I cannot claim to predict the future – nor would I want to (another post, a little more philosophical).  But I keep my eyes open.  The economic picture in our country is one big food chain.  Remember in grade school they taught you that the largest animals ultimately depended on the smallest; i.e., lions depended on gazelles, who depended on vegetation, who depended on water & sun, etc… It is the same with the economy.  Wall street banks depend on companies to make deals, those companies need cash to do that so they need to have sales, sales are only generated by people purchasing items, people only purchase when they have cash, and they only have cash when they have jobs. 

I guess to shorten that, so goes jobs, so goes the economy.  It can also work backwards, where if you see hard times ahead you start to layoff people trying to save your business. But the theory is they walk hand in hand.

As I walk around, I have noticed signs everywhere looking for help.  Restaurants, hotels, gas stations, home depot.  Accounting jobs are pretty stable in any economy (you need to count to see how much you made OR how much you lost), but blue-collar jobs tend to fluctuate to a greater degree.  I was just in Seattle and there were at least 5 help wanted signs within 5 blocks of my hotel. 

I just took a call yesterday from a sales rep I know at a payroll services company.  I asked how his biz was doing, and was surprised when he said they were having a great year.  They were up over 20% over 2009, they were not only seeing increased hiring at the firms they were with (their business model is based on headcount), but also an increase in new customers.

Again, the market may tank even more as we deal with the oil debacle and border control and whatever else pops up, but the base of our infrastructure, the jobs outlook, seems to be turning around.  With that I will have money in the market, just because I believe we are looking up, not heading back down.

The story goes that when Cortes set out to conquer Central America, he made sure that his troops were committed to the effort by burning the boats once they hit the shore. That meant no surrender – either you conquer or die.

To me, this has become an obvious necessity for a successful startup.  In my current role as CEO for a very young startup, I am seeing this everyday as I struggle with a high-level sales executive that has never given our venture 100%.  Leaving a big corporate job in December, he said all the right things and seemed excited to help grow our business.  Yet it was quickly evident that any work after 5pm was not happening, forget about the weekends, and on a good day work my start by 9.30am.

As a virtual company, you have to put a lot of faith in your people that they will do their jobs.  Blind faith is easy when you have results, but when the results are not there – doubts start to arise. Combine this with a less-than-hoped-for work ethic, and you start to realize that your all-star employee has never really worked for you at all. Instead, they are treading water and waiting to see if your company is going to “take-off”. Sort of like standing in the shadows until you are sure your side is going to win the fight.

I don’t have an answer to this, at least not yet. I am fighting it right now, how do you burn the boats without ruining the morale of your troops?  Working on that.

There is a little something for everyone there, from climbing to biking to fly-fishing. There is a “gear town” where you can check out all sorts of swag, clinic & classes, and food (BBQ from Moe’s is the best!!!).  One of our favorites is the 8-ball kayak competition on Sunday, where races head down the river and dodge the gladiator kayakers (dressed all in black) who are there just to make their life difficult.

But the best event has to be the Dock Dogs competition.  My wife likes the extreme vertical, but I prefer the Big Air Wave. These dogs jump over 20 feet – it is awesome to watch. If you are looking at getting a dog, it is a great place to scope out breeds, as not only are there a lot of dogs in the competition, but 70% of the spectators have their dogs with them as well. The Vail Valley Foundation has a good link up to the Dock Dogs event here.

See you in Vail!

So yesterday we spent the better part of the day meeting the breeder and basically being interviewed by them to make sure we were not insane and were capable of handling a puppy. By 8pm last night, “Z” was back at our house and was pretty happy scoping out his new digs.

As you can see in the pic, he is definitely still a puppy!

I should also mention that we do not see ourselves at “dog snobs.” Yes we went to a breeder because we wanted a Rhodesian Ridgeback. But we went and got one of the ridgeless Ridgebacks, as we do not care about the “show quality”, we just know we wanted this breed and we wanted a puppy.

Needless to say, you can expect a few more posts on “Z” as he grows up!

The “m” that is used to shorten million actually comes from the Roman Numeral for Thousand. So million really translates to “thousand thousand,” or “mm”.  If you don’t want to believe me, check it out on the wiki page:

For large numbers (4000 and above), a bar can be placed above a base numeral, or parentheses placed around it, to indicate multiplication by 1000, although the Romans themselves often just wrote out the “M”s:^[4]

In the startup world, vesting more often refers to the time it takes for you to earn your piece of the pie. Startups typically don’t have a lot of cash, so they use their only currency – equity – to help entice the best and brightest to join the team. But don’t think that you get all the return at little risk – your pay will most likely be lower, and you have to dig in for a period of time before that equity actually becomes yours.

The form of your equity grant, and how you manage it, can make a big difference in the tax consequences you have in the long run – hopefully I can get to that shortly.

I read that phrase yesterday on a blog post by Joe Stump and it reminded me of how true that phrase is.  Before entering the world of startups I had never heard it put that way – in the world of Big Corporations, the term is just rich. The execs fly on company jets and have vacation homes.  They may have “fuck you money”, but they have more than likely grown into it and are now spending just as much as they are making. 

In the startup world, one of the main lures (behind being your own boss and chasing your dreams) is the possibility of making a decent payday with the sale of your company. The urban defintion of “fuck you money” is:

An very large amount of money, which would enable an individual to do pretty much whatever the fuck he or she wants. Fuck you money is not a fixed amount, but is just much more then anyone could realistically put to good use.

Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street had a similar notion…

I’m talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars, buddy. A player. Or nothing.

Everybody’s exact definition of fuck you money will be different – is it $5mm, $50mm, or $500mm? What’s my number? I’ll let you know when I cross it…!

Today I am going to lose one of the best friends I have ever had.

9 weeks ago, our soon-to-be-eleven-year-old dog was diagnosed with osteosarcoma. It is basically bone cancer. And I can add that it is a complete, 100% bitch. The tumor is in the shoulder (at least the tumor we can now see), and has completely taken away the use of that limb.

Our kid dog (I’ll call him “T”), was only given 2-4 weeks to live when they first diagnosed him.  I don’t think “distraught” is a strong enough word to describe the emotions that were swirling around us that week. We spent our days trying to do all the things T wanted to do, spent nights crying as we tried to imagine life without chewy bones smeared in peanut butter and dog hair on everything. Funny part is, T never cared what we did as long as all of us were together. And as far as he was concerned, it wasn’t living if it didn’t involve peanut butter.

I had friends tell me how lucky we were to have 9 weeks to “get ready” for today… That they had to make that emotional leap in 48 hours. To that I say bravo – you could have given me 9 more YEARS and I wouldn’t be ready to make that last drive to the vet.  But I know that T gave us those 9 weeks as a blessing (hell the 11 years were a blessing) – he wanted to make sure we filled up our “love meters” as my wife likes to say…

For those of you that have a four-legged best friend, you should read this eulogy by Jameson Parker. Read it now before – like me – you find it as you are sitting at 3am searching Google trying to find the right words to express the emptiness in your heart. It can be summed up in one line:

If life is a system of balances, of yin and yang, birth and death, light and dark. then the proof of the great pleasures he gave me lies in the quantity of pain his passing has caused.

Goodbye T.

The show went very well. I would say phenomenal, but we need to execute over the next couple months in order to make me say that (stay tuned). But, looking back, I did take away a number of key points about the tradeshow and how best to execute upon them going forward. There is no order to these, just what is coming to my mind…

1) Pick the right tradeshow – if you have limited resources you cannot waste the time and money on slow shows… Pick the ones that will have the most potential customers…

2) Spend the money to make your booth standout.. Don’t use the standard banner and table.. Lights help, lit signs are better.  A flat screen TV with a video reel is slowly becoming imperative.

3) Pay for padding. Simple. People’s feet will hurt (including yours). Make sure they want to stay at your booth longer just by making the padding thick.

4) Have something to handout. Brochures. Information cards. Something other than just a business card.

5) Bring water. Plenty for everyone manning the booth.

6) Put in the effort pre-show. Mail postcards to your target audience asking them to come to your booth. It works.

7) Be prepared to sell. Invoices, payment methods, shipping details.

8) Look out for guys that will go and knock off your product. You cannot avoid it. Make sure you have your IP in place.

9) Get in a day ahead of time. It will let you get comfortable with the area, and you have time to overnight anything to the show that you forgot.

10) Last, make sure everyone at your booth has the exact same sales pitch. Prospective customers will make multiple trips to your booth sometimes, you want them to get the same pitch each time.