The Post Money Value

More Good Resources

Via Will Price:

"Stanford's Technology Ventures Program (STVP) released a collection of online entrepreneurship education resources, which can be found here. "

Good stuff, thanks for the pointer Will.

If You're Trying to Make Sense of Blogging

Shel Israel has an excellent post on what he calls "random thoughts" when it comes to blogging.

An excerpt:

4. Give to Get.

Blogging is very much like a savings account. The more you contribute, the more you get in return. Like a savings account, it takes a while before you can see measurable returns.

5. It’s the conversation.

The blog is just the latest tool. You can have more conversations with more people in more places with blogs.  None of them beat a face to face encounter.

The rest can be found here. Good stuff, sir.

The Two Minute Wait

David Cowan has a really great post about Disneyland and it has some great thinking you should apply to your start up.

"As we left, we saw the same poor souls in line, with little progress to show. My son asked me why they don't do what we did. So as we walked along the line we shared our observations, repeating, "TWO-MINUTE WAIT IN THE SINGLES LINE! TWO-MINUTE WAIT IN THE SINGLES LINE!.."

Trust me, go read the full post. There's a very important lesson in this about those elusive customers you are chasing.

nPost.com - Great Start Up Reference

Nathan Kaiser over at nPost.com has put together well over 100 interviews with CEOs of start up companies.  Those folks you will know and those which are up and coming can be found on his site.

I've scan read a number of them and Nathan has done a good job.

Memo to Robert Scoble: Great guy to team up with on content.

 

On one of the pages I saw this job snippet:

Memo to Michael Arrington: Here is another candidate for your job board, group, let's work together, thing.

Ink Blog Plugin - Beta 2

Ed Holloway's Plugin for Windows Live Writer is at beta 2. Lots of good updates and will be appreciated by Tablet PC owners.

You can get it here.

Skype - Why there's always room for a new guy

Skype that once amazing little start up which set records for downloads, users, and for 'the liquidation event'. Rah rah, except Skype has joined the ranks of BigCo with all the reality she is due.

Consider this WTF post from my daughter Rachel regarding Skype's bugs, an attempt to head back to an older version and the goofball customer service.

The well put summary from her post:

Ru-oh. Customer says 'we need you, we love you...but we have a problem.' And the best they could come up with was 'wait for when we fix it...we can't tell you when, but it'll happen and YOU can check for when it happens here'.

NO 'I'll add you to the skype updates mailing list if you'd like...'
NO 'here's a link back to version 2.0, I apologize for your troubles...'
NO valid excuse for why the two scenarios above are out of the question.
[And NO reason for getting her name wrong when it was correct a day before, recorded in the thread below his response...other than laziness/no incentive to care]

It's not a good thing when I'm saying "Hey, right about now MSN isn't looking so bad..."

A few observations:

• She is not an old, set in ways fart like her Dad. She is in her twenties and will drop Skype like that smelly jr. high school boyfriend.  That's the reality of an entire generation of customers.  One "skype sux, try this" wildfire happening in MySpace and say goodbye to some market share.
• The "bigger they are" theory continues to be alive and well.  Do I think this nonsense would have happened pre-EBay purchase, pre-golden child, pre-zillions of users? Nope.  But like virtually every company then, now, and in the future, success can be a bitch to plan for and manage.

If the Penquin and the Fox and do it, Skype should pay attention to this stuff.

Another Option on Sign Ups

Josh Einstein, the brains behind TEO, Tablet Enhancement for Outlook, offered up this comment on signing people up.  Josh is a very smart guy running a successful start up. He makes some good points.

"You might hate this idea, but from a business perspective it actually makes sense. Here's what I do:

When you download TEO, there's no sign-up, no registration. When you install TEO, same thing. But the first time you run Outlook and attempt to use a TEO form, it asks for registration data. The stuff is optional, but the screen doesn't tell you this.

The way I see it, this registration data is very important to the business for upsell and upgrade notification. I don't really consider it evil, but it is a pretty good way to keep people from saying "ah forget it" cause once they already have it installed, if they really don't want to give me contact information, they'll just give me bogus information.

I'd rather they give me bogus information than just forget it all."

Josh does the right thing by getting the product downloaded as simply and as quickly as possible. That's the priority. His method of getting important customer data works for him.  It is worth considering for your product/service.

Thanks for stopping by, Josh.

ActiveWords - Less Friction for Signing em Up

ActiveWords is a great program that many, many people are happily using. It is very effective at speeding up your work.  If you have Tablet PC, it is pretty much in the must have category.

One of the good things about the sign up process the ActiveWords is the friction free way anybody can get the product and try it.  The two phase approach is something you might consider for your start up.

No credit card/email sign up gets you a five day trial.  Sign up with just an email address and you get 60 days to kick the tires. 

For potential customers of yours, make sure you make it easy to just download and go or click and go, no friction.

They Don't Get It (Yet)

Hugh has a great email interview with Seth Godin.  There is a particularly important quote that start up types should remember, possibly make a 50x50 foot poster of this, as you are going through product design and assumptions about your audience.

"ANSWER: I'm astonished at how long it takes an idea to filter from the early adopters to the masses. What sort of person just read the Da Vinci Code or just discovered the iPod? I was standing in a nice store in a nice suburb and heard one 25 year old explain to a 30 year old what gmail was... it's so easy to assume that everyone already gets it"

The full email exchange is here.

As a bonus, you can read Fred Wilson's post about finally switching to a newsreader.  Again, keep Fred and Seth's comments in mind when you are making assumptions about your audience and the potential habits you are trying to change, break or just slightly modify.

Enjoy your weekend, folks.

Score one for WINTEL Team

You have to admit that competition is a good thing. Besides keeping developers and business owners on their toes, it tends to let advocates on both sides get super creative. 

The beneficiary is, of course, you and I. We can get enjoy better products (hopefully), competitive pricing (hopefully) and really funny stuff.

Head over and watch this spoof from a production editor about the Mac.  Remember it's a joke, no flames please.

Hat tip to Robert Scoble.

Gene Ford of Delta Airlines = Winner

Living in Toronto, I am not a massively frequent flyer with Delta Airlines. I have no super elite or uranium status with them.  Just an average Joe with a problem.

To keep a long/complicated story short/simple:

I needed to get a refund processed from Delta for a paper ticket. After sending the data/forms, etc, into Delta, I called into the place and spoke to somebody who was less than helpful.  My general rule is avoid getting made, assume somebody is having a bad day and take another shot with somebody different.

A second call into Delta's systems resulted in me speaking to a guy named Gene Ford.  He took one look at the records, said "Jezzzzusss, what the hell did 'they' do" and them promised to call me back around 1:30p.

At 1:22p, Gene calls and tells me he is on it, will clean it up and on Monday, Tuesday at the latest, he will have it all resolved.

Perfect.

He hit all the customer service buttons. Responsive, Empathy, and called back when he said he would.

So, if you work for Delta, know anybody that does work for Delta, are flying Delta, say "your guy Gene Ford rocks according the blogging world". Well, a good guy according to me, anyway.

In watching the usually negative shots people/things take in blog-o-land, it is nice to be able to call out the good stuff.

Thank you Gene Ford of Delta Airlines. If you're ever in Toronto, first round is on me.

Okay Don, Now you can quit your day job

I had a 56 year old Founder/CEO come into my office to give me a 30 minute no harm/no foul pitch on what she is up to.

[Important note to Woman Studies majors everywhere: She opened with her age to make a point about 'kids' doing all these start ups with no revenue; don't shoot me.]

First opening words:

"I'm sorry, I'm not MySpace, YouTube, or Digg, but my business makes money, has been for 3 years and I'm looking for investment capital to expand/grow."

It was a great meeting with a great CEO and we are digging in. 

This morning, as part of her follow up, she sent me Don Dodge's latest missive. I was reading email so I hadn't seen Don's entry yet via my newsreader.

Don:

"How many companies can afford to pay $1 billion dollars for any company, let alone one with no barriers to entry, no revenue stream, and copyright lawsuits hanging over its head."

Sheri's commentary, in part:

"I'd like to believe that making profits, paying taxes, creating a few jobs and satisfied customers, might be worth, maybe a little something."

Keep the faith, Sheri, keep the faith.

The Ecosystem in Action

One of the nice/minor features about AOL's instant messenger product is that you can set alerts for people signing in/out on an individual person basis vs. Windows Live Messenger's way of an all or nothing notification option.

The feature is handy so getting into Messenger should be easy given the API/Developer kits around Live Messenger.

Enter RentACoder.  A simple bid request on RentACoder and I'm pretty sure I can get this one nailed fairly easily. 

The project is here if you'd like to track it or if you are bored being an A-list blogger, code it up.

Once this is completed, I'll 'open source' it if anybody wants the source code.

Stay tuned.

Memo to Don Dodge - Keep that Day Job, My Friend.

I've been watching the debate (and a very respectful one, I might add) over my brethren out there investing in a number of "people".

Don Dodge of Microsoft kicked off this adventure with a post about Om Malik and others getting VC funding.   Robert Scoble jumped in with his take:

"Here’s a question for Don: would you have invested $5 million in Howard Stern? How about Oprah Winfrey? Martha Stewart? Rush Limbaugh? Jon Stewart? Back when those five people were nobodies?"

Don jumped back (exactly!) in when Paul Kedrosky basically said all this blogger investment stuff is, well, his words:

"Where is the same "backend participation" for bloggers? What is the ancillary money-making service that makes a blog anything other than a lower cost of entry media outlet? Because if it's just the latter -- a new media magazine, as Mike Rundle calls it in an earlier comment -- it may be an okay business, but it isn't a venture investment."

Don is one of the guys I really respect/like at Microsoft. So, with the respect Don deserves, I will disagree with him as well as remind him that this whole silly investing business is about people.

I'd like to believe that the VCs coughing up the coin for Om and others, spent a few minutes thinking about the investment and the people offering up the ideas, etc, in pretty much the same fashion all investments get thought about and made. 

There will be tons of time to do autopsies so, until we all get a bit of knowledge, let's all head back to our day jobs and give Om and crew a shot.

Guy Kawasaki and Unstructured Data

Seconding the point made by John Dodds, Guy's post is outstanding and a must read for everybody.  Come back and I'll share an interesting observation. Welcome back, good read, eh?

I got asked the other day why our firm invested in Nstein. In reading Guy's post, there was an excellent example of the great unwashed, unstructured data problem out there.

A disclaimer. Nstein is a public company, traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, we are big shareholders, and my partner sits on the board.  View everything I say with suspicion, invest only after talking to your investment professional, and don't run with the scissors.

First, trying to determine what the general feeling about (for example) Dell is a fairly simple exercise.  Look for burning laptops, screaming people on tech support hold, and employees crying about the evaporation of their stock.  Dell sucks or other such comments get picked up and added to the "Houston, we've got a problem" pile when all the Dell corporate types dig through the data about what the world is saying with respect to Dell.

Now let's consider this quote from Guy's great blog posting:

"You don’t want to make people playback your message to get your phone number, and if either of you are using Cingular, you may not hear all the digits."

Clearly, upon reading this, you know it is a hit on Cingular's quality.  If you do the Kawasaki and Cingular Google search, you'd get a pile of random mentions but not specifically this one (yet).  But what if I wanted to track trends and comments about Cingular's network reliability, customer service, call quality, etc.  What bucket does this dump into? Apart from brute force (i.e. people sniffing through every mention of Cingular), it gets tough to categorize and track this. In addition (and at the risk of starting the Canadian version of A-lister fight night) what can I do with the data that tells me how important Mr. Kawasaki is in relationship to this and any other comments he may have made about Cingular? Or the words buried in his comments section that say "I like the Cingular phone and can deal with the network drops" (This isn't there, I made it up to make the point). Is that a direct hit on Cingular? Will somebody manually classify this comment correctly, etc, etc...

Nstein's claim to fame, secret sauce, and product mix (existing and in the future) is all about dealing with millions of pieces of random/unstructured data in a way that allows people to get information in a way that allows them to make smarter decisions.  The power of this can be seen in Canada's Global Public Health Intelligence Network which takes millions of pieces of seemingly unrelated data combines it with health information and works to predict and monitor outbreaks.

Our view is that going beyond simple searches, beyond keyword watches, etc, to working with unstructured/unrelated data can provide businesses some great competitive and operational advantages.

Standards? We don't need no stinkin....

The idea of when to set some standards, how, etc, came up a couple of times in a few talks.  In an effort to be more prepared and sound smarter the next time around, I wandered the blogs and came up with a post by Morgan Goeller, entitled "8 Truths about Standardization."

Morgan did a good job listing out some good things you should think about.

1. Standards are good if they save time, effort, money, or increase safety or happiness. Any other reason is just a justification for the exercise of power.
2. Standards are set by people, not by logic, reason, money, or faith. Anyone who says differently is in denial or trying to pull the wool over your eyes.
3. If there is more than one standard way of doing things, there is no standard way of doing things.

There are 5 more and the 8 are a great checklist for companies, young and old.  Morgan did a previous post on this topic with some equally good writing and advice.

1. Keep your eye on the horizon – It was Wayne Gretzky who said, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” Don’t make yourself look like a buffoon by defining things with the latest buzzwords or by painting yourself into a corner with yesterday’s technologies.
2. Watch the attitude – When enforcing standards, it isn’t the principle that is important, it is the long term success of your organization. Period. Keep your ego out of it.
3. Pick your battles – If someone can do things better than you can, support them and learn from them. Focus on making allies, not winning arguments.

There is more.  The two posts are worth reading if you are just getting started or need some fast refresher before you are about to head into the meeting to discuss what the standard meeting agenda will look like during the non-standard meeting phone calls.

Well done, Morgan.

Have Blogs Helped?

A while back, I made the observation that blogging has, in general, made an awful lot of people available to mere mortals (like me!) that previously didn't  have this type of access.  I pointed out reporters, people in large companies, etc, were becoming more and more accessible. 

Shortly after making this comment to a school group, I got the obvious: Prove it.

So, for the past couple of months I've been doing just that. Trying to see if Blogging has meaningfully improved the general population's ability to get in front of people, get to 'big shots', etc, etc.

Here is my less then scientific methodology:

1. I created a freebie email account so people wouldn't know it was me.

2. I targeted a cross section of popular bloggers from various corporations and started asking 'random' but reasonably sane questions either of the "help, I don't know" or "can you suggest..." categories.

3. I kept a spreadsheet on who was good/not so good, responsive, etc, etc.

4. I sent out 50 pieces of email. In the world of a gazillion blogs, this is nothing but you can get some data.

5. I sent an additional 30 to email addresses I had of senior people that I knew did NOT have blogs.  Just seemed like some good sampling.

Here are the generic highlights. I'm not sharing much because there are a million variables, not the least of which is spam filters, which could have created the delay or non-answer.

Reporters who have blogs answer email. Mark Evans, Mathew Ingram in Canada, jumped right on the notes. I asked them things about the paper's they worked for and both responded with helpful information.  It tells me that the average person with reasonable dialog can talk with members of the press. Years ago? Maybe not so easy.  Jeff Jarvis who is a fairly big deal, wrote back a lengthy response to a question about a TV appearance he made.  Shel Israel answered a note with respect to the Naked Conversations book. 

Again, the point is that we can talk to authors, important TV people, etc, in a much more friction free way than ever before. 

I think on the technology front, we've made amazing strides.  Robert "A blog by any other name is a blog" Scoble was an easy poster child on this one.   During his time at Microsoft, in my opinion, you saw a rapid improvement in the overall responsiveness from Microsoft and hundreds of other companies attempting to get closer to users/customers.  Blogging, I believe really helped.  Having a list of Microsoft people and knowing the general responsiveness of the culture in general, you'll have to trust me when I tell you that my former employer has made great strides from the days of phone optional business cards. 

This applies to Google, Oracle, IBM, and other large companies but it has become the norm for newer companies and right from scratch start ups.  Icerocket is a good example. Blake Rhodes, the CEO, is on email like a hawk. Josh Einstein is another CEO (of Einstein Tech, makers of TEO) who answers email nearly around the clock. 

To be sure, there are many people/companies in the 'don't get it' column. Lots of senior people were in the no answer bucket, sent form letters or had assistants type out the Mr. so -n- so regrets stuff. 

It was good to return back with some weird science to make the point that for all the hand wringing about what a blog is or isn't, the communications between people on a variety of topics, both technical and non-technical has improved dramatically over the years.

In the end, it nets out a good thing.

Learning from others: The DEMO Archives

As a start up, you've been given tons of advice on what to day, how to pitch, slides, clothes, breath mints, etc.

One place you might want to spend a few hours is Chris Shipley's DEMO Website and, in particular, the Archive section.

You will find hundreds of presentations of top entrepreneurs of companies big and small.

For example, Buzz Bruggeman can be seen here, demoing Active Words.  I think the presentation that Buzz does is excellent and is a great example of how to get the message across quickly and succinctly.  He has a network fail, doesn't matter, listen to his voice carefully.  He doesn't miss a beat and the demo is perfect. 

If you own a Tablet PC, you get this immediately and if you are investing in Tablet PC software companies, it is a dead simple message.

There are hundreds of others on the DEMO pages.

Chris deserves a well done for taking the time and putting in the effort to do this. This is a wealth of data free for the viewing.

Filed Under Too Much Information

Wander over and a take a look at this video.

The really important question to me is: Would you change your hotel plans knowing this much information about the toilet?

Hmmm, that's what I thought.

(slow day at Casa JLA)

An Interest Points Point

As part of unwinding my wander the globe trip, I had to cancel a bunch of hotel stays.  A few of those stays were at Hilton properties and a few caused me to eat a night's stay because of pre-pay requirements.

I went to the Hilton Honnors people and said the obvious:

"Where's my points for the stay"

So far, the answer has been, you didn't stay so you don't get the points. To wit, I reply, you charged me for it so cough up the points.

So far.

I'm pressing this issue by climbing up the Hilton management food chain. Seems to me I'm entitled and I'm sure there is language in the agreement some place that says I'm not entitled.

Stay tuned.

TED Talks

Some of you may be familiar with the Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) conference.  A ton of really smart thinkers from around the globe get together to share ideas, think up new ones, and generally have a good gathering between people of various disciplines. I sneak in every year, hoping to get some of that knowledge/creative juice flowing my way.

The current keeper of the TED torch is Chris Anderson.  TED is non-profit; owned by the Sapling Foundation.  When you put TED in that light, look at the sharing, funding of world changing ideas, etc, my respect for Chris and what he is doing only grows. 

Take a look at the about TED page here.  I think the monologue that Chris does is very good. More importantly, for your start up, consider what your about page, or about me, etc, would look like if you did this.

The TED folks also have released what they call TED Talks.  These are some of the sessions that have been made available to the public.  They are all worth watching but these are particular interest to me and as start up types, you might find them interesting as well.

 

Hans Rosling.  "Hans Rosling is professor of international health at Sweden's world-renowned Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a non-profit that brings vital global data to life" 

(Gapminder will totally inspire you to build amazing things, trust me.)

Dr. Larry Brilliant. "TEDPrize winner Larry Brilliant is an epidemiologist who led the successful WHO campaign to eradicate Smallpox. He was recently named Executive Director of the Google Foundation."

(Watch for the software that is being used to track diseases. A JLA company, Nstein, is behind it as is Canada's heath community, so this is a shameless plug for both.)

Amy Smith. "MIT engineer Amy Smith designs ingenious low-cost devices to tackle tough problems in developing countries."

(You'll really enjoy the problem solving to make the world better attitude/enthusiasm.)

There are many others. I encourage you to check out the Ted Talk page.  The TED team/Sapling Foundation deserves recognition for putting this material out into the wild.  BMW is the sponsor.  Well done.

The Web2.0 Defined

From Ken Yarmosh:

 

Makes a perfect bumper sticker or T-shirt.  Nicely done, Ken.

 

[side note: I can't believe CafePress sells one bumper sticker for 6 bux.  There has to be a more effecient way for guys like Ken to have 'one off' stickers made.  It could be he has to eat 100 of em to get pricing, dunno.]

The VC Dance

Henk Kleynhas, a friendly South African whom I'm hoping to meet one of these days, has an interesting company called Skyrove.  A while back, he had a blog posting about his dance with the VC community.

Hank's story is an important read for start up folks everywhere because it highlights a number of traps that can happen when the VC and entrepreneur head out onto the dance floor.

First, you should go read Hank's story.

The big thing that stood out to me was this tidbit from the VC's rejection letter.

"1. Maturity of company: [The VC]'s current Fund2 requires an established team and business. Skyrove would for the foreseeable future require a more hands on approach which deviates from this model"

Giving an entrepreneur a term sheet without the fund being aligned with the business is, well, unprofessional (at best).  Entrepreneurs are told over and over to line up with VCs that are aligned with the business.  It appears this VC needs to get thy act together when it comes to this important point.  While Hank is fairly nice about giving the firm an out (turmoil, fund changes, etc), the fact remains that none of those things happen overnight and a term sheet seems to have been offered up a bit early.

The start up lesson here continues to be: look for funding as early as possible, establish relationships, get the VC/funder comfortable with the plans and do all of this long before a term sheet gets dumped on you.  There is nothing more painful then pulling a term sheet. It hurts the VC firm as well as the entrepreneur.  Your objective is to get a term sheet that is as good as taking money to the bank. To do that, the term sheet should be presented as far down the path as possible.  It rarely happens that way but that's my opinion.

Henk goes on to list his 'next time' or 'never again' list.  A few comments:

No Majority board control for a minority stake.

This is always an interesting issue.  Henk says he will not do it which may be fine for him. Your mileage may vary. Depending on the shareholder's agreement, 'negative controls', etc, it may not matter. Typically, in the vast majority of friendly deals that I've seen, a Series A board is small and typically comes out to be:

• one for the common shareholders
• one for the current CEO (who is likely a founder)
• one/two for the VC(s)
• one independent, mutually agreed upon

It can be less the independent when the company is first getting up and running or with an independent right out of the gate.  A board of more than 5 for a small start up is usually too much. A paid board of advisors who can help with the business is much smarter then having a large

Taking more money then one needs.

There are two issues with respect to taking money. One is that it always takes more then you think. Rarely do start ups hit it out of the park on exactly (or less) then what they need.  On the other hand, piling cash onto the balance sheet because a VC has cash deployment requirements is not a good plan either.  Dilution is not always the solution.  When you do your numbers and crunch away, keep in mind the what if scenarios and find a happy compromise between the bare need and over funding. The comfortable/prudent balance sheet is what you are after.

Being Cash Flow Positive.

It is very hard to argue with Henk's comments on this point except to say, if you can do it, do it.  He makes some excellent comments about the reality of being tight on coin.

"However, being cash-strapped has made us extremely focused on making Skyrove the best product for 90% of the market, even though we were only able to implement 10% of the features we first envisioned.... Because of a lack of cash, we've become smarter and learnt more about all aspects of running a business....If we had cash, we probably would have struggled to manage newly founded 'divisions' headed up by overpaid 'vice presidents' appointed by the board, who could outvote the founders."

Henk also makes the smart observation to do your homework with respect to talking to other CEOs of portfolio companies and doing due diligence of your own on the VC in question.

With lots of growth, money coming in, customers enjoying the product, Henk's Skyrove appears to be moving in the right direction with a CEO that can add a little VC tango to his list of accomplishments. 

It is a good lesson for others.

Crush the Competition (not)

If you have ever given a presentation to a Venture Capitalist, an angel or anybody you try to get some money out of for your new product or service, you've probably been faced with the question, "What's the competition" or "How do you stack up to your competition?"

It's an interesting trap, actually. Rather then focusing on the problem you solve, why people would love it, use it, PAY for it, we in the money biz sometimes get more worried about the other guy then what this idea is all about. Some things, like word processors, are a bit obvious with respect to having to talk about competition, most mostly great ideas should be studied as a great idea first, who uses and who pays.

My super smart daughter Rachel (who fortunately takes after her super smart PhD candidate mother), reminded me of a great post that Kathy Sierra  did on ignoring competition.

 

While that posting falls into the 'rant' category, it is in the read it pile for all new start ups.  There are two excellent pictures that sum it up nicely

First:

 

It makes the point, nicely.

The second one pretty much sums up lots of long in the tooth, bloated pieces of software.

I would suggest reading it all and making the "Headrush Gang" a part of your regular reading.

Thanks, Rachel.. Call your mother..

As Seen on Fred

Venture Capitalists have many things to dream about. Mostly, tho, they dream about 10 baggers and turning that $1m seed financing (AKA - a flyer) into a billion dollars.  VCs can aspire to be called upon to advise Presidents which happens on occasion. 

Entrepreneurs have a list of dreams. They center around making money without giving up equity or control.  There are late night stares into space with hopes that Oprah, 60 Minutes or 20/20 will sing the praises of thy efforts.

But a new aspiration can now be added to the list of true entrepreneur job satisfaction and self-actualization.

Yes, it's:

I happen to catch the following ad on a feed.  (heh, on my feed looped back into newsgator!)

Fred Wilson's AVC Blog is one of the most popular VC blogs around so, there you go.  Operators are standing by.