From the encouragement of my wife, Debra, who is reading Wheat Belly, about a month ago I added raw kale to my vegan breakfast smoothie recipe. I wanted to wait to write about it until I decided it was a permanent ingredient of my recipe. As this article points out, Kale is chock full of nutrients. It is also pretty filling, adding more heft to my smoothie. It alters the taste - making the smoothie a little less delicious but it is very delicious still. For the recipe, I use a healthy portion of the stalk and "floret" or whatever the leafy part is called.
My return to The Wharton School as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence
I had the pleasure of visiting The Wharton School recently as a returning Entrepreneur-in-Residence. I found myself more encouraged than ever about the student body and their desire to be entrepreneurs. When I earned my MBA at Wharton, from 1997-1999, I was a bit of an outlier as an entrepreneur in a class of almost all aspiring consultants and bankers. In my class, there were a few entrepreneurs, such as John Lusk and Kyle Harrison, the co-founders of MouseDriver (I recommend reading their book on the experience), and Gregg Spiridellis, the co-founder and CEO of JibJab. John is at it again with Rivet & Sway and Gregg is still running JibJab, an unusually long tenure for any Wharton graduate in my class. Gregg is my most humorous friend and his talent has shown in so many ways at JibJab. But, at Wharton, I was even more strange than John, Kyle, and Gregg. And that is because I was founding and running businesses while I was still in school.
Recruiting parallels to venture capital investing
As I've gotten more ramped up here at Austin Ventures, I've learned a lot about the "other side" of entrepreneurship. I've known the world of a founder for the first half of my life (I'm 41 now), and I've started five companies, including Bazaarvoice and Coremetrics. But I've never been on the other side of the table as an investor and been a part of the closed discussions that occur after founders make their best case to an investment committee. What I've learned is really eye-opening and is helping me put a lot of patterns together (this is called "pattern recognition" in the investing world).
Time is money, money is time, or something different?
It has been awhile since I've posted as I've had three conferences back to back, including the main TED conference in Long Beach, our own Bazaarvoice Summit in Austin, and then SXSWi. So it is perhaps ironic that I write this philosophical post about time.
Benjamin Franklin was famous for saying many things and one of them was "remember that time is money" (you can read his full quote here). In my new journey as an angel and VC investor and entrepreneurial coach, I've been having many conversations with those that have been in these fields for longer than I have. In the first half of my life, I've been singularly focused on changing the world through technology - as the entrepreneur myself versus through others. One of the more stirring conversations I had recently was with a successful investor that said, "what use is money with no time". He was frustrated in that he had a lot of money but that it had chained him to have little time and he was vigorously trying to change that.
7 lessons learned on the journey from founder to CEO
Two days ago I had the honor of keynoting at the First Round Capital CEO Summit in San Francisco. The event was held at the Jewish Contemporary Museum. During my speech, I promised to put my notes up on my blog and so here they are.
My talk was about the 7 lessons I've learned on the journey from founder to CEO. First Round Capital invested in us when Bazaarvoice was under 10 people; they came in alongside Austin Ventures - where I am now a Venture Partner - in our Series A. First Round has been an incredible partner in our journey from startup to public company. Personally, I think they are the best first round investor in the U.S. with the portfolio to show for it. Josh Kopelman, a fellow Wharton grad, is especially strong and he has helped me many times along the way.
I started off my talk emphasizing that the journey matters most in your transformation from founder to CEO. It is both a beautiful journey and also at times a gut-wrenching one. As Kirk Dando, my CEO coach of four years, says, "the path to heaven goes through the road to hell". This couldn't be more true. You aren't born knowing how to either found a company or be a CEO. You aren't born knowing how emotional this journey can be. But it is a journey that I've cherished and, in my opinion, the most profound journey that one can take in a career. It is a journey that led to me being recognized as Austin's best CEO for the large company category last year. This doesn't mean I have done everything right or that I don't make mistakes (hopefully less of them are repeat mistakes).
The death - and rebirth - of retail
On January 29, Marc Andreessen predicted the death of retail in favor of disruptive, pure-play etailers, such as Fab.com. A choice quote from the PandoDaily article:
“Retail chains are a fundamentally implausible economic structure if there’s a viable alternative,” he says. “You combine the fixed cost of real estate with inventory, and it puts every retailer in a highly leveraged position. Few can survive a decline of 20 to 30 percent in revenues. It just doesn’t make any sense for all this stuff to sit on shelves. There is fundamentally a better model.”
I've been studying retail ever since I can remember. My parents were retail entrepreneurs from the time I was born, as I wrote about in this Lucky7 post. I've been programming since I was seven-years old, as I wrote about in why I named this blog Lucky7 - in tribute to my mother. I leveraged these two experiences to start my own etailer in 1998 - programmed on an eCommerce platform that I created. And I've founded two large companies to help retailers - Bazaarvoice and Coremetrics. I've also served on the Board of Shop.org for three consecutive terms. So to say I've been thinking about this for awhile is an understatement.
The tale of Bazaarvoice, as told through the shirts on our backs (2005-2007)
Every startup has their t-shirts, and we were no different at Bazaarvoice. But you can tell a lot about a company by the t-shirts they produce. And so I would like to take you through our history - and our culture - with probably the most complete collection of Bazaarvoice t-shirts with the possible exception of my co-founder, Brant Barton.
This will be a series of post, and this first post covers our first two years in business - 2005-2007.
The first t-shirt we made was the coveted Bazaarvoice Community One 2005 t-shirt. There are very few of these. The point that I was making was that we were part of a very special community - those that joined in the first year of business (Brant and I founded Bazaarvoice in May of 2005).
50% of startup exits in 2012 exited for less than $50 million in 2012, and the founder mindset
As this article and the chart below from Business Insider points out, 50% of startup exits in 2012 exited for less than $50 million in value. Personally, I would only sell a business if it didn't have a great future ahead of it. This is the founder mindset needed to go long. At Bazaarvoice, we created over 1,000 jobs and a valuation of around $550 million today. But Brant and I could have sold Bazaarvoice for around $25 million when it was around a year old. As I point out in my Lucky7 post about the five critical ingredients to build a big company, the founder mindset matters for ultimately what ripple effects will be created.
Are you going to create 10 jobs or 1,000 jobs? Are you going to create less than $50 million of value or greater than $500 million? It all depends on your potential or TAM (Total Available Market), execution, and your mindset. Some entrepreneurs are only in it for the quick flip, and they do it over and over again. They feel more comfortable in that groove and they haven't pushed themselves to go beyond it - perhaps because it is so hard to do so.
If you are looking to join a startup, avoid these entrepreneurs unless you know that is the game and they are open enough to call it like it is. Make sure this is what you want to do - and you get a large percentage of the equity. There is a big difference in who makes money with a $50 million versus $500 million valuation, and that also means a big difference in the company's benefit to the community (jobs, future philanthrophy, etc). It is also really fun - but really hard - to go from a $50 million to a $500 million valuation. But I've never had more fun in my career than that ride at Bazaarvoice, even when factoring in all of the challenges and learning along the way. And I know many early Bazaarvoice employees feel the same way.
How to be efficient in your communication to get things done quickly
In startups, you have no time to waste. Every day counts. The opportunity cost of lost time is huge. Startup life can be short and fragile. So, one way to get things donequickly is to communicate in an effective manner. I was thinking about this today while I was at The Wharton School serving as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence and talking about a lot of lessons learned at Bazaarvoice and Coremetrics. As I wrote about in this Lucky7 post, Bazaarvoice was one of the most capital efficient companies leading up to the IPO as compared to many companies that reach this milestone. Certainly one of the reasons this was the case is we wasted less time than most companies in how we chose to communicate with each other in order to get things done quickly.
Things I've Learned (Austin Monthly)
Austin Monthly, a great local magazine, ran a profile on the things I've learned in their February issue. This is not yet available online, so I'm including a photo of the article here.
They did a great job on this article, describing a lot of my philosphies on life and entrepreneurship. They took a lot of time with this, which is rare in these days of the rushed and declining media industry. There is one error, though - my age. I'm 40, not 43.