Matt posted a hair-raising lesson on LinkedIn about electric cars, distraction and gratitude. He wanted to share it here, also.

This is a gratitude post. No fancy photos and no clever links. Just a shout-out to the universe for allowing me to be around and complain.
I have friends with cancer. I have relatives with dementia, heart disease, mood disorders, I have people in my life with serious injuries to recover from, life disasters, and more. So I don’t have much to complain about that rises to the level of those “legit” complaints.

Today I got a kind of a wake-up call at lunch. I was hit by a car.

While walking. I was coming back from lunch, crossing the street with the light, in the crosswalk. And for some reason my phone was in my pocket— an unusual thing when I’m taking a break or walk during the day. So I had all my wits about me and was presumably paying attention. I was in my suit (I wear suits at client sites, which are typically hospital systems, clinic systems or other large healthcare organizations), and was walking leisurely, not too fast. It was a warm day and who wants to sweat in a nice suit, right?

A gentleman was in an electric car. First alert—people, electric cars make no noise. So you have no warning in your blind spot as a pedestrian or bike rider. A cute little BMW i3 I think. Kind of like one of those tiny smart cars. Same shape, flat short hood. He was on his phone texting or otherwise looking at the screen. His light was red. Mine- green with the white “walk” sign just starting to count down. He swung around and zipped right into the crosswalk to make his right turn… into me. He never saw me until I was on his hood. I was two steps off the curb. I never thought to look again over my left shoulder. I had the light. There were about four or five others ten feet in front of me in the crosswalk, and if he had come 10 seconds earlier he would have hit that bunch of people, including an elderly woman and someone with a dog on a leash. The dog would have been roadkill for sure. I don’t want to think about the slow-moving elderly woman.

Why do I write this? To say “I’m grateful to be alive and grateful to have all of you in my life.” And also to say that my complaints don’t add up to a hill of beans compared to the others with real issues including the big C, and all the rest. Working lately in healthcare has given me great new perspective about how precious good health is. We take it for granted. We think we are immune from the statistics.

As a society, we live careless lives, are overweight, out of shape, putting toxins in our bodies. We think we are unaccountable for the way we treat our bodies. We think we are invincible, or we are just lazy about it. We walk around with our noses in cell phones indoors and out. We don’t notice our surroundings, much less appreciate them. Things like a gorgeous sunset. We’re too busy flipping posts in Facebook and Instagram and SnapChat and Pinterest and email. Liking a post. Making a post. Reading drivel. Is this drivel? Perhaps.

If you want a reality check go work at a healthcare company or volunteer at a hospital or clinic system. That’s where the people with legit complaints are. And they can’t just “solve” them.

Funny thing about this accident. 40-some odd years ago I ended up on the hood of a very nice woman in Palo Alto. I was riding my bike and had headphones on (not unlike many bike riders-especially commuters- today). She did not see me and as she exited a driveway without looking both ways, I ended up on the hood. I thought for sure she would pause and look both ways. Bad bet. She was distracted and was looking elsewhere. In a hurry. Luckily I was a bit more agile than I am today, and a lot more durable, and kind of bounced off and slid to the other side of the car, like a stunt man in a cop movie. She was more terrorized than I was. I was probably too young and stupid to understand what had almost happened.

Fast forward to today. Not as young, not as durable (probably only a bit less stupid) I looked to my left just in time to see this little car with the driver just looking up with a terrorized expression and no time to slam on the brakes in time. I was able to jump up and get just enough elevation to put my butt on the hood and break the force of the impact with my arm on the upper part of the hood.

The good news is that these cars are made of thin aluminum and it crushes like tinfoil on impact. So I left two nice big dents on the hood, kind of bounced off and ended up staggering away. I think my wallet took the blow instead of my hip or rear end. Thank you VISA and MasterCard. “Priceless” padding. :) I was in one of those adrenaline induced states where I was more worried about falling on the pavement and ripping my suit. My coffee was gone. No way to save that. I looked at the coffee spot on the concrete and had this terrible vision of what if that was blood. The mind does weird things.

After gathering myself and determining I was a) still alive and b) in one piece and c) okay enough to be mad but shocked enough to be happy to be in one piece, I was asked for my insurance information…. apparently mister wonderful was going to try to make a claim. There were about three people left around us, asking if we should call 911 and at that point someone made the point that they saw him run the red, looking at his phone and that he hit me in the x-walk. I declined to give my info and allowed as how I was walking back INTO a healthcare clinic and that he should be happy that I was not more banged-up and asking for treatment. I just wanted to get back to normalcy. Probably still in shock.

He took off, I came back to the office and sat down to assess how lucky my life is, to be able to complain about distracted drivers. And to be walking around to talk about it. And to warn my friends and family about electric cars at intersections… you can’t hear or see them coming when they zip around corners.

On a bike I guess I would have been more vigilant, but as a pedestrian I had this kind of invincible feeling of being protected walking with the light and the “Walk” sign inside the crosswalk. That’s not so. Be vigilant. And thank you Sensei Mirko and Senpais David and Jessica and friends for the recent agility work in jumping and spinning this week that probably got my body primed to jump up and turn around to break the impact. Not Kevin Durant elevation but just enough to get up over the bumper and onto the hood with my rear end and upper body. Note to self— practice jumping more. And look both ways twice at busy intersections.

My daughter is learning how to drive this year. I am her teacher. This is a great example of what distracted driving can do. I am not 100% guilt free in that department. I’m taking the pledge to stay off of phones 100% while driving except for bluetooth and headsets in one ear. Just too much at stake and just so many times to dodge the bullet. And maybe the Universe was sending me a reminder message today.

And to my friends with legit concerns… prayers to you that you come out of your battles and win the war. We’re only here the better part of 100 years give or take. It’s not fair what’s happening to you.

And now I’m leaving the office and driving out to watch the sunset. :)
No Instagram post. Just taking it in and enjoying it. I’ve posted my share of pretty sunsets. This one is just to look at. I encourage you to do the same, to honor our friends and family that have bigger problems than the rest of us. We can all enjoy the same sunset in sync from wherever we are. No Instagram/snapchat needed. We are the lucky ones. ‪#‎gratitude

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

If you doubt those words, just take a look at the difference between Egnyte, and Box and Dropbox.

Founded in 2007, Egnyte never offered free anything, has taken only $62.5 million (nearly half of that in 2013) in funding and says it will be profitable by year-end.

Box and Dropbox are not even close, with their millions of over-hyped, flavor-of-the-last-few-years hypergrowth users who pay nothing.

Nada.

Consumers used to pay, too, when the service was viable enough.

Angie’s List started in 1995 as a paid subscription service and boasted a 73% renewal rate in 2015.

In 2008 the mantra of hypergrowth exploded, driven by the the fremium model, but converting free users to paid turned out not be all that easy.

Many companies are now trying to sell their multi-million consumer products to corporations and are learning, to their chagrin, that corporations don’t care about freemium, let alone the media hype that drives consumer adoption.

Matt Weeks spelled it out perfectly in a guest post on NTR’s blog that’s well worth your time.

…hypergrowth without a hope of unit economics that lead to profitability has always been a fool’s errand (…) at some point there must be a path to profitable and repeatable unit economics.

Put more simply, the real goal of your startup is sustainable profit.

And there’s always Marc Andreessen’s advice, which really rules out the ‘free’ in freemium.

Marc Andreessen has two words of advice for startups: Raise prices. (…) “The No. 1 thing — just the theme and we see it everywhere — the No. 1 theme with our companies have when they get really struggling is they are not charging enough for their product. It has become absolutely conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley that the way to succeed is to price your product as low as possible under the theory that if it’s low-priced everybody can buy it and that’s how you get the volume.”

Don’t bemoan it; own it.

Image credit: HikingArtist

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

In 2011 serial entrepreneur Matt Weeks described what he calls the “startup social contract”. In it he talks about the tradeoff of salary for equity and that the basic premise is that the employees have the company’s back, the company has theirs and what happens if it is violated.

If the workers and/or the exec team come to disrespect, disbelieve or ignore this social contract, the company is lost.

Zach Ware, managing partner of VTF Capital, adds another dimension to what it means to have your people’s back and it’s crucial information as funding tightens.

“There is absolutely no reason for a company to shut down overnight. That’s a result of a selfish set of decisions a founder made.”

Ware spells it out by comparing what he did in his own startup, Shift vs. what Maren Kate Donovan, when she shut down Zirtual and laid off 400 people by email.

To start with,  Donavon claimed her CFO gave her incorrect numbers (he denies it) and that she was pitching to the last minute.

“The reason we couldn’t give more notice was that up until the 11th hour, I did everything I could to raise more money and right the ship.”

In actuality she bet 400 other people’s lives on a roll of the funding dice and then took the coward’s way out using email.

Ware finds her reasoning specious.

“Every founder should have a real-time understanding of their business. It doesn’t matter who does it. You have to know it. You have to know your horizons,”

Choosing to not only be a founder, but also CEO, means that, when all is said and done, the buck stops with you. Period.

No reasons, no excuses.

Image credit: HikingArtist

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

I saw a great article in BI about Postmates CEO Bastian Lehmann’s attitude towards hypergrowth.

For years, venture capitalists have been pushing hypergrowth over profits, at least though the initial phases of investment rounds. Investors told Lehmann to reinvest the company’s money in pushing more growth over building a sustainable business.

That advice didn’t go far with the Postmates CEO. (…) Lehmann argues that it’s the CEO’s fundamental job to have looked at the margins and made decisions early on.

“Companies that run for the last two years in hyper growth are now wondering how to make money.”

I completely agree — hypergrowth without a hope of unit economics that lead to profitability has always been a fool’s errand with precious few exceptions, and even those had their “come to Jesus” realization points that the investors were getting nervous and were anxious for at least a hope of a repeatable, profitable set of unit economics. 

There has been a sense that pushing the bidding of sequential funding rounds at ever-increasing valuations would create a kind of de-facto “momentum” and crowd-out 2nd and 3rd and 4th place contenders, or at least amass a large enough war chest to drive pricing down as much as needed to push competitors out of the running (usually also by creating such a huge and dominant brand that customer acquisition in a noisy market is too expensive to make progress to catch up with the so-called leader).

This is ultimately as silly as the Texas and Miami and Las Vegas housing bubbles, that depended on “the next fool” to buy-in at a higher valuation, depending themselves on having a subsequent investor bail them out at a higher valuation, and so goes the escalator.  The problem is, the escalator gets to the top at some point and there has to be a “destination” where value exists and with it, a hope of profitability.

The unsteady IPO market of last year and the continued bearishness of the IPO exit market this year has effectively called-out that “top of the escalator” and there are no more “next fools” (i.e. large enterprise buyers at the >$1 Bil level and no robust IPO appetite from capital market leaders that demand value and cash flow and a hope of profits).

So now, once again we are back to reality.

The great news about being back to reality is two-fold.

1)  Sub-billion dollar valuations are no longer an “embarrassment” to VCs; and

2)  Entrepreneurs can reasonably weigh a variety of capital structures that include bank and trade debt as well as investment equity and debt structures, all supported by revenue and that means free cash-flow.

With this in mind, the VCs and the investment community in general must start to become “reasonable,” because they are suddenly back in the traditional capital markets and will have to compete with other capital sources and structures for the hot deals.

Middle and nascent deals will have to become cash-flow generating, and for this reason they will also (wisely) become more reluctant to give up huge chunks of equity just to bring in working capital (at least not until the enterprise value pops to a higher tier by using bank debt, trade debt and other creative capital structures).

Savvy entrepreneurs and founding teams will also be less excited about creating an early and dramatic bump in valuation just to bank growth capital, because a down-round will likely wipe out a giant proportion of their equity.  The giddy “we are a unicorn” has turned into “what happens in a down round?” reality check, that most people forgot about.  Early venture investors have protected their downside with special preferred terms that founders and exec teams rarely consider or can demand.  If this were real-estate, it might even start to look like over-aggressive venture investors that pump up valuations too early, only to have the market adjust to “reasonable” later, were “predatory.”  It is an interesting parallel that will not be lost on founding teams, angel investors and early exec team members that hope to be rewarded via their equity stake.

The reticence to of many of the younger venture investors (those with fewer than 20 years of experience) having yet to bring in a 5X or 10X much less a Unicorn, to invest in early stage deals, is now balanced by the abundance of crowdfunding and syndicate fundraising at the seed and angel level.  This is a great organic re-shaping of the investment and capital markets in favor of the early stage company and entrepreneur.  

There is also a growing recognition that the early stage deals that do get picked up by venture investors have been in a long slow decline and “narrowing” of deals to known insiders and repeat successful (i.e. “brought a good exit to a venture fund’) founders.  I think that this is largely common sense (bet on the horse that won the last race for you), and also based on the reality that it is a rare and elite breed of entrepreneur that can see an opportunity and execute a successful solution.  That said, a close examination of the venture deals that have been funded in favor of known founders pales next to the stats behind the successful new ventures that have been founded by first time startup teams.  The difference is largely that part of the value-add from the venture investors is the addition of those “experienced” startup executives onto the exec team as soon as the big money comes into play.  Thus the risk of execution is somewhat reduced.

What does that mean to today’s startups?  It means that the old concepts of cash-flow, repeatable and scalable selling and service delivery models, the idea of managing customer acquisition, retention and lifetime customer value, are again in vogue.  

As they should have always been.  While there will continue to be many good reasons for companies to temporarily sacrifice cash flow and profitability for raw user or customer growth, the days of “just get 1 million users and we’ll figure out how to make money later” are – at least for the time being, gone.  And we celebrate that.  

Unit economics always wins.  This goes back to the days of “the lemonade stand” cash-flow exercise. It’s what built the world’s greatest capital markets.  And it will always remain the best place to start.  Water, sugar, lemons, cups and napkins.  And a sign and a cardboard box. “How many cups of lemonade must we sell at what price to pay for the supplies, time and sign?”  Simple.  One does not need an MBA or to be a dropout PhD candidate to start with those basic principles.  

In another parallel with the real estate (mortgage) market, today’s startup teams should be asking themselves the same questions that prudent investors will be asking them (kind of like the new mortgage market, where everyone has to go through “full documentation” to get a standard mortgage loan):

How can I make money?  How can I do it at scale?  What is my selling process and is it repeatable?  Who will pay for my service or product and what will they pay, and why?  How much money do I need in working capital to find my perfect product-market fit and establish the right selling model and price point/margin?  What are the unit economics of my business?  What drives retention and churn?  What prevents others from copying me and disintermediating my base?  Is there a brand value that creates loyalty, or is this market driven by other values and factors?  What are my logical exits?  Who are the logical acquirers?  Is there a realistic IPO path? 

Yes, we are back to reality.  It sucks for some people.  And that’s okay.  Those people should get with the program or get out of the startup business.  Disrupt and question everything.  Be bold, revolutionary, even bombastic and disrespectful of the incumbents and status quo. But don’t ignore the fundamental rules of business that underly the path all companies must tread to go from small to large, and startup to profit and successful exit.  After all is said and done, you have to make payroll. Sell to a customer a second time.  Own a brand people love and trust.

Reality only sucks because it makes you work harder to win, and forces you to confront inconvenient tasks and difficult questions.  Short cuts are nice but when they don’t work you end up falling off of a cliff.  Better to work harder than run headlong at a cliff you can’t see coming.

Image credit: HikingArtist

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

I rarely have time to read my Quora feed, but now and then I see a question that pulls me up short as happened when this question from last fall surfaced.

I am an entrepreneur about to get married. How do I make sure my future wife doesn’t benefit financially from our union?  

My reaction was that his fiancée should run as fast as possible in the other direction, since this guy doesn’t seem to have either the understanding of what marriage is or the maturity to build a successful one. (Most of the responses echoed my reaction.)

Thinking further, I wondered whether this entrepreneur honored what Matt Weeks calls The Startup Social Contract at his company, since he obviously didn’t with his wife-to-be.

Marriage, after all, is the ultimate startup and the risks are even greater when an entrepreneur is involved.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Opportunities to publicize your startup through talks and interviews can be golden if you remember these basics.

1. Create a set of no more than five sound bytes, i.e., brief, core points to make in all of your talks and interviews No matter what happens, be sure you get those four or five key points into the conversation and stick to them.

2. It’s normal for the constant repetition of those points to become boring for you, but it’s imperative that you control the narrative and the discussion so that you can deliver your key points. You will survive boring.  

3. The biggest mistake CEOs and founders make in these cases is to go in and “wing it.”  You need to use these opportunities in a carefully planned way and deliver your four to five key points every time.  That’s how PR and branding work…. boring repetition and strict discipline to stay on point, no matter what the venue or specific question asked.

4. Just as critical is to access an advisor with experience delivering a consistent brand message, who will coach you, help you write your key bullet points and messages and practice with you to polish your delivery.

5. If you create a founder’s video be sure to make it simple and informal. If it’s for a crowdfunding effort edgier and more “amateur” (less slick and professional) will resonate better. People will donate because they are swept up by the story and the emotion and the idea behind the deal.  Not the facts of the product or the “benefit” in a logical sense. It must be personal and emotional. Try using a camera phone, such as a high end Nokia, iPhone or Samsung, and it will be great—edgy enough to have good credibility and authenticity.

 And while these five points sound easy and simple, the discipline to follow-through on them is not.

Matt Weeks is Currently VP & General Manger, Ecosystem at Planet Soho, the industry’s leading cloud-based business management platform for micro-business customers and creatives; co-founder and investor in WorkersCount and Advisor/Mentor at ZOOMPesa Systems & Technology: The Mobile & Online Money Transfer Service with a Heart and a contributor here when he can make time.

Last week I invited entrepreneurs to share the story of their startup (see below) and the first response came from “family.”

Matt Weeks is an occasional contributor here and member of my company’s board; he’s co-founder and CEO of WorkersCount, an advisor to two startups, volunteers for several other organizations in his “spare time, is an involved dad, all around family guy and makes time for friends.

Someone asks me what I do.  “I make workers count.” Here.  Have a cookie.  Smile.

WorkersCount is a direct-to-consumer mobile service that anonymously measures worker sentiment at the workplace.  Using a simple mobile “check-in” experience, workers can safely express their sentiment, discover what’s happening at their company and track other companies. They can easily see what workers in their roles or with similar backgrounds are saying and experiencing.  Using a simple set of radio buttons, workers check-in several times daily and respond to “How are you doing at work right now?” and one “Question of the day” (such as “my boss values my contributions” or “I am proud to tell friends where I work and what I do.”

WorkersCount is not a typical silicon valley start-up, and we’re fine with that.   Most start-ups fail, and that is neither good nor bad, but just a statistic and a reality of life.  Pack a lunch, bring extra water and a power bar.  Because it’s a long run in the desert.

So we began with that vision in mind—that we had to be very different to survive.  We knew that we would have to build it, launch it, develop traction and users before we would raise dollar 1.  That’s the new reality in consumer software and services.

Who cares about this?  We arrived at WorkersCount as a pivot from a much more complicated and difficult-to-scale concept.  That was an important epiphany and a valuable lesson.  Once you get your team and your concept into what we call the “information corridor” and begin the product and market validation process to find “product-market fit” you start down the path to success.

It was during these “getting-hit-over-the-head-lessons” (for Monty Python fans) that we became disabused of our preconceived notions, and landed on the real problem that needed solving.

I call this the “market invalidation process”—meaning that we needed to push ourselves to explain why our assumptions and the monetization and engagement models we had built were NOT invalid.

Most people do it backwards—they attempt to find data points that validate their preconceived notions.  As a result they often get the answer they were looking for, instead of a new and more powerful answer.  Even if it is “start over, this one won’t work.”

Great entrepreneurs don’t drink their own Kool Aid.  Even if it looks great on a pitch deck for investors.    Building a company and holding a team together through extreme weather is tough enough when everybody is being authentic and honest.  It falls apart fast if everyone is agreeing to tell the same fantasy bed-time story.

Yes, your mom will love your idea (even if she doesn’t really understand it), and your dog will love it (especially if there is a treat involved).  But real users only care about their own experience and their own problems.  Not yours.

Through this painful process we found our market—where there was huge chaos, pre-existing spend by large entities, and an already connected and established set of communities of end users.  We discovered that there was very little dependable and valid data, and even less information that end-users (of various types) could act-upon.  The perfect storm for disruptive innovation.

Now all we had to do was build an engaging and meaningful mobile consumer experience and create habitual use, shake up some of the existing assumptions and build a trusted brand.  On a shoestring budget.  Ha!    Welcome to start-up land.

Why are we doing this?  We are a values-driven band of 5 workers with decades of work experience under our belts at large enterprises and startups alike.   We have personally felt the pain of being a worker and of trying to be a great boss or supervisor.   The experience is frustrating coming from both directions.  We think we can fix some of that, and create a little bit of fun and lots of smiles along the way.

We are passionate about enabling workers to drive a better workplace.  To discover where people like them are thriving and where they are struggling.  To enable workers at all levels to validate that they are in the right job in the right role in the right company for them, now.  And where they might look (with a little help from their friends at other companies) for their “next hop” now or sometime in the next 30 to 40- months (the average duration of the “gig” in a career these days).

We are making it fun, simple and easy, and we are rapidly introducing a fun game aspect and lots of cool rewards to build traffic and encourage people to share the experience. We want them to keep coming back to see new fun facts and get deeper vision into their own company and those of their friends.  But it’s damn hard.

The pay-off is when our early beta users (please become one, by the way, at www.workerscount.com, and help us shape the features as they are brought live) say “where have you been all my work life?  This is something that I’d use all the time!” “This is something my son/daughter/spouse/best friend needs to know about!” And when, as one beta user shared

“I would just be relieved to know that I’m having a bad day or a bad week, but that I’m really much better off here at this company with it’s imperfections, than people like me appear to be at those other two other companies I’ve been watching.  Now I can relax and get on with my job knowing that, at least for now, I’m in the right place.”

For our friends not working or actively looking, not to worry. You are more than 8% of the workforce and we respect that.  We are soon to launch insights and features for you, as well as for our college and grad school friends who want to get the same insights so that they can be smarter and more informed about where to consider for their “next hop.”

What about the “next hop?”

Are careers a series of “gigs” and short stints?  We think that this may be the new reality.  So even if you stay at the same company, your world will in all likelihood change radically every 30 to 40 months anyway.  Having a handle in real time on what’s happening inside and outside of your company is a new type of power and knowledge that every worker can now have.

By the way, in case anyone is asking:  we don’t work for employers or HR departments.  This is a direct-to-consumer service, delivered on mobile, tablets and laptops.

Yes, we’re looking to scale rapidly when we exit beta, and with broad engagement we aim to change the way workers communicate with one another, with their companies (via our public indices and reports) and with friends at other companies.

WorkersCount.  Your voice counts.  Come along with us and join the community.

We will soon have cool schwag, tee shirts, hats, mugs and yummy cookies.  Naturally.  It’s a startup.

Thanks for asking what I do.  “I make workers count.”

Thanks, Matt. I encourage all of you to sign up at WorkersCount, enjoy Personal Time, the official WorkersCount blog Matt writes, like them on Facebook and follow them @workerscount.

ATTENTION FOUNDERS, FRIENDS OF FOUNDERS AND STARTUP EMPLOYEES
SUBMIT YOUR STORY

Be the Thursday feature – Entrepreneurs: [your company name]
Share the story of your startup (not a product pitch) along with your contact information.
I’ll be in touch.
Questions? Email or call me at 360.335.8054 Pacific time.

Flickr image credit: WorkersCount

Did you start your company to become a millionaire in a few years?

If so, you’re in for a rude awakening.

If candidates’ reason for joining is to become rich when the company exits should raise more than red flags; it should ring every alarm you have and send you running for the nearest exit.

That’s true no matter how badly you need his skills or how much the team likes him.

Candidates who join because they believe they’ll be millionaires in a few years are walking time bombs and hiring them could be your worst nightmare.

Why?

Because, as the man once said, “It ain’t gonna happen.”

This isn’t about the well know statistic that half of all startups fail (they don’t), but it is based on some interesting stats I came across in a blog called the “MarketInfoGuide” sponsored by China Research and Intelligence, a market research and consulting firm in Shanghai.

Slide sold for 200 million dollars to Google, but the employees made almost nothing, because so little was left for the common stock shareholders after the preferred shareholders were paid back.

I bounced it off Matt Weeks to see how solid the information and numbers were.

“Math is wrong regarding the participating preferred, but the main point is still pretty accurate… don’t join a startup to make a million in 3 yrs.”

Also, some phrasing slants the text in a decidedly negative way, but that doesn’t change the stats.

So why should you start a company?

To solve a problem, make a difference in people’s lives, maybe even help solve one or another of society’s ills and create a happy place to work.

Why should you join a startup?

To work on the bleeding edge of technology, contribute to something amazing, be challenged, grow exponentially, be happy.

Whichever side of the table you are on remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day, Google was founded in 1998 and IPOed six years later; and Facebook was founded eight years ago in 2004.

Even when it happens it doesn’t happen fast.

Flickr image credit: Alan Cleaver

I have to admit that a post by Penelope Trunk, founder of Brazen Careerist, about “why you shouldn’t do a startup with women (if you’re a man)” greatly annoyed me, but not for the reasons you might think.

I have no quibble with what Trunk wrote about her own experience, but I do object strenuously to the idea that it is universally applicable.

Wondering if it was only me, I sent the link to KG Charles-Harris, founder/CEO of EMANIO and founder of the M3 Foundation, whose co-founder at EMANIO is female, and he emailed back,

“Interesting.  I hadn’t thought of this until now.  This is my first startup and my experience is that having Julie as co-founder has made us survive.”

I also sent it to Matt Weeks, Chief Marketing & Revenue Officer, Actio.tv and who occasionally writes for the Friday entrepreneur feature If the Shoe Fits,

“Some of the best women I’ve worked with were direct, authentic, professional, and had very similar styles as the men.  The open question is– were they adapting and modeling the men in the workplace to fit-in (having observed that crying and throwing tantrums was not likely to lead to advancement)….? or were they hard-wired to have the same style and temperament as men,and that was a key to their success…?   Most female workers are not about drama or making chaos or making their female-ness a centerpiece of the workplace dynamic or culture.  In fact having diversity in a fast-moving team with a variety of perspectives has led to better insight, better strategy and better product creation in my direct experience.  Great teams are better for the diversity of perspective, not hopelessly paralyzed and unable to focus. It depends how experienced they are in managing divergent views and coalescing around a single course of action.  That said, some men with whom I have worked indulged their male-ness,and narcissism, creating their own flavor of drama and chaos. This doesn’t even begin to figure-in the gender and sexual orientation component, which could flip the equation again.  And then flip it again.”

I also looked in the mirror and had to admit that I have been know to inject drama and chaos in my interactions, but those occasions had nothing to do with my gender.

They happened at that moment because I ran out of rope and they were over almost immediately because I reached deep or out and found more rope.

Personally, I have a hard time understanding monthly mood swings since I never experienced them, nor am I particularly comfortable with prolonged exposure to highly emotional people no matter their gender or orientation.

When I was young there seemed to be fewer choices, women got upset, got emotional and cried, whereas men got upset, got drunk and hit the wall or whatever was handy—I have done both—I wonder what that makes me?

The take-away is that your MAP will dictate the amount of drama and chaos acceptable in any culture you establish or that you are willing to personally endure.

Please join me tomorrow for a look at the power and pitfalls of influence.

Flickr image credit: scriptingnews

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

“Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for ’tis better to be alone than in bad company.” –George Washington

For early stage companies (and for all well-run private, Pre-IPO or Pre-Acquisition firms), the stock awarded to employees and the executive team is a form of “social contract” that promises them unusually high “return” for their risk, hard work, “sweat investment” and belief in the company.

The unstated social contract goes something like this:

I will initially forego a higher salary and cash compensation, in lieu of stock options that will increase in value at a faster rate than possible elsewhere, and will “return” more than the forfeited cash compensation might have, over time.

This is both an investment risk approach (“Do I believe the company’s product or service can win in the marketplace?”) and a simple ROI calculation (“Is the salary/cash compensation I forfeit going to be made-up (and then some) in a reasonable amount of time?”)

Because I am now an “owner” (“investor”) in this company (seeking to boost stock value. i.e. company value), I presumably have strong incentive to help the company thrive.

This includes being diligent and helping avoid risk, helping to find and fix problems everywhere, as well as going above and beyond my “job description” to help the company thrive and grow. I am super-diligent and respect and protect the company’s assets, reputation and product/service quality.  I treat this as “my” company.

In short, as an owner-employee (at any level), I understand that I have to “have the company’s back” and that others in the company “have my back.” We all watch-out for one another.  Our stock positions fairly and accurately reflect our contributions and risk “investments” we’ve made in this venture.

If the workers and/or the exec team come to disrespect, disbelieve or ignore this social contract, the company is lost.

Option Sanity ratifies the social contract

Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning

Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.

Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Flickr image credit: Kevin Spencer