Self-Aggrandizement: Entrepreneurship Archives

OPM
Filed October 19, 2009 11:23 PM.

Newman's First Law of Entrepreneurship:

Whatever you think your job is as CEO, your job is actually fundraising.

The Secret to Entrepreneurship
Filed October 9, 2009 3:54 PM.

Back when I used to fight competitively, I discovered that I rarely went into the ring with more determination than my opponent. "Hey," I'd think, "it's just a sport."

Then I'd get punched in the face. And all of a sudden, I'd start to get serious.

Sometimes, I'd break a tooth, or fracture a knuckle. And it was in those moments that I'd think to myself, "one of us is leaving here in an ambulance, and it isn't going to be me."

Vince Lombardi observed that it's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get back up. But, in my experience, the truth is a step further yet: if you get knocked down, make sure you get back up twice as determined, twice as sure of what you need to do, than you were before.

As Bruce Lee advised, "forget about winning and losing; forget about pride and pain. Let your opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let him smash into your flesh and you fracture his bones; let him fracture your bones and you take his life."

Coming Attractions
Filed April 15, 2009 12:27 PM.

For the past few years, Cyan has been working solely behind the scenes - putting together financial structures, building our infrastructure, and generally missing out on all of the fun parts of indie film in favor of more ulcer-inducing fare.

But, now, all that work is finally paying off, as we're shifting back to actively making and releasing movies.

To kick off the shift, we're counting down to pre-production on two new films, Keeper of the Pinstripes, and Yelling to the Sky.

In some ways, the two movies couldn't be more different - the first a big-budget family film built around the New York Yankees, the second a small, gritty, race-complicated indie drama. But, in other ways, they're quite similar - both coming-of-age stories, both driven by scripts strong enough to have garnered amazing casts.

We're hoping to add three more films to our 2009 slate, all of which, ideally, we'll be releasing in theaters throughout 2010. We have a number of strong contenteders for those three slots, but, at this point, we're also focusing nearly all of our attention on simply surviving these first two.

As they'll be consuming much of my life for the next couple of months, they'll likely also be taking up a lot of this site. Stay tuned.

Bringing Down the House
Filed March 5, 2009 4:29 PM.

CrossFit NYC's first location was on the fourth floor of a building in the Garment District. The building was old, with rickety construction, so perhaps it shouldn't have been surprising when, after months of our jumping around and dropping weights and generally pounding the floor, the ceiling fell down onto our downstairs neighbors.

I don't mean the entire ceiling, and - fortunately - I don't mean that we actually knocked a hole through our floor and fell down to the level below. Instead, it was just a piece of the ceiling, a six by ten foot chunk of plaster that had shaken loose as much due to age and poor construction as from reverberation.

Still, from our downstairs neighbors' perspective, we had knocked down their ceiling, and they weren't thrilled about it. And they made that pretty clear.

Despite the death threats and the law suits, when we eventually moved out it had more to do with running out of space than with them. Still, we certainly weren't sad to leave them behind.

Because it wasn't just the ceiling. These guys came up to yell at us several times a day, saying they could hear every step we took across our thickly rubberized floor, saying we made it impossible for them to hold meetings.

Which I always found to be slightly funny. The guys downstairs were a messenger company. And I could never quite imagine what sort of critical meetings they might be holding, in our shithole of a building, all morning and afternoon long.

CrossFit NYC's latest location is only ten blocks down from that first home, but it's a world apart. The space is five times as large, clean, with showers and changing rooms, in a much newer, much nicer building. And, this time, when we moved in to the third floor, the second was still unoccupied. Which meant that whoever moved in below us would have a chance to hear whatever noise we might make beforehand, would know exactly what they were getting themselves into.

And, in this economy, with New York's commercial real estate market collapsing, we reasoned, we might go neighborless for months or years before the space was filled.

Or not. We were in our new digs for less than a month before we discovered that a company had just leased the second floor.

It turns out, they're a messenger company. And they've already visited us a few times about the noise.

Let's hope their ceilings are screwed in tight.

Phase Two
Filed December 23, 2008 10:21 AM.

Spent most of Cyan's 2008 drafting legal documents, building Monte Carlo simulations, and writing novels' worth of white papers and other business materials. Literally thousands and thousands of pages.

All of which, in short, was necessary, but not sufficient. So, now, in 2009, it's time to actually put all of that to work. As the old saying goes, you can't plough a field by turning it over in your mind.

Redo
Filed November 5, 2008 4:10 PM.

Like the proverbial frog boiled slowly to death, the parents unable to see how much their child has grown in the past year having watched that growing day-to-day, I'd similarly totally missed the fact that Cyan's office has somehow gradually become a complete and total shit-hole.

Granted, it wasn't great to begin with. Having outgrown our prior office, but with more hiring on the not-too-distant horizon, we needed a temporary space to hole up. Hence our current digs, which are indeed cool (in the Village, with a gated courtyard, and very high ceilings), but completely ill-suited (it was built as a loft apartment, not an office) and already a tight fit when we moved in.

Because we knew we wouldn't be here permanently, we skimped on setting it up in the first place. And it's gone downhill since. Our conference table chairs (West Elm) have cracked sufficiently that a giant splinter from one recently tore a hole in the ass of my suit pants. The white walls have slowly scuffed to gray. Piles of files, DVDs, trailers, and posters have sprung up like fungus. And, speaking of fungus, the entire place has started to smell a bit, in a way vaguely reminiscent of a frat house basement.

So, even though we think we're only here for another half year, tops, I've now reached the point where I can't even stand to look at this for many days more, much less weeks or months.

A painter's swinging by tomorrow morning to give us a quote, we're weighing options for replacement chairs and lights, and we're considering where we might hang the Cyan movie posters we'd long been holding off on framing.

And, even after all of that, it probably still won't be good. But, at least, it won't be a painful embarrassment whenever anyone stops by. Which, at the moment, would be a pretty big improvement.

502
Filed October 7, 2008 2:58 PM.

A few years ago, concerned about the number of film shoots heading up to Canada, the US Congress included a smart provision in the Jobs Creation Act, Section 181, which made investing in independent films in the US a 100% tax write-off until dollar back.

This should have been huge. But because Congress did a really terrible job of informing the film industry about the change, it didn't seem to have much impact. At least until just recently, when in the last year or two some of us in the indie film finance world started to catch on. And, just when we did, we also discovered that the provision was set to expire at the end of this year.

At Sundance last year, our VP of Finance, Alex Burns, spent some time saying as much, while on a panel about film finance. Then, at a party that evening, he ran into several folks from the MPAA.

"Oh," they said. "Cyan Pictures. You guys are the ones leading the push to extend Section 181, right?"

To which Alex responded, "uh... absolutely."

So that's how we got tied, unintentionally, into congressional lobbying. And that's also why I nearly wet my pants with excitement when I learned that, tucked deep into last week's bail-out bill, way in on page 298, was Section 502., Provisions Related to Film and Television Productions.

Not only does that provision extend the 181 write-off for another year, it also includes clarifying language that makes explicitly permissible some of the more arcane tax structure stuff we've been doing here at Cyan over the past 18 months.

Which is good, because, as one of our attorneys said at the time, it's the kind of stuff you want to discuss carefully now, lest you get to discuss it for three to five years later on.

Bail
Filed October 5, 2008 11:33 AM.

So, the bail out.

The thing about unregulated markets is, on the one hand, they really are the most efficient economic system. But, on the other hand, that efficiency comes at two kinds of costs: screwing some bottom segment of the population on an ongoing basis (c.f., the percentage uninsured in the US insurance system), and screwing some now outdated segment of the population during any transition (c.f. US auto workers as we increasingly outsourced manufacturing).

Basically, then, US economic policy is a balancing game between two competing desires: we want our system to be efficient, but we also want it to be 'fair', by which we mean that we want to somehow protect any of those bottom segments and transitional segments we see getting screwed.

And, last week, it became clear that the segment getting screwed during the current transition was, more or less, all of us. A whole lot of different factors had made the financial system into a total mess, and letting the market work that mess back out (which, indeed, it would, eventually) would have probably led to a massive recession, huge unemployment, and a lot of other similar stuff we'd much prefer to avoid in the process.

So, in essence, who we were bailing out was not just some guys on Wall Street, but ourselves. If we wanted to avoid all that ugly recession / unemployment / etc. stuff, we didn't have much choice.

Of course, there are better and worse ways to handle things, and I suspect highly that Paulson's investment banking background and ties led him to a bail-out approach that's messier than it needs to be, and one that relatively few economists favor.

The bill that just passed gives the government the ability to buy bad assets from banks. As NPR's Adam Davidson analogized, that would be sort of like giving the government the right to come in and buy the junk from your basement.

The other, and in my opinion smarter, approach, would be a stock injection plan. Instead of letting the government buy the bad assets from banks, it would instead let the government buy a part of the banks themselves. This one, by Davidson's analogy, like giving the government the right to actually buy part of the house. And then possibly to move in.

In the first case, we face a sticky short-term question - how much is a basement full of junk worth? In the current crisis, if we pay too much for banks' bad assets, we flush money down the drain; if we pay too little, we don't save the banks.

In the second case, however, we don't have to figure out a price for the junk, and we already know the price for pieces of the bank - it's called the stock price. Further, because of a number of complicated issues (like capital requirements), a single dollar spent in a stock injection probably equals many more - as many as twelve dollars - spent in buying bad assets. And finally, as when we did something similar a few weeks ago with AIG, owning a big chunk of a bank would let us shit-can the CEO and other management, limit executive pay, and generally effect the sort of 'you get what's coming' justice that most Americans think would make a lot of sense.

Though, and here's the part that bothers me, it probably makes less sense to you if all of those CEOs and execs are your long-time friends and golf-buddies, which is to say if you're Hank Paulson.

Therefore, our bill mainly provides for that first kind of 'buy the junk' bailout.

Though, at the same time, tucked deep inside the actual bill - a much revised 451-page expansion of Paulson's original three-page draft - are a couple of sections (106, 107 and 113) that would also give the treasury secretary the right to take the second, smarter, better for taxpayers but less good for bank executives, stock-injection plan.

I'm not sure if there's anything we the people can do to convince Paulson to take that path. And I'm not even sure if electing Obama would mean a new Treasury Secretary, one who might be more likely to err towards that more populist approach.

But, either way, even if we just take the 'buy the junk' approach, it's something we should all be happy about. Because, otherwise, we're left solely to a market solution, and all of us are totally screwed during the transition.

We'd be to this current financial meltdown as Flint, Michigan is to globalization. Which, if you've seen Roger & Me, you know would totally suck.

Get Naked
Filed September 25, 2008 12:08 PM.

Given my job, and my dorky financial background, I've been following the public market meltdown fairly carefully.

As have Jess, my friends, my colleagues, and my relatives. Yet, when I talk to most of them, they seem to be following only the surface details. They don't fully grasp what a CDO or CDS really is, much less what the underlying causes of the chaos might be.

Blame for which, I think, falls at the feet of financial journalists. Sure, explaining complicated financial concepts and structures is difficult. But that's exactly what they're supposed to be doing: breaking jargon down to plain English, in a way that allows people to actually, fundamentally understand what's going on.

So, as a bit of public service, let me take a quick stab at a concept several people have asked me about of late: naked shorts. If this works, and if there's reader interest, I'd also be happy to circle back to explain other concepts that seem similarly confusing.

So, naked shorts.

As most people know, 'shorting' or 'short selling' a stock essentially means betting against that stock. In other words, when you buy a stock the usual way (called going 'long' on that stock), you're betting that the value of the stock will go up. If you buy the stock for $10, the price goes up and you sell it for $15, you'd make $5.

A short, then, is the exact opposite. If you invest when the stock is at $10, and pull your investment back out when the stock has dropped to $5, you'd similarly make a $5 profit.

Most people, however, are also entirely unclear on how that actually can work. So, to illustrate, let's talk about your car, rather than a stock.

Imagine that you own a car. Then imagine that, for a small fee, you let me borrow that car from you.

So far so good. Now imagine that I sell your borrowed car for $10,000. A year later, say I want to give you your car back. So, I go on Craig's List, and I find the same make and model. Only, by now, it's selling for just $5,000. Which is excellent for me, since I can buy the car and give it back to you for $5,000, then pocket the $5,000 difference between that and the original sales price.

Voila. I just 'shorted' your car.

What, then, is a 'naked' short? Basically, the exact same thing. Except without borrowing the car first.

Of course, if I do that with cars, instead of 'naked shorting', it's called 'fraud'. I just sold you something I don't actually own.

In the financial markets, however, it makes at least a little sense.

If I buy the car from you, you have to actually deliver it to me. And then if I sell it again to somebody else, I have to deliver it to him or her next. With cars, that isn't a problem, as people tend to own them for a while. But with stocks, it's entirely possible for the same share to be bought and sold and bought and sold countless times in a single day. So before stock trading went digital, actually delivering all of the stock certificates back and forth any time someone shorted a stock was doubtless a pain in the ass.

In that situation, a naked short made sense. Better to wait a couple of days to see who the ultimate holder of those stock certificates would be before loading up the wheelbarrow and sending them over.

Plus, in ye olde stock market, buyers and sellers were actual people, who traded back and forth with each other every day, and who therefore had ongoing relationships and a basis for interpersonal trust.

In a digital world, that network of trust is largely gone, and the underlying rationale - saving the work of transfering physical stock certicates - no longer makes any sense. Yet the practice persists - or, at least, did so until it was banned last week.

In all honesty, I suspect the actual impact of naked shorts has been oversold, and that they did relatively little to contribute to our current mess. But they do make a great example of, and can serve as a kind of microcosm for, the current crisis.

Because, it turns out, bringing old financial practices into a new, digital world, a world that no longer maintains direct relationships between buyers and sellers or lenders and borrowers, and doing so without carefully re-looking at the new implications of those old practices, is a recipe for all kinds of disaster.

Avast
Filed September 19, 2008 1:28 PM.

Ahoy! It be International Talk Like A Pirate Day! Shiver me timbers!

And what better time be than this to recall the greatest pirate of all time, and the patron saint of all entrepreneurs, Blackbeard.

Ay, Blackbeard. And if ye don't believe he was true an entrepeneur, observe the only records recovered from the Adventure, his fine yet sunken craft:

Such a day, rum all out- Our company somewhat sober- A damned confusion amongst us !- Rogues a-plotting - Great talk of separation- so I looked sharp for a prize- Such a day found one with a great deal of liquor on board, so kept the company hot, damned hot, then things went well again.

Arrr, that be running a startup indeed! Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me...

More Waiting
Filed July 17, 2008 5:27 PM.

In the perennial Cyan fundraise, once again stuck in a patch of waiting for high-net-worth investors to move their money.

As my VP of Development commented today, they may be liquid, but they seem to be very high viscosity.

Down to Business
Filed June 27, 2008 2:30 PM.

When I first met Jess, she was serving as the head of marketing and de facto COO of Liz Lange Maternity, a high end fashion brand. She had been there for nearly seven years, from when the company was still pretty much brand new, by the time it was acquired last November by a large private equity fund.

So, she took that company transition as a chance to step out herself, and start looking for other opportunities.

Pretty quickly, it became clear she was talking to basically two categories of companies: large ones, where they were eager to hire her, but where she was less eager to actually work; and small ones (with annual sales under, say, $5m), who were also eager to hire her, and with whom Jess was excited to work, except for their inability to actually pay a salary.

From the beginning, I suggested that she consider launching a consulting firm, the idea being that there were a lot of those little, sub-$5m companies that had bootstrapped their way to success, but had started topping out, and desperately needed strategic, marketing, financial and operational assistance.

Jess, however, was against the idea, mainly on the grounds that she was convinced she'd never find any companies willing to actually hire her as a consultant.

But, it turns out, she didn't need to, because companies started finding her.

By now, JG & Co. (at the moment, the '& Co.' being me) has signed on a slew of clients, including great brands like Lucy Sykes (WASPy-cute kids clothing), Lauren Moffatt (a quirky contemporary clothing line), and Hayden-Harnett (bags, etc.).

More companies keep popping out of the woodwork, too, and so Jess is now trying to figure out how many she can handle, and if she needs a real '& Co.' that ideally includes people who (unlike me) have at least some vague idea about the business of fashion.

Still, I couldn't be prouder of her. I know, first-hand, how hard and stressful and nerve-wracking it is to get a company off the ground, and have been constantly impressed by seeing her handle it all with grace and aplomb.

I always wanted a sugar-mamma.

True Story
Filed April 15, 2008 6:22 PM.

During the second world war, a reconnaissance group of soldiers became lost in the Alps on a training mission. It was winter, they had no maps, and they seemed hopelessly lost.

They were preparing to die, when one soldier found a map crushed down at the bottom of his pack. With the map in hand, they regained their courage, bivouacked for the night, and proceeded out of the mountains the next day to rescue.

Only when they were recuperating in the main camp did someone notice that the map they had been using wasn't a map of the Alps at all; it was a map of the Pyrenees.

When you are lost, any map will do.

Updates
Filed April 11, 2008 6:07 PM.

Still alive, still busy as f*ck, still essentially working two full-time jobs.

Latest bit of CFNYC news: the CrossFit hype continues, with cover stories the past two weeks in Men's Journal and Muscle & Fitness.

Latest bit of Cyan news: looks like we just locked worldwide distribution rights to the film adaptation of Interpreter of Maladies.

No sleep till Brooklyn.

Oh Give Me a Home
Filed March 17, 2008 5:50 PM.

Though we've been searching for a new space for CrossFit NYC for some time (having even previously appealed to you all for help - thanks David and Chris!), we're still no closer to actually moving.

As of today, it appears our third almost-home is falling through at the contract stage. This time, the landlord suddenly realized that a gym involves members coming and going - in other words, foot traffic - and decided he didn't really want such a populous use of the space.

So, though we've managed to extend by legal wrangling the lease in our current location to April 30th (no mean feat, given we previously knocked down our downstairs neighbors' ceiling), the countdown's on.

Add in Cyan and wedding planning, and the ulcer countdown is doubtless on, too.

Double Duty
Filed March 10, 2008 12:45 PM.

I'm bossy. Very, very bossy.

At least, I assume I must be. Because I have the bad habit of taking increasingly demanding leadership roles in any organization with which I get involved.

Take, for example, the gym, CrossFit NYC. As one of the four founders, my role was largely fiscal (bankrolling the first year of startup) and ceremonial (teaching a handful of classes each week). But, with some recent personnel drama, and the growing sense that CFNYC could actually be very, very big (given our explosive membership growth over the past few months), it seems I'm now stepping things up, and becoming Managing Director.

Which is on top of Cyan, and everything we're working on here. I haven't pimped Cyan's activities much of late, as after an over-slow 2007 I've been waiting for significant, concrete progress rather than vaporware to point to. But suffice it to say that we're making surprisingly big strides on a lot of fronts - from a five-film slate to a $200m film hedge fund - that should make 2008 a considerably more exciting year.

And by 'exciting', I mainly mean 'time consuming'. Two full time jobs, planning a wedding, heavy drinking. I think I'm going to have to go back to giving up sleeping and going to the bathroom to make it all fit.

Lazyweb
Filed March 3, 2008 5:31 PM.

Though poor Jess is now laid out with a cold (caught on the tail end of our immuno-supressed flu state; she's predicting AIDS next on the rotation), I'm (for the time being, at least) feeling good, and working hard.

I am, however, pulling out my hair a bit on CrossFit NYC's ongoing space search. In short, thanks to explosive membership growth, we're now bursting at the seams in our current location, and though we've been searching hard for a suitable new home, we've mostly been coming up blank.

Our requirements:

3000 sft or more;
$10-12k a month;
allowed to build in showers / locker rooms;
able to jump around and drop weights without bothering downstairs neighbors (whether that means basement or ground floor, or just an upper-floor light industrial space);
and, centrally located with good subway access (we're currently at 38th and 6th, which is just about perfect).

A laundry list, I know. But, if you have any hot leads, I'd hugely appreciate an email, as I'm pretty sure bald isn't my look.

Bigger and Blacker
Filed November 19, 2007 6:18 PM.

About three years ago, I started doing CrossFit workouts, following the free routines posted daily on the crossfit.com website. They were brief, they were intense, and they worked. I made faster progress in far less time than with anything else I had tried. I was hooked.

About two and a half years back, I started getting together with a couple of other idiots who had tried this CrossFit thing, for monthly workouts in Central Park. Misery loves company, and I quickly found I had more fun, pushed myself far harder, when working out with a group.

When the weather turned cold, we found a small gym on the Upper East Side that would let us, for ten bucks a head, use their space for our group workouts. A few more people heard about it and joined in, and they, too, made fast, significant progress. People would walk in the door unable to do a pullup, and six months later they'd be doing sets of twenty. Other clients at the gym, who over the same stretch of time might have moved up one notch on the lat pulldown machine, would leave their private trainers to work out with us instead. Then, fairly predictably, the trainers would get the owner to ask us to leave.

Lather, rinse, repeat. We lived through that find a place, grow the group, inadvertently steal clients, get kicked out cycle five times. After which, we were just bright enough to start seeing a pattern.

So, back in January of this year, we opened up a space of our own, the Black Box, just below Times Square. It was only 1500 square feet, up on the fourth floor of an old building. I cash-flowed the place myself, unsure whether it was a really dumb idea to have just opened a gym, unsure of whether anyone might actually show up.

But show up they did. And so did their friends. People would get results and brag about it, and now, ten months later and with zero advertising, we have more than a hundred members and nowhere near enough space.

My brother David very kindly took some time out of running his real estate development company to play unpaid broker, and helped find us a new space. We're still trading lease documents back and forth, but by December 15th we're hoping to be in our new home.

This second Black Box is nearly six times the size, and on the ground floor (which is good, as we inadvertently knocked down part of our downstairs neighbors' ceiling in our current space with all of our jumping around). This time through, the stakes are higher. And so is the rent. I'm equally unsure whether opening this considerably larger space will turn out to be a really dumb idea.

But, as they say in CrossFit: get some, go again.

Trading Places
Filed November 13, 2007 4:30 PM.

A few months ago, I had lunch with my friend Daniel Adamson, who runs the very intriguing (to me, at least) Blue Funds. The company, in short, manages a family of mutual funds that invest in public companies that both 'act blue' (meet a list of social and environmental responsibility requirements) and 'give blue' (give at least 50% of their campaign contributions to democrat candidates). It turns out - both in historical back-testing, and the first year of actual investing - that these companies handily outperform the S&P. So, they're succeeding on sort of a triple bottom line.

Anyway, he spent lunch telling me about his company and what they have planned for the next year or so, and I told him about what we're doing at Cyan, the First Cut Film Series, and some bigger institutional financing things we're brewing up (both a tax-arb production fund, and a capital-protected distribution fund).

By the end of lunch, we both wanted leave our own companies to work for the other's. Which, it seems, happens almost every time I meet up with another young entrepreneur.

The reason, I think, is that entrepreneurs tend to thrive on hope, on possibility. We get excited about new ideas, about big-picture innovation. And when you're hearing about someone else's projects, all you have to think about is that fun, strategic, high-level stuff.

But then you go back to your own company, where you have to worry about cash-flow and execution and all of the detail that actually makes or breaks a company. Which, frankly, often sucks in the doing, the day to day.

I still haven't figured out a way to reconcile the two. But I have, at least, penciled in a few times a week for me to sit down and formally re-pitch myself Cyan's plans, the big-picture fun stuff that we're trying to achieve. It doesn't spare me the pain of executing, but it does, most of the time, get me re-excited about why I'm doing it in the first place.

On the Road
Filed October 2, 2007 6:18 PM.

Off to the University of Rochester early tomorrow morning, where I'll be giving a speech cleverly titled "Get Off Your Ass: Start a Company (and Avoid a 'Real Job')" as 'inspirational keynote' of the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour's stop there.

That's right. The Extreeeeeeeeme Entrepreneurship Tour. Like the X Games of motivational college speaking.

Don't worry, mom, I'll wear a helmet.

"Humor"
Filed September 12, 2007 2:22 PM.

This clause was in a contract Cyan just finished drafting:

14) Headings. The headings of the paragraphs of this Note are inserted for convenience only and shall not be deemed to constitute a part hereof.

We therefore changed the clause to read:

14) Fishsticks. The headings of the paragraphs of this Note are inserted for convenience only and shall not be deemed to constitute a part hereof.

I am embarrassed to say we then laughed so hard as to almost wet ourselves.

Yes, we are losers.

Fundraising
Filed August 31, 2007 2:29 PM.

"Lack of money is the root of all evil."
- George Bernard Shaw

For the Money
Filed August 23, 2007 4:04 PM.

Earlier this week, I headed out to dinner with my brother David, his business partner, and an investor they knew, who was possibly interested in putting some money into Cyan's next project.

The investor owned some nightclubs, and was therefore an alcoholic. So, after dinner, he suggested we all grab a round of drinks nearby. And then another round. And then another.

My brother and his partner, at that point, wisely bowed out. But I could tell the guy was sizing me up, trying to see if I could, as the kids say, bring it.

So, I kept on drinking. And he kept on drinking. And, when we parted some hours later, it was with much increased mutual respect.

Or so I assume. Actually, by that point, I had totally blacked out.

I'm not entirely sure how I made it home, though Jess tells me I came in the door talking gibberish and laughing hysterically, barely able to stand.

But the next morning, I woke up feeling great. I wasn't hung over at all!

Instead, I soon discovered, I was still drunk. Still totally, plastered drunk.

It's a miracle I didn't fall onto the subway tracks on my way to work. I could barely type once I arrived. But I still felt fine. Until about 11:00am, when I suddenly and violently crossed out of drunk, and into terribly, horribly hung over.

For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, we have a small ironing board in our office at the moment. Which, it turned out, is precisely the right size and height for use as a pillow when lying on the floor, something I preceded to do for the next hour and a half.

I rallied in time for a business lunch, which I managed without tossing my cookies in the restaurant bathroom (something, unfortunately, I did last year in a similar situation), though I was otherwise utterly worthless the rest of the day - couldn't write emails, answer the phone, or even focus on a piece of paper well enough to read.

Still, it looks like the investor will be coming through, and may even be bringing the deal around to a couple of his angel investing friends. So, in the end, as I told a friend yesterday afternoon, happy as ever to take one for the proverbial team.

He pointed out that approach, essentially, made me a whore.

To which I replied, no no, given the amount of money we're talking about, I'm fairly certain I qualify as an 'escort'.

Contingencies
Filed April 23, 2007 2:36 PM.

Everything, apparently, hinges on everything else. Which is how a handful of minor delays and small problems can cascade their way to a slew of disasters that consume months with non-stop firefighting.

Or, at least, that's how things have been going here of late. Fortunately, looks like all the flames are nearly extinguished, and I'm still holding my breath. Here's hoping I end this all no worse scathed than thickly covered with soot.

Back to it.

Update!

As hoped, I survived this latest stretch of standard startup-wrangling disaster with company, sanity and personal relationships all fortunately and firmly in tact. Regular blogging now to continue apace.

Hurry Up and Wait
Filed April 5, 2007 5:02 PM.

People often ask me what I actually do as CEO of a small company. In short: fundraise. First for seed capital to turn the notional company into something real. Then for more capital to keep the young company moving ahead while its expenses still outpace its income. And then, once the company turns profitable, for capital to fund expansion, to underwrite the large new projects that drive growth.

And, frankly, fundraising sucks. Not least of all because you have to ask people to give you large sums of money. But also because, even when they want to, you're still a far, far back priority to the main concerns of their own lives.

So, in short, you wait. You wait for emails and calls and faxed contracts. And you balance a 'squeaky wheel gets the grease' tack with the knowledge that if you pester them too much, they're more likely to wash their hands of the whole thing, rather than cough up cash.

Even once papers are signed, things are often no better: by then, you're waiting for their wire to arrive, obsessively reloading the online banking site.

And, the whole time, bills pile up, along with demands for that still-not-arrived money, money that you can't really make arrive any faster than it is. But, since you're the middle man, the face that they see, people tell you again and again to do the impossible: to make all of this process, which moves on investor time, move instantly, on their time instead.

That said, if it's the film business, then at least once every couple of months you get to walk down a red carpet somewhere. So it's all worth it. It's all worth it. Or, at least, that's what you repeat to yourself, like a mantra, as you reload, reload, reload Chase and WaMu.com.

Aural Abuse
Filed February 28, 2007 5:13 PM.

It's 5:12pm, and I still haven't had lunch, as thus far today I've been on the phone for a total of 6 hours, 21 minutes.

Can you hear me now, indeed.

Like a Blind Date
Filed December 20, 2006 5:39 PM.

I've been going to a bunch of biz dev meetings of late, with people I've previously only met via email. And, inevitably, just before such meetings, I end up standing at the front of the restaurant or coffee shop, looking at each middle aged man coming in the door, trying to divine whether he looks like a DVD distributor, casting director or foreign sales agent I'd be meeting.

Ninety percent of the time, oddly, I get it right. Oh, I think. Of course he's the guy I'm meeting. But the other ten percent, I don't have a clue. So, five or ten minutes after the appointed hour, I start asking anyone standing around, from most likely candidate to least, whether they're Bob or Ted or Chris. Usually, I don't get it right until the fifth or sixth ask. And, on each I get wrong, the guy who isn't Bob or Ted or Chris quickly and vigorously explains that I've most definitely got the wrong guy. It took me a while to realize, from the weird face they also give me at the time, that they're assuming I'm not looking for a potential business partnership, but rather for a discreet tryst with an older sugar daddy I've met somehow on Craig's List.

Just one of the many dangerous side effects, it seems, of dressing filmmaker-hip business casual.

Talk to Me
Filed November 5, 2006 7:00 PM.

This Wednesday evening, I head off to Paris for a long weekend with Jess.

But, before I do, I train up to Connecticut to keynote the next stop of the Extreme Entrepreneur Tour, which brings "the world's top young entrepreneurs to college campuses". Ah, how disappointed these kids will be to get me instead.

(As an aside, the tour is spearheaded by Michael Simmons and his wife Sheena Lindahl, who were just named to this year's BusinessWeek's Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25. The final ranking is vote-driven, and I personally vouch for these two as more than worthy of the top slot, so go cast your ballot in their favor.)

For the keynote, I'm apparently supposed to babble for forty-five minutes or so about how to start companies and take over the world. But, as of this evening, I don't actually have anything prepared. So, armed with a legal pad, a fountain pen, my keen insights and biting wit, I've sat down to map out a rough outline of the wisdom I can pass along.

In the process, I flashed on a clear image of the last time I gave a similar talk, a few years back, to a group of Ivy League business school students. And I started out that talk by telling the students they were older and smarter and more experienced than I, and that they shouldn't really even be listening to what someone like me was saying. During which, every single one of them was dutifully writing down in their notebooks "don't listen to what this guy is saying..."

As my suggestions of skepticism seemed to have little impact then, this time through, I'm falling back on one of the wisest poets I know, Dr. Seuss, for a poem that should hopefully more clearly set the tone. As it's one of my personal favorites, and a great one to keep in mind as you slog ahead through any life path, I'm copyimg it here below:

My Uncle Terwilliger on the Art of Eating Popovers

My uncle ordered popovers
From the restaurant bill of fare.
And, when they were served, he regarded them
with a penetrating stare...
Then he spoke great Words of Wisdom
as he sat there on that chair:
"To eat these things," said my uncle,
"You must exercise great care.
You may swallow down what's solid...
BUT... you must spit out the air!"

And... as you partake of the world's bill of fare,
that's darned good advice to follow.
Do a lot of spitting out the hot air.
And be careful what you swallow

Darned good advice to follow, indeed.

For the Film Biz Dorks
Filed October 24, 2006 8:04 PM.

A quick note for all aspiring film entrepeneurs in New York City:

The Institute for International Film Financing, based in San Francisco, is now branching out to our fair city. It's a great group in which to network with other business-minded film folks, and their inaugural NYC event this Thursday evening has an impressive lineup of speakers. Plus, me.

I'll be talking about finding and seducing investors, and I promise the talk itself is far better than the name (which I didn't come up with myself), "THE FILM ENTREPRENEUR'S GUIDE TO SUCCESS: Strategies for Funding Your Film Co & Keeping Investors Happy".

Other folks will be talking about deal structure, courting hedge funds, tax credits, profitably distributing documentaries, and approaching film investment from a quantitative perspective.

While I realize most of you fell asleep even just reading that last sentence, I also don't doubt there are a handful of folks who wet their pants a little bit at the prospect of that lineup. If you're one of them, come on down, and certainly pop over to say hello.

Cohabitation
Filed October 17, 2006 6:22 PM.

Rob Barnum, who heads up Cyan's West Coast office, arrives in town early early early tomorrow morning via JetBlue red-eye, with his fiance Sophie in tow.

On past such trips, with both of us decidedly more single, and with our company equally bastardly cheap, Rob opted out of hotel booking, instead taking over my living room's fold-out couch.

So, out of old habit, we didn't book him somewhere to stay at the time he booked his flight for this trip, about a month or so back. We thought nothing of it, until late last week, when we realized that wedging a nearly-married couple along with me into my Manhattan-size apartment would, in short, be remarkably, awkwardly cramped.

So, for the balance of the week, I'm essentially gifting my home to those two crazy kids, and invading Jess' instead. It will be, by far, the longest contiguous stretch of nights she's had to put up with me; I give it four nights, tops, before my insisting on alternative pronunciations of words like 'equinox' leads her to punch me in the face.

Update: Jess texted to say she wouldn't punch me in the face. She'd kick me instead.

Easy IPO
Filed September 19, 2006 7:14 PM.

The girl is head of marketing for a high-end maternity-wear company; as such, I got a chance to visit their New York boutique, and was quite impressed by the stylish pairs of women's jeans stocked there, with top few inches of fabric retofitted with stretch spandex.

And while, certainly, the market for such pregnancy-friendly women's clothing is well documented, I'm convinced a men's version of those same jeans could easily become the anchor of a similarly succesful product line.

Consider this: you've just eaten Thanskgiving dinner, or an overly generous mid-summer helping of baby back ribs. Your pants are uncomfortably snug around the waist. If only your jeans were able to stretch accomodatingly around your distended stomach. If only, in short, you were wearing a pair of of Eatin' Pants(tm).

Despite what seems to me a compelling business case, the girl remains unwilling to jump ship from her current job to launch such a no-fail startup. So, entrepreneurs of the internet, I gift this concept to you. All I ask in return is a free pair from the sample run. 30" length; 29" waist before I start eating, and perhaps 36" after a third helping of turkey, stuffing and cranberry come November 24th.

Professionalism
Filed July 31, 2006 3:30 PM.

Annotated last paragraph of an email from me to the CEO of a successful digital distribution company:

That said, I'd be happy to meet up for drinks, though would also love to get you on the phone with [San Francisco-based Cyan VP] Josh [Pincus] at some point, as he's our point-man for all things digital. Would Wednesday or Friday afternoon work for a call? And, sometime next week for a round of drinks?

Last paragraph of the CEO's reponse:

As for drinks, my drinking schedule is COMPLETELY OPEN next week, and I am ashamed. Monday at 8:30 AM EST before work?

Then, capping it all off, an email to both of us from Josh Pincus:

A call at that time on Wednesday works for me. Drinks sound good too; I'll be at a bar at 5:30 AM Monday so that we're all drinking at the same time.

other Josh

Worst part is, come Monday at 5:30/8:30 AM, there's at least a 50% chance we'll actually be having those drinks.

Cyan Pictures: we take this shit serious.™

Things I Hate
Filed April 12, 2006 10:38 AM.

7:00am Breakfast Meetings

Leveraged
Filed February 8, 2006 1:27 PM.

Nearly nine years back, I and a college friend named David Fischer started up a database software company called SharkByte.

It grew faster than we expected, and, in the process, he and I had to write lots and lots and lots of RFP's for potential clients. These pitch documents are mind-numbing to write for the first few, and then get progressively worse from there. So for each one, we'd try to invent a new buzzword.

Inevitably, when we'd go in to pitch the client live, they'd quote back our invented word like it was in common usage, happy to agree with our utterly meaningless, but highly technical-sounding, assessment.

Over time, a few of those invented buzzwords became favorites, appearing in long successive strings of RFPs and other documents. At the top of the heap was 'core technology fulcrum' (as in "we believe the software interface will allow you to leverage your company's core technology fulcrum."), which never failed to land the deal, and which I still occasionally use.

Yesterday, however, David emailed along this informational gem:

Newman,

Was reading the 2003 edition of A Random Walk Down Wall Street and what do I see on page 61 but the phrase "core technology fulcrum" mentioned as a nonsense phrase invented in the 60s conglomerate craze.

Clearly genius is destined to repeat itself.

Indeed.

Note to Self
Filed December 13, 2005 8:24 PM.

One of Long Tail's investors just doubled down on our second round; after his wire hit, he sent along this email, summarizing the secret of entrepreneurial success in five sentences:

Stay focused and attack your plan. We grew from $3 million to $165 million in sales over 15 years. Step by step. Intense focus. Blocking and tackling, innovating, executing.

I know you can make it happen.

best,

Mike

Intervention
Filed October 14, 2005 8:05 AM.

This is what you get for hiring smart-asses:

From: Rob Barnum
Subject: Intervention

Josh-

Our relationship takes on many forms: business partners, CrossFit devotees, dot com escapees, an Old Testament microcosm, co-blimp pilots, bloggers, friends…you get the idea.

But, my good chap, when you blog about company business and then accidentally link to some unknown weblog (www.blure.com?) rather than our animation partner, it makes us all look bad. From both a blog-brotherhood standpoint as well as a company.

Since today is a day of prayer, think about it.

You really let us down.

Rob

Undisclosed
Filed July 11, 2005 10:41 AM.

Back in my venture capital days, I saw and signed a slew of NDA's, or non-disclosure agreements, which guaranteed that, as a signee, I wouldn't steal a company's ideas and try to pass them off as my own.

Running Cyan, I almost never saw an NDA - literary releases, perhaps, but rarely something that guaranteed the secrecy of abstractly discussed ideas for running a business. Since starting Long Tail a few months back, however, those NDAs have returned to my life in full force. My desk is littered with them, and my fax machine buzzes with incoming and outgoing signed copies throughout the day.

Long Tail, on the other hand, doesn't have an NDA of its own. In part because, from a legal standpoint, most aren't worth the paper they're printed on. But mainly because I don't think business ideas themselves are worth all that much. The best way to protect a good idea, by far, is to execute it, really, really well.

As we've been lining up vendor partnerships for digital release of Long Tail's content, many of the NDA's I've signed recently cover aspects of selling movies over the internet. Yet, I suspect, most reasonably bright eight year olds could come up with the same concept: "Hey! You know what would be great? You should be able to buy movies online like you buy MP3s!!"

No shit. But saying as much doesn't make it so. Instead, you have to somehow piece together an endless array of servers and bandwidth and software and content partnerships, top it off with some special sauce, and then get your downloads out into the world. Doing so, as you might imagine, takes ungodly amounts of work. Which, in short, is why Long Tail is partnering with digital download vendors in the first place: the millions of dollars and thousands of hours of sweat equity these companies put in to making movie downloads work will doubtless yield far better solutions than my colleagues and I could half-assedly cobble together in-house in our spare time.

So, send me your NDA. I'm happy to sign it. I'll even use my good pen. But if you think that piece of paper brings you even one step closer to changing the world or retiring young to the Bahamas, you're out of your mind. While you and your lawyers were drafting up that NDA, moving commas and reworking clauses, somebody else was busy instead making the same idea into a reality. And that's the person we're going to partner with. Because, odds are, they're about to kick your ass.

[Post-script: about three minutes after I put this online, another "fully executed" NDA just rolled out of my fax machine. The timeliness of Self-Aggrandizement entries never ceases to amaze.]

Vestmented
Filed May 10, 2005 5:35 PM.

[As running two companies seems to have been eating into my writing time, blog entry ideas have been piling up, unposted, for the past week. I'm hoping to start chipping my way through the list over the next few days. To wit:]

Mark Twain once famously observed, "clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." Which is the primary reason I get dressed in the morning. And, more to the point, why I try to do it well.

As countless studies have shown, the way we dress deeply impacts what others think of us, how likely they are to listen to us or to do what we ask. Sure, we all occasionally chastise ourselves for so blithely judging books by their proverbial covers. But, whether or not we should, we most certainly and subconsciously do. Which makes pulling clothes from the closet a strategic exercise. How does a given shirt make me feel? How does it make me appear in the eyes of others?

It's important enough that, spending my days the past week bouncing between meetings with filmmakers and meetings with investors and corporate execs, I've even stooped to mid-afternoon changes, pulling from two disparate subsets of my wardrobe.

Most business books, on the subject of clothing, advise that you dress to match the people with whom you're meeting. Which, like most advice doled out in business books, is hopelessly misguided. Far better, instead, to dress to match their expectations of how someone in your position is 'supposed' to look.

The jeans, blazer and vintage button downs, then, come out not for the filmmakers, but for the staid execs, a group for whom sunglasses worn indoors bespeaks a certain desirable level of cool, rather than suggesting total douche-bagdom, as it would to fellow filmmakers. Similarly, then, the suits come out for meetings with screenwriters or prospective key cast. Without a tie, certainly, and perhaps erring towards DKNY shirts rather than Polo Ralph Lauren's, but still formal enough to say, "yes, I'm intimately familiar with the finer points of GAAP and SEC filing laws."

This 'dress like they want you to' rule is not a recent discovery. Instead, it's something I stumbled across my freshman year in college. Having just launched SharkByte, I quickly found that the odds of success in a new-client sales pitch were directly proportional to the number of electronic gizmos I clipped to my belt for that pitch.

Or, as I so tastefully summarized the idea to the Wall Street Journal: "show them a laptop and they'll wet their pants."

Burn Baby Burn
Filed April 7, 2005 12:26 AM.

Prior to launching Long Tail, I'd begun to forget what it's like to run a startup.

Sure, I've been slogging ahead non-stop with Cyan for a couple of years, but in many ways that's been a markedly different experience. Because movie production largely works on a project-by-project basis, nearly all of my mental energy has been focused on the details of individual films, rather than on Cyan as a whole.

That's especially true with fundraising, as - aside from a small chunk of seed capital at the very start - we haven't raised money for Cyan itself, instead working to align financing directly for the films Cyan produces.

As a result, fundraising is a fairly static, separate phase of each Cyan project. Knowing a film costs $2m, we can push ahead with courting investors until that $2m is in the bank, then switch over to operations, to actually making the movie.

With Long Tail - as with most startups - fundraising is instead ongoing, simultaneous to actually running the company, alongside acquiring and releasing and marketing films. It's a bit like bailing water from a leaky ship, constantly trying to stay one step ahead of a rising puddle of costs.

That puddle - and the speed with which it accumulates - is known in the business world as the burn rate. In short, a company's burn rate is the amount of cash needed to fund operations for one additional day. With at least that much in the bank, the startup pushes ahead for another 24 hours; below it, and it's game over, no matter how well things are going otherwise.

Which is why, as a startup's CEO, no matter what else your job description entails, you're first and foremost a fundraiser. You line up incoming investment money, and watch it flow back out, ideally watching it flow ever more slowly as the company's revenue picks up the slack and pushes to break-even, to the point where revenue alone is enough to cover the burn.

Which makes startup fundraising doubly frustrating; you're not just concerned about the amount of money raised, but also about the speed at which it rolls in.

Over the last two weeks, Long Tail has signed on another $60k of investments, bringing us close to closing out our seed round. But while that new money is there on paper, it's not yet in the bank. And without feeling the urgency of burn first hand, the investors behind the cash inevitably take their own sweet time in actually sending out their wires.

So, for most of this week, instead of blogging, I've been obsessively checking bank balances online to note any incoming fund arrivals, and paraphrasing Popeye's Wimpy to vendors - we'll gladly pay them Tuesday for DVD duplication today.

It isn't much fun. Particularly because it's all so very close to working, and yet so very far, all at once. And because letting it stop us now would be a bit like surviving a long open-ocean swim towards dry land, and then drowning in the last two feet of water.

We don't even need to swim this last little bit; we should be able to walk it. Stand up. One foot forward. Then another. Make it out one little waterlogged step at a time.

RE:
Filed March 28, 2005 8:47 PM.

[Yes, they're still coming: another installment of Radical Entrepreneurship.]

In the introduction (Chapter 0: Build Your Business), I beat to death the idea that the single most important part of building successful companies is unfailing persistence and determination, an unflappable commitment to start your company, and keep it going, no matter what.

But there’s one other trait that nearly all successful entrepreneurs share: they network like it’s their job. Because, frankly, it is. A strong and extensive network is far and away the single best tool that any entrepreneur can have at their fingertips.

Literally every other aspect of starting a company – from hiring and financing, to sales, execution and business development – is largely made possible by the same thing: knowing the right people, or being a single introduction away.

That last bit is key – it’s not just who you know, but who they know that makes networks powerful. If you have 250 names in your Rolodex, and each has 250 in theirs, you’re suddenly one step away from over 60,000 potential customers, collaborators, investors and employees. Sixty thousand!

That estimate of 250 people per network, by the way, comes from Joe Girard, a Chevrolet salesman whose prolific success put him in Guinness as The World’s Greatest Salesman. After researching the question of average network size, Girard concluded that most people invite about 250 friends and family members to major life events – weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs. He coined that fact Girard’s Law of 250, and credited his business use of it with much of his success.

[Girard wasn’t just a salesman, he was a decent researcher, as recent academic research on human networks seems to confirm that most people have networks of 200-250 people they know well enough to, say, stop and have a drink with if they ran into them at a bar.]

As Girard knew, each person you bring into your network, each person with whom you build a relationship, can put you a step closer to 250 friends, family members and colleagues, any of whom might invest in your company or work for it, buy from your company or cut you a great deal on the services and supplies you’ll need to run and grow it.

Hiring, fundraising, sales – they’re all numbers games. The techniques and tactics I’ll be sharing in subsequent chapters can help you boost your batting averages, but only networking can push up the number of times you get to go to bat.

2.1 Time to go Fishing?

Of course, if your network consists of an average number of people you know averagely well, you’re bound for decidedly average results. So, for a moment, stop and see exactly where you stand.

First, check your contact list – hopefully it’s electronic, perhaps it’s a Rolodex on your desk. If you don’t have anything but numbers in your cell phone or a rough list in your head, at least you have nowhere to go but up.

How many records do you have? More than 250? More than 500? At the moment, I’m at 2,243, and I suspect I still have a very long way to go. Consider senators and presidential candidates, who in one study were all found to have significantly more than 10,000 live contacts each!

Importantly, that’s 10,000 ‘live’ contacts, the only ones that really count: those people you’re still actively in touch with, those with whom you have strong and ongoing relationships.

How many of your contacts are really ‘live’? Head to the first contact on your list whose last name starts with the letter ‘p’, then pull out the next ten to check.

Of those ten: how many have you spoken with in the last six months? How many have you not spoken with in more than two years? What are the odds that any of them, if called last-minute, would get out of bed to pick you up at the airport at two in the morning?

And, if they wouldn’t make that airport run, what would possibly make you think they’d come through for you in business situations, most of which involve them putting their own reputation on the line?

Next, take another look at those same ten people. Do you know their birthdays? Their spouse’s and kids’ names? Where they were born, where they went to school, what they do for fun?

All of those pieces of information are invaluable intelligence. If you don’t know them now, it’s time to start collecting.

Which, basically, is the point. Wherever you stand, you can always improve. Read the rest of the chapter, put the ideas to work, then come back in a year and do the same self-tests again. I suspect you’ll be pleasantly shocked by how far your network has come.

One last test, this one to simply gauge whether you’ve been getting out to meet enough people in the first place – people who might eventually end up in your network, and point you towards the investors, employees, customers or collaborators your company will need.

This particular test is courtesy of Malcom Gladwell, as detailed in his great book on the power of social networks, The Tipping Point. On this page is a list of 250 surnames, pulled at random from the Manhattan phone book. Head through the list, giving yourself a point for anyone you know with that surname. For this one, use ‘know’ loosely – if you sat next to a guy on an airplane who introduced himself with the same last name, that’s good enough. Give yourself a point for each, and multiples count – if you know three Johnson’s, that’s three points. Ready:

Algazi, Alvarez, Alpern, Ametrano, Andrews, Aran, Arnstein, Ashford, Bailey Ballout, Bamberger, Baptista, Barr, Barrows, Baskerville, Bassiri, Bell, Bokgese, Brandao, Bravo, Brooke, Brightman, Billy, Blau, Bohen, Bohn, Borsuk, Brendle, Butler, Calle, Cantwell, Carrell, Chinlund, Cirker, Cohen, Collas, Couch, Callegher, Calcaterra, Cook, Carey, Cassell, Chen, Chung, Clarke, Cohn, Carton, Crowley, Curbelo, Dellamanna, Diaz, Dirar, Duncan, Dagostino, Delakas, Dillon, Donaghey, Daly, Dawson, Edery, Ellis, Elliott, Eastman, Easton, Famous, Fermin, Fialco, Finklestein, Farber, Falkin, Feinman, Friedman, Gardner, Gelpi, Glascock, Grandfield, Greenbaum Greenwood, Gruber, Garil, Goff, Gladwell, Greenup, Gannon, Ganshaw, Garcia, Gennis, Gerard, Gericke, Gilbert, Glassman, Glazer, Gomendio, Gonzalez, Greenstein, Guglielmo, Gurman, Haberkorn, Hoskins, Hussein, Hamm, Hardwick, Harrell, Hauptman, Hawkins, Henderson, Hayman, Hibara, Hehmann, Herbst, Hedges, Hogan, Hoffman, Horowitz, Hsu, Huber, Ikiz, Jaroschy, Johann, Jacobs, Jara, Johnson, Kassel, Keegan, Kuroda, Kavanau, Keller, Kevill, Kiew, Kimbrough, Kline, Kossoff, Kotzitzky, Kahn, Kiesler, Kosser, Korte, Leibowitz, Lin, Liu, Lowrance, Lundh, Laux, Leifer, Leung, Levine, Leiw, Lockwood, Logrono, Lohnes, Lowet, Laber, Leonardi, Marten, McLean, Michaels, Miranda, Moy, Marin, Muir, Murphy, Marodon, Matos, Mendoza, Muraki, Neck, Needham, Noboa, Null, O'Flynn, O'Neill, Orlowski, Perkins, Pieper, Pierre, Pons, Pruska, Paulino, Popper, Potter, Purpura, Palma, Perez, Portocarrero, Punwasi, Rader, Rankin, Ray, Reyes, Richardson, Ritter, Roos, Rose, Rosenfeld, Roth, Rutherford, Rustin, Ramos, Regan, Reisman, Renkert, Roberts, Rowan, Rene, Rosario, Rothbart, Saperstein, Schoenbrod, Schwed, Sears, Statosky, Sutphen, Sheehy, Silverton, Silverman, Silverstein, Sklar, Slotkin, Speros, Stollman, Sadowski, Schles, Shapiro, Sigdel, Snow, Spencer, Steinkol, Stewart, Stires, Stopnik, Stonehill, Tayss, Tilney, Temple, Torfield, Townsend, Trimpin, Turchin, Villa, Vasillov, Voda, Waring, Weber, Weinstein, Wang, Wegimont, Weed, Weishaus.

Now compare. In most groups, the average score floats somewhere between thirty and forty. Well networked people score above ninety or a hundred. Where does that place you?

Here as well, however, there isn’t a ‘right’ score. Simply gauge where you stand, follow the ideas in this chapter, come back in a year for a retest, and find yourself pleasantly thrilled by how far your networking skills have come.

And, trust me, it’s well worth the effort. As I said before, literally every aspect of starting a company – from hiring and financing, to sales, execution and business development – all are largely made possible by the same thing: knowing the right people, or being a single introduction away. Made possible, in short, by building the right network.

2.2. How to Fish

Building a network is really a process in three parallel parts:

• First, you need to identify and meet people who make valuable additions to your network.

• Second, you need to establish the initial relationship – meet with the person one-on-one to bond and build an initial tie.

• Third, you need to constantly build and maintain that new relationship, keeping it strong enough to draw upon when you need to, possibly years down the line.

All three are crucial to a successful network, so let’s look at them each, one by one.

2.3. Where the Fish Are

In some ways, networking is one the easiest and most enjoyable parts of your job as an entrepreneur. Sure, it’s technically work, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it. Your rat-race employee friends will be insanely jealous – you get to meet interesting new people, have breakfast or lunch with them at new restaurants, and you get paid to do it? Hard work indeed, you’ll reply, but someone has to do it. (Hah!)

Because networking is so fun, however, because it likely won’t seem like real work to you either, it’s very easy to slack off as the pace of your company picks up. Don’t! Don’t let networking fall by the wayside. The more successful your company becomes, the more you’ll need the flow of new and growing relationships that persistent networking provides.

To that end, make networking a habit. Start now, and don’t stop doing it, ever. Meet someone new every week. One new person a week is exceedingly easy, doesn’t take up much time. But, by the end of the year, those fifty new contacts will put you one introduction away from over 12,000 new people in their respective networks.

Never giving up, the most important part of entrepreneurship, is a mental stance you need internalize; networking, the second most important part of entrepreneurship, is a behavior you need to habitualize. Making sure you’re building that habit is the point of the one new person a week minimum.

In other words: no matter what else is going on in your company, always find time to meet someone new each week.

That leaves you, minimally, 50 new people to find this year. Which begs two questions: what kind of people should you meet, and where do you find them?

[Cliffhanger of an ending, I know; as this chapter (like most of the coming ones) is rather long, I'm splitting it up over several subsequent postings. Stay tuned.]

RE 1. What Am I Reading?
Filed March 14, 2005 11:30 AM.

[The third chapter of Radical Entrepreneurship, and the last one for this week while I go back to rambling per usual.]

Before we dive into the specifics, let’s first take a look at who this book is meant for, the broad areas it covers, and how you can best use it to generate maximum results.

1.1. Should I Read This Book?

Perhaps you have an existing business that you’re looking to kick into hyper-growth. Perhaps you’ve been tossing around a great startup idea, but haven’t actually launched into it yet. Or perhaps you simply know you want to start a company, but aren’t yet sure exactly what that company will be.

In any of those cases, you’ll love Radical Entrepreneurship; over several hundred pages, I’ll share with you absolutely everything you need to find ideas, turn those ideas into companies, and then grow those companies extremely quickly and effectively.

At least three other groups of people can benefit from this book as well.

First are the heads of nonprofit organizations, or anyone thinking of starting a nonprofit. Not only do the guerilla tactics I present for building successful companies apply to nonprofits, but the results-driven organizations the tactics create also make fundraising vastly easier – donors give money to organizations they believe can really get things done.

Additionally, many of the ideas in this book also apply to people who work for companies rather than start them. An entrepreneurial approach to your job can make you a more effective employee, and can help you reshape your company from the inside – two great ways to quickly climb the corporate ladder. Much of the information presented can also make finding a new job much easier, should you want or need to move on from your current post.

Finally, students of business will also benefit greatly from Radical Entrepreneurship. Learning these ideas – really learning them – then filing them away, will arm you to launch into action when you’re ready. But, just because you’re still in school, don’t think you can’t get down to business! I sold my first company while a sophomore in college, and sold the second by the time I graduated. And I’ve seen many other students achieve similar business success while in school. Here’s your chance to make ‘becoming a young mogul’ your extracurricular activity.

1.2. But Don’t Just Read This Book!

A recent study of business book buyers showed that about half of the buyers never actually read the books they bought. Of those that did, fewer than 10% then actually put the information they learned to work in their own companies. In other words, 95% of the people who buy business books are completely wasting their time and money.

I hope that’s not you. Because, while this book makes for reasonably entertaining reading, it only becomes truly valuable when you actually use the contents, when you figure out how to put them to work in starting and growing companies.

To really take advantage of this book, I’d suggest reading it with a pen and notepad by your side, and using them often. If something makes a lot of sense, spurs specific to-do ideas, or launches you into a fit of brainstorming brilliance, write it down. When you’re done reading, you’ll then be ready to jump into action.

Additionally, bundled with this book is a series of chapter-by-chapter checklists that, combined with your own notes, should help you actually put all of the ideas to work, step by step. The checklists may not make much sense until you read the associated chapters, and as most chapters depend on similar and interrelated ideas in other chapters, I’d recommend you read through the entire book before launching into action.

When you’re ready to implement, you can use the index or table of contents to go back and review specifics things you’d like to think through again.

Finally, a few months down the road, once you’ve had a chance to actually try out some of the ideas the book contains, I’d also recommend re-reading the entire book; at that point, you’ll likely pick up all kinds of things you didn’t the first time through.

1.3. Telling You What I’ll Be Telling You

As you may have noticed, Radical Entrepreneurship is fairly long. Fortunately, it’s also structured rather logically, with each chapter reflecting a major aspect of building a successful company. Here’s a quick overview of what you’ll be learning along the way:

Next up, in Chapter 2: It’s Who You Know, I talk about the extreme importance of building a large and active contact network. The chapter covers some of the very best ways to meet people, build relationships with them, and then leverage those relationships throughout the process of building a company.

As the quality of your contacts plays a huge part in determining your effectiveness in every other aspect of starting a company, learning to network well is a great place to start.

In Chapter 3: What’s the Big Idea?, I cover the logical first step of starting a company: deciding what kind of company you’re going to start. I talk through the different kinds of companies, with some of the advantages and disadvantages of each, before moving on to discuss ways to generate specific company ideas - from combining or improving existing ideas, to generating paradigm-shifting ones from scratch.

In most cases, you can’t – and shouldn’t want to – go it alone. So, in Chapter 4: Loading the Bus, I talk about building your team. First and foremost, you’ll need to bring in some other executives equally committed to growing your company.

You’ll also want to put together a board of directors, and a board of advisors. And, over time, you’ll likely hire in increasing numbers of employees to handle your company’s growth.

Your decisions while building a team can make or break your company, and so I’ll focus particularly on how to recognize and recruit the right people.

After that, in Chapter 5: Getting Down to Business, I walk through the (admittedly, often not terribly exciting) process of laying all the infrastructure groundwork for your new company. From decisions about office space, to building a team of outside service providers (such as lawyers and accountants), it’s all here, with lots of guerilla tips for maximizing the benefits gained from each.

Follow the steps in this chapter, and you’ll have a real company. Then what?

Ah, yes, that pesky empty bank account. Time for Chapter 6: Show Me the Money, in which I’ll walk you through the full range of financing possibilities, sharing direct experience, and exploring how each financing route has changed post ‘new economy’ bubble.

I’ll also drill into the process of writing a business plan, explain why most of what you’ll find in books on writing business plans is hopelessly outdated or total bullshit, and help you pull together a document that not only helps raise you money, but also clarifies exactly where you’ll be taking the business, and how you’ll be getting there.

Right. So now you’ve got the colleagues, the corporation, and the cash. Nothing left but to get down to actually doing business. Chapter 7: One Foot after Another, shares my tactics for making that happen. You’ll learn about using a top-down, strategy-driven approach to determine what need be done, then delegate and hands-off manage those tasks to completion.

I’ll also talk about the role of honesty and over-communication – two things that will make running your company vastly easier (ironically, even more so during rough patches than in smooth ones).

And, finally, I walk through the various stages of company evolution, discussing how companies change as they grow, and how your approach to running them has to change in response.

Excellent. The company’s off to a great start, and growing quickly. But how could it grow even faster? Almost certainly, the limiting factor is the number and quality of your customers. So in Chapter 8: Building the Cause, I talk about the first half of finding customers, the part that involves reaching large numbers of potential customers at once, and is often called marketing, building a brand, or evangelizing. Whatever the name, this is the first step in building and retaining a rabidly loyal customer base.

Since this book is about guerilla tactics, I’ll focus on lot on low- or no-cost approaches in particular that will bring customers beating a path to your door.

Of course, once they knock, it may still take a bit of work to get them to step inside. In Chapter 9: Selling the Dream, I talk through the one-on-one aspects of customer acquisition, the process of getting them to sign on the line that is dotted.

If you’re a natural salesman, you’ll take away tips that will hone your game; if you hate the prospect of pushing to close, I’ll also share a number of win-win strategies that will make selling (a key part of any CEO’s job) much less painful.

Speaking of the CEO’s job, Chapter 10: It’s Good to be the King, goes into greater detail about what that job actually is, before launching into a rather extended laundry list of how to do it more effectively – from managing time better and taking control of email, to the ins and outs of business travel and the importance of buying good shoes (really!).

Taken together, all of this should make you as effective as you possibly can be, getting the most done with the least possible time and stress.

That leads me to the sister chapter, Chapter 11: Enjoying the Ride, which delves into the importance of maintaining your sanity (or, what little of it you currently possess) throughout the startup process, by building a rich, balanced and fulfilling life that doesn’t entail you sleeping under your desk for the next five years (which, sadly, I’ve seen done),

With all the previous information under your belt, you’ll be growing a company that will soon have you, too, on the pages of Forbes and the Wall St. Journal. Then what?

Given my own experience, and what I’ve seen amongst successful entrepreneur friends, you’ll be gut-hooked by the absolute fun that building companies can be. And, frankly, the joy is in the starting, the making something from nothing, the cooking from scratch. So, in Chapter 12: Rinse & Repeat, I discuss exit strategies – how and when to cash in your chips.

Normally, that takes you back to the very beginning, as you go through all the same steps again in building your next company, though this time with the good judgment gained from your experience, bad judgment, and the words of wisdom in this book.

As my reprinting the first twelve chapters a second time to reflect that fact likely won’t help you much, instead, in Chapter 13: Last Call, I’ll bring things to a close, summarizing all that’s come before, and – for good measure – throwing in some verse by my most favorite poet, Dr. Seuss.

That’s pretty much it. Go to it.

RE 0. How to Build a Business
Filed March 13, 2005 3:07 PM.

[As promised, the next chapter of Radical Entrepreneurship.]

Ready for the secret? All that it takes to build a company from zero to millions and beyond? Okay, here goes:

1. Start.
2. Keep going.

That’s it. Seriously. Those two steps are all you need; everything else I’m going to tell you is just detail about one step or the other.

If you’re nodding your head in agreement but getting ready to skip ahead to the good stuff, you’re an idiot. Because anybody can pay lip service to those steps.

Actually doing them, doing them no matter what, is unbelievably hard. Yet that’s what it takes to build wildly successful companies.

I cannot emphasize this enough. Growing a company is long and hard and tiring and difficult and overwhelming. You’ll want to stop at many, many points along the way. Most people do. The way you win is, don’t. In the words of Winston Churchill, “if you’re going through hell, keep going.”

Churchill meant it. Brought in as Oxford’s graduation speaker, he got up on the podium, looked around, said, “never, never, never give in,” and sat back down.

Never, never, never give in. Keep going no matter what. Come hell or high water, push the damn company forward one little step at a time. That’s all it takes to succeed. Really.

0.1. More Keeping Going

Allow me to continue flogging the dead horse of this point, because it’s absolutely the most important thing in the entire book: Radical Entrepreneurship is, more than anything else, a commitment to starting a company, and then doing whatever it takes to build that company into a success.

This shouldn’t sound like a new idea. If you’ve read a handful of biographies of unusually successful people, you’ve doubtless noticed that the one thing, the only thing, they all had in common was the ability to keep going no matter what.

Thomas Edison’s journals show that he created more than 10,000 failed lightbulb attempts before making one that worked. Colonel Sanders pitched his chicken recipe to over 200 restaurants before one was willing to go into business with him. The list goes on and on and on.

Here as well, we’re really good at paying lip service. “Oh, absolutely,” we say. “I’d have done the exact same thing.” But, in reality, when things get tough, we tend to wildly overestimate the amount of ‘never say die’ we’re actually putting forth.

There’s a great story about a guy who attends a Tony Robbins seminar, and complains to Robbins that, despite trying everything, he can’t lose weight.

“You’ve tried everything?” asks Robbins.

“Everything,” the guy replies.

“What were the last hundred things you tried?” asks Robbins.

“Well,” the guy admits, “I haven’t actually tried a hundred things.”

“Then what were the last twenty-five things you did?” asks Robbins.

“I haven’t tried twenty-five things, really, either,” the guy responds.

“So how many things have you actually tried?” asks Robbins.

“Well,” says the guy, sheepishly, “maybe five or six.”

At various times, we’re all that guy. I know I am, frequently.

I’ll think to myself, “jeez, I’ve gone to everybody, and I can’t raise this round of financing.” And then I’ll realize that, by ‘everybody’, I actually mean ‘ten or fifteen venture capital firms’. Which leaves more than 3300 venture capitalists I've yet to approach. That’s a lot of rejections to go before I can legitimately say I’ve tried ‘everything’.

Fortunately, I can’t tell you what it’s like to get shot down by all 3300, because on even the toughest fundraising rounds, the ones that left me despairing and ready to quit at countless points along the way, we raised funding successfully long before getting that many rejections.

In my experience, that’s almost always the case – keeping going usually requires only that you somehow take the few steps beyond where you think you can’t possibly take any more.

Still, if it ever came to it while fundraising, I’m absolutely certain I could force myself to work through the entire list of 3300, painful as it might be. If you’re not similarly sure you could make yourself do the same thing if necessary, save yourself some time, close this page, and start looking for a safe job in middle management.

To be a Radical Entrepreneur, you need to commit, one hundred percent, to what you’re about to do: start your company, and keep it going, no matter what.

RE -1. What is Radical Entrepreneurship?
Filed March 12, 2005 3:12 PM.

[On the ongoing urging of a number of my friends in the VC and entrepreneurship world, I've been slowly pulling together my thoughts on starting and building companies, in book form.

And, seeing that, at my current rate, my grandchildren will be drinking with me at the release party, I've decided to take the unorthodox approach of posting the draft here as it comes together, both to spur me on towards completion, and to get the ideas off of my hard drive and into the hands of people who'd actually be able to put them to good use.

I'll be posting up the first three chapters over the next few days, with the rest to follow intermittently, mixed in amongst the regular inane ramblings that, for reasons I'm still not entirely clear on, seem to draw a sizable readership.

While the book is primarily targeted at current and would-be entrepreneurs, I'm hoping it's a reasonably entertaining enough read to keep everyone following along. As ever, your feedback and thoughts are most appreciated. So, without further ado, Radical Entrepreneurship, Chapter -1. What is Radical Entrepreneurship?]

The word ‘radical’ is an odd one, as it means two wildly different things. Coming from the Latin word for root (radix), it initially referred to the juice in fruits and vegetables, and, by extension, to the very essence, the core substance of things. Then, as the word evolved, ‘radical’ took on a second meaning: extreme and unusual.

Given those two opposing definitions, ‘radical’ is a great word to apply to the style of entrepreneurship laid out in this book.

On the one hand, Radical Entrepreneurship is about the core tasks of starting up a company, the simple steps, small details, and nitty gritty of actually making a company work.

On the other, because so few people talk about these things, really lay them out in careful detail, some of the ideas presented may initially seem rather unorthodox.

Still, most of the strategies and tactics in this book are of the ‘how did I not already think of that?’ variety. I know, because I didn’t think of most of them myself, at least when starting my first company. (Or, in come cases, even when starting my second or third or fourth…)

Instead, I learned them the hard way, one mistake, and one subsequent climb back to success, at a time. It’s an ugly way to learn, but it works.

Along those lines, there’s a great story about a young man who goes to a very prosperous older man to ask for advice:

“What’s the most important thing in life?” the young man asks.

“Good judgment,” replies the older man.

“And how do I get that?” the young man continues.

“Experience,” replies the old man.

“But how do I get that?” persists the young man.

“Bad judgment,” concludes the old man.

That pretty much sums up this book. The things I present here aren’t armchair theories that sound good, or business school textbook truisms; they’re the things that actually worked for me in building and selling companies, the good judgments I learned through years of bad judgments.

As most of the successful entrepreneurs I know seem to have made many of the same bad judgments, I’m hoping that by reading this book, and by putting the advice it contains into action, you can avoid making those bad judgments yourself.

That way, you’ll be free to pioneer new and wildly creative bad judgments instead. Which is basically what entrepreneurship is all about.

pure genius
Filed March 2, 2005 12:16 AM.

As I've mentioned before, the back burner of my brain churns out ideas for startups all the time. And, by and large, I don't follow up on them myself, instead floating them out to would-be entrepreneurs I run across more likely to actually execute. Every so often, however, I come up with something really, remarkably good, something I'm tempted to hang onto myself. Such is the case with one business that popped out in conversation with my younger brother David a few years back, which has become a perennial favorite topic of late-night strategizing ever since. Realizing I'm far too deeply ensconced in Cyan and Long Tail to take advantage of it at any point in the next couple of years, however, I'm finally throwing it out in the hopes that someone will follow it through to untold billions.

By way of introduction, a quick question: what are the two things that everyone does regularly? Yes, you guessed it! People go to bars, and people get haircuts. Now, imagine if you will, bringing them both together. No, no, not by taking the easy way out with a combination salon & lounge, but rather with a bar you can go to with friends and cut each other's hair!

Brilliant, I know, but it gets better! The Sip & Shave (as we've christened this baby) is the ultimate viral marketing concept. Imagine further that you head on out to the West Village branch for a few rounds of tequila and some turns with the scissors one weekday evening. Then imagine, the next day, heading in to work. "What the hell happened to your hair?" your colleagues would doubtless ask. "Why," you'd reply, "we hit the Sip & Shave, of course." Word about this baby would spread like wildfire.

Savvy entrepreneur as I am, however, I know that building a market for a new product or service from scratch can be remarkably tough. Take the world of fast food, where McDonalds didn't really take off until competitors like Wendy's and Burger King jumped in to help collectively redefine how the world overdoses on saturated fat. So, to that end, the plan would necessarily include also launching a couple of wholly-owned subsidiaries as apparent competitors (perhaps, say, the Shoot & Snip, and the Chug & Clip) to really get things rolling.

Just think of it! A business that capitalizes on people's regular needs, with a built in viral marketing angle and a chance to build from scratch and then completely own a whole new market. Yes, kids, I've got this one all figured out. Take it and run with it if you'd like, though with only one small request if you do: grant me a lifetime tab and the first Flowbeed whack at your pate. Other than that, this sucker is all yours.

tell me more
Filed February 8, 2005 6:48 PM.

As I've blogged about quite a bit in the past, for just over the last year of my life, I've been having a go at Radical Honesty - at telling the truth, the whole truth, all the time, even if I think it isn't politically expedient.

Which, frankly, has been really hard. But, like most hard things, has also been undoubtedly worth the work.

I was thinking about Radical Honesty a lot today, after stumbling across the details of one of Stanley Milgram's social psych experiments. In short, the experiment involved a team of researchers heading onto partially full New York subways, and asking seated riders to give up their seats. The results themselves are moderately interesting indications of the power of social compliance - about 70% of those asked gave their seats. But far more interesting to me are the qualitative descriptions of the experimenters' own feelings during the experiment; most reported feeling becoming uncomfortable when asking for the seat, often having to ride six or seven stops to work up the nerve.

Which, in a nutshell, is what the Radical Honesty experiment has been like for me so far. By and large, the results of telling the truth as much as possible are far, far better than I'd have expected. The hard part is actually making myself do it.

One area, for example, where I keep having to remind myself of this is in keeping investors, colleagues and collaborators posted on progress. Like in any situation, my instinct is to play up the positive, and omit the rest. Which causes problems when progress slows; waiting for something good to report, I hold off on calling or emailing with updates. And, during the ensuing silence, people tend to assume the worst. In literally every single case, I've found that simply sending along a 'things are stalled out and here's why' email leaves people not upset about the stall but rather extremely happy to simply be in the loop.

Like any new habit - even any new habit you know is far better for you than what you've previously done - it still feels unnatural, still takes a lot of work. I'm hoping, at some point, if I can reliably keep up Radical Honesty long enough, that eventually it will all be second nature. But, until then, in my work and personal life, I'm happy to slog ahead, one effortful, consciously monitored day at a time.

under the microscope
Filed January 31, 2005 8:12 AM.

For the past few years, I've had a running joke with my parents: they ask if I'm going to go to business school; I reply, absolutely, as soon as the school has my students ready.

Confirming my long-standing belief that, if you make dumb jokes about something long enough, it has to happen, a team of b-school students from Denver University's Daniels College of Business (which leapt this year to the top ten in several of the Wall Street Journal's b-school category rankings) is using the nascent Long Tail as a case study for their business planning class, and helping us flesh out the company's strategy.

After spending a couple of hours yesterday afternoon giving them a crash-course lecture on the economics of film distribution, I realize I'm yet one step closer to my eventual goal: reconciling my desire for an advanced degree with my distaste for that pesky 'going to class' thing, by getting some hapless institution of higher learning to simply grant me an honorary doctorate.

no sleep till park city
Filed January 12, 2005 1:45 PM.

When people comment that I seem to juggle an overwhelming number of interests and obligations, I usually joke that my secret is stopping sleeping and going to the bathroom to free up time.

And, frankly, I wish that were true. Some people seem to get by remarkably well on just three or four hours of sleep a night. Sadly, I'm not one of them.

Sure, for short stretches, usually during production on a film, I've gone entire weeks with less than ten or eleven hours of shut-eye. But, by and large, as I scale back from a solid eight hours a night, I start to feel increasingly off. Most people pour on the caffeine to push through, but I often find coffee hits me the hardest - and least helpfully - when I need it most. Perhaps it's my already manic, fast-talking personality, or my hummingbird metabolism, but several cups of joe after a few sleep-deprived nights mainly leaves me twitching, with jumbled thoughts and a tongue that can't seem to form sounds in time with the thoughts my brain is trying to push out.

The past week, which so far has featured evening drinks each night followed by breakfast meetings each following morning, already has me piling up the sleep debt. And, after just a few days, the effects are already starting to wear on me. I lose my train of thought in mid-sentence, find myself frequently looking up in the air as if perhaps what I'm trying to say might be written on a tele-prompter just over a conversation partner's shoulder.

This morning, though, in searching for a set of financials from an earlier company that I could repurpose into support material for Long Tail, I stumbled across an essay I had written a few years back for one of the slew of now defunct e-business trade publications. Reading it, I was startled by my own prior thinking. As Cyan and Long Tail are both undoubtedly long-hauls, perhaps it's time to start taking some of my own earlier medicine: sleeping through the night and trying to live with a bit more sanity.

The article:

A few weeks ago, I sat down to lunch with a long time friend and tech CEO to talk about how his company had faired since the market soured a year ago. For the most part, he said, life was business as usual. Except for one thing: he had begun sleeping eight hours a night.

In most circles, that might not seem unusual. But in the dot-com world, lack of sleep has traditionally been seen as a badge of courage. This very friend, for example, often went for days sleeping only in quick power naps on a mattress kept under his desk, and was famous for the time that he fell asleep while walking down a hall. Dozing off mid-stride may seem a bit extreme, but more entrepreneurs than not have similarly bizarre sleep deprivation stories to tell. Intrigued by my friends somnolent confession, I spoke with several more. The consensus: most of the entrepreneurs I know are sleeping several hours a night more than they had been twelve months back. In the past, they admitted, they were stockpiling sleep options for that post-IPO vacation. But with company building once again a long-haul pursuit, they now wanted to pursue a more sensible and sustainable pace.

Certainly, well rested execs are a change in the right direction. After all, according to a recent study by the National Sleep Foundation, sleeping five hours a night (versus the recommended eight) actually decreases productivity by a full 43%. And with sleep deprivation a factor in 60% of car accidents, one has to wonder whether as many companies were dragged down by sleepless CEOs. But more interesting to me is whether this increased sleeping is indicative of a larger trend. With the dot-com rush petering out, has the actual pace of business life slowed down?

Consider the intriguing case of the Slow Food Movement. The Italian organization, symbolized by its distinctive snail mascot, works, according to its manifesto, towards “a firm defense of quiet material pleasure… the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life.” The group, which organizes local chapters across the world, has begun to take hold in the US, organizing vineyard tours, cheese tasting workshops and mushroom picking expeditions. Most tellingly, the largest US chapters of the organization have sprung up on entrepreneurship’s most hallowed grounds: Silicon Valley and New York City. More to the point, even the new economy rag Fast Company (a magazine boasting the tagline “everything fast”) ran a glowing feature piece on Slow Food. When the number one proponent of new economy fast begins to extol the virtues of old world slow, certainly major change is under foot.

The question, then, is where to go from here. Perhaps adding a midday siesta, taking Fridays off, and scaling back to banker’s hours? Certainly, none of those options seem particularly likely. Like it or not, the world of entrepreneurship is dominated by passionate, driven individuals who keep going for no other reason than they’re having too much fun to stop. Because at the end of the day, even the most sleep deprived exec is craving the endorphins that come from a solid pitch, a closed sale or a good contact at a networking event. Perhaps what we can expect, then, is a bit of sensible moderation. While entrepreneurs may continue to work and play hard, it seems they’ve begun to understand when even they need to take a break.

startup therapy
Filed January 6, 2005 8:28 PM.

With the first official week of Long Tail well underway, my life has been exceedingly, overwhelmingly hectic. Though in a good way. I've been inking partnerships, rolling ahead towards the release of our first film (This is Not a Film, out February 1st), hiring on a team of people vastly smarter and more talented than I, and generally gearing up to take the movie world by storm.

And, frankly, I'm excited. Wet-your-pants excited. So excited that, today, mid-way through adding a few new sections to the business plan, I literally got up and did a little dance, only stopping when I realized the people in the law firm across the street could totally see in through my window.

Sure, Cyan's a startup too. But, in its day-to-day operations, it's been completely different from any other startup I've ever dealt with. In movie production, everything you do, absolutely everything, is dependent on extensive collaboration with a slew of outside individuals and organizations. Which is part of what makes making movies fun. But also all of what makes making movies so frustrating. Unlike in most startups, no matter how hard we push, the vast majority of Cyan time is 'hurry up and wait.'

Having the ball, primarily, back in my court, with the responsibility and potential that implies, has made this week rather jarring. If things aren't moving ahead as quickly as I'd like on Long Tail, it's my own damn fault. Which, I realize, is what attracted me to the world of entrepreneurship in the first place: the chance to build something extraordinary, bounded only by my own ability to think of amazing ideas and then put them into action.

And while I knew, instantly, from that first night of staring up at the ceiling, running through plans, too excited to sleep, that I would feel different with Long Tail underway, I didn't realize how much that would bubble out.

So far this week, for example, on three separate occasions, I've had people tell me I was the best salesman they'd ever met. And, frankly, while flattered, I know that's not true. I'm not really much of a salesman at all. Having seen the pros at work, the people who could sell proverbial ice to Eskimos, I know I'm nowhere near that 'coffee is for closers' league. But, as the first of the three pointed out this Monday, it seems I'm starting to channel a Steve Jobs-esque Reality Distortion Field. By the end of our meeting, he commented, he felt ready to sell a kidney if that's what it took to partner his company with ours.

Reality Distortion Field? That I'll own up to. And that, I think, is what the kind 'best salesman' commenters really meant. I'm sure a better seller's pitch would be more eloquent, her responses to concerns more carefully reasoned. But I have trouble believing that anyone could be more excited, more thrilled to get down to work on fundamentally changing the way the movie industry works.

Will Long Tail succeed? In rational moments, I'd give it maybe 65% odds. But, given the will I'm ready to put behind it, given the passionate, talented people and companies ready to throw their full weight into the fray, it's a bet I'm 100% willing to take.

Starting a company: it may not be cheaper than Zoloft, but it's certainly more effective.

on the internets
Filed November 4, 2004 12:49 AM.

I am an information addict. For all of my life, I've loved ideas: facts and theories, concepts and conjectures, knowledge and wisdom. In short, anything I can pack into my brain. Which makes the internet a dangerous place for me. I can - and often do - waste hour upon hour, exploring, reading, surfing from verbose site to equally verbose site.

This morning, for example, my carousing took me from fractal geometry to the biological evolution of morality, from the feng shui of desk layout to the history of electoral math. And, frankly, it didn't take me there quickly. Were I simply to click my browser closed, I'd easily free up hours each day, cross far more of my lengthy to do list.

But I don't. And, for that, I've always harbored more than a bit of guilt. Oh weak-willed self! Oh procrastinating spirit!

Today, though, in between surfing stretches, I set out to write the start of yet another chapter of Radical Entrepreneurship, the unorthodox business book I've been slowly and steadily piecing together over the past months. The chapter was on ideas, and, particularly, on how and where to find good ones. Though I'd outlined most of the other chapters to a disturbing degree, this one was - to put it mildly - still a bit vague. Where, exactly, do ideas come from? And what, if anything, can we do to make more good ones?

Pondering that question, I flashed back to a point made by David Gelernter, an eccentric Yale computer science professor who - among other things - revolutionized parallel computing, got Unabombed, and penned a book proclaiming the 1939 World's Fair as the height of world civilization. Gelernter, I remember, once pointed out that great ideas rarely come from people deeply entrenched in a single field. Instead, paradigm shifts depend on 'top view' - the ability to look down across multiple disciplines, to connect together disparate ideas that neatly interlock in ways nobody previously considered.

Starting a company, it's remarkably easy to get pulled deeper and deeper into the minutiae of operations, to look no further than the balance sheets and business plans piled up on desktop. Which, frankly, is a huge mistake. It's exactly that laser focus, that lack of step back and think things through with the new perspective of new ideas, that gets businesses into trouble, cuts off innovation before it even begins to take root.

And, with that in mind, as I pulled up pages on bookbinding and calligraphy this afternoon, for the first time I didn't scold myself for time wasted. I didn't even press to find links between the new thoughts packing my mind and any of my more day-to-day pursuits. I simply let the information sink in, confident that, somewhere, somehow, I'd be able to put it to good use.

As Da Vinci once observed, "men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active." Despite the name of the site, I certainly won't lay claim to lofty genius. But least work? That, I think, I've got down pat.

execution
Filed October 18, 2004 10:27 PM.

Over the summer, I ended up on a panel of entrepreneurs, speaking to a group of high school students about the startup world. It's something I do fairly regularly, and, by now, I'm ready with standard answers to most of the questions flung in my direction. If the questions don't catch me off guard, however, the other panelists' answers often do.

At the last event, for example, the moderator asked for our thoughts on the hardest part of starting a company.

And, after a requisite moment of brow-furrowed faux-thought, the first panelist replied: coming up with good ideas for potential products and businesses.

I almost jumped out of my chair. Coming up with ideas? The hard part? No, no, no.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Give me five minutes, and I can come up with a laundry list of products that would sell millions (try: biodegradable tattoo ink, for tattoos that disappear after five years; or, disposable six-pack coolers made using the same chemical mix found in instant-cold break-and-shake medical ice packs). Even ideas for whole businesses take only a bit longer - just enough time to sketch out the model on the back of a napkin.

But, actually making those products and businesses happen? Now that's hard.

No matter how simple an idea seems, the execution is always an absolute mess. Which is why, like a newborn baby, a startup eats all your time and money, and leaves you completely sleep-deprived for months or years on end.

In the case of children, we're biologically geared to love our offspring more than life itself - that's what (usually, at least) keeps people from ditching screaming brats in a dumpster somewhere. But, when it comes to starting companies, there's no similar inherent drive.

Sure, most people assume that money's a good driver. But, in reality, entrepreneurs chasing cash rarely bring in the bank. The specter of IPO riches, of post-acquisition tropical trips, is simply too distant and too uncertain to motivate a team through eighty hour week after eighty hour week. To make it through the long slow slog of actually putting a company together, you have to like the operational specifics of the company. In other words, you have to like what you're doing each and every day enough to want to come into work.

It's a lesson I sometimes forget. Over the last few years, I've put together full business plans for additional companies I was considering starting. And, with each, as I began to lay out timelines for execution, I realized that, after several years of actually carrying out the plan, I'd mainly be likely to execute myself.

That's why, despite any of its problems, I've loved starting Cyan. At the end of the day, even at its worst, making movies is vastly more fun than having a real job. And that's also why, at the top of the column to the right, there's a new company name, in italics, just below Cyan: Long Tail Releasing. It's the first company idea I've had outside of Cyan in the past three years that I'm actually excited to work on, day in and day out, over the next decade of my life.

While I'll let further details emerge over the next few months, suffice it to say Long Tail is an alternative distribution company that dovetails well with Cyan. Production and distribution companies? Harvey Weinstein, look out.

a taste of my own medicine
Filed May 13, 2004 10:45 AM.

In the entrepreneurship book I'm writing, in the chapter about networking, I talk quite a bit about the power of doing homework - learning everything you possibly can about a person you'll be meeting before you actually meet up. People are always surprised and flattered to discover you've gone through the trouble of finding out more about them, and you can build strong ties very quickly by knowing in advance common interests that can launch discussion.

I say this because, in two weekends, I'll be heading to the Reboot conference, a yearly retreat organized by the Spielberg and Bronfman foundations, at which young Jewish movers and shakers (and this year, by their likely mistaken inclusion, me) try and assess the state of American Judaism, of how to make the evolving religious civilization of the Jews relevant to modern life. As one past attendee jokingly described it, sort of the yearly meeting of the Youngers of Zion.

Yesterday, I received in the mail a large packet from Reboot, with about twenty-five articles and excerpts meant to ignite thinking in advance of the actual event. And, in the pile, was a collection of short bios of the fifty or so attendees. So, following my own advice, I've been diligently researching each attendee through the magic of Google, making flashcards for each, and working to memorize their individual details.

It's a bit of an experiment, as I've never tried networking research on such a large scale, and I'm very curious to see whether it actually pays off.

brain dump
Filed April 20, 2004 1:07 PM.

While I'm already knee deep in putting together Cyan's web writing anthology, and have for years written blog posts, short articles, screenplays, etc., I've never really tried to put together an entire book full, several hundred pages worth, of my own thinking on a single subject. So, after much prodding to do so by people I've worked with over the years, I finally sat down to outline Radical Entrepreneurship and see if I could think of anything worthwhile to say.

I started by laying out some broad chapter topics - the importance of building a network, where to find ideas, how to raise capital, building a team, etc. And then I started adding in sub-chapter headings, as well as tips and ideas I could touch on within each. My initial fear was that I wouldn't have enough worthwhile things to say about starting companies to really fill a book. As anyone who's met me in real life can attest, however, I'm rarely low on words, and apparently that carries over to writing as well. My outline, which started short of a single page, is now close to eleven, and I find I'm constantly remembering other things I should add in. Before, I was concerned I'd end up with a 50 page book; now, I'm concerned I'll end up with a Harry Potter-sized 800 pager.

Carpal tunnel syndrome, here I come.

we mean business
Filed August 19, 2003 6:40 PM.

Every so often, you get to go into a negotiation and just lay it down. I mean, you own that puppy. You control the pacing and flow, dictate the language of discussion, deftly make moves that seem concessions yet actually push your position steadily ahead. You out-legalese their lawyer, jocularly defuse their emotion-laden contentions, and leave deeper in their good graces than you began the meeting, they with the vague sense that perhaps they came out ahead, and you with the knowledge that, most clearly and certainly, you were the one who did.

OPM Filed October 19, 2009 11:23 PM.

The Secret to Entrepreneurship Filed October 9, 2009 3:54 PM.

Coming Attractions Filed April 15, 2009 12:27 PM.

Bringing Down the House Filed March 5, 2009 4:29 PM.

Phase Two Filed December 23, 2008 10:21 AM.

Redo Filed November 5, 2008 4:10 PM.

502 Filed October 7, 2008 2:58 PM.

Bail Filed October 5, 2008 11:33 AM.

Get Naked Filed September 25, 2008 12:08 PM.

Avast Filed September 19, 2008 1:28 PM.

More Waiting Filed July 17, 2008 5:27 PM.

Down to Business Filed June 27, 2008 2:30 PM.

True Story Filed April 15, 2008 6:22 PM.

Updates Filed April 11, 2008 6:07 PM.

Oh Give Me a Home Filed March 17, 2008 5:50 PM.

Double Duty Filed March 10, 2008 12:45 PM.

Lazyweb Filed March 3, 2008 5:31 PM.

Bigger and Blacker Filed November 19, 2007 6:18 PM.

Trading Places Filed November 13, 2007 4:30 PM.

On the Road Filed October 2, 2007 6:18 PM.

"Humor" Filed September 12, 2007 2:22 PM.

Fundraising Filed August 31, 2007 2:29 PM.

For the Money Filed August 23, 2007 4:04 PM.

Contingencies Filed April 23, 2007 2:36 PM.

Hurry Up and Wait Filed April 5, 2007 5:02 PM.

Aural Abuse Filed February 28, 2007 5:13 PM.

Like a Blind Date Filed December 20, 2006 5:39 PM.

Talk to Me Filed November 5, 2006 7:00 PM.

For the Film Biz Dorks Filed October 24, 2006 8:04 PM.

Cohabitation Filed October 17, 2006 6:22 PM.

Easy IPO Filed September 19, 2006 7:14 PM.

Professionalism Filed July 31, 2006 3:30 PM.

Things I Hate Filed April 12, 2006 10:38 AM.

Leveraged Filed February 8, 2006 1:27 PM.

Note to Self Filed December 13, 2005 8:24 PM.

Intervention Filed October 14, 2005 8:05 AM.

Undisclosed Filed July 11, 2005 10:41 AM.

Vestmented Filed May 10, 2005 5:35 PM.

Burn Baby Burn Filed April 7, 2005 12:26 AM.

RE: Filed March 28, 2005 8:47 PM.

RE 1. What Am I Reading? Filed March 14, 2005 11:30 AM.

RE 0. How to Build a Business Filed March 13, 2005 3:07 PM.

RE -1. What is Radical Entrepreneurship? Filed March 12, 2005 3:12 PM.

pure genius Filed March 2, 2005 12:16 AM.

tell me more Filed February 8, 2005 6:48 PM.

under the microscope Filed January 31, 2005 8:12 AM.

no sleep till park city Filed January 12, 2005 1:45 PM.

startup therapy Filed January 6, 2005 8:28 PM.

on the internets Filed November 4, 2004 12:49 AM.

execution Filed October 18, 2004 10:27 PM.

a taste of my own medicine Filed May 13, 2004 10:45 AM.

brain dump Filed April 20, 2004 1:07 PM.

we mean business Filed August 19, 2003 6:40 PM.