Time to write is scarce these days. My days are full with work, kids, homework supervision, music, house stuff, friends, and movies. The kids and I saw Megamind in 3D today. 🙂 So that means less time for me to write on the blog, but not to worry I am still getting my creative outlet through song writing. My new music writing partner and I now have 5 prototype songs done. They are still works in progress but for the few people I have played acoustic/rough cut recordings to, they seemed to like them or they did a good job at acting they liked them! My favorite one so far is based on lyrics inspired by my daughter.
This past week, I had the chance to participate in two really neat entrepreneurial related events in Austin. One was the Entrepreneur’s Foundation of Central Texas (EF) annual fundraising Texas Hold ‘Em poker night event. The Austin Technology Incubator, where I work, partners with the EF to handle our company’s equity donations to The University of Texas at Austin. The organization was co-founded by one of my friends, Randi Shade, who is currently an Austin city council member. This was my third year to go and I always have a blast. Each time, I’ve made it past the initial table to the 2nd table. One year I think I made it past the 2nd table, but this year I was out at the 2nd. It’s a fabulous networking event with the who’s who of Austin entrepreneurs and investors in attendance. Last year, they had celebrity guests, one of whom was Heather Graham. I got a picture with her and yes she is as beautiful in person as she is in the movies! She even gave me a stick of chewing gum. The EF provides a great service to our community by helping facilitate donations when companies have a liquidating event to charities of their choice.
The other event was the Idea to Product Competition (I2P). I have judged and served as a feedback judge at I2P for several years now. I remember being part of the early formation discussions of the competition 10+ years ago. I really enjoy participating in this competition for many reasons. The student teams seem to get better every year. I’m always fascinated with the life science companies and this year is no exception. One company had invented a tiny microscope to help detect diseases in blood samples via enhanced imagery. I don’t want to go into too much detail because our advice to them was to really get a clear understanding of their intellectual property ownership. Another had an at home device for testing for certain sexually transmitted diseases. The topic makes me cringe but apparently there is a large and unfortunately growing market. The entrepreneur in me gets excited to see these students interested in commercializing technology they have either created or intend to license from a university. It also reminds me of when I was a student presenting my first company in front of a panel of judges in one business plan competition after another. I can relate to the nerves/anxiety but the thrill of selling the concept kept me going.
As I think I’ve mentioned before, there are many really neat things happening in Austin in the world of high-tech entrepreneurship, and I only wish I had time to write more about them.
And now for a really quick post…Happy Halloween! My kids dressed up as Super Girl and something called a Metal Skull Rider and went trick or treating with their dad. I didn’t dress up, but at my son’s soccer game today I asked one of the mom’s to spray gold glitter in my hair so my daughter would try having some in her hair.
This weekend I showed up to help advise companies that are part of a program called 3 Day Startup hosted by the Austin Technology Incubator (where I work) and coordinated by our wireless/IT director, Bart Bohn. Check out the ATI Blog for an update on the students that were involved and the companies that emerged from the weekend lock-in. Three teams presented tonight to a panel of judgest so that’s where I spent my Halloween evening…with glittery hair.
Check out this post by Michael Arrington on TechCrunch to find out if you are a Pirate (a.k.a. entrepreneur in search of adventure because finding that pot of gold is rare). He says, “Entrepreneurs, though, are all screwed up. They don’t need to be rewarded for risk, because they actually get utility out of risk itself. In other words, they like adventure. The payouts for starting a business are just terrible when you account for risk. A tiny minority of entrepreneurs ever get rich. And the majority of entrepreneurs would probably make far more money, and have more stable personal relationships, if they just worked for someone else.”
Last weekend, my kid’s school, Magellan International, had its first Fall Festival. We were one of the founding families of the school and it was a great event with lots of kids, booths, sno cones, dragon dancing, and pinatas. I even got my hand painted with henna in classic Indian style. It has made my recent business meetings quite interesting because I feel compelled to explain the ornate henna tatoo on my fingers and palms so that people don’t think I have some rare disease. 🙂 My daughter decided to get her face painted as Spiderman…but fortunately not with henna!
There are always so many things going on that are school related that I’m really impressed with the parents who coordinate events like these. As a full time working mom, I feel like I can’t keep up most of the time so I’m grateful for the other moms & dads who get involved and organize events like these for the school.
The coordinators for this event chose to use VolunteerSpot as their tool to help organize the other parent’s contributions and activities. I was excited they used VolunteerSpot because a friend of mine, Karen Bantuveris, is the founder of the company. I had lunch with Karen last week and told her how I liked using the tool. I signed up to bring paper plates and volunteered my time at one of the booths (mask making for the Brazil booth). It was really easy to sign up and then I got an email reminder before the event letting me know what I had signed up to do. I try to get everything on my calendar but as life and kid’s activities get more complex, I appreciate every little reminder I get.
I was originally going to do a post about all the various issues I’ve had lately with my car, my garage door, and other stuff, but then I rented and watched Slumdog Millionaire last night. My car stopped working last Friday but they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. Fortunately I happened to be near the dealer and was able to drive it into the lot before it died again. They give free rental cars so I just had to pay about $50 for the diagnostic even though I had a nice new rental car for 4 days. My garage door stopped working Monday night even though I had just replaced the motor just a month ago and spent more money than I’d like to say to get it fixed. I was about to lose it when they told me they would charge me for the service trip, but when he came out he discovered it was a warranty issue so I didn’t get charged. So compared to the life of many street kids in India, I have a pretty sweet set of periodic challenges (knock on wood).
Slumdog Millionaire was a great movie and apparently the Academy thought the same because it won 8 awards in 2009. It’s about the life of orphan street kids in India. I’ve been to India and Sri Lanka and the poverty and abysmal living conditions of many kids is real. Maybe I’m a little cynical these days but the happy ending seemed a bit surreal given the horrible hardships they endured. Spoiler Alert: The main character wins 20 million rupees, he is finally reunited with the girl he fell in love with as a boy, his brother who betrayed him shoots the bad guy and gets killed in the process, etc. However, I’m sure the visuals were even more dramatic on the big screen. If those poor street kids in India can have a positive, entrepreneurial attitude when everything and everyone around them can’t be trusted, then who am I to complain.
One day I hope to take my kids to a true 3rd world country so they will fully appreciate the United States of America and what a nice life we have here. I feel so blessed to be living in America. And hopefully they will finally appreciate it when I tell them “there are poor kids in India who would love to have your food” when they say don’t like something on their plates!
We love stories and movies about people beating the odds. We love the high, the risk, the adrenaline, the rush, the underdog making it. We all want to be that person who beats the odds and we cheer those people on. I saw the movie Secretariat this weekend and what a story. Secretariat was a famous, record breaking race horse. I love horses. I used to ride horses and one day when the stars align, I’d love to be around horses again. What a sweet relationship between Secretariat and his owner.
I think this is why I am drawn to entrepreneurship and people who like to create something out of nothing. People who believe against all odds that what they are doing will change the world and take on the risk of not making it. It’s that passion that you wish you could bottle and release upon the many people in the world who are afraid to try something because they are afraid of failing or looking bad. It’s really scary to do things that go against the grain. To risk being alone. The anxiety in the pit of your stomach is there when you do something that might result in people judging you but you know in your heart of hearts that it’s the right thing to do even if you can’t fully explain why. You only know it’s right when you get to the other side and you win, or you get your freedom, feel the calmness, or you see/feel the fruits of your labor pains. And sometimes you lose, but when you follow your heart there really is no losing because you are true to yourself.
The following quote hit my in box today: 10/10/10 (this must be an auspicious day :-)) from Jeffrey Fry’s Potent Quotables and I took a risk I would never have thought myself capable of doing that might be a mistake or it might just end up being an expensive bit of fun, but time will tell. It felt right to try it out, and I look forward to the adventure. If it’s a mistake, I’ll learn from it, move on, and hopefully help others avoid the same mistake.
“If I could do it all over again, I’d make more mistakes.” –Mark Twain
As I watch my son play soccer, I think to myself how great it is that he is part of a team. I watch him and his other 7 to 8 year old buddies communicate with each other on the field and off. There’s a neat camaraderie and chemistry they have even at this young age. They can be intensely focused on winning but realize that you win some, you lose some, you get some goals, you totally choke and miss some goals, and you are still a team. The team skills are something I see him picking up organically because although I know I could try to explain to him the importance of playing certain positions, playing to your strengths, working with others on a team, etc. he would never really get it unless he experienced it. He doesn’t know that he’s already learning valuable life lessons on the field and when he hangs out with those same buddies off the field. Right now their team seems to work really well together and they win most of their games, which is good because they enjoy it and it motivates them to continue. I think those people who played team sports growing up or were in groups like the military have an advantage when starting businesses or working on teams that are creating innovative products because working with other people can be the most enjoyable and yet sometimes the most emotionally draining experience you can have. Knowing how to ride the waves of your own and others humanity can be the difference between success and failure in an endeavor or a work place.
My daughter seems to prefer swimming which is a more individual sport but if she gets good enough, she might want to join a swim team. I played team sports at various times during my elementary/junior high school years (track, bowling, basketball) and then later in junior high and college I rode horses competitively as part of a team. I also participated in some college intramural sports and company sports teams…mostly softball, but I wish I had done more. I don’t really remember most of the people on those teams, but I do remember a few that made strong impressions on me based on their personalities and talents.
As the saying goes: “There is no “I” in Team.” Even investors in the high tech entrepreneurial world will say they would rather invest in an A Team with a B idea than a B Team with an A idea because the A Team has a better chance of navigating changes that inevitably get thrust upon them.
You would think that would be obvious, but half way to the roller skating rink where we attended a kid’s birthday party last weekend, I realized I was wearing flip flops. Too late to turn back. I had never been to the skating rink with them before, fortunately however, they both had been to Playland Skate Center before with their dad. My son went off on his own (which surprised me a bit) skating around the rink and participating in limbo and other games. I just kept hoping he would be OK and not get lost or have a major crash while I was with my daughter. I can’t remember when I crossed the mental line of worrying too much about him in large, but enclosed entertainment places (e.g., Chuck E Cheese, Inflatable places, etc.) or him going to the Men’s restroom (shudder) without me nearby, but it happened in the last year or so. I guess I finally trusted him to find his way back to me, a bad guy wouldn’t suddenly steal him, or that I would find him. She wanted me to be near her most of the time so as she used the rail to get around the rink, I had to stand just outside and help her across some longer spots wearing my flip flops. Needless to say both she and her brother ran into my feet a few times. Ouch!
It has probably been a couple of decades since I had been inside a roller skating rink, and I was suddenly flooded with all those teenage roller skating party memories but this time everything seemed louder, darker, somewhat annoying, but without, as my friend in high school used to say, the teenage bullshit. But I did observe a lot of the teenage BS because there were many teenagers there.
At any rate, I’m not sure what my point is other than I thought this blog title sounded kind of cool. There are a lot of entrepreneurial things going on in Austin. So much I can’t keep up with them, nor do I even have the strength, stamina, or time to blog about. Even Austin Startup blog has slowed down its posts because the founder of that blog has a full time job.
I have hired someone to do a new blog background for me which may inspire me to change the focus of my blog a bit more. Right now the tag line is ‘babbling about business and parenting.’ Maybe I should just change it to “writing in flip flops or bare feet and trying to survive.” 🙂
You’re going about your weekend morning breakfast routine. The kids are having fun and doing fine. You boil eggs for them except they turn out a little runnier than one of your kids likes so you put it in the microwave to harden up the middle a little for 30 seconds. The egg white was already slit and you remark that you hope it doesn’t explode in the microwave. You pull it out and it looks fine. You place it in front of your 5 year old daughter and take a fork to it to cut it for her and BOOM, it explodes all over your face, her face, the table, the chairs, the floor, etc. You are stunned, she’s stunned, her brother is stunned. You can’t see because there are egg pieces in your eyes and your daughter starts crying because she’s startled and scared.
You stand dumbfounded for a moment wondering what happened when you realize there are pieces of egg everywhere. You wipe her face and your face and she walks off to sit on the couch nearby because she doesn’t want to be anywhere near the disaster and she wants to recover. Your 8 year old son keeps walking around where the egg pieces on the floor are despite being told at least 5 times not to walk there, but he’s kind of amused by it all. He keeps saying “sorry, I didn’t realize it was here.” And you roll your eyes at him not comprehending why he couldn’t remember you just told him not to walk there. You start laughing at the craziness and then after a few minutes you all start pointing at each other and laughing at the fact you all have pieces of egg in your hair. You ask your daughter if she’s still hungry and she says she is so you offer her a bagel with cream cheese (which is her favorite) and she says she wants to eat it while sitting on the counter and you let her so you can finish cleaning the breakfast table area. Her brother also wants to sit on the counter and eat a bagel so you let him do it too despite the fact he ate all of his egg because he likes runny eggs.
You clean up, you take them to your voice lesson where they color and play on the iPhone while you have your lesson, for lunch you cut them some apples and make them cheese & ham quesadillas that get slightly burned because you discover more egg pieces and get distracted trying to clean them up, you listen to them complain briefly that their lunch is slightly burned but you don’t get too upset because they are playing nicely together with some board games and staying out of your way while you continue to eradicate the kitchen of random pieces of egg, you take them to your daughter’s swim lesson where your son wants to download more free games to your iPhone, and then you come home. You let them watch TV because you are tired and you lay in between them and fall asleep for 5 minutes before their Dad comes to pick them up.
Then you attempt to catch up on hundreds of emails, housework, paperwork, busy work, eat cereal for dinner because nothing else appeals to you, watch a recording of Mad Men, write this post and then go to bed.
Yes, that was my day today and I wouldn’t trade it for any other because an egg exploded in my face for the first time in my life and my kids were there to see it and everyone is OK. 🙂 And I’m grateful that it was just an egg and not an airplane exploding in my building like what happened 9 years ago in New York on this very date, September 11.
There are so many ways to tie an egg unexpectedly exploding in your face to life as an entrepreneur or parent, that it would take too long to write about here. So I’ll just leave it up to you all to come up with your own egg exploding business start-up and other parenting analogies.
Time heals all wounds or so they say. Time certainly does makes the wound look different and allows it to close up a bit, but the wound is still there to remind us of something. In the world of high-tech entrepreneurship, people sometimes refer to those wounds as ‘scar tissue’ or ‘battle wounds.’ It means you’ve been through a lot, learned a lot, and in some cases they are looked upon as honored badges of experience here in the US. In other parts of the world, that ‘scar tissue’ is socially a black mark which is why you have fewer risk takers and people trying new things. The results of failure in some cultures/families are not just some scratches you can put Neosporin or Mederma on, learn from and move on, they come to define you as a person.
The trick is to learn from those wounds but also be open enough to recognize that although a situation might remind you of circumstances before you got stabbed previously, you should be aware of the subtle differences so you can move to avoid the hurtling knife or not react in a way that causes history to repeat itself.
Another thing that helps heal wounds is keeping up a strong network of friends, mentors, advisers and to watch a bunch of movies, musicals and TV shows. Talking with people about what they have experienced in life & business, really helps put perspective to what you have experienced. We have all faced challenges and talking about things out loud with others helps heal your hurt ego and heart.
The endless debate on whether life imitates art or art imitates life might never be solved, but it’s sure great to watch them and feel better about your situation. It’s usually never as bad, crazy, funny as what happens in the movies or TV. I recently saw Inception in the theater, watched The Holy Grail (I didn’t have time to re-watch Life of Brian before I had to return it – Ugh!), and saw Mean Girls on TV. I started watching a TV series called Mad Men (set in an advertising firm in the 1960’s) but missed the first several seasons I think. Inception was incredible. It’s about dreams within dreams and I’ve always been eerily effected by movies like The Matrix and this one Twilight zone show about spiders that bite you with this venom that makes the characters think they are fine, but they are really dreaming that everything is fine with occasional glimpses that they are caught in a space shuttle with alien spiders wrapping them in their webs (Scary!).
Last night I saw Jersey Boys: The Story of Franki Valli and The Four Seasons. What a fabulous show. All the drama of their families, debt, drinking, taxes. It makes me wonder if with such talent, misery also follows. You can point to so many great singers/actors whose lives were tragic (e.g., Elvis, Michael Jackson, Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, etc.). The actor that played the role of Franki Valli had a wonderful voice and I had forgotten all the songs they sang. Some of my favorite songs were My Eyes Adored You, December 1963 (Oh, What A Night), and Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You. But behind those lovely lyrics & melodies was a lot of pain and heartache as well as good times.
The sad thing is that we get older while time is passing by and healing all those wounds, so we have less energy to do more things with those learnings. So we have to learn fast! Self doubt diminishes but so does the stamina. “Youth is wasted on the young.” – George Bernard Shaw. But then there’s always the saying that apparently an internet search can’t even reveal the source “Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.” – unknown
I saw a play/musical called The Drowsy Chaperone this past Friday with some friends at a local Austin theater called Zach (if you click that link you can even see a short video) and it was very good. The narrator was hilarious. He is an obviously gay guy who was married once but now is alone in his apartment listening to old vinyl records, one of which is of the musical The Drowsy Chaperone. He intervenes during the performance with his opinions of each scene with great commentary from his life experience. He is so excited about the musical, where most of the cast end up marrying each other (i.e., 4 weddings take place at the end), but also sad and lonely about his situation about not finding the right person to be with. Actors to me seem to be entrepreneurs, selling themselves for each show in the hopes of getting cast. I’m guessing that unless you are on Broadway in New York, acting is a tough life financially.
I also discovered a new restaurant called Paggi House. The food was great (except the mussels were too small) and they had half price drinks and appetizers until 7pm so we shared a bunch of interesting things including one of my favorite things: soft shell crab! Well, my friend isn’t a big fan of soft shell crab so she let me eat 95% of it (yummy) with a really interesting sweet/sour/vinegar house made sauce. She had a really interesting salad that I took a few bites of that had vanilla in the dressing!
Saturday and Sunday consisted of meals at homeand Chuy’s as well as seeing the movie Despicable Me with the kids. They had already seen it, but since I hadn’t. I used my strong persuasion skills (not hard) to get them to see it again. It had some pretty funny, but predictable scenes. The main character strives to be the best villain in the world and gets caught by surprise when he adopts 3 little girls as part of one of his schemes to be the best villain. His mother is never pleased with his attempts at villainy as a child and later in life which motivates him but also makes him sad. In the end his mother pays him probably the best and only compliment he’s received from her when she tells him that he is a great parent to the 3 little orphan girls he adopted…”probably even better than me.” You can tell he was pleased that she finally gave him credit for something and it wasn’t for any of his attempts to be a bad guy. Us mothers can cause so much joy and sadness in our kids lives…well according to movies anyway…oh and a few psychologists. 🙂 I wonder where the dads are in these animated movies?!
I had planned to post this earlier, but my Internet has been down for the last couple of days because some squirrels chewed through some of the cabling…those darn squirrels!
As long time readers know, I write about business and parenting and sometimes how the two combine or don’t combine. Well, this post is about a little bit of both. My kids, age 8 and 5 1/2, have pretty much reached the age of reason — most days. Of course there are those times when the term ‘reason’ resonates with no one (including myself) around here, but on most days they are reasonable. I discovered recently, they have reached the age where they will play together. I mean, they have played together in the past but they’ve always wanted me involved, didn’t fully agree with what the other wanted to play, wanted to watch TV, or play the Wii. I’d get frustrated and just tell them to watch TV and then feel like a less than stellar mom for putting them in front of the TV after I’ve had a long day at work and needed some time to catch up with home stuff, organize stuff or even just sit down for a minute!
In the last few weeks, I’ve been able to go tell them to play cards or a board game while I cook, clean, check some emails, or lay down for a bit and they actually listen! On a couple of occasions, I’ve even had to tell them to wrap up playing if they wanted to watch a little TV before they went to bed. I don’t know why but I feel much less mom guilt when they play with each other even if they are chasing each other around the house playing tag and I happen to be home base (safety) while I’m trying to do the dishes. In a weird way, their aging is allowing me to have time to do more things because they entertain themselves. I knew there was a reason I had two kids because it certainly wasn’t a rational decision at the time given my son didn’t sleep more than a few hours in a row until he was over 4 years old! When I see them playing, hear them discussing the rules of the game they are about the play, and sorting out their disagreements, my heart smiles, my other troubles disappear for a while, and I think to myself how lucky I truly am.
I just got back from a week long part stay-cation and part away-cation with some friends who live in two different cities. We visited some local Austin famous places like the Oasis and Hamilton Pool. We also saw The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (nice movie). I always feel so blessed after I get to spend time with these particular friends because I’ve known them for 20+ years now. Our kids have virtually grown up together and at one point in each of their lives, they thought they were cousins. It didn’t matter that we looked different, to them they just felt like family. I feel lucky to have them in my and my kids lives.
During this time, I read a very interesting book (that most of the rest of the world already knows about because the movie is now out starring Julia Roberts) Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (Amazon Link) by Elizabeth Gilbert. It was if the author was writing parts of my story! It got enough positive reviews to warrant a movie starring Julia Roberts but it certainly touched a nerve with some of the Amazon reviewers who decided it was self indulgent! One of the moms at a water park we went to saw I was reading it and told me how great it was and she loved it. She told me “just wait until you get to the part when she’s in India.” This is obviously a book that elicits very different responses from people depending where they are in their life/spiritual journey.
I won’t quote some of passages (that I desperately want to) here because my blog is read by many people…not just women age 30+ going through a mid-life awakening and search for meaning. This is a non-fiction account of the author’s experience of taking one year ‘off’ to find God/herself. She does not have kids and received a hefty book advance which makes this a much easier endeavor. She spends 4 months in Italy (eating), 4 months in India (praying), and 4 months in Indonesia, specifically Bali (loving). She writes about divorce, marriage, God, spirituality, crushes, love, food, different cultures, depression, not wanting to live, yoga, meditation, physical intimacy, soul mates, etc. The only character in India who the author says she uses his real name is Richard from Texas. Richard has an interesting take on soul mates (see quote below) and apparently he builds houses in Austin. I SO want to run into Richard from Texas some day! Given I live in Austin, it might happen. Now for some quotes:
“Sincere spiritual investigation is, and always has been, an endeavor of methodical discipline. Looking for Truth is not some kind of spazzy free-for-all, not even during this, the great age of the spazzy free-for-all.” p. 2.
I’m not going to type it all here, but the top of p. 49 she talks about how she tried to make sense of her depression and why she would feel this way from chemical, diet, seasonal, to being an artist/writer, to her situation, to her parents, to xyz and she concluded it was probably a little bit of everything and things she didn’t even understand.
“Virginia Woolf wrote, ‘Across the broad continent of a woman’s life falls the shadow of a sword.’ On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where ‘all is correct.’ But on the other side of that sword, if you’re crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, ‘all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course.’ Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a far more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will also be more perilous.” p. 95
“The Bhagavad Gita – that ancient Indian Yogic text – says that is is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection.” p. 95
“The classical Indian sages wrote that there are three factors which indicate whether a soul has been blessed with the highest and most auspicious luck in the universe: 1. To have been born a human being, capable of conscious inquiry. 2. To have been born with – or to have developed – a yearning to understand the nature of the universe. 3. To have found a living spiritual master.” p. 124
“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it….[they] shake you up…tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you [have] to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master and beat it.” p. 149
“To know God, you need only to renounce one thing – your sense of division from God. Otherwise, just stay as you were made, within your natural character.” p. 192
“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.” p. 260
“The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I’m a failure…I’m lonely…I’m a failure…I’m lonely…) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourselves from our suffocating mantras.” p. 325
Yes, this is a great book to read for those of you on a journey ‘to understand the nature of the universe’ which is a means to understand yourself.
A long time Adviser/Mentor of mine, who also happens to be a very successful investor, sent me a link to the Venture Capital Human Capital (VCHC) report. The findings were interesting but not too surprising (except for possibly the average age of the founding team, given I founded my first company at the “didn’t know any better” age of 26) from my vantage point. I have embedded the report below so you should be able to scroll through the pages.
They say: “In part 1 of our first-ever Venture Capital Human Capital Report, we look at the race of founders, the racial composition of founding teams, age of founding teams and the # of founders of VC backed companies to see if there is any relationship between these characteristics and the VC funding received.” Some of their findings:
87% of Founders are White; All-Asian Teams Raise the Most Funding
Nationally, South Asian and East/Southeast Asians are funded to a similar extent
83% of Teams are all White. All Asian teams raise more money.
Average founding team is age 35 to 44 years old.
39% of founders were CEO/Founders before. Sales/Marketing and Product Management/Development were common previous roles.
Majority of companies have two or more founders, but a third are led by one founder.
Most people think the opposite of love is hate, but really it isn’t, and I think most people know this if they take the time to think about it. If people love your products, you do great. If you have a group of people who hate your products, you are still likely to do OK. Take for example the iPhone. People love it because Apple somehow convinced many of us of its greatness. Then there are those who hate it (see iPhone4 vs. HTC Evo YouTube video) and it still does great and its main competitor the Android phone is doing well because people love it. They just spread the word in a less visible/audible way. Another example is twitter or facebook. Some people love them and others think they are a complete waste of freaking time, but they are both doing well from an adoption if not a profitability standpoint.
The same is true of people. Some people love Steve Jobs (founder of Apple) and some hate him for his megalomaniac ways. More often than not people apparently hate Larry Ellison (founder of Oracle) but they still keep buying Oracle products. Some people love president Barack Obama but some hate him for the change he represents and for his sometimes questionable political decisions. The same goes for Rush Limbaugh and former president Bill Clinton for his promiscuous way. Everyone seemed to love Lady Diana and despise Prince Charles because he loved another woman not nearly as beautiful and sweet as Lady Di. The vast majority of people adored Mother Theresa and Gandhi. Some people love hard rock or country music and some can’t stand either. So the products, people, and genre’s that people don’t care about are the one’s that no one gets emotionally charged about either way, and they disappear or have a very small niche.
So the opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy. What kind of company, product, person are you or do you represent? One that people love or hate? Do they not care enough to pay attention? Do they care if you throw your products into the sea or a landfill? Do they care if you throw yourself into the sea or a landfill? Will they notice if you walk out the door? If they don’t care and you are feeling like furniture (song lyric alert), then maybe it’s time to build another product, start/join another company, transform yourself so people notice you/your products, change your life situation, and/or buy new furniture! All of these things are much easier said than done except, of course, for ‘buying new furniture.’
To me, a sense of humor is really important. But funny enough what some people think is funny others don’t. The best comedians appeal to a majority of people with their jokes because usually they pick on the insecurities many of us have. If you can’t laugh at yourself, your mistakes, or even others from time to time, you’ll go insane. In my opinion, a good sense of humor is important with friends, family, and in the workplace. I like to laugh and I like to make others laugh. I’m certainly not a comedian by any stretch of the imagination, but I tend to show my humor much more off blog than on blog because I really don’t know what will resonate with you hundreds upon hundreds of readers out there. (Are you still there? Feedburner, Google Analytics and WordPress stats say you are. :-))
There are two cartoons that I think are hilarious that my kids watch. I like to watch them too and my kids ask me (while they are laughing) why I think they are so funny and I tell them “I just do.” They are Penguins of Madagascar (based on the DreamWorks movie series Madagascar) and Emmy award winning Disney channel’s Phineas and Ferb. King Julien, the ring-tailed lemur, cracks me up in his self absorbed ways in Penguins of Madagascar. The crafty penguins with their dry wit, make me laugh out loud.
The creativity (and obliviousness) of the two little step brothers in Phineas and Ferb, their older classically teenage sister (Candace) who is always trying to BUST them in their over-the-top, dangerous projects, and Perry the Platypus who is always busting the evil Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, are so well ‘cast’ together. The brother’s Firecamp Girl (play on Girl Scouts) friend Isabella helps them with their projects and always greets them with a “Watcha doing?” when she sees them. According to the Wikipedia link, the creators of Phineas and Ferb pitched the concept for 16 freaking long years before Disney picked it up. Wow! To me, it’s pure genius.
I also just rented Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, Life of Brian, and The Holy Grail because a friend (Earl Lundquist – soccer blogger) mentioned that he and the family were watching Monty Python on one of his facebook updates. It reminded me that I hadn’t seen those movies in a really long time, and I think Monty Python is classic British wit that pokes fun of many sensitive subjects (religion, politics, personal relationships, gender) at its finest. I re-watched Meaning of Life last night and it still is so funny. The scene where Death comes to visit, or the scene where the professor is trying to teach sex-ed to a seemingly uninterested group of boys by going through the mechanical acts of procreation with his wife, or the scene where the Catholic mother is doing the dishes and gives birth to her 30th child and they sing about not being able to use protection, or the scene where they come to harvest a liver from a live donor are just classic.
I can’t wait until my kids are old enough to watch them with me. I think if they can laugh at themselves or find the humor in things, they will hopefully be happier individuals overall. [Although I do have a limit to the bodily functions humor they both seem to like.] I hope they find Monty Python funny too and don’t roll their eyes at me and think how embarrassing their mother is, but I’m prepared for the worst. Well, maybe my sense of humor is odd, but hey at least I can laugh at something (some people are so serious they can’t see the lighter side of things). Plus they say laughter is the best medicine and it can be just what you need to make a breakthrough in a tough project at home or work. 😀 <— that’s me Laughing Out Loud (LOL).
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