What Separates Good Teams from Bad Teams?

Every once in a while, I have a conversation that forces me to distill an idea to a sound bite – those frequently become blog posts.  Many happen with members of my team at Return Path, or my friend Matt on our Saturday morning runs, or my Dad or Mom, or Mariquita.  This one happened at dinner the other night with Mariquita and my in-laws Rick and Carmen.

The subject came up about managing a senior team, and different iterations of teams I’ve managed over the years.  And the specific question we posed was “What are the most significant characteristics that separate good teams from bad teams?”  Here’s where the conversation went…“I believe that 100% of the members of good teams can, 100% of the time”

1. Get outside of themselves.  They have no personal agenda, only the best interests of the company, in mind.  They make every effort to see issues on which they disagree from the opposing point of view
2. Understand the difference between fact and opinion.  As my friend Brad says, “The plural of anecdotes is not data.”  And as Winston Churchill said, “Facts are stubborn things.”  If everyone on a team not only understands what is a fact and what is not a fact, AND all team members are naturally curious to understand and root out all the relevant facts of an issue, that’s when the magic happens

Of course there are many other characteristics or checklists of characteristics that separate good teams from bad teams.  But these feel to me like pretty solid ones – at least a good starting point for a conversation around the conference room table.

When a group of us had dinner back in May, Brad posted that it was remarkable that 4 of the 6 people had blogs. Then Amy started a blog, making it 5 of 6. Today, Mariquita and her friend Sharon launched their blog about wine, making it a clean sweep.

There is almost a complete dearth of blog information and commentary about wine. You can tell — the URL she was able to get on Typepad was wine.blogs.com! When Mariquita and I went looking into other wine blogs a couple months ago, all we found were one or two somewhat lame ones, one not updated since February, one not updated since April, none with interesting information that helps average people learn more about how to buy, pair, and enjoy wine.

I think this will be a fun single-topic blog. Enjoy the first posting, and welcome to the blog world, Mariquita and Sharon!

More thoughts on some of Fred’s and Brad’s points about VC deal algebra, valuation, and liquidation preferences for venture-funded startups. My apologies if this gets a little too technical or too long!

On liquidation preference: Preferred stock makes sense, participating preferred makes less sense. Sure, a VC who puts capital at risk in a startup should be entitled to get his or her money out before management and common shareholders who are paid to run the business. But I’ve always had an issue (even when I was in the venture business, although admittedly not as a partner) with the participating preferred security which allows VCs to get their money out first, and then still receive their proportional share of the rest. Fred calls this “a loan with an option,” and that’s the best presentation I’ve ever heard of the security. But what’s always struck me as a bit over the top about this is that it gives VCs downside protection at the same time they’re negotiating even more upside in a deal.

One simple solution to this, if you can negotiate it, is a “kickout” provision which makes the participation feature on the security go away if the company becomes worth a multiple (usually 2x or 3x) of the post-money valuation of the financing. In other words, it gives the VC the downside protection they want but gives you and other shareholders more of the upside if things go really, really well.

On valuation and deal algebra: I completely agree that valuation is a derived number and that it’s completely misunderstood in early stage investing. However, I think that while there may be low correlation between valuation and what the business is worth today, there are a few things that have always bugged me about VC valuations:

While I understand that valuation is more a function of future potential than current value, it sometimes feels like companies get punished for having a track record. Let me clear about my point – it’s not that that I actually think VCs lower valuations unfairly when companies demonstrate poor results. It’s actually the opposite. VCs are quick to bid up the valuation on companies that don’t have revenue or even a lot of operations just because the idea is cool or because the theoretical market is large (Friendster, anyone?). I don’t think VCs as a group do a good enough job of risk-adjusting or future-competition-adjusting valuations for new companies, or they get caught up in what Fred once called Venture Fratricide and just pour money into new sectors en masse. This has the unintended side effect of making management teams of existing companies feel like their ideas aren’t interesting any more because they’re not new and shiny.

Second, it’s interesting to note that while VCs use valuation as a way of placing limits and getting protection on their bet about the future potential of the company and entrepreneur, entrepreneurs have no corresponding mechanism to place limits or receive protection against having a bad VC. (VCs actually have many tools at their disposal to reign in poorly performing management teams once the deal is signed – they can fire them, cram them down, force all their common stock to be on a vesting schedule or subject to clawback.) But make no mistake about it – a bad VC can almost kill a company, or certainly keep it from realizing its full potential, and once that deal is signed, the entrepreneur typically has little recourse. I’m not sure there’s an easy solution to this particular problem either, but it’s one that’s worth thinking through with a good lawyer the next time you negotiate a term sheet with a new venture investor (and certainly one that is easier to negotiate if you either have a good track record as an entrepreneur or multiple VCs interested in your company). I made one suggestion around participation in future financings in my earlier posting on term sheet negotiations — item #8.

The final thing that’s bugged me about valuations stems from what Fred calls the 1/3 rule (1/3 of a VC’s investments work out well, 1/3 go sideways, 1/3 go bad). As a result of the rule, valuations and deal structures can end up being about VCs getting as much upside as possible out of their winning deals to cover their losses from their zero-return deals. What bugs me about this is that entrepreneurs don’t have that same luxury of a diversified portfolio – they are 100% invested in terms of their human capital and often their investment capital in their company. I fully realize that this is the nature of the beast, but I’ve always felt as a result that entrepreneurs should negotiate – and VCs should be willing to give – proportionally much more upside to management in the event that the deal turns out to be a big winner. This point relates back to my first point about participating preferred securities.

Next up in this series…Reverse Engineering Venture Economics, and managing other kinds of investors (Angel and Strategic).

(This is the seventh and final post in a series documenting the work I did in Colorado on the Governor’s COVID-19 Innovation Response Team – IRT.  Other posts in order are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.)

I’ll start the final post in this series by sharing the overview and retrospective deck that we created my last day and the two days after.  Governor Polis is going to share this with the National Governors Association in case other states are interested in our model or learnings. This pdf, which you’re welcome to download or just view in SlideShare, is a good overview of what we did and where things stood as of Saturday, March 28, noting that by the time you’re reading this post, half of it may be obsolete! 

I am normally a small government guy.  But not when this kind of thing hits. This whole thing calls for consistent national government response to the disease – potentially even global government coordination at a level we’ve never seen before (let alone the level that’s fashionable these days).  I’m not sure I’d want a Chinese style lockdown (although that may prove to have been effective), but South Korea’s pattern of learning from SARS and MERS, bulking way up on labs, reagents, epidemiologists, ventilators, etc., and then passing legislation that allows for deeply intrusive tracking in case of a public health emergency like this seems to be the way to go.  

Certainly, leaving responses up to individual states, counties, and cities is a problem.  It’s inefficient and on average ineffective, although I think our group made some extraordinary progress on a few fronts.  But the scale of the effort in an individual state of 6mm people with the associated resources just pales in comparison to what a strong federal response would be.  Of course…the federal government has to actually believe in the need for a rapid and comprehensive response and have the wherewithal to pull it off for that to work.

As for our federal government’s economic responses, that’s a different story.  At some point, the government literally won’t be able to afford to fill in the economic holes left behind by the virus (you could argue that we can’t even afford the $2T we’ve already ponied up since we are terrible at saving money when times are good and run huge deficits even then).  I’m not sure what will happen then.  

But government aside, I hope the response across the country and the world is enough to take the edge off this disease long enough for supply chains and healthcare systems to be able to properly respond.  I hope that people who have the means will continue to support local businesses and individual/freelance service providers like housekeepers, gardeners, music teachers, tutors, and coaches through this stretch, even if those people aren’t able to provide those services.  And I hope all the people who are on the ground working the problem – from frontline healthcare workers to my new friends in the Colorado state government and on the volunteer side – get the recognition they deserve for the extraordinary efforts they are undertaking to drive solutions and get everyone through this.

Special thanks to Governor Polis and his staff for the opportunity to do this work, to Brad for roping me into it and then letting me rope him into leading the private sector side, and to Kacey, Kyle, and Sarah, my new friends, for making it all work and for continuing the work after I left.

How to Negotiate a Term Sheet with a VC, Part IV

Brad is making  new postings easy this week.  Here’s another good one from the VC’s perspective on liquidation preference.

I’m thrilled to announce The Daily Bolster — a quick-hitting podcast for startup leaders scaling their businesses. It’s the actionable insight you need to scale—in about 5 minutes. The first episode drops this coming Monday.

Our team created The Daily Bolster for folks in the startup world who — like me — want to hear from industry experts of all backgrounds, but don’t always have the time to listen to full length interviews, even at 2x speed (which usually ends up sounding like Alvin & The Chipmunks, anyway).

Instead, we’re getting straight to the point. GTTFP, as Brad says.

Starting next week, I will be joined every day by experienced operators and industry experts who share their real-world experiences and practical advice. Each day of the week, we’ll cover a different topic or theme:

• Monday: CEO Tips & Tricks
• Tuesday: Scaling Yourself & Your Team
• Wednesday: The View from the Board Room
• Thursday: Ask Bolster (this one will be more like 20-30 minutes to go deeper with someone)

The schedule is jam-packed with dynamic guests and punchy interviews. Whether you tune in every day, when you see a guest you’re especially interested in, or only on Tuesdays, we’re so excited to share these conversations with you.

In Week 1, I welcome Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta, board member extraordinaire and marketplace guru Cristina Miller, Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson, Helpscout CEO Nick Francis, and Bessemer Operating Partner and veteran CFO Jeff Epstein. They’ll share their practical advice and real-world experiences around professional development, company culture, startup strategy, and tips and tricks for executive growth.

Check out the season preview to learn more. You can also sign up for email notifications, to make sure you never miss an episode. The daily email will also include a pull quote and clips in case even the 5-minute version is too long for you.

You can subscribe to The Daily Bolster on these platforms: Bolster, YouTube, Apple, Google, Spotify, Amazon, Stitcher, Pandora, and Castbox, plus we’ll put each episode up on LinkedIn and Twitter. You should either follow me (T, LI) or Bolster (T, LI) on those to see the content.

Feature Requests

Here are two new features I’d like to see in life:

1. Any time you hit “reply to all” when you are in the BCC line – a giant red alert should pop up and say “are you really sure you want to let all these people know that you were BCCd on this thread?”
2. Any time you place a call to a cell phone that’s outside of the person’s normal time zone – a giant red alert should pop up and say “are you sure you want to call this person at 3 a.m. in Singapore?” before completing the call

I’m not sure to whom these requests should be addressed, so I’ll just start with the open web.

Pivot, Don’t Jump!

I spoke last night at the NYC Lean Startup Meetup, which was fun.  I will write a couple other posts based on the experience over the next week or so.  The Meetup is all about creating “lean startups,” not just meaning lean as in cheap and lightweight, but meaning smart at doing product development from the perspective of finding the quickest path to product-market fit.  No wasted cycles of innovation.  Something we are spending a lot of time on right now at Return Path, actually.

My topic was “The Pivot,” by which the group meant How do you change your product idea/formation quickly and nimbly when you discover that your prior conception of “product-market fit” is off?  I talked a bit about the pivots we’ve done over the years here, not just the corporate ones, but some of the essential product ones as well.  One of the comments a member of the Meetup made that really stuck with me was that you have to “Pivot, Don’t Jump” when making changes to your business or product.

This has been true of Return Path’s pivots over the years.  Our pivots have all had two very solid foundation points — the company’s deep expertise in email, and our customer base.  Every pivot we’ve done has been in some way at the request/urging of our clients, and the new directions have always been in line with our core capabilities.  While we have a talented team that probably could execute lots of different businesses well, it’s hard to see us being successful in other areas that are farther afield.

People over the years, for example, have suggested that we should get into SMS deliverability — isn’t that going to be a hot topic?  We don’t know.  We don’t spend our lives immersed in text messaging.  What about getting into measurement of social media messaging — isn’t that related?  Maybe, but it’s not in our wheelhouse.  Expanding from email deliverability software and analytics, into services, into data, into whitelisting on the other hand – those were pivots, not jumps.

One other note of course, is that the larger your business is, and the more investors have a stake in it, the harder it is to make BIG pivots or any kind of jumps.  Innovation is still critical, but innovating from a well-protected core is what it’s all about, not chasing new shiny objects.

It’s Not Having What You Want, It’s Wanting What You’ve Got

I’ve always thought that line (the title of this post) was one of Sheryl Crowe’s better lyrics. And there’s nothing like moving houses to bring it to life. We are pretty minimalist to begin with, or at least the size of our apartment had constrained our ability to be anything more. And we cleaned out and threw away a bunch of things before we moved. Now that we’re almost done unpacking, and we have several empty or nearly empty rooms in our much larger house, the lyric resonates.

I’m sure we’ll ultimately fill up those empty rooms, at least a little bit. That’s what everyone says happens when you expand into more space. But for the most part, we don’t NEED to. The furniture, toys, beds, and chairs that worked for us in one place SHOULD work for us in another. Happiness can’t come from forging forward on the volume of earthly possessions. It should really come from contentment when where you are in life. Anything else is icing on the cake.

That’s probably a good metaphor to think about the road ahead in business and the economy. It’s still not clear to me how much this current mess is going affect the general economy and spending across all sectors. Hopefully confidence returns to the financial markets, the credit crisis passes, and there’s not a general deep recession. But as my colleague Anita is so fond of saying, Hope is not a Strategy, so everyone needs to be bracing themselves for the worst right now.

And that means we all need to prepare for Not Having What We Want, but rather Wanting What We’ve Got. Businesses will continue to function and even grow if there’s a recession. But if there’s belt tightening to be done, it means that growth companies will have to shift paradigms a bit. They’ll be investing less in growth and in new things. They’ll be focusing more on profits. There will be less hiring. Promotions and raises and bonuses will be harder to come by (especially on Wall Street!).

None of this means we should stop forging ahead or reduce our ambitions. On the contrary – companies that can figure out how to achieve both growth AND profitability in tough times are the ones that win in the end. But it does mean that we’re in for a long road if we don’t all change our mindset and behaviors to match the times, as growth and profitability together looks quite different from growth at the expense of profitability.

I’m Sorry, What Year Is It?

My colleague Tami Forman saw the attached leaflet posted on the subway in NYC.  I’m not sure which is funnier — that someone wrote it and put it up, or that two people ripped off the phone number to make follow-up calls.  Fred, Brad, Greg, anyone interested?

We’re Right Up (Down?) There With Lawyers Now

I remember reading somewhere a while ago that the least respected professions in America were used car salesmen, politicians, and lawyers.  Well, step aside everyone — according to a J. Walter Thompson study reported in DMNews, only 14% of Americans have respect for people in the advertising business.  I’m going to include that anyone who works in marketing services, by extension.

Don’t get me wrong – I wouldn’t have expected people in the advertising profession to join the upper echelons of the study with military personnel, doctors, and teachers.  But 14% is a pretty low number.  Beneath that single number, though, lie some conflicting data.  For example,

· 72 percent agree, “I get tired of people trying to grab my attention and sell me stuff,” and

· 52 percent agree, “There’s too much advertising — I would support stricter limits.”

And yet

· 82 percent indicate a positive engagement with media overall, and

· Two-thirds claimed, “Advertising is an important part of the American culture.”

My bottom line from these data is simple.  You know something is wrong with your industry when 52% of the general population wants to regulate it.  But with the dual movements towards more free content and more restrictions on data that could be used to target advertising…I’m afraid our profession will continue to do the things that consumers don’t like for years to come.