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

I said Tuesday that I wasn’t holding my breath in hopes of change when it comes to harassment in the workplace.

I blamed two main reasons, one societal and the other legal, but KG sent me an article yesterday that diminish the likelihood even more.

The articles cite an annual survey done by First Round on various topics, such as hiring, compensation, funding, etc. Last year they added diversity and inclusion and this year they added questions about harassment.

The companies are venture-backed and from all over — the Bay Area, New York, Los Angeles and other parts of the US.

Every year, we survey as many venture-backed startup founders as possible to figure out what it’s like to run a technology company right now. This year, we got more responses than ever before — 869 — giving us an even more precise pulse on what entrepreneurs think, feel, fear, and value.

These founders are the bosses of tomorrow’s tech sector, which doesn’t bode well.

As you can see they aren’t kids who are likely to change their attitudes when they “mature.”

55% have been in business for three to five years. Nearly 60% have an all male board and slightly more than half say their team is “mostly male.”

Actions speak louder than words and most don’t have any formal policies regarding diversity and inclusion or harassment.

Maybe I’m missing something, but there’s nothing about the majority of these new “leaders” that changes my mind regarding the likelihood of real change.

Image credit: HikingArtist and First Round

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

Entrepreneurs are great, although I have to admit that the entitled, connected, mostly white, bros of Silicon Valley aren’t among the ones I like and respect.

And no matter how large the investment, high the valuation or great the returns, coming up with a new way to find a date/restaurant/cheap ticket for whatever or share your life (in order to believe you have one) I don’t find particularly impressive.

But I love those who solve real problems, whether for enterprise, healthcare, agriculture, and, especially, for our poor, beleaguered planet.

So I got a real kick out of seeing what  Arthur Kay, the UK founder of Bio-bean, is doing.

Most of the products his company makes from used coffee grounds are industrial, but they do have a consumer product called Coffee Logs (sadly not available in the US — yet).

Each carbon neutral Coffee Log is made from the grounds of 25 cups of coffee and contains about 20% more energy than wood – meaning it burns hotter and for longer than wood.

Now Bio-bean has teamed with Shell to produce biofuel.

The startup collects used coffee grounds from cafes, restaurants and factories, and transports them to its recycling facility. There, the grounds are dried before coffee oil is extracted.

The coffee oil is then blended with other fuels to create B20 biofuel, which can be used in diesel buses without modification.

Without modification, that’s huge and undercuts the biggest reason governments use to avoid greener options — cost of conversion.

And that doesn’t even factor in the benefits from not sending all those coffee grounds to the landfill.

The UK produces 500,000 metric tons of coffee grounds each year, but that pales in comparison to what is left in the US after making 400 million cups of coffee every single day.

Kay needs to bring his concept to the US—it would make quite a difference.

Image credit: HikingArtist and bio-bean

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

Not all techies are “brilliant assholes” or even aspiring to that label.

Further, there plenty of brilliant nice folks and plodding assholes to be found amid the majority of people that populate techdom.

Unfortunately, that loud, vocal, arrogant, in-your-face minority often becomes the standard by which all participants are judged — think Gen X (slackers) and Millennials (entitled).

Worse, their MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) tends to rub off on others and permeate the group culture, as it did on Wall Street, to the point where those who don’t fit the mold are ashamed to admit their involvement.

“MBA jerks used to go and work for Wall Street, now wealthy white geeks go to Stanford and then waltz into a VC or tech firm.”

Patrick Connelly, founder of health-tech startup Corevity, also sees the Wall Street parallels.

“The focus of Silicon Valley used to be innovation with the wonderful bonus of money on the side of that, but those two things seem to have switched – just as the pencil-pushing mentality of finance in the 70s became the champagne lifestyle in the 2000s, People have come to have too much swagger and not enough insights.”

Like Wall Street banks in 2008, Big Tech is in no hurry to take responsibility for its actions, as shown in the recent congressional hearings — no CEOs or executives showed, instead they sent their company lawyers.

Big Tech sold the world and its employees on the idea that, unlike Wall Street and other dominant corporate entities, tech was focused on changing the world for the better and would do no evil.

But, like most concepts, evil has a fluid meaning (like murder) and money is a change agent — nothing that drives revenue is evil. That includes Russian ads, hate, bigotry, and trolling.

Industry leaders espoused values that anyone could embrace: sharing, connection, community, openness, expression. The language they spoke was the language of a universal humanism….

These concepts might have sounded vague, but they produced concrete political outcomes. They convinced politicians to privatise public goods – starting with the internet itself. In the 1990s, a network created largely by government researchers and public money was delivered into private hands and protected from regulation. Built on this enclosed ground, a company like Facebook could turn formerly non-economic activities – chatting with a friend, or showing her a picture of your kid or crush – into a source of seemingly endless profit. Not by chance, the values that these companies touted as intrinsic goods – openness, connectivity, deregulation – were also the operating principles that made their owners rich.

That said, not everybody has drunk the kool-aid. There’s a small, but growing, cadre of techies working to change things from the inside out.

While tech has outsourced many roles, software development is, and probably always will be, handled internally.

Even if (when) AI reaches the point of being able to automate some coding, it will take far longer for it to take on the roles of creation, architecture or design.

And that will concentrate even more power in the hands of the engineers able to handle that work.

One can only hope they use it more wisely than their bosses.

Image credit: HikingArtist

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

KG Charles-Harris, who has written here in the past, shared a Medium post from Brandon Evans explaining how/why startups are mostly minimum wage (or less) jobs.

For instance, 50% of founders are making less than $6 an hour.

After raising $15 million Evans company reached a million in revenue the first year and tripled that each of the next three, but when Evans wasn’t interested in raising another $20 million he was fired.

Our investors are great guys and were doing their job. But that job is to maximize the returns for their investors. Homan Yuen in his VC Math post clearly shows why VCs are almost exclusively focused on unicorns (or those rare $1B+ exits). For them to generate an acceptable financial return, they typically require 2 to 3 of them per fund. “Small” $50 million or $100 million dollar exits do little for keeping their investors happy.

What those “small” companies do do is drive the economy and create jobs, obviously a goal of little-to-no interest to VCs and those who invest in their funds — despite their talk to the contrary.

Even an IPO isn’t a guarantee for enormous founder wealth, as shown in the recent SendGrid IPO.

On the other hand, two of the three cofounders no longer own as much as 5% of the company: Tim Jenkins, and Jose Lopez. Both are still listed on the company’s website as engineers who work there. The biggest winner in this IPO among the three cofounders is Isaac Saldana. He still owns 4% of the company and, at $18, his stake is worth $33 million.

Not that $33 million is anything to sneeze at, but Foundry Group was the big winner walking away with $171 million.

It’s interesting to note that SendGrid seems to have put as much effort into its culture, via its four pillars, known as the four H’s: honest, hungry, humble and happy, as its growth.

“We’re so ridiculously over the top with it, it would absolutely scare you away. If these things didn’t resonate with you, you wouldn’t come to SendGrid because you’re like, ‘OK, these guys are like a cult with those four values. That’s not for me, I’m out,” CEO Sameer Dholakia said.

“I’ve been in software and high-tech for 22 years. I know a lot of absurdly talented professionals who would hate SendGrid. It would literally be their seventh Hell because there is nothing humble about them,” he said. “And that’s OK. They’re absurdly talented and in other cultures they can thrive where it’s a star-centered culture. Great! But they would hate us.”

Any one of those values, let alone all of them together, seem to be in short supply at most of the recently headlined unicorns.

And contrary to many in the startup world, values do scale if the focus goes all the way to the top. This is how you do it, according to Sameer Dholakia, SendGrid CEO

• Keep values simple so employees will remember.
• Make them distinctive to attract people who support them. Not everyone will or should fit.
• Be conscious of behaviors that impact the values and reinforce them.

The second is where most founders fail, because they aren’t willing to walk away from stars, AKA brilliant jerks.

Of course, many founders are members in good standing of the brilliant jerks club, but SendGrid is proof that you neither have to hire them  nor be one.

Image credit: HikingArtist

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

This is a short post, because it links to a longer one by Henry Mintzberg that should be required reading for every entrepreneur.

Three years ago I questioned the profits entrepreneurs derived from building incompatible systems for the electronic medical records (EMR) systems mandated by the Affordable Care Act.

The money in play is substantial; privately held Epic is one of the largest suppliers and its founder, Judith R. Faulkner, is supposed to be worth around $2.3 billion.

When you’re making that kind of money who worries about lives ruined or lost because of EMR incompatibility?

Last summer Ryan wrote a thoughtful post comparing ‘enough’, on a personal level, to an empty hole that needs filling and ending with this comment.

Perhaps there is never enough.

Perhaps all that matters is what you are filling up that hole with.

Mintzberg is the latest to write on the subject, but with far more knowledge and authority than most, and his focus on staying private, instead of IPOing truly changes the conversation: Enough of MORE: Better is better

We would do well by shifting our economies from MORE toward better. While MORE is about quantities, better is about qualities. They lift us up instead of dragging us down. We can invest our efforts and our resources in durable products, healthier foods, personalized services, properly-funded education. Rather than reducing employment, a shift to better can enhance it, with higher paying jobs in healthier enterprises. When we work better, we feel better, and so we do better and live better. Our societies become better…and sustainably democratic.

Any of these moves requires moving profit out of the top slot, which won’t be easy.

I looked up the example Mintzberg provided at the end of his post and it is proof of how difficult it will be to change the money focus.

…many shareholders expressed concern on Wednesday that the Germanwings tragedy risked distracting management from its turnaround efforts.

The “distraction” involved 149 intentional murders and one suicide.

More recently, money trumped responsibility (pun intended) for Facebook, Google and Twitter during the presidential election.

Hard research from Harvard provides proof that money isn’t the focus of successful startups..

If what really interests you is building a company that actually does make a difference and helps change the world, while providing you and yours a happy life along with the money, then read Mintzberg and seriously consider his advice.

Image credit: HikingArtist

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

Winning takes many forms, as Ryan pointed out yesterday.

Let’s face it, we are not all going to be the next Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.

But there seems to be plenty of room for us all to push a bit harder each day and surround ourselves with winners.

It is up to us to make that happen.

Not all winners desire to be founders anymore than all founders are winners.

I doubt anyone would/could/should minimize the abilities, skills, intelligence, and sheer grit that lands a person in a top senior role at a multibillion dollar tech company, such as Microsoft.

Achieving positions at that level are neither accidental nor serendipitous.

Now, imagine a future in which you are a winner of whatever kind and writing the summary paragraph of your LinkedIn profile.

What would you say when summing up what you did and how you accomplished it? What would you consider your major accomplishments?

Would it read anything like this? (Emphasis mine.)

“I am passionate about building technology that gets out of the way so you can focus on what matters most. My mantra ‘people first, technology second’ has been the driving force in my career. My focus has been leading teams and incubating new technologies and experiences to re-imagine the platform for intelligent work. In my career, I’ve helped build products, including Office, Windows, Internet Explorer, Xbox and Surface, that touch more than a billion people every day. As a leader, it’s important that my door always be open — to embrace everyone’s individual perspective, personality, style and abilities to makes my teams stronger — and creating a culture that the best ideas can come from anyone and anywhere.”

Is this someone worth emulating? Someone you’d want to hire?

Would your answer change when you learned this someone is a woman?

Because it is; she is Julie Larson-Green.

And it is the last 14 words of her summary that truly proclaim her a winner — by any standard.

Image credit: HikingArtist

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

The suicide of Austen Heinz, CEO of Cambrian Genomics and other founders in 2015 that focused a spotlight on the increasing levels of depression among entrepreneurs.

The same people who are responsible for their company’s environment, as well as its culture

Have you created an environment for your people in which they are as productive, creative, confident, and happy as possible?

Is it one that welcomes their ‘whole self’?

Or just the easy, socially acceptable, whatever-it-takes-to-fit-in version?

The above traits are enhanced when people can bring all of what makes them them to work.

It’s well-known that startups reflect the attitudes of their founders.

If founders choose to ignore or, much worse, deny the importance of ‘whole self’ and the positive mental health associated with it they should expect problems (not challenges).

The more pressure to fit in the more energy is spent camouflaging/hiding and even denying parts of one’s self.

That’s energy that would be spent on more positive efforts in a different environment.

An environment that actually welcomed ‘whole selves’ in fact, not just in talk.

Use the links; read the articles.

Then take a hard look at how many of your people are actually bringing their ‘whole’selves’ to work.

And if it’s not 100%, then do something about it.

Image credit: HikingArtist

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

Ask most tech founders about role models and who they want to emulate and you’ll usually hear the same names —  Gates/Jobs/Page/Zukerberg/Bezos.

Rarely do you hear Benioff.

Granted, Benioff’s Salesforce’s revenues aren’t as high and the valuation is “only” $66 billion, but Salesforce sells no consumer products — ads are products — therefore has a much smaller market.

Revenues aside, Benioff is a much better leader and role model.

Not just a philanthropist, but an activist philanthropist who is not afraid to use his clout and get in the face of his peers.

Given the same clout, would you do the same thing?

A guy who believes a company’s concerns should go beyond its investors to include all its stakeholders, direct and indirect.

How far beyond yourself do your concerns go?

Tech’s been on the hot seat lately for a host of reasons, with gender issues front and center, especially equal pay.

Most, including the “role models” listed above, have been vocal in their promises to address the pay disparity.

Benioff, however, has put his money where their mouths are.

In 2015, his company did a salary study, and it turned out they needed to make some changes. So they spent $3M to level the playing field. A year later, they put salaries under the microscope again and found they had to spend another $3M to close additional pay gaps.

Now Benioff has pledged to evaluate salaries on a regular basis. For this and more, he was named a “Global Champion of Women in Business.”

And before you whine about not having enough cash to do that stop and think.

If you pay your people equally when you hire and promote there wouldn’t be a pay gap for you to erase.

Image credit: HikingArtist

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

Quick. Off the top of your head, what are the chances you’d hire a 65 year-old Black man for a senior management role in your startup?

Unlikely — or flat-out ‘no’?

Next question.

How well could you handle traveling from the Bay Area to Detroit to Toronto back to the Bay Area and then to New York, London and Columbus, Ohio, back to the Bay Are for one night, then to Singapore, Australia, and Hong Kong for ten days, with a side trip to Seattle?

That was the recent schedule of the 65 year-old Black guy you probably didn’t hire.

Tough schedule, jumping around all those times zones; think it would dent your 20/30-something system more than the 70+ hour week you brag about?

The guy you didn’t hire is John Thompson, but that’s OK, he already has a job.

He’s CEO of Virtual Instruments, one of several startups he invested in after he retired from his ten year stint as CEO of Symantec, which came after his mandatory retirement from IBM after 28 years.

That little age bias you have would also preclude your hiring Impossible Foods founder Patrick Brown (62), Qualys CEO Philippe Courtot (70), Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison (73), Netflix’s Reed Hastings (56) and dozens, if not hundreds, of others.

The interesting (hilarious? ironic?) part is that if you were using most recruiting filtering tools, human or software, their resumes would probably be screened out.

Now just think how much larger your pool of exceptional talent would be if you brought yours and your organization’s biases/assumptions/prejudices under control.

What talent shortage?

Image credit: HikingArtist

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

If you’re a guy and have a daughter/niece/sister/mom/female friend this post is for you.

If you’re a bro this post is especially for you.

You’ve all heard the stories of women who weren’t taken seriously as founders and couldn’t get funding.

You’ve heard it as anecdotal evidence, directly from women founders, and from those around them.

In fact, there’s finally enough data-driven proof that the fact can no longer be denied or blamed off on something else.

It’s not just investors; but suppliers, partners, and vendors who ignore/condescend/etc., when the other party is female.

Penelope Gazin and Kate Dwyer experienced all these problems when they launched Witchsy last year.

So they took a time-honored approach.

Having noticed that the mostly male artists, developers, and designers they were working with took their sweet time to respond to requests and were often slightly rude and condescending in email— “They’d say things like ‘Listen, girls…,’” Dwyer tells Quartz—they decided to bring in a male co-founder named Keith Mann to make communication easier.

Pre-Keith, Dwyer explains, “it was very clear no one took us seriously and everybody thought we were just idiots.” When “Keith” contacted collaborators, Gazin says, “they’d be like ‘Okay, bro, yeah, let’s brainstorm!’”

Keith only lasted six months, but, by then, being Keith had taught them to stop being communicating “like a girl.”

Neither the approach nor the result is unique; women have been obscuring their sex to get ahead for centuries. But…

In era that touts gender equality, even school-age children are still absorbing warped messages about the sexes. A recent study published in the journal Science revealed that by the time most girls are six, they believe that only males can be geniuses.

That means by the time a female hits first grade she’s already convinced she’s second best.

And that’s on you.

Image credit: HikingArtist and TechCrunch