Benefits of the Family office investor

Had a really good meeting with Chris Ackerley. He told me that he read my blog about my perception that they weren't as comfortable as Ignition. He went out of his way to express support for Judy's Book -- belief in the idea, the entrepreneurs (Chris Devore and I) and the investment. Since making the investment in August and my blog post in September, I've started to really appreciate the value that Ackerley Partners brings to Judy's Book. The Ackerleys approach the investment from a media perspective, they have deep media experience, they're always looking for ways they can help the company (and manage to find many ways!), and seem to be in the investment for the long term.  It's this last piece that became clear yesterday -- because they're a family office and don't have money from other limited partners, in the end, they report to themselves. Structurally, this allows the Ackerleys to be a more patient investor than most venture capitalists. I got excited about the prospects for the company after Chris' visit -- we're really fortunate to have pulled such a solid group of people together to make this company work.

Distributed teams

Judy's Book has been an exercise in long distance collaboration. We have people that contributing regularly from the east coast and while communication remains a challenge...the experience has proven much better than I would have anticipated. I used to have a rule that in a start up you need to be in the same room to make a go of it. I think the introduction of new technology like cell phones, gmail, and conference calls makes it easier to collaborate long distance. I still hold my earlier belief -- it's just been tempered with the current positive experience I have working with long distance judy's book contributors.

Sadness

In my humble opinion sadness is one of the most under-rated human emotions.  There's nothing like a quiet, deep sadness to get you in touch with the profundity of life -- having a sad year because of the loss of someone you love or because of bad relationships or some painful memory is something that we all experience but rarely appreciate and celebrate.  And while sadness inherently isn't something that is fun -- it is a strong emotion and is a heck of a lot better than feeling numb to the world.

It's funny to be writing about sadness on the happy new year-- or at the very least it's ironic.  And more importantly, I think it's appropriate given the catastrophy in SE Asia and the grief that is being experienced in a large part of the world. For the survivors, the memory of December 2004 will be very sad.

Proud to be an american

I was inspired by my friend Fazal Majid's blog today. I was going to write a snide comment in my blog about how proud I am to be an American given our overwhelming generosity in the tsunami situation ...and more broadly, my pride in the fact that as a nation we spend 0.013% of GDP on helping people less fortunate than us.

Initially, we could only must $35MM to spend on the tsunami crisis -- when we are spending $285 million per fighter plane. Geez -- ever think about making one less fighter plane?

Christmas Carolling

My wife and I threw a holiday party last night and we had a lot of people singing christmas carols. It reminded me of how infrequently we as a culture get together and sing songs. In many other parts of the world, singing is a common recreational and community activity -- but in the US, it just doesn't happen frequently enough. Singing is really fun, even if you're lousy at it. Thank goodness for christmas carols!

An entrepreneurs view of employee retention

Retention of employees (especially key employees) is paramount to success and I recently got an email from an entrepreneur friend who I think summarized the entrepreneurial dilemma when it comes to employees. He writes-
"First, my theory on employees.  In an ideal world I want three things;
  1. pay people less than they are worth,
  2. get people to be extremely committed and passionate about their job, and
  3. have them work lots and lots of hours. 
The reality is that you can have 2 of the 3.  Since we clearly want 2 and 3, we have to give on #1.  In other words, if we are going to expect great things from our people (and we do) then we have to compensate them accordingly.  This isn't to say that we are changing the company way which is that your compensation will always trail your value (usually by 3 to 6 months), but it does mean that for those folks that have proven their value - we better be compensating them."
I think he's spot on -- there are two things he didn't mention enough when it comes to employee retention:
  • i) quality work -- people are drawn by responsibility and the opportunity to undertake important tasks that impact a company
  • ii) A culture of appreciation -- appreciating people's contributions and saying thank you is so often lost at larger enterprises that it's the no brainer thing to do.

Home stereo nightmare

Our stereo broke about 6 months ago.  Replacing the stereo has been on my todo list since that time. Meanwhile, it's been radio silence in our house and as the holidays approached my wife nudge, prodded and pushed the task off of my to-procrastinate list and back onto the todo list....culminating in a visit to Best Buy this weekend where we purchased a new pioneer stereo amplifier, a toshiba cd/dvd player and a set of speakers. Once I arrived home, I promptly set out to connect these new components to my late 1980s / early 1990s tv.

What a friggin' nightmare. Four hours later -- I threw in the proverbial towel for the evening. I couldn't get all the components to work properly. I couldn't believe it -- I have advanced degrees and couldn't figure out how to get all the components to work together seemlessly -- even after poring over the manuals page by page 3 times. The manuals were woefully inadequate and the components integration complex. There has to be a better way -- there's a business opportunity in here somewhere. I guess that's what the ipod is all about.....That was my home stereo nightmare.

Annual Planning

We're going through the process of annual planning at Judy's Book. I have to admit that the process is proving quite helpful. We've been in business for 8 months and reviewing our original business plan, our original market hypothesis, and getting everyone on the same page about our go forward plan is a super valuable process.

As far as outcomes, we haven't made any radical changes in direction but have some distinct and definate hypotheses that we should be and will be testing.

More politics

I had dinner with a friend this weekend. We were both discussing what happened to the democrats. He believes the democratic party needs to apply marketing basics to the current dilemma -- he proposed listening to the middle of the country and giving them what they want. In other words, use the traditional marketing approach to listen to the customer problem and then presenting the customer with a solution -- that you offer. This is a perfectly valid approach. However, I think it lacks something that the democratic party needs more -- a vision. The party needs to stand for something and the message of what it needs to stand for needs to be delivered by a messenger that inspires. In business, I've learned that people gravitate to easily articulated visions delivered by credible and inspiring spokespeople.  I think the party failed to deliver the vision as well as the candidate -- and yet it almost won.

Mano a Mano Friendship

I had a fabulous dinner with Brad Feld last night. Brad and I have been having sushi dinners for over 10 years now.  Our conversations have moved from largely business to largely personal as our tastes have gone from maki to largely nigiri sushi. You know -- we've lost the cover on the rawness. There was a period of time where we couldn't have sushi because of Brad's diet -- we tried Italian food, vegetarian food, even pizza -- but it always felt wrong to me. We're a sushi and sake friendship and very happy about it.

After dinner I was reflecting on the fact that I'm in my mid to late thirties and I am really cherishing a number of my male friendships. In college, I always liked my guy friends -- but I often felt that the intimacy level was limited.  I felt alienated and alone in relation to my male friends.  I'm happy to report that I've been able to create a few very good friendships with men -- my only regret is that they don't live that nearby and as a result I'm not able to have sushi with them them frequently enough.

Local Search Conference

Sorry for my silence. The rational reason for my absence was that I was speaking at the Kelsey Local Search conference in New Jersey. Gregg Sterling organized the event and did a super job -- I tend to think that industry conferences like this are a bore -- but I found this event worthwhile. It had good speakers, interesting content, some free time, and good networking. I'll go again. Now I just need to decipher all this information into actionable steps....

The emotional reason for my absence was that I've been speechless since the Nov. 2 election. I'm still not sure what to say -- beyond my Nov 3 entry of Ugg.