The Post Money Value

The Power of Restraint

I'm here in Kitchner in a speakers room waiting to do a talk with (among other notables) Chris Anderson of The Long Tail/Wired fame.  In walks a guy from one of the big banks.

Chris, being a polite and friendly guy, says hello and asks a simple question: "So, what are you going to be speaking about."  Friendly banker guy says "I'm the innovation guy and I'm going to talk about how we innovate at the bank."

Chris, in an amazing display of restraint simply says, "Gee, cool. I've got two companies running and I use PayPal to do payroll and basically run the place. Tell me more."  He then proceeds to be great in listening not wanting to pick on a 30 something MBA banker type.

But there is still, shall we say, a bit of adjustment going on at the bank.

When the conference organizers passed out the release forms for being recorded, our banker friend turned a shade of green that wasn't money.  He couldn't sign it without checking back with home office since he hadn't been media trained, etc, etc. Promised to get back the organizers. 

We both agreed, tho, that a bank giving a 30 something some power and influence to change things up, was a great sign. He did a great job at the conference.

Your Strengths

Tawfiq Arafat is probably one of the most important people in my business life. Taf, as we lovingly call em, is a world class monster brain when it comes to facts, figures, and math.  A genius to be sure.  Without him, my mistake count would be off the charts.  Nobody crunches numbers, remembers numbers, and makes magic out of numbers like Dr. Math.

Kevin Patterson is VC Taser when it comes to details. He doesn't miss anything and will stop, shock, -n- stun anything that isn't done correctly. No document, no agreement, no amendment, etc, leaves my hands without Kevin's review and approval.

These guys are the reason I have a prayer at being successful as a VC. And the jury is still out, to be sure.

I bring this up because the topic of teams consistently came up in the VC roundtables. I have one single and simple message that will improve your odds of success.

Surround yourself with people smarter than you, get out of the way, and focus on your strengths

• Jeremy Wright at B5 is building a world class team so he can focus on his strengths, bloggers and blogging.
• Marc Gingras at Tungle is doing the same so he can focus on his strengths, solving people's collaboration and meeting issues.

Both of these CEOs will proudly tell you what they suck at.  Ask them. They case studies in hiring smart people so they can do what they do best.

I can point you to many ex-VCs (speaking from the world I live in today) who were successful at some big software company but ended up flaming out in VC land because they weren't surrounded with smart people and they didn't check the ego at the door before writing checks.

What do you suck at and who's handling it?

VC Left and Right Hand Adventures

True story:

Small start-up has interesting service.  Selling well and doing well.  They decide to raise some expansion capital to open up some additional markets, do some additional development work, and generally speed up the company's progress.

The CEO goes in and pitches big VC firm.  VC firm has tons of cash, people, and offices.  Pitch goes well and the partner says "Let's continue the dialog" while starting to do some work on the file.

The sales guy, who knows NOTHING of this fund raising activity, calls HR department of said big VC firm and proceeds to give the sales pitch.

Two emails come in from said big VC firm.

Email one: "Sorry, we pass"

Email two: "Cool product, here's the signed contract, can't wait to start using it."

I think this is hilarious but I'm generally viewed as twisted so your humor meter may not go off.