketing as well as entrepreneurship, but I can almost promise that George will be both wittier and more insightful than I. At least, that’s what he tells me. Take a look! Subscribe. Enjoy.