Fuck yes.

(Just making sure…)

The past few weeks have been really interesting at Graphicly. We have achieved product/market fit, our new product launch has been overwhelming, and there is a clear direction and focus in the company. Revenue is doubling week over week, and our internal mantra has gotten equally clear.

“You are either building, selling or leaving.”

So much has be made of “vanity metrics” and our apparent love affair with them. As entrepreneurs, we are told by the media, investors, and other entrepreneurs that whats cool isn’t $1 million but $1 billion. That Instagram is AMAZING and their 15million plus users are the reason why.

How can we not buy into the importance of vanity metrics, when it seems that the ONLY THING THAT PEOPLE CARE ABOUT is vanity metrics?

Fuck it.

For a company to be successful there are literally only two functions the company has to perfect. Building and Selling. Thats it. Metrics and analytics are only the score card, the reporting mechanism to determine if what you are building will sell, and what you are selling is worth building.

Last rant on this point: Find a metric that is truly indicative of what makes your business go. It may be a vanity metric like page views, or something more interesting like reads/user, photo filters per session, or times my mom shares my baby pictures on Facebook. Find it and love it. Throw out all other charts and graphs. Put ONE FUCKING SLIDE in your board deck/presentation and tell your shareholders if that number is going up or down and why. Any other metric just makes it easier for your investors and employees to tell their friends why the company they are a part of is cool in a dumbed down fashion so others can understand. But DONT CARE about those numbers.

Care ONLY about the metric that proves that you are building something worth selling, and selling something worth building.

Now, about sales.

Both Brad and Mark have written about Grinfucking. Its an epidemic. No one wants to be the bad guy. The working stiff dreams of being involved in that super cool startup with the sick lounge. When he gets pitched by that startup founder in the flannel shirt and Warby Parker glasses, Toms shoes and Charity:Water rubber bracelet on a cool new technology and he doesn’t understand it, then he is full of FEAR THAT HE IS AN IDIOT.

Which makes the awful, awful truth that the prospect will never say no.

Your goal as an untested, unknown founder, who has a product to sell that NO ONE CARES about is to find what about your product makes your users lives better. Read that again. Thats not a feature. Thats not a price. Thats a feeling. Better is a feeling. Sell the feeling.

For enterprise its 99% of the time that you are making your prospect look good to his/her boss. Thats it. Focus on that.

For consumer its 99% of the ego or time. People want to be part of something amazing, or want something to help them become amazing. At Graphicly, we consider our “Content Empowerment Platform” an easy button for authors and publishers. They want their stories seen. We make it so. Its amazing and it helps each one of them show the world how amazing they are. It makes their lives better. It makes them happy. (I hope.)

Instagram makes people happy. Its not the number of users, but the amount of engagement that is what makes them awesome.

Stop getting excited by the “maybes” and “lets have another meeting” responses you get to your product. IT MEANS YOUR PRODUCT SUCKS.

Budgets, approvals, etc are all excuses as to why they don’t want to buy, but don’t want to say no.

If it takes more than a simple presentation of your value to a prospect to get to a verbal yes, YOUR PRODUCT SUCKS. (Ok, maybe you SUCK as a salesperson. But sales isn’t hard if you are a founder. You are just making it hard.)

Get to an answer.

Build, Sell or Leave. It IS THAT EASY.

Finally, about revenue.

In todays funding climate, if you are not thinking about your business in terms of speed to self-sustaining revenue, you are a moron. Seed rounds are, and will continue to be, relatively easy to raise (sub $1mm). Series A investors are now looking for real businesses with real potential. Call it a crunch, call it Jennifer, doesn’t FUCKING MATTER if you don’t have a real business, because you will be called DEAD.

Have a real path to revenue. Test that path immediately. Ensure that its a real path, with the real ability to simplify sales, and go that way. You never want to get in the car, see the path you need to travel, press on the gas and find the tank empty without a gas station in sight.

Just Fucking sell. Your company depends on it.

Apple is going to change education!

Apple is going to destroy publishing!

(Interesting that no one really said “Apple is going to sell more iPads!” but we live in a world that hopes that everyone leans towards doing good for goods sake.)

Did it happen? Did the world turn upside down causing the worlds publishers to weep?

No.

Apple’s move into the education market is an important one. This year, for the first time ever, Amazon sold more digital books than print books. Print, for lack of a better word, is dying. People are still buying books, in fact some could argue that more books in total are sold — the diversity of purchases has increased (as defined by the total number of titles), even while the sales of printed books has slowed.

At lunch with Ron we talked about how the science fiction of our youth was actually coming true. Cable has passed its usefulness; people are watching TV in 3D, and the government is still run by troglodytes that believe the can control the flow of communication and information. (One would think they saw the Christian Slater film Pump Up the Volume…). Technology is no longer a “thing” to marvel and discuss, it just is.

Publishing is probably the last bastion of old school media that digital is disrupting. With low(ish) price points and the amazing smell and feel of paper, and the romanticism we still attach to the printed word, it seemed that digital was almost an after thought.

Amazon, with its Kindle, began to widen the crack in the wall, and now with Apple’s ebook Authoring tools, the walls have fallen down.

Or have they?

We all love the interactivity of tablet based books, and the application for text books is clear, but its not as simple as that.

Currently there are more than 30 different marketplaces that an author could distribute their work digitally — if they own the digital rights that is. Most markets have wildly different file formats, so that building for one certainly doesn’t work as well for another — especially if the book is any other than flowing text. Most markets have different payment terms, revenue splits and requirements, rights requirements, and thats just if you are writing a flowing text-based book.

You want to do a fixed format children’s book? A graphic novel? An illustrated novel? Cookbook?

You’re screwed.

Apple’s authoring tool comes with another kicker — if you build a book in their authoring tool, and IF you can get it to work on another marketplace, you legally can’t distribute through the other marketplace without a financial arrangement with Apple.

Yup. You read that right.

Im not going to spend much time on that, Paul Carr over at PandoDaily (great work Sarah!) does a great job of writing about it, and I agree with his assessment.

Being an independent author or publisher has just gotten more messy, rather than less.

I am excited that Apple has entered the eBook space, especially the education space, as I know it will do wonders for readers.

But, there is something wonderful about a book. There is something beautiful about being able to read that book (on any device), in any way you want, and hopefully, one day this gigantic mess of rights, distribution, file formats, etc. will be cleared up.

At each meeting, I asked the same question, “What do you think of digital?”

And each one answered the same.

“There are more people pirating my comic books than there are buying them. Perhaps as high as 5 to 10 times.”

The comic book industry, which saw its heyday in the 1990s, when highly successful books would sell in the hundreds of thousands, is now ecstatic if a book sells even fifty thousand.

Online piracy has absolutely decimated the industry.

How bad is it?

Comic books come out every Wednesday. By the time I wake up in California, I can already download most of the books that came out earlier that day on the East Coast.

Its not the big guys, Marvel and DC that get squeezed. It not even the little guys–although most will never see a publisher print their book–that are getting smashed, its the publishers in the middle like Image Comics and Archaia that are feeling the vast weight of piracy the most.

Piracy, on many levels, is helping to drive more market share to the top guys, Marvel and DC (both backed my billion dollar companies that aren’t as sensitive to the success of individual books or creative teams), and eliminating the necessary diversity required to ensure a healthy industry.

As Graphicly has grown, we have seen it time and time again. Small and mid-sized publishers struggling for consumer awareness and acceptance in a world dominated by Spiderman and Batman. As diversity dies, so does the ability for the industry to sustain growth.

Every once in awhile a great story like The Walking Dead will break out, but thats not the norm. Interestingly enough, I would say that the pressure piracy places on the mid-tier publisher has actually driven them to become more creative in order to rise out of the shadows of the big guys, but its not easy.

There is no other way to say it, but that piracy is probably the biggest single digital issue facing the comic book industry.

But SOPA and PIPA are not the saviors that “old media” companies hope it will be.

Giving the government carte blanche to censor sites and control the flow of information will cause more damage, deeper damage, long lasting damage to the industry that I have grown to love. The publishers and creators that Graphicly works to support will be hurt in ways that I personally, cannot be a part of.

There are better ways to end piracy. We can improve access. We can develop a platform that allows publishers and creators to be as creative with the distribution, pricing and promotion of their work as they are with the stories themselves. We can help fans discover great stories easily, simply — no more difficult than clicking on a link — removing the burden of surfacing great content.

We can help connect publishers and creators directly to their fans — and believe you me, pirates are some of the biggest fans in existence, as crazy as that might sound — so that those fans can show their support directly to the stories and creators they love.

On January 18, my blog will be censored. I personally am standing next to many of my friends, mentors and colleagues by doing this.

I have also decided to not blackout Graphicly.com.

I made this decision, because we have thousands of creators and publishers that are making real money distributing their stories in a “new media” style, that it would be wrong to deny that. And, more importantly, the access and discovery it provides to great stories are paramount in the fight against piracy, even if “old media” doesn’t understand it.

I am ardently apolitical, yet stopping SOPA and PIPA is exceedingly important, so important, that I have written about politics for the first time ever in the several years this blog has existed.

I want piracy to end.

I want all the story-tellers that should be discovered to be found. I want them to get paid, and I want their fans to get unending enjoyment out of supporting their work.

But, I won’t stand for censorship.

“Excited to turn the Doomsday Clock back a minute?”

The Doomsday Clock was invented in 1947 during the Cold War. Set at seven minutes to midnight, it represented how close the world was to global thermonuclear war.

Seven minutes in 1943. A high of 5 minutes in 1984. A low of 17 minutes in 1991. Currently, as of 2010, we are at 6 minutes.

A cold, numeric, non-emotional reminder that as a world we are always that close to complete and total destruction.

(whew. thats pretty emo.)

So many of the founders that I work with and speak to see the financing event as the penultimate indication of success. Its nothing more than the purchase of a lottery ticket (perhaps with a bit of inside knowledge).

Investment lets us turn that Doomsday Clock back a minute. It gives us the time needed to build a business.

The truth is that all startups are dying the moment they are birthed, and its our responsibility to do whatever in our power we can to keep them alive for just another day.

If I have learned anything in the decades I have been involved with startups is that you should apply a Doomsday Clock to everything. Products, people, partners, business plans. Everything. Nothing should be spared; everything should move that Doomsday Clock back a minute.

Imagine if before you signed a partnership deal; started building a product; hired a person, you simply said: “The Doomsday Clock hits midnight if X happens. As long as this partner, person, product doesn’t do that, its a benefit to the company. Push the minute in the wrong direction, and make a change.

Is that evil? Kinda mean? Maybe, but your world, your startup is hurtling towards total global thermonuclear destruction. Perhaps you should do everything you can to stop that.  Maybe.

Even on the grandest stage, time is the greatest gift you can give.

Six minutes to midnight.

Perhaps you should stop caring about raising money, and find new ways to turn that hand back. Understanding and treating fund raising as a distraction as to what is important is the first step.

Build a sustainable business. Or…

Boom.

Storytelling resonates with me more strongly than any other single sociological/community building concept.

Think about it. The first written communication was a story.

Pictures of deers and hunters with oversized spears (even then, we men exaggerated), running through trees and mountains.

We learn about our world through stories.

Stories are told each night on the news, and people make trillions and trillions of dollars, if the stories are told in just the right way.

I saw the movie Hugo this afternoon, and it was really a story about telling stories. It was about the heartbreak felt by a man, who no longer felt his stories were being heard, yet they were captured in the dreams of a young boy who struggled to find his place in a world that didn’t want him.

Story telling is an art. Its an amazing talent when its coupled with the desire to provide value, real value through the tale itself.

Yet, stories have a dark side, and not just around the campfire, but when we believe that the story is more important than the truth.

The world has been lying to us about what its like to be an entrepreneur.

What do you mean that Zuckerberg and friends worked 24 hours a day for months and months in a smelly small space filled with nothing but nerds? Where was JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE DAMMIT!

We have decoupled the story teller from the story, and apply value to each separately.

I see it happen all the time with entrepreneurs, who believe in “what a founder is” and how “an entrepreneur should act,” that they forget their primary purpose is to build a company and make decisions regardless of the prettiness of the action (or reaction), but based in the righteousness of the conclusion.

Raising money is not the story. It is a step.

Getting press is not the story. It is a step.

You are not the story. You are the shoulders on which your startup should stand for all to see.

Take a moment and think to yourself, what is the story you are telling? What do your employees, investors, customers think of your story?

If your story is not telling the world that your company is 1) adding enormous value; or 2) that it has a deep belief in its mission, then perhaps you are telling the wrong story.

And, most importantly, if you are letting others (including the tech press) dictate what your story should be, you are fucked.

The story of your company should capture the dreams of your users, employees and investors, and I can guarantee that none of them are dreaming about you.

When I was a kid living in Mountain View (532 Thompson Avenue!) a rather large, but old tree fell down in our backyard during a storm.

“Geez, Dad, how are you going to get rid of that tree?”

“Remember that bike you wanted, Micah?”

“Of course”

Ive been wanting a multiple gear bike for months, constantly annoying my parents with pictures, magazine articles, strategic walks through the mall, basically anything I could do to get them to take a gawd damn hint.

“Then you’ll be getting rid of the tree.”

My grandmother was visiting from Albion, Michigan, and I turned to her and used the biggest “woah is me” look I could muster.

“Don’t worry about it, Micah,” she assured me in that special Grandmother way, and headed out of the house with my mom.

A couple of hours later, my grandmother returned, and I bounced up from the couch.

“Hey Grandma!”

“Here, Micah, I got you a gift!”

My excitement quickly waned as she pulled a bow saw out of a bag.

“With this, you will make quick work of that tree.”

With that stupid, gigantic tree sitting between me and the bike that I was destined to ride, I hung my head and walked into the backyard, and for the next three weeks cut branches into three foot logs with a bow saw from Sears. Finally, my dad brought out his chain saw and cut up the rest of the tree (lesson I learned? Those with the right tools for the job like to give those without “life lessons.”)

It was then that I decided that having other people do the work rocked, and in every business I ran afterwards, the first thing I did was hire strategically. (The best example of this? High school when I started a pool cleaning business I hired the star football and baseball players. Lets just say I had a very fine high school experience.)

Then as I started to work at larger companies I started to see a trend. Have a problem? Hire a person. Problem goes away? Fire the person. When I was at Kozmo.com, I hired 5 folks to help run our launch marketing. We killed it. Our output was 50-75x of any other city. Yet, once we smashed our goals, I was asked to lay off those 5 people.

Later, when I explored the idea of buying a bar (Running a neighborhood bar has always been a dream of mine), I was talking to someone who had 5-7 bars in the Denver area.

“People are cheap,” he said. “Food is expensive.” He explained that the number one downfall of a bar was serving food. Food goes bad. You can always hire more people.

Over time, as the businesses I built got bigger, and the need for employees grew, it became clear that it was good business practice to understand that people — “head count,” was to be viewed financially and strategically as a renewable resource.

I hate it.

Yes, finding good employees (read: productive — does culture fit really matter? yes. sort of. Have an amazing engineer that has to poop in his own house, so he won’t travel more than 3 days? Betcha make sure he is always close to his own toilet) is hard. Amazingly hard. So hard that an entire recruiting industry has grown up around solving that problem. Companies like BetterWorks exist to help solve that problem. Its a problem. I get it.

But on a balance sheet, employees are no more or less valuable than the rent you pay, and to truly be an effective leader, you have to understand and accept that.

Its why I hate employees.

Know a very common solution to extending your runway? Lay offs.

Know what most corporations do to protect themselves during bad economic times? Lay offs.

An entire industry has grown up around THAT.

By the way, the department of human resources tells you IN ITS NAME what corporations think of their people.

When we started Graphicly, I swore that we wouldn’t run the company by seeing our employees as human resources. I demanded it of myself.

And we don’t.

Have we fired / laid people off? Yes. Its a function of business optimization, and with startups, its often the by-product of pivoting. (Love to pivot? Better love to fire people too.)

We don’t have some ridiculous program or hidden insight, and, frankly, I don’t know if we even get it right.

What we have instituted is a very healthy sense of respect for and belief in each other, and a very open communication path.

Does that mean that we hang out, high five each other and discuss world affairs? Not every day… :)

It means that we respect that we each have ideas, a life, a work style, a high level of ability and an amazing focus on being productive. It means that we ask each other how things are going…and mean it. We treat our little company as a part of the large community we are fostering, and extend the same respect and open communication to that community.

For Graphicly to succeed, it can’t have employees that are building a company; We are just part of a larger community of artists and storytellers that is built on respect and communication.

I hate employees. I hate that we have to hire people who’s tenure with the company is based on the success and direction of the business. Its antiseptic and the opposite of how we as people build communities.

Graphicly stands on the edge of 2012 looking into a future that is filled with amazing tales spun with breath taking art, and as we help creators and publishers get their stories seen the world becomes just a little bit more rad.

We’re looking to build our team. Shoot me an email if you believe you have the technical, product or design skills to build and design the tools that make that world a reality and want join our effort.

tl;dr: Come build cool shit, own your own success, and make the world rad.

Focus is my enemy. We battle daily. Every time I think I’ve won, someone tells me that they wish I was better at being focused.

I hate Focus. Focus is for fools. I don’t understand its importance. I hate that its something I have trouble doing. Fuck focus in its stoopid head. I can’t write lists. GTD means nothing to me. I can’t use to-do lists, no matter how awesome they are designed.

But, I finally hacked focus. Ive won.

Here’s how I did it.

1) Using Merlin Mann’s (10+2)*5 hack (Figured if sprints could work in product development, then it can work in my battle with Focus.)

2) Downloaded Concentrate – set up some solid actions around: writing, email, and other fun and exciting activities. (Its funny that music is included in all of my activities)

3) Downloaded Howler Pro – and looped two timers (one for 10min and another for 5min) and run them

BOOM goes the Focus.

Now I challenge myself to do 10min sprints with high degrees of focus. Will I skip breaks? Probably if I get into something fun, but so far, the forced need to take 5 min has been awesome.

Hope it helps.

Oh, and check this article out on structured procrastination. When you have 5 min.

Well, not right now.

Right now, I am doing what I have done every day since I was ten years old. Im sitting in front of a computer banging on the keyboard.

When I was twelve I started participating and hosting BBSes. Standard story of the early 1980s Silicon Valley. I was never a hacker. With or without a Z. I certainly wasn’t 1337, although I did text 80085 a lot.

When I was interviewing at ServiceMagic, I sat down with Rodney Rice (who is still one of the most important mentors I have ever had).

“Why is the internet important?” Rodney challenged me. (If you know Rodney, there was no other way to describe Rodney’s style than one of a constant state of challenge.)

I spent a long pause thinking about it. I thought about my time on the BBSes. The times I sat in front of the Main Frame in my Dad’s office at Stanford. I thought about being the first non-computer science major to have an email address at UCDavis.

“The internet…” I stalled. I thought about how amazed I was using Netscape for the first time and the world it opened up for me.

“The internet facilitates communication and speed information sharing.”

“Exactly,” Rodney smiled. “Exactly.”

Im actually not even close to dead. At least I hope not.

The past year has been an enormous one. For the world things have changed. Really, actually changed.

It feels that we have reached the point where communication and information can’t move faster. They can be optimized and the processes for communicating and information sending and retrieval can be simplified.

And, more amazingly, the breaking down of the communication/information barrier has driven up the demand for transparency. Be transparent; Be real. Its a responsibility, not a right!

That transparency has changed the world. And continues to change it.

But that transparency has also brought to light something that has always existed by like communication and information has been accelerated. Depression.

This year, we had the death of a young entrepreneur. My friend Ben wrote about his thoughts of suicide. Conversations were had, posts written, tweets sent.

But, as the amount of information and communication shared grows, our attention spans decrease. Our mental capacity for data hasn’t grown with the speed of the internet.

Earlier today I read a post my friend Jeffrey wrote in 2008, about how living with a potentially deadly condition has shaped how he looks at life, and tonight I read a post by my friend Dustin. He remarked about how he read a post written by a woman who died from cancer. Her last post.

So I walked in from outside, sat down at my computer as I had done every day for the past 10,950, and decided I would write my last post.

Im not dying of cancer. To the best of my knowledge, I am not dying.

But I wish I would every day.

Well, thats a bit harsh.

I think about what would happen if I died every day. Not in a responsible, how would I handle my affairs sort of way, but in a pros/cons live vs. dying kinda way.

Im not sick. Im not mentally unwell. Ive done it since as long as I can remember. Some days, the positive/negatives are pretty close; other days one truly wins out.

One would think that with those thoughts I would have a clear idea or believe about what happens after death. I don’t. I just don’t know. But the uncertainty of it has never scared me.

I also know I have enough friends and loved ones that if it ever got too bad (it never has) that I would be okay. This post is certainly not a cry for help. I just haven’t said anything because I worried about that potential/current employees, investors, customers, etc might take it incorrectly as instability. Its not, in fact is the complete opposite.

Its my way of saying, “I understand. I get it. Im available.” Its not that life is tough, its that believing in yourself is.

This year I am focused on putting caring at the center of my core (yes, I know that your core is usually your center, so think of it as the center of your center. The deepness of your being). Caring for me; caring for others. I am not sure how I will exactly enact it, but Ill do it.

It will certainly include the setting aside of time; and more importantly reducing my focus on extraneous stimulus.

I am not dead.

And this is only my last post of 2011.

Before I moved back to California a few months back, I saw a therapist once a week for more than 6 years. Its a fascinating process. For me, the process went something like this:

me: So, this happened.
therapist: how did that make you feel?
me: It didn’t. It just happened.

Then I would leave and I would spend days thinking about how I actually felt. How that action/situation truly fit in my life. What I did. What I didn’t do. What happened. Why it happened. What the alternatives were. I would review, reflect, dissect, recombine, and connect. That personal cycle was mirrored professionally, where I explore and try to understand my actions and the actions of others vis-à-vis Graphicly.

For the past several months, I have not had that weekly meeting. Things still happen. I still reflect.

But, I have come to realize that being introspective causes much more difficulty than it solves.

As a person, introspection leads to overanalyzing. It adds complexity to what might be a simple situation. Is it important to understand why things happen? yes. Is it more important to accept that things happen and moving on? yes.

Professionally, introspection can be a catalyst for fear and inaction. The review of each step, forcing a complete understanding of why things happened, creates a culture of inaction. How should startups work?

ceo: So, this happened. Was is good?
team: no
ceo: ok, how do we fix it?
team: this way.
ceo: cool. do it.

I recently read that Dennis and Naveen of Foursquare have a 5 year product roadmap. Is it true? Probably. First time I met Dennis at SXSW (08?), he was talking about foursquare.

Why does that matter? Because there is no need for introspection with that type of vision. There is only a need to ask one question: “Does what we are doing NOW help us get to THEN?”

Introspection is about the past, and while its certainly important to not repeat past mistakes, the best way to ensure that doesn’t happen in hyper-accelerated startupland is to NOT DO THE SAME THING.

Its certainly ironic that I am being introspective about being introspective. But, for me, who spends a lot of time inside my own head, taking time to step outside of my own thoughts and refusing to be pulled back into the often melancholy world of reflection is extremely difficult. For me, 2012 is about action. Its about putting the act of giving more central to my core, rather than have it continue to be a hobby.

Introspection, in being an academic exercise, is the enemy of action.

Be great this year by doing great things. Its simple. No introspection needed.

The feeling that this was something important. Something that was needed, and something that we all could be proud to participate in, either as mentors or founders.

Over the years, Techstars has grown, focuses have shifted, competition has heightened but that feeling from the first fall, that we are all part of something important that touches startup communities everywhere. (I get asked about Techstars and Silicon Valley and I always reply that programs like Techstars force Silicon Valley to up their game. As entrepreneurs we are taught that attacking a huge incumbent is often preferable because of blind spots and inability to adapt. If anything is true, Techstars and programs like it have put Silicon Valley on notice that, as the leading startup community, it has to continue to innovate on support infrastructure for startups or see its influence and dominance slip.)

I am proud to be involved in other programs, either directly or indirectly, like 500startups, Advise.me and a stealth mobile accelerator (yes, even accelerators are stealth nowadays), but Techstars is where I was reminded of my love of startups and entrepreneurs, and I am very excited to be part of this video (and is Taylor, my crazy ass dog).

Want to know why community will always define Techstars? Watch this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Are VCs really just parasites that make money off the work of entrepreneurs? Are entrepreneurs all so desperate to take that evil, evil money?

I really struggle with this. Like brain battling for hours. 

Its no secret that I have a real interest in helping startups become successful and that one piece of that success often comes in the form of financing. 

After letting it rattle in my brain for the past day or so, here is what I came up with:

The true measure of the VC/entrepreneur relationship is not the money. Its not about "evil" or "desperate." Its not about being taken advantage of, or who makes the most. 

Yes money is the most obvious and optical representation of the VC/entrepreneur relationship, and there are many, many VCs that see their entrepreneurs simply as investments regardless of the lip service they provide. 

And, yes, almost always the VC makes more on a winning liquidity event than the entrepreneur. (By the way, if you say that's because the VC is taking all the risk…fuck you. The entrepreneur is the one giving up his/her life, health and often sanity to see their dream live. Yes, the VC is taking a risk, but its his fucking job. If he is good at it, he will mitigate the risk appropriately.)

If working with a VC was ONLY about the money, then every entrepreneur that I know would never take the money, unless they desperately needed it.

But, its not about the money. Yes, its about the connections, and yes its about the social capital, and yes, in many ways, its about the ego.

But thats not it either.

Its truly about advocacy. Its about having someone in your corner that cares only about your success. (Let me also be clear here too. When I say VC/Entrepreneur, I am really referring to the CEO/VC, with the expectation that the CEO is the founder. VCs tend to not talk to the whole team, just like CEOs tend to not talk to the whole partnership. This is an important distinction.)

On the entrepreneur side its about having someone that can help provide you data to help make decisions. Big decisions. Company decisions. Vision decisions. 

That's it. Its those two things: advocacy and data.

When I watch the young/first-time VCs its easy to see who will become great.

Its not that they care about entrepreneurship (I would hazard to guess that 90%+ of VCs got into the business because they believe in entrepreneurship), its that they care about entrepreneurs. Their blogs are full of information for entrepreneurs. They are accessible. They spend hours and hours with entrepreneurs — some of which they are not investors. (Its easy to see the ones that arent going to do as well – their blogs are full of bluster and they dont tire of showing how smart they are in their understanding of markets, products or companies.)

I've mentioned these guys before, but as I continue to think about what kind of VC I would be, I keep coming back to them.  Josh Felser of Freestyle Capital and Jeff Clavier of Softtech VC have both passed on me — probably more than once — but I know I could reach out to either for an introduction/conversation/whatever.

I have been really impressed watching Kent Goldman at First Round (passed), Ryan Swagar and Brandon Zeuner at Venture 51 (invested) and Jonathon Triest at Ludlow Ventures (invested) grow as investors over the last year or so. I once spent about 10 hours playing Werewolf with Dave Hornik, of August Capital and while I have never pitched him or had much opportunity to spend time with him, the value he placed on people (intelligence, truth and leadership) tells me that one day I hope to do both.

My current lead investor, Blair Garrou of DFJ Mercury and I talk probably 2-3x a week. Often not about the business, but about being a better CEO and leader. 

An entrepreneur spends an amazing amount of time learning about the market they are entering. They spend hours and hours pouring over metrics.

The best VCs have enough personal experience with enough companies to say "you guys are thinking about doing X. Here is what happened when companies A, B, C and D made the same decision." When I was at Lijit, Brad Feld of Foundry Group talked about the "one key metric" a startup should manage towards, and I watched Todd Vernon make real decisions around that metric and saw the company continue to focus and grow until they recently had a positive exit.

Its impossible to get that type of data from other CEOs, or from the market or Google Analytics.

As a entrepreneur there is nothing more important than advocacy and data. Nothing.

So are VCs evil? Do they make all their money on the backs of desperate entrepreneurs?

I wish it was an easy answer. What I do know, is that for me, the only type of VC I will ever work with is one that understands the value of advocacy and data, and believes its their responsibility to provide both, rather than just write a check.

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• Morgan: Why Entrepreneurs Should Never Meet VC's Unless They're Formally Pitching (askthevc.com)
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The man on the left was born in Romania, and was interned in a forced labor camp during WWII. He and a friend bribed their way out of the camp and then escaped towards Palestine, only to be detained by the British in Cypress. While in Cypress, he served as the translator for the British because he spoke English the best. He prided himself on how well he spoke English. While translating for the British, he helped the prisoners steal butter to protect their skin as they swam several miles out into international waters where a ship waited to take them to Palestine. Once in Israel, he settled at kibbutz Dafna, where he met my grandmother and got married, and later when my mother was born, they named her Dafna.

You would never have known this man had has these experience. I once asked him why he didnt talk about those days. “Why should I talk about those days?” he answered, “today is much more fun.”

When I was 13, I decided I wanted to spend the summer with my grandparents in Israel. They lived just outside of Tel Aviv, and staying with them for 2.5 months and getting to see the country was something I dreamed of. Over the course of the year, I worked as hard as I could to save enough money to go. My parents didnt have much money, and the $1200 for the plane ticket was a lot of money. So I worked. My mom and dad saved. And we got enough to go to Israel.

That summer, I created an enormous amount of memories, from the gigantic cockroaches that flew into my grandparents flat; to floating in the Dead Sea; to photographing a pickpocket in action in the Carmel Market. My mom made my grandmother swear to not allow me to “roll off the plane” when I got back, so my diet consisted of plain yogurt, seltzer water and glass noodles — both because my grandmother would not feed me, and because she was the worst cook in the world.

Tel Aviv in the early 1980s was an interesting time. Israel had just invaded southern Lebanon, Jews from Ethiopia and other members of the diaspora were pouring into the country. The currency was in shambles, and the country was in the midst of an election.

My grandmother dragged me all over the country. We saw and experienced everything. It was amazing. The first day I got to my grandparents flat, there was a brisk knock at the door and in Hebrew a voice called, “Is the American boy here yet?” Spending the days playing games we invented with apricot pits with the neighborhood kids was just icing on the cake.

Through it all, my grandfather was his quiet self. Then one day, he asked if I wanted to see a movie. He got dressed in a jacket, tie and a fedora, put a pack of cigarettes in his pocket and shepherded me out the door. We walked to the bus and sat silently as it wound through the Tel Aviv streets.

He stood as we reached our stop and reached out for my hand. We left the bus and walked another block or two to the cinema. As we arrived, I looked up and saw that we were going to see Against All Odds. As a 13 year old boy, lets just say, I was very excited to see it.

As the movie started, there were ads prior to the movie, and everyone in the theater began to smoke cigarettes, and as the movie progressed, it felt so much like it must have been to go see a movie in the 1960s when everyone wore suits and dresses, drank whiskey and smoked.

About half way through the movie, there was an intermission, and while he bought me candy and a coke, he told me of the story of his time in Romania before the war. I had never heard the story, but knew it was something that he didnt normally share. I said nothing. I asked no questions.

The curtain raised and the movie continued, and I sat back and thought about my grandfather. He worked for one of the richest men in the world. A man so rich that he owned a building called the Asia House in Israel that had blue mirrors on the ceiling to simulate water. He dealt with the horrors of the second world war.

And despite it all, he found a woman that he loved and married for more than 50 years, and had two wonderful daughters.

As I settled back in to watch the second half of the movie, I smiled.

Yesterday, or maybe the night before, I read a post about 500startups and their approach to investing. I tweeted that it was both what I loved and disliked about the 500startups process. Dave was quick to ask me to explain further, imploring me to outline what I thought was wrong so they could work on it. (I sent him an email this morning for those keeping track).

On Tuesday, I am heading to Half Moon Bay for DFJ‘s annual CEO Summit. Its a good time, and DFJ and 500startups are as different as two funds could get.

All of this has got me thinking about what a perfect venture firm looked like. If I were to have $100mm in my pocket, and I was to build a firm from the ground up, what would it look like?

Im not sure if I am ready to completely outline that — still thinking about it, and in truth it would be stealing from Foundry Group, Union Square Ventures, First Round, Spark Capital, 500startups, Tim Draper, Chris Sacca and others — but this morning, I read this post on how Jim Harbaugh is putting Alex Smith in the best position to win.

The premise is that by simplifying the playbook, and removing “sight adjustments,” that Alex Smith has gone from a shitty QB to a decent one.

A “sight adjustment” by a receiver refers to the concept that, if a defense blitzes, the quarterback and receiver must both — on the fly and after the snap — recognize it and adjust routes accordingly.

How does that relate to venture capital?

VCs pride themselves on the ability to pattern match and through that bring additional wisdom to the startup process. In many ways, the VC acts as the coach, and the CEO as the QB. If the VC is helping develop the playbook by injecting their knowledge from other deals they have done or have knowledge of, there is an inherent risk that they are helping to create a startup that is built to succeed based on their experience, not on the skills of the CEO.

Most first-time entrepreneurs — like young NFL QBs — dont have the faith in themselves to say to their investors “I got this. Here is what I do best, and this is how we are going to build this company.” Instead, they look to carry out the playbook as dictated by their VCS — “we didnt fund you to have you save it — hire fast — move the company — whatever” and if their skill set doesnt match the “perfect” startup playbook, they are removed or diminished.

The genius of what Jim Harbaugh has done is that he has removed the “complex ballet of synchronized adjustments” and replaced it by “just look[ing] for a different receiver.” Its not simplification, its the reduction of complexity. A company that I am advising, CAGE, said it perfectly in a blog post:

Too often, companies strip out features for the sake of being simple. But that’s not simple, it’s frustrating. So we spent some time carefully finding a balance between useful new features and the simplicity that has made CAGE so easy to adopt. You could say we’ve been on a mission to make every detail perfect and to limit the number of details to perfect (thank you, Jack).

The best VCs are the ones that work to put the CEO in the best position possible to succeed, not because the CEO is the best to work the playbook they devised, but because the playbook is devised to allow the CEO to succeed.

If I were to start a fund today, it would be with the philosophy of removing the need of the CEO to make sight adjustments, and providing a supportive environment to allow the perfection of the simple.

Of course, coaches often say they are “simplifying the playbook,” but Harbaugh has been able to do it coherently and in a way that actually aids his quarterback’s ability to succeed rather than simply removes options.

Related articles

• Why Jim Harbaugh Is Insane to Suggest Alex Smith Is an Elite QB (bleacherreport.com)
• Cautious optimism: Startups will come out ahead (venturebeat.com)
• So You Think You’re a Shot Caller? (learntoduck.com)
• I’ve Got an Idea for a Startup: NOW WHAT? by Amit Klein (chaitanyapramod.wordpress.com)

How could that be, given the night before at dinner I went on a rant about the fact that no food photo app – not Foodspotting, not Forkly, not any of them – would ever enter the mainstream enough to be interesting.

“It just doesnt integrate into my daily work flow. Its an occasional use app, which means I have to remember to use it. I dont *want* to use it. It doesnt beg me to use it.”

Yet, The Eatery proved me wrong for two reasons. One, it makes me *want* to use it because I want to see if I am eating as healthy as I think I am, and I trust my friends to score my food appropriately.

Two, its perfect enough.

In the world of low-cost startups, where the ability to launch apps makes startups a dime a dozen (and dozen and dozen and dozen), and methodologies like Lean Startup reign, we have developed into a “just launch” culture.

After all, it’s a Minimum Viable Product, right?

In believing that a cycle of launching –> customer development –> iterating –> launching is the way to get to success, we forget that the important part of that cycle is not the launching, but putting ourselves in the place of the customer and solving their problem.

Its that fundamental aspect of building a big special company that we have forgotten somewhere along the line. We are enthralled about the latest Techcrunch article about our coolest feature that just launched or that some app now has 12 million users. We compete on having the greenest grass, and stopped competing on having the strongest solution.

For most people, taking pictures of their food is just not a problem, but understanding the value of what they are eating is a real, huge, defined problem. And by Massive Health focus on the type of information provided in the feedback loop they will have a hit on their hands. (Instead of getting “wow that looks great!” which validates your status as a “foodie” — and is an ego boost among your friends; Massive Health is getting “wow you made a good decision” which validates your decision to do something good for you — and makes your friends feel good for helping out.)

Is The Eatery the perfect app? No, the onboard is a bit much, and the friend management blows. The analytics are a good start, but leave much to be desired. Rating takes a few clicks too many, and some functions carry no descriptions. Yet, by keeping in mind the problem they are solving, the actions they wanted users to take, they have built an app that is just perfect enough.

I implore all founders to stop what they are doing for the next 60 minutes and ask “what problem are we solving?” and more importantly, “does that problem really matter?”

Big businesses are built on the ability to 1) make people feel good about themselves; 2) magically. Not if you have the largest, greenest lawn on the block.

Nice work Massive Health, you have inspired me to re-focus on whats important. Our users.

Related articles

• The Eatery, App Shares Your Photos of Meals to Improve Your Health (laughingsquid.com)
• Why we need to reinvent healthcare with technology (wired.co.uk)
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First, let me say this: Steve Jobs was a weirdo.

And, thank god for the weirdos.

I went to Monta Loma elementary (as did Steve Jobs) and Critteden Middle (yup, Steve did too). Crittenden was such a craptastic school. They even spelled their own name wrong on our yearbooks in the sixth grade. We had gangs, not the hipper Crips and Bloods, but gangs nonetheless, and we constantly were fighting some other school to right some disrespect. No guns. Mostly chains and boards.

Good times.

There were also breakdancing battles. Boom boxes and cardboard. Call outs and head spins.

I guess we liked the battle.

I remember getting asked out by an eighth grader when I was in the sixth grade. It was for the Sadie Hawkins dance. I ran away. I wanted to fight, not go to some stupid dance, with some stupid girl. (Not my last stupid decision, let me tell you.)

My parents moved away from our house on Thompson Ave in Mountain View after my sixth grade year. We ended up in San Jose. I went to Morrill Middle and later Independence High School.

Fighting was replaced with stealing, and stealing was replaced, luckily, with sports. I lived across from Pool #3 on Capewood (my parents still do), and when I was a freshman I got a job as a lifeguard. I realized that no one was really cleaning the pool, so I asked if I could do it. Told them I had a company. It was easy, my dad was on the board.

I hired the super cool football players and baseball players, and quickly, my high school experience got better. Much better. After all, high school is always better when you hang out with cheerleaders. I played football for a year and wrestled, at least until I destroyed my shoulder, and settled into the swim team.

The swim team was great. We were all weirdos. We had Fish Hill to hang out on, and we had a crazy coach. He used to ask if I wanted to fight him. I usually declined. Coach Rutherford would remind me that he had forgotten more about fighting than I would ever know. Having served in Vietnam, I kinda believed him.

We would spend hours in and out of the pool, and learned quickly that our place on the team came from two places: our ability in the pool, and our ability to help others get better. It was a good lesson.

I loved the solitary nature of swimming. I would swim for hours lost in my own thoughts. Mostly as a challenge, Rutherford had me compete in the 500 free and 100 butterfly in meets. At the time, they were back-to-back and brutal. But, every time I got half way through the 500, I would sing Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer.

Still do when I am half way done.

We shaved fish in the back of our heads, and our entire bodies at big meets. The hair on my legs still hasnt grown back completely.

As a swimmer, we didnt get the level of fandom my friends on the football team did. It was ok. We were fans of each other.

It was that lesson that has stuck with me more than anything.

In today’s social technology, it has become deeply clear that this is a weirdo’s world, where the people are driving innovation more rapidly than ever before. We have learned that building companies in a vacuum creates subpar innovation. We celebrate Steve Jobs for his commitment to beauty; Shervin for his drive for access; McClure for his support of shrinking borders; Chris Sacca for his desire for goodness; Brad Feld for his belief in the importance of freedom. We look to our competitors and see friends; we revel in the growth of entrepreneurially dense centers like New York, Boulder, Beijing and Omaha.

It is almost unprecedented how our industry understands that singular success doesnt “win”. We win because it is possible to focus on the importance of true innovation and its collective effect on the world. It is seen in the explosion of open sourced software and companies like Github. We are an offer help first culture, and that mentally is finally beginning to seep into the world at large.

We are the weirdos, and we are making it a weirdo’s world.

Thank god for the weirdos.

Related articles

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• Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow. (tech.fortune.cnn.com)
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• Letter: Nurturing Future Geniuses (nytimes.com)