With Christmas right around the corner, I thought I’d take this chance to give an early Christmas present to all the entrepreneurs I know. I wrote this article for the Idaho Statesman last year and I think it’s worth sharing again.
I’ve spent the bulk of my career investing in companies and interacted with hundreds [...]
Archive for the ‘Wisdom’ Category
Dec
15
A Startup’s Twelve Days Of Christmas
Dec
01
Our American Treasure
Recently I had the rare opportunity to live out a life-long dream. Thanks to the efforts of my partners Mark and Archie, I was able to spend a week on an aircraft carrier. The ship was the USS Ronald Reagan, one of our Navy’s newest nuclear super-carriers and she was on her way [...]
Nov
24
Smooth Seas Don’t Make Skillful Sailors
The other day, I received a phone call from Geof Barker. Geof was the founder & CEO of Vigilos, the second company we ever invested in at Highway 12 Ventures, way back in 2002. I hadn’t heard from Geof in some time and it was good to hear his voice. Our investment in Vigilos hadn’t [...]
Oct
15
Don’t Let The Bastards Grind You Down
And you can dream
So dream out loud
You know that your time is coming ’round
So don’t let the bastards grind you down - U2, Acrobat
After literally thousands of meetings with entrepreneurs in my career, one of the lessons I’ve learned is giving an entrepreneur a quick “no” is much more beneficial to someone than stringing them [...]
Jul
14
Karma
When I met my wife Pam in the early 90s, I wasn’t necessarily the most enlightened guy on the planet. As a matter of fact, it would be fair to say that I was more concerned with what was happening in my own little world than in the lives of others. I grew up in [...]
Jul
06
Leadership Observations
Earlier in the year, my partners and I had the opportunity to spend a few days at West Point, where we heard from some of the Army’s top experts on Leadership. My partner Mark wrote a great piece about it in a previous blog - In-Extremis-Leadership . It was an incredible experience.
There were [...]
Jul
02
Alone Time
It’s very early in the morning the day before the July 4th weekend and I’m heading out on my road bike for some “Alone Time”. I’m going to pedal up to the top of the Boise foothills to Bogus Basin, our local ski hill. It’s a fairly brutal climb: 16 miles of nothing but uphill [...]
Jun
10
Good Books For Entrepreneurs?
During the Boise Idavation event a couple of weeks ago, someone asked Brad Feld to recommend a good book for entrepreneurs. His answer was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig. Definitely a good read. I first read it over 35 years ago while in high school, and have read it several [...]
May
21
Draft The Best Available Athlete
I grew up in New York and have always loved my NY sports teams. In the NFL, it was all about the NY Giants for me. Unfortunately, during my most impressionable sports years (the 70’s), the Giants simply sucked and the Dallas Cowboys utterly dominated the NFC. As a matter of fact, I barely remember [...]
May
10
The “Lifestyle” Company
There are two broad categories of companies an entrepreneur can choose to start, “lifestyle” and “investor-backed”. Both can be financially and psychologically rewarding, but each has their particular demands.
A lifestyle business is one in which an entrepreneur often supplies the starting capital, which may include “borrowing” funds from family or a bank. Often a [...]