My Sex Life, Your Money
February 19, 2008
Let’s say you’re a woman of a certain age and you’re seeking funding for your startup from a Venture Capital firm. You don a skirt, heels and mascara and knock at the VC’s door. Somewhere during the conversation he “slips in” a question about your marital or reproductive status. The investor asks about what happens when you decide to have kids.
If the question of reproduction seems an inappropriate one for a VC meeting, you might be right. One person interviewed said, “On a pure legal level, it isn’t appropriate. However, women entrepreneurs need to realize that doing a startup is different from taking a job. Entrepreneurs make sacrifices, get on the hamster wheel. Investors expect that commitment from you, regardless of any ‘life’ issues. I’ve seen people miss their parents’ funerals.”
While you may not have to miss your mother’s funeral to become an entrepreneur, you do have to make choices about how you structure your life. Back when you had a 9-5, a 401k and maternity leave, you didn’t have to think about how your employees, investors and customer base would respond to you leaving to give birth. An employer would be breaking the law to ask. With VC money, it’s a different story. Is it a good idea for VCs and angel investors to ask before deciding to fund your company?
Paul Roales of Pearl Street Venture Funds has a different answer to the question: passion. At his firm, they “look for people who live, eat and breathe their company. Passion that is very unlikely to be changed by a change at home, be that divorce, marriage, kids, [a] new house.” Does starting a family change your life? It’s undeniable. Should it be a barrier to entry when seeking funding? That’s a different question.
Lindsay Yaw, founder and CEO of BeThree.com, expresses her anger at a potential investors’ remarks after a meeting, “he leaned over and said, “you’re engaged to be married, right?” “Right,” I said. He continued, “What happens when you want to have kids and not work full time? What will happen to the business then, will it just fizzle out?” Yeah, dude, I’m going to flush the zillion hours, two home equity loans, and a lifetime supply of grey hairs it took to build this thing….just so I can play gaga with a two year old.”
Yaw is in her twenties and has more focus, charisma and drive than many of the men I’ve met in their mid-twenties starting companies. Were any of them asked about their reproductive status? A woman is fifty percent responsible when a couple has a baby. Ostensibly, the other fifty is the man. I’ve never heard of a man being asked whether he plans to start a family and whether he’d blow his opportunity at entrepreneurship to do so, but it’s never as clear cut as that.
For those women thinking of starting a family that are seeking investment, a few pointers:
-Have a response (to the baby question) in mind when approaching investors.
-Know yourself. Know your desires for family (or not). Be transparent about it to the degree to which you’re comfortable.
-Have some witty comebacks if things do get too personal. Interactive Developer Sara Czyzewicz suggests you retort with, “we’ll have another employee on board! Two small helping hands.”
Humor, honesty and self-knowledge. Armed with those three qualities, regardless of your marital or reproductive status, is there anything you can’t accomplish in life? After speaking with a dozen successful entrepreneurs about the issue, the bottom line seems to be this: if this question is a deal breaker for the potential investor, perhaps they aren’t the right investor for your company. Be willing to accept that and keep looking for the right fit. You’ll be glad you did.
Tip #5: Be Picky, but only about the right stuff
February 18, 2008
And just like that we’re at tip #5 in my top twelve startup tips from TechStars last summer. I’m shooting to pick up the pace and get them all done before TechStars starts again this summer.
Tip #5 has to do with being picky, but with the important caveat that you should be picky about the big, scary, important things. For me, this list includes stuff like:
1) What my company will do.
2) Who my co-founders are.
3) Who the early employees are.
4) Which advisors and investors we bring on board.
5) Which customers/partners I choose early on.
6) Usability of my product.
7) How I treat my customers.
And it doesn’t include “little stuff” like:
1) What the letterhead will look like (do companies even have letterhead anymore?)
2) Which font point size we’ll use on the web site.
3) What my title is going to be.
4) Which shade of orange we’ll use on the logo.
The key difference between the “big stuff” and the “little stuff” is that big stuff is hard to change, while little stuff is (relatively) easy to change. With the little stuff, you get feedback, and you change it. As with most things, getting early feedback is key to avoiding major “change costs” down the road.
Being picky starts on day one, when you’re deciding which market you’ll enter. Certainly not picking a sensible market has killed many a startup.
Being picky continues on day two when you’re selecting co-founders. These are people that you’re going to spend more time with than your family. And we know that team problems are a major source of startup failure.
Being picky keeps being important when it comes to how your product looks and how your customer interacts with it. Not being picky about your product is a surefire way to make sure that it completely sucks.
Ben’s excellent point that entrepreneurs must harbor a strong bias towards action must be reiterated here. In a startup, you simply can’t be so picky that you never made a decision. There are lots of cases where “good enough” is just that. It’s a talent to know intuitively when something is good enough and when it warrants extra time, diligence, and effort.
What’s on your “big stuff” list and what’s not?
Ronald Lewis joins Colorado Startups
February 8, 2008
I’m pleased to announce that Ronald Lewis will be joining Colorado Startups as a contributor of occasional audio and video segments. Here’s a bit about Ronald in his own words:
Greetings!
My name is Ronald Lewis. I am a new contributor here at Colorado Startups and believe it is a wonderful acknowledgment of my work as an imagineer and social media producer here in Denver. My passion is synonymous with ‘imagining, dreaming, creating and engaging,’ which allows me to embrace social media and technology to deliver knowledge, information, inspiration and solutions to individuals and organizations.
For the past two years, I’ve focused most of my time on having conversations with amazing people such as Dr. David Farber, Kem, Kevin Rose, Stephen Meer, David Friend and Alec Saunders. Recently, I even interviewed some guy named David Cohen.
I am thrilled about my new relationship with David and Colorado Startups. It’s the opportunity I’ve long sought here in Colorado, which will afford me unparalleled access to a vibrant community of people from which to draw knowledge, information and amazing conversations. This is undoubtedly the chance of a lifetime and a wonderful start to even greater things to come.
Keep an eye out for interesting podcast conversations, video tours and much more!
Proceed until apprehended.
February 6, 2008
Today, I used a phrase that I hadn’t heard myself use for years. It reminded me how great a phrase it is.
“Proceed until apprehended”
At ZOLL Data Systems, we had the general policy of proceeding until apprehended. It was in our policy manual early on, which consisted of one page documenting a couple of smart-ass-isms such as “dress code: underwear on the inside”, “do what you think is right”, and “Don’t hire idiots.”
Sometimes as we grew it became harder to get stuff done. So we’d tell people to decide what they thought was right, and to proceed until apprehended. This rule works remarkably well, assuming that you trust everyone in your company to do the right thing most of the time, and to be well intentioned all of the time.
It work even better when you’re a startup founder. The good ones don’t wait for permission to try interesting or even crazy stuff. They just proceed until apprehended. And since there’s often nobody to apprehend them, you’ll notice, they usually get the most interesting stuff done.
Funny how that works.
Tech Cocktail Boulder
Tech Cocktail is a great event put on all over the country by Eric Olson (Feedburner, Google) and Frank Gruber (of Somewhat Frank). I’m totally psyched that they’ve decided to do one in Boulder on March 6th. It’s a tech mixer that will happen at a downtown Boulder bar and will have some interesting local companies demoing that evening as well.
They haven’t announced the Boulder event officially yet, but asked me to blog about it so all the cool kids who read Colorado Startups would have first chance to sign up. Attendance is free, and it should be an exciting night. Register now - these things sell out quickly.
The video at the bottom of this post gives you a little bit of an idea of what Tech Cocktail is all about.
If you can help out and sponsor Tech Cocktail, please drop me a note and I’ll introduce you to the organizers or go here for direct email addresses. Think about sponsoring this event if you can help - it will have some great buzz and national exposure, and I’d like to see it return to Boulder in the future.
I hope to see you there!
Tonight’s New Tech Meetup: Put it to a Vote
February 5, 2008
UPDATE: I’ve added a video of “exit polls” after the new tech meetup so you can see what people thought. The video is at the bottom of this post.
Tonight’s Denver/Boulder New Tech Meetup was packed, despite the fact that the caucus was happening at the same time. That should say something about the dedication of our tech community.
Each New Tech Meetup starts with job openings and event announcements. We heard from the Boulder Innovation Center followed by the Silicon Flatirons. Silicon Flatirons is hosting an event on March 4, prior to the March New Tech Meetup. Paul Jacobs will keynote at the Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Entrepreneurship in The Information Industries event. For those attending the New Tech Meetup afterwards, there will be no charge.
In total, five companies presented tonight. Those five, in order, were: Whereyougonnabe.com, YowTrip, J Catapult, Corybant Developer’s Toolkit and Reference Vault.
Whereyougonnabe.com’s tagline is “helping you meet your friends more often.” Peter Batty explained that they’ve announced their service as of today. The primary function of this spatial networking application is to connect up with friends and business contacts in the near future. If you’re heading to a bar and see that someone else in your vicinity is a friend, you can send them a quick message and let them know. The application is built with Google API and will start with Facebook and branch out from there.
Questions from the audience revolved around privacy concerns. Peter put fears to rest by mentioning there would be privacy settings. The audience was pretty stoked about this idea. Several members of the audience were curious about future features for this application.
I liked the idea of being able to use this application to connect with people in my vicinity, but already do exactly the same with Twitter, on a daily basis. So, for me, because I tend to create meetups on the fly, it would be a redundancy. For those that plan further in advance, it might be a worthwhile tool to explore.
YowTrip asks Where will you go next? Similar to whereyougonnabe.com in theory, but in practice it is about planning and sharing trips with friends. If you’re headed to Australia and you want to invite your friend to go along with you (virtually or otherwise) you can use the site to collaborate in terms of planning, chatting and photo sharing. The one point I would make as a frequent traveler is that I already have my systems in place to connect with other travelers and have tools to upload photos, chat and maintain my lifestyle at home just as I do abroad. I wonder how YowTrip will market itself and whether it will partner up with other travel networks in the future.
J Catapult was presented by Boulder-based Inversoft owner Brian Pontarelli. He refers to J Catapult as a “next generation web development rapid application platform.” Inversoft is essentially a home grown open source component-based dev toolkit similar in concept to Ruby on Rails. The difference being that Inversoft is targeted at big enterprises. Texture Media, of Boulder, is currently using J Catapult on some of its client’s sites, including IZZE. It’s early (he released Milestone 1 just yesterday), and really it’s a question of adoption.
Corybant Developer’s Toolkit presented a Voice-Email Integration system. They demonstrated an email being sent over the phone and answered using voice recognition. In the spirit of the elections, we were asked to vote on whether we, “have (or can imagine) a product/service for which there is compelling value in adding these communication services on a pay-per-use basis?” Definitely seems like this could be an interesting option for developers currently building voice response systems that may be looking for a head start.
Reference Vault was up last. Erik Rank, their Senior Web Developer walked us through the site. The purpose, he said, was to help you get a better job. He presented some facts and figures on how competitive the job market is. Reference Vault allows you to request, store and decide which job references to display on your page at Reference Vault or other places (including your blog, via widget) around the world wide web. You can get a reference once and use it forever. The idea appeals to me, although I have seven references at LinkedIn that are on my public profile (and I can choose whether or not to make those public, too), so I wonder how often I’d log in to Reference Vault. If I were a job applicant actively seeking employment, I can definitely see how something like Reference Vault would be a great resource for collating and storing my references.
VCIR presenting companies announced
The presenting companies at next months Venture Capital in the Rockies were announced publicly today for the first time. They are:
Albeo Technologies develops and sells patented solid-state lighting (SSL) systems for industrial and commercial businesses. The products improve profits for customers by reducing energy, maintenance, materials, recycling, and cooling costs. Albeo products are designed to replace the billions of lighting systems found in buildings in every city around the world.
Altela serves customers in need of creating clean, pure water from highly salinated and contaminated water sources. Altela’s products desalinate and decontaminate highly challenged water sources without the energy intensive equipment, high temperatures, and high pressures of other water desalination technologies such as reverse osmosis.
AVA Solar has commercialized an advanced process for manufacturing cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film photovoltaic modules. AVA Solar has perfected a robust, industrial-scale, continuous process for producing solar PV modules at an industry-leading cost per watt.
Control4 is the platform for the “Digital Home’. Control4’s hardware and software allow all the systems of the home to work together to create a truly “smart” home while leveraging the products consumers already own. Control4 home automation software allows almost any home appliance from a Surround Sound Receiver, to a refrigerator, to a TV to become the “heartbeat” for the home. Control4 hardware fills in the gaps to make automation possible for every consumer today.
DAZ Productions, Inc.
DAZ strives to bring 3D art directly to the masses by delivering the highest quality digital 3D content and software at the most affordance prices. With a continuing effort at creating realism and diversity in every figure DAZ makes, and a commitment to providing excellent service and support, DAZ works to inspire 3D fans to “Unleash the Artist Within”. DAZ also offers premier 3D software programs such as Bryce 5 (a 3D environment package), Mimi Pro (a 3D lip-sync program), and DAZ Studio (a 3D proposing application) all at rock-bottom prices.
FamilyLink.com uses technology to connect families to their history and to each other. The goal is to become the leading genealogy company in the world, and to build the largest social network for families.
FiltrBox is focused on distilling the chaos of online content into relevant, actionable intelligence for knowledge workers. The innovative content monitoring service allows users to define and customize “topic filtrs” that find new articles from both mainstream and blog sources that are directly relevant to the users’ business world or personal interests.
Format Dynamics makes print advertising work for the online world, delivering media solutions that advertisers want and web publishers need. The company creates new ad inventory by optimizing how web pages print and extending onscreen advertisements into print, enabling new revenue opportunities.
Go Fast Sports & Beverage Company
Go Fast created a leading premium energy drink and well recognized lifestyle brand.. Go Fast Energy drink contains a balance of high quality, energy-enhancing ingredients, and provides consumers with a longer, smoother, more sustained energy boost, without the “jittery crash,” of many other energy drinks.
ISONAS designs, builds and distributes the first control panel-free, computer network-based security Access Control system. ISONAS Security Systems’ hardware and software Access Control products provide the most advanced physical access security for buildings and workplaces across a wide range of industrial applications. ISONAS’ products connect directly to the building’s TCP/IP network, eliminating dependence on old fashioned, hard wired panel-based systems.
Newmerix provides a comprehensive software suite designed to manage strategic, lifecycle change across enterprise applications. The Newmerix Automate! Suite gives senior management of enterprise IT organizations control and visibility at every stage of the application lifecycle. Newmerix delivers Configuration Management, Change Management and Release Management which streamline IT processes and ensuring business success.
Socialthing! consolidates popular social websites into one interface. Socialthing! is a digital life manager that puts what you do online into one place. It allows users to see everything that’s going on with your friends in all the sites they use and to post stuff to multiple places at once.
Tendril builds an Energy Management System (EMS) that facilitates a dialogue between Utilities and their consumers on how best to manage energy consumption. Tendril’s EMS is an open standards based platform comprising Utility load management software, in home devices such as thermostats and smart outlets and a web-based consumer energy portal.
WBS Connect is a leading international provider of high bandwidth Internet Protocal (IP)-based telecommunications services to the rapidly growing IP network services market. The Company has created a very cost efficient, private broadband network and a sales distribution structure that allows it to provide a comprehensive suite of products and services in North America and Europe.
Yieldex is providing unique technology for in-depth, accurate, and fast analysis of online ad inventory and availability, providing ad sales and operations personnel with the visibility needed to identify, quantify, and recover the lost revenues that result from inefficient use of available inventory.
Zayo acquires and operates fiber optic based telecommunication carriers. Zayo has gained new and broader sets of service offerings that appeal to different customer verticals each with diverse telecom needs.
Zonder provides a highly-scalable on line inventory management and distribution platform that enables consumers to instantly find and book vacation homes, cabins, condos and villas across the Caribbean, Central and North America, through a variety of channels. Zonder consolidates inventory from thousands of professional property management companies into a searchable database with real-time availability.
VCIR is open to the public (registration fee required) and is February 26 - 28, 2008.
February 5 Boulder Open Coffee: New Startup Resources, Meetups
Solid turnout for this morning’s Boulder Open Coffee Club. Jennifer Ross and Patti Miller presented on behalf of Boulder Tech Bootstrap, a new resource for startups and entrepreneurs in the Boulder community. Looking for a place in the local tech startup/bootstrap community to share resources? This is it. Jason Mendelson pledged to put up law documents while emphatically adding that he is “not fucking responsible” for getting you out of trouble should you use one and run into a problem. We all look forward to seeing these documents.
Several new tech meetups were announced, including one for a new “green” tech meetup (slated for February 27, but subject to change), Podcamp Colorado (date not yet set) and Boulder Women Engaging Technology (check the calendar for details). If you have an event you’d like to see on the calendar, please get in touch.
Startups-only job board
February 3, 2008
Right now there are over a dozen jobs posted on the 100% free startup-only job board here at Colorado Startups. Here are a few of the open positions.
Sr Software Engineer - PHP, MySQL, Linux @ HiveLive
Lead Developer @ IAC - Primal Ventures
User Experience Lead @ Me.dium
Java Developer @ Filtrbox Inc.
See all the jobs here, and don’t forget to post your own free ad if you’re part of a startup that is hiring.
Stop the Junk Mail. Please. Somebody!
Nearly a year ago, I signed up for GreenDimes, which promises to “stop up to 90% of your junk mail and plant 10 trees on your behalf” for your annual membership fee. Assuming they planed the trees (I’m sure they did), this has technically been true. Don’t even get me started on this “up to 90%” crap again.
It seems to me that GreenDimes has had basically no effect on the junk mail I am receiving. I filled out all their post cards and sent them in, and the junk just keeps coming in one truckload after another. I’m guessing this is unusual, since I haven’t heard a major uproar about this from the blogosphere in general. Maybe it stopped 5% of my junk mail, but somehow I doubt it. I suppose 5% is “up to 90%”.
Anyway, when I first wrote about Greendimes on my personal blog, I got an interesting comment from Margot Brown who is the founder of a competing company here in Colorado called StopTheJunkMail.com. She was put off that I was covering an out-of-state competitor even though I was supposed to be a voice for Colorado-based companies. I explained in response that she was commenting on my personal blog, and not on ColoradoStartups.com, and that I wasn’t even aware of StopTheJunkMail.com. Needless to say, Margot made me quite aware.
So now that my membership on GreenDimes is up, I decided to switch to StopTheJunkMail.com. They make the same meaningless promise of stopping “up to 90%” of my junk mail, but offer to plant just one tree instead of ten. The price is about the same - both are about $20.00 per year.
StopTheJunkMail, like GreenDimes, has a way of allowing me to request stops for specific pieces of direct mail or catalogs. For me, this is almost too tedious a process. I just want all catalogs to STOP, as well as all mail that isn’t addressed directly to us. Perhaps everyone doesn’t want to stop all catalogs like I do, but why not offer that as an option? Or perhaps let me say which catalogs I do want, and stop the rest? It’s probably too cost prohibitive, but that’s what I want.
One advantage that StopTheJunkMail claims to have over other services is that they don’t need to send you a bunch of postcards that you then have to send out. They handle it all centrally, which cuts down on all the handling between all the parties.
Anyway, I’m all for giving a Colorado-based company the business, and I am hopeful that StopTheJunkMail will have a noticeable impact on the junk mail volume at my home. If you’ve used a service like this, I’d love to hear your comments about it. Clearly these services are very well-intentioned and if they work are a bargain for the price.
We’ll see. If none of this works for me, maybe I’ll start using something like Earth Class Mail and let them deal with it.
