Anyone who tracks the startup community hears stories of the stupid criteria investors use when deciding who to fund.

• No strong accents or women with young kids or who are planning on having kids according to Paul Graham of Y Combinator (more on Graham tomorrow).
• An anonymous investor who, although he considered the product and team brilliant, passed because the founder wasn’t Caucasian.
• Age (way off base)

At a guess, I’d say that more than 90% of stupid turndowns are based on standard bigotry.

The other 10% fall in the Stupider category

• Dislike of founder’s alma mater
• Talk funny (Southern, Bostonian, New England, New York, Texas, etc.)
• Grooming bias

Now Peter Thiel has added a new bias that is so silly it calls for a Stupidest category.

Don’t fund anyone wearing a suit.

A slicked-up entrepreneur is inevitably a salesman trying to compensate for an inferior product. Based on this perception, Mr Thiel’s venture fund instituted a blanket rule to pass on any company whose principals dressed in formal wear for pitch meetings.

There’s a basic problem with these kinds of rules.

• No rule can be applied universally, without question and no exceptions.
• Universal rules are just another form of bigotry—one size does not fit all.

But if a suit is a sign of “a salesman trying to compensate for an inferior product” then why does Thiel himself wear a suit?

Flickr image credit: Fortune Live Media

The more they stay the some.

Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

George Bernard Shaw said, “The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

Both of these go a long way to explaining the unchanging culture that fosters gender harassment in the workplace, most prominently in STEM fields.

…666 responses, three quarters of them from women, from 32 disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, biology and geology. Almost two-thirds of the respondents said they had been sexually harassed in the field. More than 20 percent reported being sexually assaulted. Students or postdoctoral scholars, and women were most likely to report being victimized by superiors.

Does a woman or minority in a leadership role actually have more ability to help level the playing field? Not hardly…

…when minorities and women behave in a way that calls attention to their race or gender characteristics — i.e. by advancing others like them — it separates them from other white male leaders, causing them to be devalued by their peers.

Schmoozing and small talk are considered lubricant in business negotiations, but they don’t work for women.

Men who engaged in small talk were likely to get positive ratings on questions about trust, overall impressions and solid foundations for a future relationship, (…)  When it came down to final offers, they were willing to give the men who chit-chatted nearly 8% more than they offered women who engaged in small talk.

Ben Horowitz, of Andreessen Horowitz, has a new book about startups and the Valley called The Hard Thing About Hard Things. There are exactly four women mentioned in the book and one is his wife.

In the first 90 percent of the book, I counted three females: a human resource staffer, a woman whose husband ran NetLabs, and Horowitz’s wife Felicia, a woman with “award-winning green eyes” whose focus seems to be family and her husband’s success. He doesn’t present a real-life female peer until four pages from the end, when he hires Margit Wennmachers, a marketing guru-turned-venture capitalist whom he dubs “the Babe Ruth of PR” and “Sultan of Swat.”

There are many anecdotal stories from women founders on the varied ways they are hit upon by potential investors, but this one in Forbes is first person sourced.

I met the author several months ago and was floored by the stories she had to tell about her dealings with mostly male investors. Like many men (as she writes), I knew women in tech faced a certain degree of chauvinism and harassment, but I’d had no idea it was so barefaced and routine, in an industry that thinks of itself as egalitarian and forward-looking.

In the real world, however, it seems that traction is the best way to stop investors from hitting on you.

Payal Kadakia, the founder of ClassPass, thinks it’s the fact that her startup has started to gain significant traction and now investors who once had an upper hand actually want a piece of her business. And they don’t want to say or do something that could mess up their chances.

In a 2009 post about repentance I wrote, “Repeating the behavior makes it obvious that there is no real remorse and that you see getting caught as the true offense.”

Or, in the words of Friedich Nietzsche,

“The consequences of our actions take hold of us, quite indifferent to our claim that meanwhile we may have ‘improved’.”

Flickr image credit: Wesley Fryer

On August Max Schireson voluntarily stepped down from his CEO role to become Vice Chairman of MongoDB.

He did it to spend more time with his family.

He wasn’t forced out and no pressure was applied.

Schireson took a hard look at his life and decided that, based on his personal value system, he needed to change it.

It wasn’t bad, just not what he wanted it to be.

My hat is always off to everybody who puts their personal values ahead of the way our society scores the game.

But what about the countless men who would make the same choice if circumstances didn’t prevent it?

The same things that impede women from viably combining aggressive careers with family also impede men—in spades to at least the 10^th power.

The people who want to see their kids grow up; want a relationship with kids and spouse, want choice-sans-repercussions, want to live their values aren’t a minority.

Jack Welch famously stuck his foot in his mouth on this subject.

Five years later the old white guys are still running 75% of the Fortune 500 and many are still saying the same thing—as are too many of the 25% who are neither old, nor white, nor guys.

But what I find truly depressing is the prevalence of old-white-guy MAP in Millennials.

Image credit: Fortune Live Media

As someone who has lived more decades than most of my readers I can remember when having influence wasn’t considered a viable life goal.

But that was then…

Not only is it an acceptable goal, there are sites like Klout that track your influence and even companies and managers dumb enough to hire based on a candidate’s Klout score.

These days, influence is measured based on important criteria, such as number of friends and followers, tweets and other commenting and web presence—an impressive way to measure, to be sure.

As influencers become more intentional and influencees less discerning I thought this was a good time to repost something I wrote several years ago.

Influence = Manipulation

Every conversation about leadership talks about ‘influence’ and how to increase yours.

In a post at Forbes, Howard Scharlatt defines influence this way,

Influence is, simply put, the power and ability to personally affect others’ actions, decisions, opinions or thinking. At one level, it is about compliance, about getting someone to go along with what you want them to do.

He goes on to describe three kinds of influencing tactics: logical, emotional and cooperative, or influencing with head, heart and hands and talks about ‘personal influence’ and its importance in persuading people when authority is lacking.

A couple of years ago I wrote The Power of Words and said, “Personally, other than socially acceptable definitions, I don’t see a lot of difference between influence and manipulation,” and I still don’t.

I realize most people consider manipulation negative and influence positive, but they are just words.

I often hear that leaders are good people, while manipulators are bad people. But as I pointed out in another post,

• leaders are not by definition “good;”
• they aren’t always positive role models; and
• one person’s “good” leader is another person’s demon.

Everyone believes that they use their influence in a positive way, but when you persuade people to do whatever who are you to say that the outcome is positive for them?

Influence, persuasion, manipulation; call it what you will, just remember that it is power and be cautious when you wield it.

And if you are on the receiving end of influence, be it active or passive, you’ll see a higher ROI by paying attention and being mindful of intent.

Image credit: Anonymous

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Whose responsibility or fault, if you’re feeling judgmental, is it if a hire goes south?

No matter the circumstances, that dubious honor lies with the hiring manager.

In the decades I’ve worked with hiring managers I’ve heard every conceivable (and inconceivable) reason, but none shifted the de facto responsibility (blame, if you prefer).

Most of the time managers’ claim some variation of ‘the candidate lied…’

Of course, that’s what reference checks are for.

Often it’s the manager who doesn’t

• sufficiently think through the job;
• consider the current team’s competencies;
• accurately share the culture; or
• was even consciously aware of the culture;
• consider the candidate’s career interests;
• etc., etc.

The main thing to remember is what good hiring actually means:

Hiring the right person into the right position at the right time and for the right reasons.

Change any “right” in this sentence to “wrong” and you’ll end up with a bad hire, but a bad hire does not mean a bad person.

Bad hires have four basic ingredients—

• charm,
• bad reqs,
• poor hiring skills, and
• homophily

all of which are a function of the hiring manager’s MAP and can be overcome.

Founders, like many managers in larger companies, frequently claim they are too busy to take time to lay the groundwork for solid hires and then wonder why they make hiring blunders.

Poor hiring leads to high turnover.

High turnover shrinks your candidate pool because it wrecks your street rep and street reps are forever—good, bad or indifferent—nothing fades away in this digital age.

Image credit: HikingArtist

I always look forward to attending events produced by AlwaysOn. They do an exceptional job bringing together high-profile players appropriate for the conference subject, entrepreneurs, service providers and other interested parties.  The Silicon Valley Innovation Summit 2014 I attended last week was no different, but the devil was in the details.

Those both present and presenting were recognized tech movers and shakers—well worth listening to—the networking was excellent and I made some stealth contacts I’m not at liberty to discuss.

Subject matter centered on mobile any/everything, Big Data, SaaS, subscriber, consumer and investment globalization, which left me a bit disappointed even though big data is Quarrio’s ’thing’.

There was no mention of the tech I’m hearing/reading about daily, i.e., artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, etc., and the combination of these technologies with mobile and big data.

We all know that this kind of focus and talk follows the money, so I am left with a question.

Are the ideas being funded yesterday’s instead of tomorrow’s?

KG Charles-Harris is CEO of Quarrio and a frequent contributor to MAPping Company Success.

Do you like your boss?

Or do you love your boss?

Obviously, the global staff at online luxury fashion retailer Net-APorter loves theirs.

The company was founded in 2000 and MARK Sebba joined in 2003—not the best of times for the dot com world.

During Sebba’s 11 years as CEO Net-APorter grew to €550m sales last year, 2,500 people and a valuation around €2.5bn

When he stepped down from that role the end of July his people found an amazing way to show their feelings.

The comments at YouTube are pretty cynical; saying that he must have known about the tribute, etc., but that’s not really the point.

Watch the faces of the staff and you’ll see emotion that can’t be faked.

Whether he knew or not, his staff’s feelings are very real.

YouTube credit: Diagonal View

Several years ago I wrote a post that basically said leadership was about coping; I also said,

“…leading yourself is the most important leadership job you will ever have, because if you can’t lead yourself you will never have the opportunity to lead others.”

There is much to learn and many ways to learn it. One of the best samplers I know it the monthly Leadership Development Carnival.

This month it’s hosted by Shawn Murphy and his team over at Switch and Shift; the theme is
Motivational and Inspiring Leadership.
You can find it right here.; dig in.

Flickr image credit: Brian Shamblen

“It’s not about the dollars you invest. It’s about the people you invest in.”

I don’t remember where I read that, but it’s certainly true.

Some bosses invest in their companies—they buy new hardware, upgrade development software, customer service and other IT systems, improve the physical environment, etc., etc.

They spend to improve their company’s bottom line.

They don’t spend much on training.

They believe the money spent building and growing people provides marginal return, while increasing turnover.

Great bosses invest in their people—they encourage learning new skills, cross-train, provide access to educational opportunities, etc., etc.

In return they have a highly creative, fully engaged, hyper-productive workforce.

They know people may leave if there are no internal growth opportunities, but great bosses cheer them on.

They know that people leave for many reasons, but when the reason is positive then the buzz is positive.

And positive buzz enhances both the boss’ and the company’s street rep.

Flickr image credit: opensource.com

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

I’ve been working with entrepreneurs since the 1980s.

Sadly, the mindset has changed significantly—and not for the better.

I’m not the only one who feels that way.

German designer Hartmut Esslinger, who met Steve Jobs in 1982 and told him “Apple’s products were incredibly ugly and wasteful in production,” puts it this way.

“There is a bubble where greed meets hype and fake: Too many want to get rich instead of doing something meaningful for mankind, something for progress, to improve life.”

“Greed meets hype and fake;” what a perfect description of so many apps with billion-plus valuations.

The question you need to ask yourself is, “does it fit mine?”

Image credit: HikingArtist