I am as Blue State as it comes. A son of the liberal bastion known as the Upper West Side of New York City, a resident of the immoral, free love San Francisco. A progressive activist in college who now makes a living in the environmental technology sector that President Obama has supported wholeheartedly.
I am a donor to Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign, and on the Advisory Board of Potential Energy, an international non-profit working in Darfur.
Yet for my all progressive bona fides, the fact that I don’t hate Mitt Romney may be enough to revoke my standing reservation at the latte liberal’s café.
I should be clear, I don’t particularly like Mitt Romney nor do I intend to vote for him, but I do think he is a decent enough human being. As Maureen Dowd wrote today:
Even though he [Mitt] once seemed to have sensible, moderate managerial instincts, he won’t stop ingratiating himself with the neo-Neanderthals
In the words of Eminem, I wish the real Mitt Romney would please stand up.
I believe that he’s an incredibly intelligent, hard-working, caring guy. I respect his education, his professional career, and his dedication to his family. I may not agree with his policy prescriptions, but I think that he’s arrived at them through truly thoughtful contemplation.
I do deeply regret that he continues to pander to the neo-Neanderthals in his party, primarily those whose knowledge of Science is downright prehistoric. The evangelical, “legitimate rape”, anti-gay wing of the Republican party is to me the epitome of evil and everything wrong with America.
It is excruciatingly difficult for me to peel Mitt apart from those that surround him with these hateful views. But I must and we must if are going to reclaim a sense of sanity in American politics.
President Obama is not a radical, socialist Muslim who hates America, nor is Mitt Romney a mindless, heartless, Bible-beating capitalist who is going to take away your grandmother’s Medicare.
Those of us in the middle need to resist the urge to hate. It is the only way that politicians in the center will find the strength and confidence to stand up to the Neanderthals on both sides of the aisle.
In one corner, I see the Tea Party representing the righteous indignation of hard core conservatives eager to see an America built on God, Guns, and Gold and in the other, I see the Occupy Wall Street movement representing a cliche patchwork of feel good sounding liberal causes coupled with the support of increasingly counterproductive Unions.
I demand something for the rest of us.
America is a jetliner descending in a long, slow crash pattern and those of us who long for solutions based on pragmatic, intellectually rigorous solutions are lounging in the back of the plane while the far left and the far right wrestle for control of the yoke. I count myself amongst those seated too comfortably, yet not guiltlessly, in Business Class enjoying my fresh-squeezed orange juice while gazing out the window at our rapid descent.
You see, I’ve spent a good bit of the last six months out of the country, living for a time in Europe, traveling for business in Asia, and vacationing in Central America. All the while, I’ve watched the political process unfold in America with a growing sense of detachment and fatalism. For someone who has thought of himself as politically engaged, this has become an increasingly sad and frustrated feeling.
Our country is badly broken. No amount of rhetoric, Christian militia or peacenik marching, or cable news commentary is going to solve the intractable issues we face. We can’t cut around the edges and we can’t leave it to the “Rich” to bail us out. Our problems are not going to be solved by cranky, old, white men posing as Patriots or naïve, college youth imitating revolutionaries.
Our problems are only going to be solved by those with enough practical experience to know what real trade-offs we face and the courage to tell voters things that they might not want to hear. We need leaders who won’t pander to those who believe that either God or Government is here to save us. We need visionary thinking, but only from those with the backbone to execute on it.
We need solutions that respect human dignity and individual liberty while not bankrupting us to do so. We need an economic environment that promotes innovation of all kinds, that allows those creating disproportionate value to enjoy disproportionate gains, but that has clearly enforced rules of the game to protect the public good and the least fortunate.
In short, we need a movement of the middle. I’m tired of watching this World Wrestling Federation match happening up in the cockpit that is certain to send us spiraling into the ocean. I don’t want to take to the streets in protest nor blather away on Fox News or MSNBC. I want to do something to help find real solutions to real problems. Who’s with me?
The following organizations seem to be fighting this good fight (please let me know of others!)
I have been working with a client recently that frequently uses the question - “what is our right to win?” For example, when assessing strategic growth opportunities for their business, they evaluate standard drivers such as market size, growth rates, competition, and margin trends, and then thoughtfully, and with a refreshing level of self awareness for a major multinational company, turn the mirror on themselves to ask “regardless of how attractive this opportunity is, why should we able to win here?”
As I sit reflecting on my own professional decisions, I realize how important this question should be to assessing one’s career choices. Like many of my peers, I am plagued by a constant fear of choosing. In the past twelve years, I’ve been a management consultant, run business development for a software company serving non-profits/advocacy groups, spent a stint writing on technology commercialization at a major research institute, went back to graduate school, founded a web-based service in the advertising/entertainment space, and now help to run a venture-backed research firm on cleantech. On top of all of that, I harbor a deep desire to be a yoga instructor and own a coffee shop.
To say that I have become a jack of all trades, might be an understatement. I don’t regret any of the aforementioned opportunities that I have pursued, yet in retrospect it is clear to me that most of the analysis that led me down those paths was focused on dissecting the job and not me. Is this a big market opportunity? Would this be an interesting topic to learn? Is there a brand value to the firm/position? I even asked altruistic questions… What does this job/company contribute to the world? Is this work meaningful?
What I didn’t genuinely ask was “why am I uniquely positioned to succeed in this role?” Certainly, I could have answered that question with a proper amount of spin in each job interview, but what I didn’t do was really take stock of it myself. I think that I am just beginning to internalize how important this question is to aligning one’s passions and skills to one’s chosen profession. As I think about the roles that I will take over the next decade, I am more certain than ever that success, and equally as important, satisfaction, will rest in making sure that I take a good look in the mirror each and every time and have a solid, gut-check answer to the question of “Why me? What is my personal right to win here?”
This week was a classic, “whack-a-mole” week. One of those work weeks where there are a million and one things to do and that the faster you knock things off the list, the faster that new ones appear. In my old office I had hung a Mario Andretti quote, “if everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough”. I believe in it wholeheartedly. My only caveat would be that in the startup world where stasis is death, extreme levels of busyness can easily be mistaken for positive momentum.
I think that one of the real keys to success is to understand when this frantic pace is actually contributing to building a foundation for long-term success and when it is just busyness. If you get distracted by thinking, “I’m so damn busy, something good must be happening”, you risk whacking the wrong moles and spinning your wheels.
We’ve got an all-day management meeting this week that we do once a quarter to pull our heads-up out of the day to day. I’m sometimes guilty of rolling my eyes at these kinds of strategy sessions as I think they can distract from the “doing”, but this is one of those times that I am thankful to be working with a business partner/friend/CEO who has far more intuition than I do about when to focus at the 100,000 foot level and can force me to come out of the weeds.
You can’t build a successful company without whacking the moles, but it pays to plan a bit about which moles to whack.
Warren Buffet famously describes his favorite businesses as “economic castles protected by unbreachable ‘moats.’” The Apple ecosystem is a good example of this. Apple makes money a few different ways, but its primarily from hardware. While other manufacturers might make a faster tablet, or…
Even by my liberal standards of coffice etiquette, this crosses the line. A full desktop setup including full size keyboard in The Grove this morning. I feel particularly sensitive around this as a couple of years ago, I saw a similarly over-the-top setup carted into Snice, one of the world’s greatest spots to hang out and do work in New York City. A week later, they had shut off wifi and clamped down on laptop use, so I saw that desktop stunt as the straw that broke the camel’s back for the store owners that had grown tired of squatters. Demonstrates that we should be kinder to our cofficemates and more respectful of our landlords!
In an effort to jumpstart some more personal blogging, I thought I would try a weekly “curious things” post that highlights some random news and notes that I come across during the week that stimulate the “I should blog about that” reaction, but that I never seem to muster enough energy on for a real post. We’ll see how long I can keep this up!
BRIC nations are abstainers on Libyan no-fly resolution - I found it interesting that the world’s fast growing, BRIC countries - Brazil, India, China, and Russia - were the only nations (plus Germany) that abstained from supporting the UN’s Libya no-fly resolution. Perhaps this should be a signal that costly foreign interventions are the anchor that continues to drag down Western economies intent on maintaining an antiquated position as global police force while high-growth BRIC countries prefer to remain on the sidelines.
DFJ Esprit nets 5X venture return (or 15% IRR) - Rarely do you see a venture capital firm put out a press release touting a return on an investment, but DFJ Esprit did just that this week. It cited a 5x return on its investment in call center software company TLC. While 5x sounds like a homerun, consider that they first made this investment in 2000. 11 years to exit means that a 5x return equates to a 15% IRR. 15% annual return is by no means shabby, but it doesn’t have quite the ring as 5x! Just goes to show how the venture world sometimes plays fuzzy math to make itself seem far more impressive.
Inside Job - I went to see the Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job last night. I had already read The Big Short (a must read), so the idea that the 2008 mortgage meltdown was the result of disgustingly greedy, deceitful, ponzi-like behavior came as no surprise. What continues to surprise me is that absolutely nothing changes in the face of increasing income inequality and the clearly documented, widespread fraudulent behavior that many in the finance world have used to achieve this extraordinary wealth.
There is no reason for anyone with any chops online to be remotely involved with Facebook, except to peruse it for lost relatives. So, next time you log on, remember it’s really AOL with a different layout… Welcome to the past.
Got to say that I’m beginning to agree with him. Over a fairly computerless holiday time and first week of the year (thanks to my laptop crashing), I did a bunch of thinking about how I spend my online time, what was bringing me true professional and personal value, and I just couldn’t really see the value I was getting from Fbook relative to the time I spent sharing, commenting, and posting. There are other online forums that seem to offer far more tangible value and I’m going to be spending more time there.
I believe that Fbook has created an incredibly powerful form of entertainment, people love and need entertainment and I certainly don’t begrudge anyone some mindless relaxation. It’s a personal reality TV show 24 hours a day and since even I like an episode of Jersey Show now and then, I appreciate the power of this form of entertainment. If Vinnie, Paul, and The Situation are making millions then Fbook is certainly worth billions. That said, for me, Fbook is a reality genre that has gotten boring for me and so I’m going to turn the channel. I may channel surf back from time to time for reruns, but I’m no longer a regular audience.
(Yes, I realize the irony that this post will appear on Fbook since my Tumblr account is linked there)
It is not often that Kleiner Perkins is able to participate in a $100M+ deal in the cleantech sector without sending the cleantech media and blogosphere into a virtual frenzy. But that is exactly what happened last week.
I gave it 24 hours. Nothing. It is a week later now and still no mention. Silver Spring signs a partnership deal with Control 4 and everyone falls over themselves to get the story out, but Kleiner buys a significant stake in a highly profitable company with over 10,000 customer installations and it’s like a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it.
Even more remarkable is that OSIsoft should be a poster child for the cleantech venture sector’s current theme of 2011 – capital efficiency. OSIsoft is a software business that specializes in aggregating data from disparate systems in industrial environments. The company is no startup venture. It was founded in 1980 and now employees over 500 people.
While the company doesn’t comment publicly on revenue and profitability, a 2008 corporate presentation cites $160M+ in revenue. For a business built organically that continues to invest significantly in R&D, it is a safe assumption that it is producing plenty of cash.
And where there is an established business with healthy cash flow and the potential to ratchet up the growth curve, private equity money will come knocking. While OPower may have boldly proclaimed that they didn’t really need Kleiner’s money, OSIsoft truly didn’t. This is not a venture deal and OSIsoft VP of Marketing Jon Peterson confirmed for me that the investment was primarily providing liquidity to existing shareholders and not direct investment back into the business.
The existing shareholders deserve liquidity as they have built an incredibly successful business that is poised for growth as the company begins to position itself as a leading provider of smart grid and broader energy efficiency applications. They already serve many of the world’s leading power producers and industrial manufacturers and provide a data aggregation solution that may emerge as an important development platform for third party application developers looking to build analytics and optimization packages.
I believe that this deal is an important signal of things to come. As our work for the Department of Energy on the Smart Grid Ecosystem pointed out, the majority of vendors providing solutions into the smart grid market are not startups. They are companies that have been around for quite awhile. While they may not be based in a trendy loft space, they are likely producing significant revenue from legacy product lines. With the venture model under pressure in the cleantech sector, I predict we will start to see more interesting deal activity from private equity players seeking out opportunities with established vendors.
It may not set the blogosphere abuzz, but it makes for good business.
I know that this headline is riveting and that perhaps only one, incredibly wonky political friend of mine will read beyond that title (if that is you, please like this link as proof you are a nerd).
The census is serious stuff. It happens once a decade and it drives the assignment of Congressional seats and political boundaries. State results are out and as today’s Politico headline announced, “2010 census results show power shifting westward”.
As of April 2010, the official date of the census, the five fastest growing states were all in the West: Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Texas and Utah. As many political commentators have pointed out, this would seem to benefit Republicans as these states gain Congressional seats.
With my new post-partisan hat on however, this is not going to be argument about Republicans v. Democrats. This is going to be an argument that the data driving the census is quite likely entirely wrong already and we’re not even a year into the decade governed by this dataset.
As of April 2010, these “fastest growing states” were also, in parallel ranked amongst the top states for home foreclosures (in order of misery - #1: Nevada, #4: Arizona, #5: Idaho, and #8: Utah). Recent data suggests Texas has now cracked the top 10 as well.
While it is noble that people packing up their belongings and filling a moving truck took an extra 10 minutes to fill out the census, this act of civic responsibility has likely totally skewed the data that will drive assignment of political seats. It wasn’t enough that we had to bring down our economy with the mortgage fiasco, we had to screw up the census too!
It’s holiday time and that means year-end giving campaigns from your favorite charities and political organizations. It’s a noisy time to make an appeal and economic times are tough (tax deductibles donations are not as helpful when you’ve got less income to deduct!) but all that aside, this one is quite personal.
Last week, I joined the Board of Advisors of Darfur Stoves. If you’re in search of an organization to support this time of year, I’d encourage you to read more of the Darfur Stoves story.
For all of us tech-centric folk who think technology really has the power to change the world, Darfur Stoves is putting theory into practice.
There are two keys reason that I joined this organization and why I’d encourage you to take a look!
#1: I believe that those of us developing and promoting technology in the first world, particularly in my current field of cleantech, have an absolute obligation to find ways to transfer these technologies to the developing world. Darfur Stoves was founded via the pioneering work of Ashok Gadgil at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. In addition to a variety of work on energy problems in the first world, Ashok has been one of the leading thinkers in the world today on adapting technologies to the realities of developing world conditions and markets.
#2: One of the first lessons I learned in building startups was that you bet on people not ideas. Darfur Stoves is a wonderful idea and a wonderful technology, but organizations like this are built on great people. Andree Sosler, Darfur Stove’s Executive Director is not only a good friend, but she’s one of the smartest, most fiercely committed people that I’ve met operating in the non-profit world. Andree and I met at Wharton where she took two years out of her life not in pursuit of personal profit, but rather in search of for-profit frameworks that would help her back in the developing world. While most of our Wharton classmates headed up to Wall Street, Andree went straight from Philadelphia to Rwanda to consult on development issues.
If you’ve set aside some savings to give to people out in the world using technology to fight the good fight, please consider supporting Darfur Stoves.
Flecktones at the Fox Theater in Oakland last night
When they broke into Big Country, I felt instantly transported to a very good time of life circa 1998.
Some things never change…
- Victor Wooten still turns the electric bass into an inhumanly textured instrument that leaves you shaking your head in wonder
- Future Man and his drumitar have come no closer to returning to planet Earth
- Bela, sitting by himself, on five string acoustic banjo is still simply transcendent.
Some things do change…
- Nader, one of my best friends in the world for the past fifteen years, was still sitting there next to me at the Fox (that probably should be filed under the best thing that hadn’t changed). Our hair is much shorter now though and he is a proud father.
- Pandolfi wasn’t there sitting in awe and plotting his course to play as fast as Bela, he is somewhere out on tour with a couple of hit albums proving that he can do it.
Thanks Flecktones for taking me on a ride in the time machine!
