“Sitting is the smoking of our generation.”
–Nilofer Merchant, Harvard Business Review

Can you help me with an experiment?  I want to have more walking meetings.

I have two reasons for this goal. First, I think meetings where we talk while walking are more effective. Steve Jobs (and now Mark Zuckerberg) are famous for taking long walks to interview employees or discuss key strategic initiatives.  For some reason, moving stimulates more creativity and easier dialogue.  My best recent meetings with entrepreneurs have been on walks around the Pioneer Square area.

Second, sitting in meetings all day is killing us, slowly, incrementally but unquestionably. I am no expert on the activities of our biological ancestors, but I know for sure we were not evolved to alternate between sitting in meetings, sitting in front of the computer and sitting in front of the TV (which is unfortunate because I am among the best in the world at all three). In fact, as reported in the New York Times, a recent study published in the journal Circulation showed that every extra hour per day a person sat in front of the TV increased that person’s risk of dying by 11%.

Here are three important exceptions to my walking rule.

1. If you are presenting a slide deck or showing a demo, that’s harder to do on the run. Let’s sit for that.
2. If you are wearing high heels when you meet with me, I won’t ask you to walk. But if you are meeting with me and reading this, don’t wear heels. I have terrible fashion sense and always wanted to be taller, so heels are unnecessary.
3. If it’s raining (or snowing), we’ll stay inside.

I know most of you out there spend far too much time sitting in meetings.  But it can be awkward to ask someone to go for a walk.  Get over it. Join me (and others) in this crusade.

If there is no good reason to be sitting in your next meeting, don’t be afraid to ask the person across the table from you to go for a walk. I bet he or she will love the idea.

I was scheduled to have foot surgery last Friday morning.  As I was both reading my emails on my iPhone and helping my wife Shannon with the kids’ school lunches that morning, I popped a bite of cheese and salami into my mouth.  A minute later I realized I had broken the cardinal rule of no food or drink eight hours before surgery.  My surgery had to be rescheduled, and I am limping around for the near term.

I know what many of you are thinking (which is what I would be thinking): “Who cares?”  Or better yet, “Greg, you’re an idiot. Who can’t follow a simple rule like don’t eat before surgery?”

Which is exactly my point.

The truth is, I can be pretty hard on others for making silly mistakes and especially hard on those I love the most. My wife tells me I can be tough on the family for trivial failings, and she’s totally right.

Even if you hate dumb mistakes, you have to admit they’re becoming harder to avoid. In this new world of multitasking and juggling kids, school, jobs, and the latest in technology, all of us are just more prone to doing stupid stuff.

So after my Friday morning snack, I made a February resolution to be a little less judgmental.  Join me for the next couple weeks. I can’t promise a world with less stupid mistakes but hopefully one where we can forgive ourselves for falling short sometimes and, of course, the occasional pre-surgery cheese and salami indulgence.

“Why so serious?”
–The Joker in Batman Returns

If you are fortunate enough to be building software for a living, do us this small favor: Put a little more personality into your products.

The best products pay deference to their creators. They’re functional, but they also can be fun at times, whimsical, punchy, interesting, sexy and surprising. Done well, they mimic the best parts of the personality of the teams that created them.

The classic example of adding personality to a product is Google’s homepage. Is there a more functional use of pixels than www.google.com? Yet, sitting right there in all its irrelevant glory is the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. I have never clicked on it, but I love it. I love what it stands for–we built the world’s best search engine, but that doesn’t mean we take ourselves too seriously.

My all-time favorite example of building in personality is the metrics page on Bandcamp.com. Bandcamp is a clean and beautiful site. The simple GUI on the stats page for musicians is no different; you can look at tracks played, media buzz and sales/downloads over various time periods: all-time, 60 days, 30 days, 7 days, today and defender. Wait, what’s the “defender” option? So you click on it, and immediately the screen turns black, a little warship appears, and you are playing a fully functioning version of the old arcade game Defender. In Bandcamp’s version, your own metrics graph serves as the mountains and terrain. If you don’t understand how insanely cool that is, please stop reading immediately.

Well-executed Easter eggs like Bandcamp’s defender option make economic sense. Customers talk about them, Facebook about them and tweet about them. They humanize a product. Customers are more likely to rave about your company and forgive failings if your product appeals to them emotionally.

Of course, personality isn’t just about being funny or clever. The late, great Steve Jobs doesn’t strike me as a funny guy, but his personality lives in every Apple product. Every beautiful curve, every feature, and every nuance down to the packaging is Steve Jobs. Every minute detail mattered to him because the products were an extension of him.

The story of Madrona portfolio company Haiku Deck is instructive here as well. The founders were making a pivot on their business and decided to build a product that embodied the appealing approach they took to making presentations. “People kept telling us we built the greatest slide decks — simple, beautiful and fun,” CEO Adam Tratt said. “So we decided to build a product that made sharing ideas and telling stories a joyful experience instead of a soul-sucking one.”

Adding in personality is not just for consumer-facing products. Business people like working with products they like just as much as consumers do. That’s why there are now more iPhones at work than Blackberries.

Are you building personality into your product? If not, take a step back and give yourself license to humor, delight, and inspire your customers. Don’t force it. You’ll know when you are doing it right.

To my surprise, the ideas the students came up with were incredibly fun and original.  I had three different groups of approximately 10 students.  After each group voted for a winner, we all honed the idea to make it better.  Without further ado, here are the winners, selected by the students themselves.

First group

Company name:  Ydrive

Concept:  A student named Alex pitched the idea of a car that drives itself.  Some of the other students decided that we should add Siri functionality to it, so that the car would respond to voice commands.  Another student wanted to make sure the car was easily customizable, meaning that the owner could replace various components easily if he or she wanted to change the color or add additional functionality.  The students wanted to enable Wi-Fi in each car.

I made the students aware of Google’s efforts in this self-driving arena, but they were confident they could beat Google to market.  I especially liked the name, Ydrive, suggested by a student named Zoe. Her rationale: “It’s like WhyDrive? but without the wh.”  Wow!  Anyone want to hire Zoe to head up marketing?

Second group

Company:  Aquamarian

Concept:  A student named Evan pitched the idea of an underwater hotel.  The initial property would be built in Hawaii because “there is a lot of good fish to look at there.”  The students wanted to make sure that each room had an Xbox and the latest in 3D TV technology.  The hotel would have unbreakable glass (it is an underwater hotel, after all) and the ability for guests to access the hotel from waterproof elevators that open above water.  Note: The students rejected my idea of calling it Hotel Atlantis.

Third group

Company:  SenSuit

Concept:  A student named Andres pitched the idea of a full-body video game controller. The suit would recognize body movements and enable a more fully immersive gaming experience. SenSuit would include a helmet that would have a 3D display.  The suit also would respond to stimuli in the games. For example, if you were stabbed in swordplay, the suit would vibrate in the affected area.  The students thought it made sense to launch this controller to work with Halo 4 “because it’s a really popular game and the suit would work well with it.”

In this third session, I actually changed the voting procedure so that the students voted secretly versus public voting which I did in the first two sessions.  Like in the adult world, the students’ public votes often depended more on who was pitching than on what was pitched.

Some other ideas that didn’t win, but I loved: clothes that grow with you as you grow (perhaps using smart nanoparticles), a video game controller that responds to brain stimuli versus body movements, a smartphone that folds out into a TV, launching an asteroid with a camera to explore the universe, and a party RV outfitted with the latest in 3D, hi-def TVs to watch big-time sporting events.

In the midst of so much negative press about our education system, today was a great day at an outstanding public elementary school. If you had joined me today, you would feel much more comfortable about the future of entrepreneurship.

Thanks to Rand for hosting and Nick Sayers for shooting the video!

So from my family to yours and without further ado, here’s Gary the Snoman!

http://FunnyOrDie.com/m/7ki

My favorite line (although there are a lot to choose from): “Tell them we’re somewhat interested, but need to know who else is interested before we know if we’re really interested.”

So good.

Coach Dale talking to his players

“Think of him as chewing gum. By the end of the game, I want you to know what flavor he is.”
– Coach Norman Dale (Gene Hackman), Hoosiers

Entrepreneurs don’t do enough diligence on their investors.

As venture investors, we do a lot of diligence on you. We call references, both on and off your reference sheet. In our partnership discussion, we talk about your strengths and weaknesses, your character, your ability to grow the business, your idiosyncrasies, whether you will want to sell too early, your willingness to take feedback, and everything else under the sun. We are making a bet on you just as much as (or more than) we are betting on your idea.

As an entrepreneur, you should conduct an equivalent amount of diligence on your investors, but few entrepreneurs do. My experience has been that most entrepreneurs base their decision on one factor well above all others: price. Choosing an investor based on price is like picking a wife based on looks. It seems like a good idea for the first six months until you hit a bump in the road and figure out you optimized for the wrong factor. I am not saying price isn’t important; it’s just not all-important.

Choosing an investor based on price is like picking a wife based on looks. It seems like a good idea for the first six months until you hit a bump in the road and figure out you optimized for the wrong factor.

The obvious caveat is that often entrepreneurs don’t have a choice in choosing their investor partners. Assuming the choice is there, below are seven tips/questions to help you think about your diligence.

1. Call references.

If you are deciding whether to accept an investor’s money, you can ask for intros to the CEOs that the investor works with most closely. Good investors often volunteer this information. Even better, find references you trust. Talking with someone who will give you the straight scoop is much more valuable than asking questions of someone you don’t know and who is likely more beholden to the investor. Check out LinkedIn and Facebook for mutual contacts.

2. Ask the tough questions.

Don’t do perfunctory reference calls. Ask if that CEO would take the investor’s money again. Ask about strengths and weaknesses. Ask about how that investor reacts when times are tough. Ask if the CEO calls that investor when he or she is dealing with an important issue.

3. What did you learn through the negotiating process?

Your best indication of how you will interact with your investor during a more stressful time is the negotiation you just had. Maybe you didn’t get all the terms you wanted, but was the investor honest and up front? Did you feel good about the process? Was he or she responsive?

4. Think about the next round of funding.

If you are still an early-stage company, make sure you are setting yourself up for success down the road. What is the investor’s role in the firm? Is he or she respected among other investors outside that firm? Is there additional capital reserved for your company and how much?

5. What’s the track record?

By track record, I mean more than past successful investments. How has the investor responded in the tough situations that inevitably crop up in startups? Does this investor hop off boards the first sign of trouble? Does the investor attend board meetings in-person or phone it in?

6. Do you like him/her?

You may be spending 10 or more years with this person. Divorcing your spouse is easier than getting rid of a large investor, so don’t jump in willy-nilly. Do you respect this person? Would you enjoy talking to him or her over a beer? Try it out before the investment is closed.

7. Do you trust him/her?

Trust is the most important element of a successful relationship between entrepreneur and investor. Listen to your gut based on what you’ve heard and experienced. Prioritize trust over a couple pennies on valuation.

General George C. Marshall

George Marshall was a truly great American leader.  Credited by Winston Churchill as the “organizer of victory” for his leadership of the U.S. Army during World War II, he also was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for spearheading the Marshall Plan as Secretary of State.  Marshall also owns my favorite quote about leadership.

“Gentlemen, enlisted men may be entitled to morale problems, but officers are not.  I expect all officers in this department to take care of their own morale.  No one is taking care of my morale.”

This quote has been interpreted historically in different ways.  One newspaper columnist recently wrote that this quote symbolizes an old style of leadership.  His argument is that leaders today need to be human and that openness and approachability are critical characteristics for those who want to be followed.  But I get something different from this quote.  To me, Marshall is saying simply:

If you want to lead people, stop whining.

Now let me be clear, I can whine with the best of you.    I come from a long line of whine aficionados.  Indulging in a good whine takes a load off.  I can think of 100 things to whine about at work and at home.  But I agree with Marshall: If you want to lead people, stop the impulse to complain.

Whining isn’t fair to those who work for you.  It makes you look bad.  It sours them on the organization.  It empowers them to whine.  You can still be open, accessible, and “real” without complaining.  You can keep a positive attitude about your workplace and still address hard problems and hard times.

Being a good leader is unnatural in important ways.  It requires fighting against the natural impulse of lifting yourself up by putting others down.  It asks you to be constructive, rather than destructive, in an organization that may be and often will be off track.  Next time you are ready to unload to a co-worker or someone who reports to you, think back on this quote.  It has come in handy for me more than once.

[As an aside, the quote is from David McCullough’s Truman, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and one of the best books on leadership.]

In honor of TechStars Demo Day tomorrow in Seattle, I present to you . . . the Ice Cream Glove.

Flavor Flav

On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
–Narrator, Fight Club

No matter how compelling your product or service is, no matter how great the terms you are proposing, no matter how appealing you are as a promoter or sales person,  given enough time, your deal will fall apart.

It won’t be your fault. In the last two quarters, I have heard the following from CEOs at various software startups.

• “Our deal champion left the company.”
• “The budget shrank, so we’re off the table now.”
• “The buyer missed its numbers. Everything’s on hold.”
• “That company fell off the list because it went out of business.”

So what does this mean for you? In the immortal words of Larry the Cable Guy, “Git-R-Done” (appreciate the sentiment, if not the delivery). Below are seven tips to keep in mind if you are selling anything.

1.    Don’t let the perfect deal be the enemy of the good deal. I have seen deals blown up over three months of escrow. There’s no excuse for that on either side. If you feel good about a deal, close it.

2.      Not every term is a deal breaker. Figure out ahead of time what’s important to you and what’s not. Not everything is important, and some terms might be more important to the other side than they are to you. One tip: Push back on a couple non-deal breaker terms early and be willing to give on them in the next round of back-and-forth.

3.    Understand who is sitting on the other side of the table. Are you negotiating against someone who expects you to negotiate?  Or is the counterparty someone who puts down what he or she believes is a fair deal and won’t budge from there? I have negotiated with someone who fell into the latter camp, thinking he was in the former. I pushed back reasonably (I thought), and he walked. Later on, we discussed it, and he told me that he was the type of person who didn’t like a lot of back-and-forth. His best offer actually was his best offer. In retrospect, I should have spent more time trying to understand who I was negotiating against before determining my strategy.    

 4.      Deal momentum is everything. Once the deal ball is rolling downhill (you will know when a deal has good momentum—they’re calling you, and you’re calling them), push the deal to conclusion. A CEO I know was in the middle of selling his company.  He had a long-planned two-week vacation and was out of cell range much of that time. When he came back, the deal was off.  He is confident being away during that critical time cost him that deal.  

5.       Negotiate the key terms up front. This tip might seem counterintuitive to the time-kills-all-deals point because getting an initial Letter of Intent (LOI) is an important first step to a larger deal. That said, if you wait to negotiate important terms beyond price post-LOI, you will lose leverage, put speed bumps in front of the deal closing, and likely be negotiating with lawyers (many of whom think their job is to make your life difficult) versus business people. Dealing with the important business terms upfront will actually speed up your deal over the long run.

6.      Split the difference. When you are at an impasse and both sides genuinely want to move forward but can’t get past a certain important term, employ three of the best words in the human language: split the difference. This concept does not work for all terms. The negotiator on the other side is entitled to industry-standard terms, as are you (a good lawyer can tell you what those are). But if you are fighting over $0.10 in share price, “split the difference” can help move you along.

 7.      Hire a good lawyer. Good lawyers are not cheap, but during a deal process good ones pay for themselves. Good ones tell you what to focus on (and what not to), push back if you are being unreasonable, nudge you if they feel you have some room to negotiate, and don’t waste time negotiating over needless points that end up stalling a deal.

If you catch yourself lollygagging or fretting over an insignificant issue, don’t sleep on it. Time kills all deals.