I am a 2x entrepreneur who has gone to the Dark Side of VC. I started my first company in 1999 and was headquartered in London. I left this company in 2005 and sold it to a publicly traded French services company. I founded my second company in Palo Alto in 2005 and sold this company to Salesforce.com where I became VP Product Management. This company now forms what is known as Salesforce Content. I joined GRP Partners in 2007 as a General Partner. I focus on early-stage technology companies – usually looking at Series A investments.
Basecamp in my mind (I wrote the article) is establishing a product that gains adoption and reaches a set of realistic milestones that can be achieved within 2 years rather than focusing on the summit (how big this can ultimately become). I'm going to update the article to make this clear. Thank you for prompting.
As I wrote in the article the interpretation is left to the investor. It could be product features shipped. It could be biz dev deals signed. It could be talented people hired. Whatever. The point is that you get to see how the person accomplishes things that they set out to do. If you meet them only briefly over a 2-week period you don't have enough data points to decide.
I don't assume that at all. I'm arguing in favor of investors getting out and spending time with entrepreneurs now that they might want to fund later so that your line becomes someone else's dot.
All you do is choose different words than I do but I suspect we're not a million miles off. You talk of "not being a bully, not being a softie." That is sufficiently vague as to be acceptable and populist. But it is a hard line to walk and it is at the heart of what I was getting at with heat vs. light. I suspect if we sat and talked about it you'd find that we aren't that far off each other in management style. I am neither phony or manipulative. Although I can see why nuance is lost when I write quick blog posts and choose words that don't resonate with you.
I understand why you would be uncomfortable about it. But I firmly believe that giving an employee time to reflect on what went wrong & why is important. And they need distance to achieve this. If you're immediately chummy with them after a failure then this time of reflection is less likely. I know it doesn't sit well with everybody so I'm not asking you to adopt my style. But it is not manipulative and actually is quite effective.
I do a video & podcast every week that covers startup lessons, venture capital advice and deals funded for the week. It's called This Week in Venture Capital. http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-venture-capital/ (there are links to there to the free iTunes download.
Also, This Week in Startups is great because it profiles startup CEOs and talks about the week's news. Hosted by Jason Calacanis and is here: http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/
Other recommendations: www.mixergy.com - Andrew Warner is great and profiles successful founders.
I'm not against you. I think some developers working remotely can be useful. I am also OK with any team member working a day or two from home. Finally, from an environmental point you're absolutely correct. My biggest argument is that management teams (CEO, VP Products, CTO) who work in remote geographies are often sub-optimized.
I don't have "weird" preferences - just ones that are different from yours. I don't play it "by ear" - I used to develop software myself and I built and sold two software companies. I accept other people's arguments and even change my opinion when they are compelling. You, sir, have made no arguments to the contrary other than name calling.
More accurate summary: author (me) believes that teams that colocate the three most critical people (CEO, VP Product & CTO) perform much better. I think some developers can be remote.
Great story! And exactly the point. The other saying is "you can't make an omelet unless you're willing to break eggs." I don't mind getting messy from time-to-time. When you take risks like your partner did it backfires sometimes. But I'd rather occasionally get shut down for trying too hard.
Mostly if you're doing the asking and you don't hear what you want you need a plan anyways for what you'll drill down on. If you don't go into the meeting with a pre-planned agenda you're unlikely to achieve objectives.
These same people on a bad day wouldn't likely say FU to my face. They would argue with me and I would listen. But verbal insults of this type are usually encouraged by anonymity where people feel brave using this language with no attribution.
OK. I accept that. And the truth is that I really did value the push back that I got. I only felt it was over the top when invective language was used and personal emails were sent.
Thank you. Well written and fair points. I was expecting negative comments and wrote "let 'er rip" as a way to add some levity. But you're right that it doesn't achieve what I'm after. I will change it.
I normally avoid being inflammatory. I wrote my original post too quickly and late at night. I agree it wasn't well worded and accepted (almost) all criticisms. I don't think that forgives people saying FU or similar. There is a difference between attacking and crossing the line with epithets.
I wrote the first post. The title was too extreme. I acknowledged that and apologized for it. I agree that many of the comments were fair and said so in this post. This isn't my first post to get FU's. I can live with that. I still wonder whether my suggestions may help?
Do you feel better about yourself about saying this about me anonymously on HN? re "you are not my Mother or Father" - I never asked you to read my blog. So the implication that I'm lecturing you is a stretch. I welcome people to disagree with my POV, but personal attacks or epithets are unnecessary.
Hardly bitter. Hardly "elderly." And I have tons of young entrepreneurs that I work with. Just because you disagree with my POV doesn't mean you have to try and launch a personal attack on me. What do you gain by this?
Director, VP, COO or even CEO roles at startups. To find these jobs the best sources are the ones I mentioned. You don't have to agree with me: but my empirical evidence suggests this is true. Now ... I'm clearly not talking about developers, who seems to be the main readers of HN so I know that this advice may not apply to many of you.
Nice that you "genuinely hate me" given that you don't even know me. Very easily to "hate" people online you've never met. Harder in person where we don't easily fit some stereotype you have in your mind.
You're way off base.
- I haven't lost any employees so painting me with that brush is wrong
- I never made any commentary on the guy who left Mahalo - I wrote him a private email making it clear that my commentary had nothing to do with him (I didn't even know that story when I wrote my post)
- I never publicly insulted anybody
- I made a balanced argument that if people leave a few employers early in their careers it's fine. If they make a career out of changing jobs they'll find it hard in the long-run to wind up in senior positions.
And while we're on the topic of insulting posts or people on a rant, why don't you re-read your text and think about how IT sounds
Paul, I think you make a compelling counter-argument. Thank you for moving the debate forward. I have written my own follow on posting here: http://bothsid.es/62o that referenced your blog posting
I agree that it is a personality trait, for sure. But those traits mean that over time the "roles" become separate. I'm defining role as the person's job function.