Health, wealth, excellence, abundance, and joy are the 5 key precepts that I remind myself to focus on every day.
Service to the community has always been a significant dimension of my life. What I disliked about service was that many service opportunities asked me to volunteer time doing tasks I was not good at or tasks that any one could do. I always felt like I could give more to my causes if I could give my causes the full value of my skills.
For example instead of donating a book to the local library wouldn't they be better served by me if I could help them raise awareness of their services and their programs by building them a new Web site or new Brand campaign?
But I didn't think there was any mechanism for me to volunteer my marketing, business, and technology acumen to such places. That was until I found Taproot, where we "do it pro bono."
Today, we launched the second Web grant project I have volunteered to guide. I am an account director/grant manager for Taproot and I lead the development, design, build and launch of Advanced Website grants for Taproot.
The first Taproot project I was involved with was the Slide Ranch web site: http://slideranch.org/news where I acted as Grant Manager / Account Director. At Taproot I acted as the Grant Manager/Account Director for the Slide Ranch Advanced Website Grant. Slide Ranch, “Where the Bay Area Gets Down to Earth,” provides outdoor education programs focused on re-connecting students to where food and clothing come from. For the Slide Ranch Advanced Website Grant I built a 7 person team consisting of a Marketing Manager, Copy Writer, Web Designer, Web Programmer, Account Director, Slide Ranch Liaison, and the Executive Director of Slide Ranch.
This team based on the pro-bono model developed an advanced Web site executing on the Taproot process. The Taproot process includes steps such as a project plan, time line, requirements docs, design directions, wire frames, beta site, and go live.
Live today, the second Taproot project is the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library web site: http://www.friendssfpl.org/ or http://www.friendsandfoundation.org/. The Friends of the San Francisco Public Library is a legendary local non-profit serving the Bay area's entire chain of local libraries. I felt it was a great honor to be of service to this incredible organization. For this project our team ebbed and flowed. We lost members of the team to disease, car accidents, pregnancy, and job changes. During the development of the site I saw two companies fold, my mother died, and I divorced my wife. But some how the remaining team of myself, Civiane Chung, David Balmer, and Natalie Thompson stuck it out and finished the project.
Here are the credits: http://www.friendsandfoundation.net/?Credits listing the team.
My joy at completing this second Taproot project is quite deep. The investment by the volunteers, in sum, by both current team members and by ex-team members is well over 400 hours of work. Considering the size of the Friends site and considering the variability in the project, I couldn't be more proud of this team's accomplishment.
Interested in donating your technical, business, or marketing skills to local non-profits in need? Check out http://taprootfoundation.org.
Interested in your local library and the programs they run? Check out http://www.friendssfpl.org/
Friday, August 01, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Fighting the good fight....
In a start-up we often get a diligent board and a passionate CEO. A less common situation is a passionate board and a diligent CEO. In both cases in start-ups the vision of the company is driven, necessarily, by people with blinders on. They essentially have tossed away any disbelief in their approach to their vision.
My question is in about how to amend such a vision when the team of a start-up realizes the board and CEO are barking up the wrong tree?
Whether you are the head of engineering or the head of sales or any other such team member -- if you begin to see that the direction of the start-up has not been set correctly how can you alert leadership and help them course correct without getting fired or being considered a drag on the business?
I've seen several attempts at this and the ability of the wheel house of the company to hear the sounds coming from the engine room is often lacking.
So how does a QA Director or a VP of Sales or such a team member open the ear of the board? In a team of ten or so people one would think this would never be an issue and yet I see time and time again the engine room conversation is never heard? Is this a structural defect in start-ups that can't afford to hear about their own potential flaws? Is it a necessary evil of the hard charging all steam ahead nature of a start-up? When is a course correction too late? Or is it never too late?
These are the kinds of questions I think teams in start-ups often face. Questions that usually don't or can't get answered.
My question is in about how to amend such a vision when the team of a start-up realizes the board and CEO are barking up the wrong tree?
Whether you are the head of engineering or the head of sales or any other such team member -- if you begin to see that the direction of the start-up has not been set correctly how can you alert leadership and help them course correct without getting fired or being considered a drag on the business?
I've seen several attempts at this and the ability of the wheel house of the company to hear the sounds coming from the engine room is often lacking.
So how does a QA Director or a VP of Sales or such a team member open the ear of the board? In a team of ten or so people one would think this would never be an issue and yet I see time and time again the engine room conversation is never heard? Is this a structural defect in start-ups that can't afford to hear about their own potential flaws? Is it a necessary evil of the hard charging all steam ahead nature of a start-up? When is a course correction too late? Or is it never too late?
These are the kinds of questions I think teams in start-ups often face. Questions that usually don't or can't get answered.
Monday, July 14, 2008
The odds...
Once upon a time when I was thinking about growing up to be a serial entrepreneur I heard the following:
"One in a 100 start-ups get to the seed funding stage. One in hundred of those get to a Series A. One in a hundred of those that get a Series A or a Seed round get a Series B or an exit..."
This was followed by "One in 10,000 start-ups get to a public offering..."
A sane person would say that these odds suck.
I, of course, said, I like those odds. I am not unlike many of the extreme skiing, surfing, shark-diving entrepreneurs who believe the long odds make ourselves the favorite. I am amongst a large crew of start-up guys who believe the world conspires in our favor when the odds are longest. I actually believe that the odds tilt in my favor because I am involved. If the typical odds for a "normal" entrepreneur are 1:100 then I believe the odds for ME are more like 1:5.
From my experience with others in the start-up arena this prospect of success despite the odds is a common thread. For some it is their belief in their intelligence, or their technical acumen...for others it is their belief in how they read the marketplace...for still others it is their belief that they can sell anything...and for still others they believe they can build great teams and great teams can do anything. Whatever it is that the serial entrepreneur brings to the table they think they bring it in spades.
"One in a 100 start-ups get to the seed funding stage. One in hundred of those get to a Series A. One in a hundred of those that get a Series A or a Seed round get a Series B or an exit..."
This was followed by "One in 10,000 start-ups get to a public offering..."
A sane person would say that these odds suck.
I, of course, said, I like those odds. I am not unlike many of the extreme skiing, surfing, shark-diving entrepreneurs who believe the long odds make ourselves the favorite. I am amongst a large crew of start-up guys who believe the world conspires in our favor when the odds are longest. I actually believe that the odds tilt in my favor because I am involved. If the typical odds for a "normal" entrepreneur are 1:100 then I believe the odds for ME are more like 1:5.
From my experience with others in the start-up arena this prospect of success despite the odds is a common thread. For some it is their belief in their intelligence, or their technical acumen...for others it is their belief in how they read the marketplace...for still others it is their belief that they can sell anything...and for still others they believe they can build great teams and great teams can do anything. Whatever it is that the serial entrepreneur brings to the table they think they bring it in spades.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Old Stuff that is cool that still hasn't been built...
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6877137.html
One of the patents I worked on at a doomed start-up called Aurigin is now out there in the free patent universe. I believe alot of the ideas once "pending patent" are worthy of review. If I was in a sector and starting a new technology business I would at least window shop the world of expired and untended IP.
For example this piece of IP: System, method and computer program product for mediating notes and note sub-notes linked or otherwise associated with stored or networked web pages
is still a very interesting consumer service.
At the time we called it codename WEBSTER because you could surf anywhere annotate anything, share the links and annotations with anyone. Very fun, social browsing stuff...but in 1998...in an enterprise start-up focused on Pharma and Chemical the idea of a consumer service as a marketing function for the business was considered beyond stupid.
Of course in hindsight, WEBSTER was the future and the core business a dead end.
One of the patents I worked on at a doomed start-up called Aurigin is now out there in the free patent universe. I believe alot of the ideas once "pending patent" are worthy of review. If I was in a sector and starting a new technology business I would at least window shop the world of expired and untended IP.
For example this piece of IP: System, method and computer program product for mediating notes and note sub-notes linked or otherwise associated with stored or networked web pages
is still a very interesting consumer service.
At the time we called it codename WEBSTER because you could surf anywhere annotate anything, share the links and annotations with anyone. Very fun, social browsing stuff...but in 1998...in an enterprise start-up focused on Pharma and Chemical the idea of a consumer service as a marketing function for the business was considered beyond stupid.
Of course in hindsight, WEBSTER was the future and the core business a dead end.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
6 Million Dollars Later...
When I was at AvantGo some 8 years ago I worked for a VP of Services that always thought big. His mantra was "go big or go home."
I was struck by the boldness of the approach and seduced by its grandiosity. What promises of success and wealth were contained in the claim! Typically, as with this VP, the claim is laced with additional baggage that results in an organization trying to do too much at once in too little time.
There at AvantGo I think the the "too much" was the attempt to build out an application suite AND create an enterprise platform AND create a profitable consumer service as disconnected businesses--each with their own P&L.
The key lesson I have learned from the series of 5 or so start-ups that I have been involved with is that you can "go big" (in fact it is a requirement of the vision of any investor backed effort) but you must focus on a core proposition. If you have more than one core proposition when you are a Seed or Series A stage start-up then you have too many propositions and you are unfocused. I have actually found that it is impossible for a start-up to be too focused. Often people see two risks--being unfocused or being too focused. Yet 95% of the time the problem is being not focused enough. So are there really two equal risks?
At TailWind, a small company I founded, my engineering group thought it was a joke to refine the thinking of the business down to one value proposition. They dismissed the idea of the business having a culture of accountability and aligning around a core principle.
This is not uncommon. Most engineering groups get through the day on a steady diet of sarcasm and irony. The nature of most software engineers is to be skeptical, uncommitted and critical because these are easy attitudes to stay safe behind. When engineers feel a greater need to stay safe and cynical behind their critical eye this is a sure sign they are reluctant to commit to success. This is a sure sign the start-up is getting off on the wrong foot.
This attitude is often the result of bad experiences. So its manifestation is often not the individual engineer's dysfunction as too many leaders have insisted to them the business must "go big or go home" resulting in thrash of engineers, their teams, and their efforts. This especially happens when go big translates into a lack of focus that seems more like a call to action to "boil the ocean."
When I have been successful with the start-ups I have been involved with is when we have aligned the culture of our start-up team around some basic ideas.
The first is that all involved, everyone, no one excepted has to buy in to the shared vision of the business and the product that will start the business toward that vision.
The second is that all involved, no one excepted, has to buy into a way of going about the business with explicitly agreed to principles of how we treat each other and how we keep communication flowing through and organization. Some simple examples of this are a) the one up one down method of sending email (there are no 1 to 1 communications in a business of three or more people) b) ask don't tell (inquire rather than dictate).
Thirdly, is that all involved have to desire to make meaningful commitments, on a daily basis, to the vision of the business. That is to say ambiguity, noncommittal attitudes, ambivalence are attitudes that hurt a business as much or even worse than attitudes of spite or disdain. At least with spite and disdain everyone is aware of the position of the person who holds the attitude. With ambiguity, ambivalence and non-committal attitudes they appear to not do any harm and they whitewash the energy of the business.
Theses gray attitudes substitute wishy-washiness in place of clarity, insouciance in place of progress, ignorance in place of accountability. I am surprised at how high a % of my experiences at both start-ups and established businesses are populated with people that prefer lack of clarity and unrequested commitment. From my observations this preference happens unwittingly. Leaders and teams alike seem to agree they won't uncover what they really need to do. I always look to create or be part of a group that can make a commitment to a vision then commit to what they will do that day, that week, that month, that quarter--and then they make every effort to to get it done.
I was struck by the boldness of the approach and seduced by its grandiosity. What promises of success and wealth were contained in the claim! Typically, as with this VP, the claim is laced with additional baggage that results in an organization trying to do too much at once in too little time.
There at AvantGo I think the the "too much" was the attempt to build out an application suite AND create an enterprise platform AND create a profitable consumer service as disconnected businesses--each with their own P&L.
The key lesson I have learned from the series of 5 or so start-ups that I have been involved with is that you can "go big" (in fact it is a requirement of the vision of any investor backed effort) but you must focus on a core proposition. If you have more than one core proposition when you are a Seed or Series A stage start-up then you have too many propositions and you are unfocused. I have actually found that it is impossible for a start-up to be too focused. Often people see two risks--being unfocused or being too focused. Yet 95% of the time the problem is being not focused enough. So are there really two equal risks?
At TailWind, a small company I founded, my engineering group thought it was a joke to refine the thinking of the business down to one value proposition. They dismissed the idea of the business having a culture of accountability and aligning around a core principle.
This is not uncommon. Most engineering groups get through the day on a steady diet of sarcasm and irony. The nature of most software engineers is to be skeptical, uncommitted and critical because these are easy attitudes to stay safe behind. When engineers feel a greater need to stay safe and cynical behind their critical eye this is a sure sign they are reluctant to commit to success. This is a sure sign the start-up is getting off on the wrong foot.
This attitude is often the result of bad experiences. So its manifestation is often not the individual engineer's dysfunction as too many leaders have insisted to them the business must "go big or go home" resulting in thrash of engineers, their teams, and their efforts. This especially happens when go big translates into a lack of focus that seems more like a call to action to "boil the ocean."
When I have been successful with the start-ups I have been involved with is when we have aligned the culture of our start-up team around some basic ideas.
The first is that all involved, everyone, no one excepted has to buy in to the shared vision of the business and the product that will start the business toward that vision.
The second is that all involved, no one excepted, has to buy into a way of going about the business with explicitly agreed to principles of how we treat each other and how we keep communication flowing through and organization. Some simple examples of this are a) the one up one down method of sending email (there are no 1 to 1 communications in a business of three or more people) b) ask don't tell (inquire rather than dictate).
Thirdly, is that all involved have to desire to make meaningful commitments, on a daily basis, to the vision of the business. That is to say ambiguity, noncommittal attitudes, ambivalence are attitudes that hurt a business as much or even worse than attitudes of spite or disdain. At least with spite and disdain everyone is aware of the position of the person who holds the attitude. With ambiguity, ambivalence and non-committal attitudes they appear to not do any harm and they whitewash the energy of the business.
Theses gray attitudes substitute wishy-washiness in place of clarity, insouciance in place of progress, ignorance in place of accountability. I am surprised at how high a % of my experiences at both start-ups and established businesses are populated with people that prefer lack of clarity and unrequested commitment. From my observations this preference happens unwittingly. Leaders and teams alike seem to agree they won't uncover what they really need to do. I always look to create or be part of a group that can make a commitment to a vision then commit to what they will do that day, that week, that month, that quarter--and then they make every effort to to get it done.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
THE FOUR STEPS MY MOTHER'S RAMP WOULD ASCEND
Some people might be thinking I am asking for some massive ramp ascending a giant hill...not so. Some people might think we are asking to remove Giant Oak Trees and Huge Retaining Walls. Take a look for yourself...
This all started with my post Tuesday, October 23, 2007 The Cruelest Community: Disabled Breast Cancer Victim Denied Access to her own Home by Reston Association
Below is the picture of the fours steps my mother's temporary ramp would ascend:
The ramp, to have the gentlest rise and not be a ski slope, needs to run from the far right up to the far left. This 28 feet allows for an ADA compliant slope that canot be achieved any other way.
Here are the drawings for the temporary ramp:
This all started with my post Tuesday, October 23, 2007 The Cruelest Community: Disabled Breast Cancer Victim Denied Access to her own Home by Reston Association
MY UNSENT RESPONSE TO THE RESTON ASSOCIATION'S REQUEST FOR ADDITIONAL MATERIALS
Below are thye responses that I wanted to send to the request for additional materials from the Reston Association wackos...
Plat or site plan, drawn to scale, showing how the ramp will relate to the property lines.
I am now in California, my mother is in a hospital bed in Manor Care. I'm sure she will leap to her feet and rush back to her house that she can't get into and find those plats. Oh wait...aren't they on file at the county?
Let me know when you have gone down to the county offices and retrieved those plans and made them part of the proposal!
____________________________________
Elevation drawing of the front of the ramp including the front of the house.
Yea.Right.
____________________________________
Picture of the front right corner of the property where the proposed landing flush with the sidewalk will be located.
See picture 4. Or go see an optometrist.
____________________________________
Plan of removal of the front retaining wall.
Oh, that six inches? Dynamite. Heavy explosives. Most definitely.
____________________________________
Request for approval to remove the two trees in the front yard if the ramp will be installed in their place (our records show that there were two large trees in the front yard in 1997 that have since been removed without approval. I'm assuming that the two small maples are their replacement?)
I wasn't around ten years ago but it is my understanding they were both struck by lightning simultaneously and destroyed. The local cluster then asked that they be removed. But this is just what I was told by a neighbor.
____________________________________
Color of the railing: painted to match the siding? Left to weather naturally?
We will paint the railings alternatingly pink and neon orange. Randomly we plan on spraying the ramp with glitter.
____________________________________
Plat or site plan, drawn to scale, showing how the ramp will relate to the property lines.
I am now in California, my mother is in a hospital bed in Manor Care. I'm sure she will leap to her feet and rush back to her house that she can't get into and find those plats. Oh wait...aren't they on file at the county?
Let me know when you have gone down to the county offices and retrieved those plans and made them part of the proposal!
____________________________________
Elevation drawing of the front of the ramp including the front of the house.
Yea.Right.
____________________________________
Picture of the front right corner of the property where the proposed landing flush with the sidewalk will be located.
See picture 4. Or go see an optometrist.
____________________________________
Plan of removal of the front retaining wall.
Oh, that six inches? Dynamite. Heavy explosives. Most definitely.
____________________________________
Request for approval to remove the two trees in the front yard if the ramp will be installed in their place (our records show that there were two large trees in the front yard in 1997 that have since been removed without approval. I'm assuming that the two small maples are their replacement?)
I wasn't around ten years ago but it is my understanding they were both struck by lightning simultaneously and destroyed. The local cluster then asked that they be removed. But this is just what I was told by a neighbor.
____________________________________
Color of the railing: painted to match the siding? Left to weather naturally?
We will paint the railings alternatingly pink and neon orange. Randomly we plan on spraying the ramp with glitter.
____________________________________
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)