Healthcare Reform or Debacle?
Mar 28 2010

Last week I was out of town for a much needed break and as pretty much everyone knows much of the week was all about US health care reform or as people have been calling it Obamacare.   I ended up seeing more of the health care bill passing/signing spectacle than I normally would because I was with family members who like to keep up with every detail when it comes to things like this.  I usually don’t have time or the interest in understanding more than a broad brush of what is happening.  I know I probably shouldn’t admit that but daily life gets in the way and I’m one of the fortunate people that happens to have good health insurance right now.  In this case, I’m actually a bit disheartened in how things were handled and are being handled.  Long time readers of my blog know that I supported Obama in the election and am still amazed at what he’s been able to accomplish.  He is a very intelligent, charismatic man.

Yes, I’m glad that small business owners will get a tax credit for offering health insurance.  Yes, I’m glad that people who could not afford and did not have insurance in the past will now have an option.  Yes, I’m glad they will share some of the financial burden that all of us taxpayers have covered to date.  Yes, I’m glad that children with pre-existing conditions cannot be denied health care coverage.  At one point when we didn’t have access to employer based coverage except via COBRA (which was way too expensive), I shopped around for coverage.  Because of a minor observation that a doctor had made during a doctor visit for my then 18 month old son, one insurance company denied him coverage.  I had to find another company to cover him.  It was ridiculous!

What I’m not happy about is how this bill came to pass.  I have several very good Republican friends and if I was in their shoes I would feel very upset with how the bill got passed.  My friends aren’t the type that yell things at congress people.  They aren’t the crazies who try to physically hurt people.  They are smart, caring people.  And if they don’t buy in, get, approve, or understand the bill then I think this was a hollow victory.

In my opinion when you are trying to implement a change of this nature that has huge financial AND emotional implications, it’s the leader’s job to get buy in and understanding from all sides.  When one side is completely opposed, you’ve set yourself up for a long uphill battle, wasted energy, wasted money, and bi-partisan messes.  As unpopular as the war is now, at the time it had bi-partisan support.  As broken as I think the welfare, affirmative action, social security, and medicare programs are now, they (as far as I know, and I readily admit I could be wrong) had support (even if minimal) from both sides.

One thing I think most bills are missing that pass Congress is an “out clause.”  How do we get out of something that isn’t working anymore?  How do we get out of the war?  Some of the billions of dollars being spent on the war could be (in my opinion) better used on the home front including health care reform.  How do we get out of, change, or just drop programs like the ones I mentioned above that are no longer working as designed because people have learned to game the system?  I think all of the programs (just like this health care reform will initially provide) provided great value at the time they were implemented and helped hundreds of thousands of people, but now they aren’t working as designed and there is no easy out clause.

I believe in people.  I believe in the men and women who are the one’s that get things done on a daily basis in this country.  It doesn’t matter if they are Democrats or Republicans.  In the case of health care reform, I think from a “change management” perspective we have set ourselves up for a very challenging road.  There is a huge process in managing change and this is a big one.  Many changes implemented in corporations fail, many mergers & acquisitions fail precisely because everyone underestimates the amount of change that really needs to happen to make something work. People are all different and we fundamentally don’t like change.  The insurance companies, the patients, the doctors, the hospitals, etc. will all have to change.  We want to feel like we’ve bought in and understand the change before changing our behaviors.  If we don’t feel we’ve been given that respect, we will dig in our heels and resist.

Overall, I’m glad the bill passed because it has now taken the discussion on health care to a different level. After all the lawyers get in & out, I am hopeful that everyone will plainly see how it will help millions of Americans as well as understand how we will pay for it.  I don’t fully understand how we will pay for it just as I don’t fully understand how we continue to pay for an unpopular war.  However, I think Obama and the Democrat members of Congress should have had the foresight to realize that the energy drain and distraction that the nation is now facing will take its toll…especially now when we should be allocating some of that energy on educating our kids and creating jobs to maintain our leadership position in the world.

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About Pain
Mar 19 2010

Some of you may have been wondering why I took such an extended blogging break and why I’ve been so spotty in the times between posting.  I thought quite some time about posting this, but then I thought I might never reach my potential as a writer or even as a human being if I don’t throw caution to the wind and risk offending or for that matter validating/pleasing others.   Plus I thought that if it helps one person or helps someone think differently even if just for a nanosecond, then it would have been worth it.  Some of you may recall I wrote About Laughter, About Sleep, About Writing and About Car Paint.  This post is About Pain.

There’s physical pain and then there’s emotional, mental, and spiritual pain.  Most of us have experienced all different kinds in life.  The worst physical pain in my life came as a result of breastfeeding my son over 7 1/2 years ago now.  I developed an infection that hurt so bad I couldn’t sleep and if I was able to nod off, I would wake up with tears in my eyes.  I remember thinking “I want to die right now, but I can’t because I must feed my baby.”  I was determined to breastfeed him no matter how many people said I should give up.  I have never wished to die before or since.  I have wished to be waited on hand & foot while laying in a hammock on a beach drinking a pina colada and having my feet massaged, so if that’s what happens after death, I’m all in!  Thankfully the maternal instinct is so strong, and we live in a day & age where antibiotics are available that in a few excruciating weeks the pain was gone. But I still occasionally have memory pain that has diminished over time.

But emotional, mental, and spiritual pain seems to last much longer (unless you have chronic physical pain which probably exacerbates the emotional kind as well).  And unfortunately, a week of antibiotics doesn’t cure this kind of pain.  This kind of pain can start from childhood and stick with you…flaring up at various times in your life when things trigger your deep seated fears and emotional memories.  There’s a theory that you are often attracted to people that have some of the same traits as people in your family did growing up because it’s a known/comfortable pattern.  The theory continues that down deep, you want to resolve some of the pain that you as a child were never able to resolve, see your parents resolve, or resolve with your parents.  This theory is outlined in a book called Intimate Partners: Patterns in Love and Marriage (Amazon Link), and I read it before I got married, but I didn’t really get it until now because I didn’t know what those patterns were until I was immersed in it as an adult and mother.

What happens when someone in a marriage (with kids) finally realizes that the pattern is not resolvable or they don’t know how to, don’t want to, or can’t resolve it?  They suffer or get divorced and the pain is horrid.  Especially the pain you feel for the kids as you imagine the pain they might feel.  I lived through a divorce myself as a child and was often caught in the middle of a lot of bitterness and anger, and I have relived that pain for my kids even though it’s a completely different situation and their dad is a very good, involved father.

What’s even harder is when you are both good people that happened to have a lot of unexpected crap happen throughout the marriage.  You wonder what is wrong with you.  When in most cases, there is really nothing wrong with you, but you look back and realize that neither of you knew how to nurture a marriage or you didn’t see or understand the signs that should have been big clues that something huge needed to fundamentally change in each of you.  It’s like you both have blinders on until suddenly one of you takes them off and doesn’t like what they see, don’t see, feel, or don’t feel.  Marriage, like life, does not come with an instruction manual and even if it did everyone is so different it would be hard to apply to your unique marriage and you would think you could wing it or that it didn’t apply to you.  There are more instructions around a divorce which requires a signed agreement between the two of you outlining your responsibilities than there is before a marriage.

So, yes I just got divorced after what was probably close to a year of being separated mentally, if not physically.  This past year is somewhat of a blur.  It’s the hardest emotional, mental, and spiritual pain I’ve ever experienced and unfortunately there are no legal drugs I can take to make the pain disappear in a few weeks.  Despite the fact that 50%-60% of marriages end up in divorce, it is the 2nd most stress inducing event anyone can experience behind death of a loved one.  And it doesn’t really matter if you are the one leaving, the one being left, or it’s mutual.  Mix divorce with unusual work dynamics, kids, and other personal issues and you have a recipe for a potential breakdown.  Fortunately, I am very lucky/blessed to have wonderful friends, co-workers, family friends, and family who have supported me and let me cry on the phone, on email (yes, it’s possible to cry on email) or in front of them and repeatedly (until I’m sure they were sick of it) told me that everything will be OK.  They let me say and write stupid (although sometimes funny) things and were kind anyway.  I have never felt so out of control in my life!  I mean I’ve gone months without reconciling my check book, was late on a couple of house payments, and my house (although overall neat) more disorganized than I’d like.  Plus a whole shit load of other emotional stuff.

I’m still a ways away from being back to normal whatever that is, but we both love the kids immensely and right now we can’t foresee not being friends and friendly for their sakes.  From my perspective, we both still respect each other and as hard as this has been, we’ve both taken the high road because that’s the kind of people we are, and we know it’s best for the kids.  A child counselor told us it was obvious we loved the kids and they loved us.  She also said that they got along so well with each other, were exhibiting normal behavior for going through what they were going through, and seemed happy despite what they were experiencing which of course took off about 80% of my maternal guilt.   I did a post back in September 2009, called Double The Trouble, Double The Fun which stemmed from me feeling glad they had each other during this hard time their parents were going through.  I felt that I/we had done at least one thing right by giving them the gift of each other to weather storms that life will inevitably bring them.

So now you know why I had such a long break from writing on the blog.  My personal life started to bleed into the blog, and I needed to get a handle on things for a little while.  I think back to that Entrepreneurial Ledge where I stood almost a year and a half ago.  When your sleeping heart wakes up suddenly, it’s a very disorientating, scary feeling.  It’s like gasping for air while at the same time trying to soak in all the colors, beauty, sounds, smells, shapes, feelings that you have not noticed/felt for years.  You start falling in love with life again and it seems that pain is a part of love.  You unknowingly/desperately reach out to people, anyone kind nearby to help ease this searing pain. In the case of some friends and family, they are there for you in ways you never imagined.  In the case of others, they can’t or don’t know how to be there like you want/need them to be and it exacerbates and magnifies the pain.  You start to realize that you are really reaching out to your lost self and the only one who can save you from drowning is YOU.  Then you start the process of excruciatingly, slowly mending a broken heart and falling in love with yourself…and you wonder why and when you fell out of love in the first place.

Thank you for reading.

About the photo:  The photo above is of a piece of art that my cousin, who goes by the pseudonym of Isaac Falconer, made for me when I told her I was getting a divorce.  I didn’t get to see her that often growing up.  She is a unique, vibrant, passionate individual.  She has followed her own path and seems to have found happiness in doing so as well as people who appreciate and buy her art!  She has even exhibited in Italy.  The piece is called No Pleasure Garden (c) 2009 and it’s made of Chantilly lace from Italy with hand made hypo allergenic orchids affixed to two locations on the huge piece of lace.  In her words, “It’s meant to be placed across the bottom of your bed as a reminder to you of YOUR personal glory – which has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with your life-mate or your kids or your professional work.“  It looks so lovely at the bottom of my bed and makes me smile when I enter the room.

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SXSW Interactive Days 4 and 5
Mar 16 2010

Just to round out the series of posts on SXSW Interactive, I feel I must finish this one.  I’m not particularly motivated to do so, but here’s a recap.  On Day 4, I showed up and checked out one of the Accelerator panels where companies were pitching in the personal social media category.  One was about sharing your favorite foods on the iPhone and another one was about getting opinions on what you were wearing before you went to a big event by sending people pictures of what you were wearing.  Both were interesting, but I couldn’t really see how they would scale and make significant amounts of money.

Then I went with my friend Cindy Lo who runs Red Velvet Events to a keynote speech by Gary Vaynerchuck who hosts Wine Library TV.  He was mighty entertaining and dropped the f-bomb several times.  He wrote a book called Crush It that he mentioned a lot and was overall very motivating.  Then Cindy and I went to go hear the keynote of Umair Haque of Havas Media Lab, who I think also wrote for Harvard Business Review, interviewing twitter founder Evan Williams.  About 10 minutes into the interview, I was bored to tears because Umair was so low energy and the questions he was asking were so dry.  I was wishing that Gary was interviewing Evan instead.  We left.  Because I had a headache and had to go pick up my kids from a friend of mine’s house who was so wonderful to watch them because they are off from Spring Break, I left the conference all together.  For some reason, the fact that there were seemingly thousands of people watching this unenlightening talk, made me feel kind of sick and I couldn’t stomach being there.

I sometimes get overwhelmed in crowds of people and the sensory overload of colors, sounds, and desperate people seeking meaning and attention in this world gets to me.  I couldn’t deal so I left. I decided not to go back on Day 5 (today) and instead go back to work where the desperation is slightly easier to handle. 🙂  Then I had dinner with some great long time friends who were visiting from Dallas at another one of our friend’s houses in Austin.  I had a wonderful home cooked Indian vegetarian food while catching up with friends who accept me for who I am…even if I don’t really know who I am at the moment.

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SXSW Interactive Days 2 and 3
Mar 14 2010

Although I didn’t get in too late last night, I figured I’d wait until today and do a post about both days.  For those who know me, I’m usually all about ‘the plan.’  I like to have a plan, know the plan, and resonate with the plan.  Not having a plan heightens my anxiety level above its usual anxious state.  But for SXSW Interactive, I had no real plan other than to show up and see what happens and that’s what I’ve been doing.  To every rule there is an exception and that exception was attending Austin Technology Incubator‘s Entrepreneurial Lounge the last three evenings.  And quite honestly, that event has evolved into the ‘place to be’ for entrepreneurs at SXSW Interactive!  Bart Bohn did a post about the Entrepreneurs Lounge for the ATI blog at  Entrepreneur’s Lounge at SXSW Interactive – March 13, 2010.

I attended a Porter-Novelli (PR firm) event, crashed a Women in Tech Digitini event at the top of the tallest building in Austin, and attended a couple of parties but didn’t stay too late.  I hung out at the blogger’s lounge sponsored by Microsoft with the irony being that 80% of the people in there had iPhones.  At the blogger’s lounge there was a woman giving out free jewelry and she gave me a nice turquoise bracelet from Charming Charlie (there’s a location in Austin’s Domain) that matched the shirt I was wearing.  I’m just not a late night bar hopper kind of person.  Now if there was dancing involved, I’d be more interested.  One party sponsored by Microsoft/TechSet had two women dancing in what looked like black/red lingerie near a guy who was playing the guitar.  Just goes to show you how male dominated the tech industry still is.

Today, I went into a SXSW Film panel where Jeffrey Tambor was giving an acting class.  He and two amateur actors were on stage with him.  He was coaching them through a scene where this man and woman were broken up but the man wanted her to pretend they were still together while they had dinner with his brother.  She refused and he was supposed to try to get her to do it.  It was a marked difference between how they first did the scene and how he pulled out the emotion in them to show the scene in a different more touching way.  The actress, in my opinion, was much better than the actor.  The actor wasn’t convincing when he tried to get her to pretend to stay together.  It was like he was trying to get her to do something more out of fear rather than love and because of that the actress reacted accordingly.  He was so non-believable, no woman would have been convinced by him.  It’s obvious he didn’t feel it.  Jeffrey tried to get him to be more playful to pull out the residual love the actress still felt.  It was a fascinating workshop because I could see how you could apply his same techniques to people management/coaching.

The weather has been gorgeous here.  California weather.  Tonight was especially nice.  I thought briefly about staying out longer but as I was walking back to my car from the convention center, I breathed deep and was glad I was going home to see my kids, do some laundry, have some quiet time to finish writing this post, maybe watch Grey’s Anatomy, and then go to bed.

Only two more days left…

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SXSW Interactive Day 1
Mar 12 2010

Another early night.  Maybe I’m just getting too old for these conferences or maybe I’m just wearing the wrong shoes.  Tomorrow, I’m wearing Skechers and will just have to not plan on going dancing anywhere!  Today was a pretty good day.  I had some meetings in the morning and then went back to the Austin Convention Center.  I went straight to the blogger’s lounge and saw some people I hadn’t seen since last year.  I thought about listing their names, but I’m too tired or is that lazy to list their names and link to them.  Needless to say, the hugs and hellos were nice.  I didn’t see any panels that were that interesting to me so I spent most of my time catching up with people and networking.

I always find it interesting going to SXSW because you see all sorts of people.  The world I live and work in, everyone is pretty prim and proper with conservative clothing.  At SXSW you see tattoos, piercings, and unusual clothing.  It’s a fascinating reminder of the world outside of business and high tech…everyone is living their own lives according to their different standards and we all live on the same planet and all attend the same conference for different reasons.

Walking around the convention center, I also ran into several Austin people I know but haven’t seen for a while.  The Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) co-hosted Entrepreneur’s Lounge at the roof top of Fogo de Chao and as I mentioned on my Day 0 post, the caipirinha’s, cheese bread (probably had about 6 of them) and meat were great.  The networking was awesome although I didn’t recognize about 80% of the people there.

After that we headed to a Microsoft event at Speakeasy and it was crowded.  I couldn’t find the guy I was trying to find, but I did run into a guy from Dell who I was trying to get to come speak at one of our Lunch & Learn’s at ATI so that was good.  Then I felt like it was just too crowded and my feet hurt so I figured I’d call it a day and come on home.

I was invited to two parties tomorrow evening so it may be a later night and if so, I probably won’t blog about Day 2 until Day 3. 🙂

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SXSW Interactive Day 0
Mar 11 2010

This evening I went down to the Austin Convention Center to pick up my badge for South by Southwest Interactive and check out the Big Ass Twitter Happy Hour at Frank Hot Dogs and Cold Beer.    I got the Chicago dog and a cranberry vodka because I don’t drink beer.  The hot dog was pretty good but the drink tasted well nothing like cranberry or vodka.  I got there kind of late and realized that since I’ve been so out of the social media scene this past year and rarely tweeted, that I really didn’t know a whole lot of the new twitter crowd.  There were a few of us early adopters there, and I caught up with them before getting my badge. I thought briefly about going to the Austin High Tech Happy Hour but by the time I drove by where it was, the crowd had thinned so I drove on by and came back home.  It was an early night.

SXSW interactive doesn’t officially start until tomorrow, but they opened registration up tonight and it’s a good thing because the line was already quite long.  So it was an uneventful Day 0.  Tomorrow should be more interesting since I have some business meetings set up for the morning, more people I know would have flown in, the bloggers lounge should be open, and I will get to drink a caipirinha and eat some cheese bread on the roof top of Fogo de Chao (Brazilian Churrascaria), where the Austin Technology Incubator hosts the invite only third annual Entrepreneur’s Lounge.

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A Point In Time
Mar 10 2010

Today was an interesting point in time for me.  March 10, 2010.  My son is 7 1/2 years old and my daughter is almost 5.  God, I love them so much.  A mother’s love cannot be explained in mere words.  When we learn to communicate telepathically maybe we can share that intense love and the world would be a better place.  I will blog more later about the poignancy of this day which happens to be a day or so before SXSW Interactive 2010 starts.

I picked up my kids from school after their soccer class today, and they rode their bikes near the house for a little bit since it was such a gorgeous, sunny day after the sudden burst of rain earlier in the day.  My daughter wants me desparately to take her training wheels off so she can ride like her older brother, and I keep telling her to wait until summer or the weather is consistently better so I have time to teach her like we did my son back in 2008.

I’ll be attending SXSW Interactive this year as a spectator.  Last year I organized a panel called Building A Web Business After Hours.  It was fun and well attended.  I learned since then it’s a very hard thing to keep up especially when you don’t have the time, support, and monetary resources to do it well.  I ended up transferring ownership to my amazing partner, Nicole Johnson.  This year I submitted a panel idea on how to leverage your online and offline networks, but it was not selected because I think they wanted it to be more narrowly focused.  I was kind of relieved actually.  I’m looking forward to going and supporting the Austin Technology Incubator‘s presence there via Bart Bohn’s (Wireless/IT Director) involvement with the Entrepreneur’s Lounge, Austin’s Interactive Showcase, and The Accelerator.  A couple of ATI’s companies have been nominated and will most likely do very well.  I’m also looking forward to the parties I’ve been invited to, catching some interesting panels, and seeing some of my online friends I haven’t seen since last year.

Onward and upward.  Today is another day in the journey of the rest of my life…

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Recent Entrepreneurial Events in Austin
Mar 6 2010

What I want to do with this blog is evolving, but I’m pretty sure my posts will generally still fit my tag line of “babbling about business and parenthood.”  Pretty much everything falls into those categories except for maybe marriage and love.  But you can feel married to your business, in love with it, and close to unconditionally in love with your children so yes, even marriage and love are fair game for this blog known as entrepreMusings.

On this post, I’m going to mention a few events that I’ve been involved with or attended recently here in Austin, TX that had to do with entrepreneurship.

Back on February 17, 2010 I had the honor of being a table moderator at a local event hosted by the Austin chapter of Texchange, a group that brings entrepreneurs together to network and discuss things that are of concern to entrepreneurs.  This event had a panel of 3 CEOs that recently had successful exits of their companies.  The panelists were Joel Trammel of NetQoS, Rod Favaron of Lombardi Software (an Austin Technology Incubator alum through it’s now defunct parent called OpenPlus), and Craig Malloy of Lifesize Communications.  For their full bios, check out the post on AustinStartup called Meet CEO’s With Major Recent Exits.  It was great to have in the same room, 3 CEOs who have had positive exists from their company.  I believe 2 of them even had all cash deals!

On March 4, 2010 I participated in 3 events and took away something from all of them.

The first was an Semantic Web Austin event hosting Mark Greaves from Vulcan Inc. (Paul Allen’s asset management group – www.vulcan.com) to discuss the opportunities in the semantic web space.   This event was hosted by the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) and Bart Bohn, our Director of IT/Wireless division coordinated it.  I have to say that most of it was over my head since I’m not a tech head – my degrees were not in technology.  The key takeaways for me were that there are languages called OWL and RDF that are used in creating Semantic Web apps,  and we are very early in understanding the semantic web and how it can be used as a basis of a profitable company.  It seemed to me like the next level in search querying.  In google you now would type something like ‘white elephant’ and get some links to sites that discuss white elephants but it’s based on how many people link to that site.  With the Semantic Web, you can ask things like “How many white elephants are there in China who belong to people making over $10K?” and get back more descriptive results.  To me it sounded a little bit like what Ask Jeeves was/is trying to do in a more sophisticated way.  Mr. Greaves mentioned companies in this space, including Zemanta, which I have wanted to try on this blog for a while now but have been wary about the learning curve.  An interesting applications he discussed was one aimed at pharmaceutical/medical companies that need to search tons of research data to get at specific points of data to continue research for other drugs.  I couldn’t quite get my mind around it, but like people didn’t really understand the social web 5+ years ago, we are probably at that stage right now for the semantic web.

The second was a RISE panel I sat on that was held at at TechRanch and the topic was “resilient start-ups” Suaad Sait was on the panel with me and he’s done several companies the most recent being Reach Force.  It was a fun panel in an intimate living room type of setting where the audience seemed to really get engaged.  I learned a few new things from the other panelists, but I think my biggest takeaway was that although my most visible entrepreneurial experience (venture backed) was just about 10 years ago, the lessons I were able to share still seemed relevant today.  Even though, I ended up transferring ownership of Babble Soft to my partner and didn’t end up raising money, I learned things about social media and a consumer business from it.  I sometimes forget that there are not that many people who have the experience I and the other panelists have or are living through right now.  I realized how easy it is to forget the unique value any of us brings to a situation based on our life learnings even if some it happened a decade or so ago which seems like an eon in Internet time.

The third event I attended was a CleanTX Foundation event on called Other People’s Money – The New Funding Landscape for your clean energy startup.  These events are run by Melissa Rabeaux, ATI’s Marketing/Communications Manager.  There were probably close to 150 people registered for the event!  The topic was interesting with very experienced speakers on the panel.  I learned how Xtreme Power, an ATI alumni member, got funded as well as about other sources of funding for clean tech companies.  I also learned that some people actually think you can bootstrap a clean energy company which is very hard to do given the research, tools, equipment one needs to have to build something in solar, wind, or alternative fuels.  Unlike some web companies that can be built by the sweat of your brow to prove viability, clean energy companies generally don’t operate that way.

So there are many things going on in Austin.  Check out the ATI blog for updates on what is going on in and around Austin and the ATI community.

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Gapingvoid Cartoons – Love and Entrepreneurs – Part 2
Feb 25 2010

So now to part 2 – the Love series by @gapingvoid.  Check out Part 1 on Entrepreneurs.   In this post, I’m linking to some of Hugh MacLeod’s daily newsletter cartoons that highlight my favorite of his Valentine’s 2010 love series.  These particular cartoons touched me.  He has a way of taking words and using color, lines, space, and feeling in a unique way.  Please click on the image to go check out how to buy a print.

I liked the first one because it made me think of term sheets and love at the same time.  As an entrepreneur, when you raise money, you are presented with a term sheet (or create one yourself) and you negotiate terms until you come to an agreement with the person giving you money.  This cartoon to me represented yearning with a clear stated desire of wanting to be with someone while being vulnerable and trusting enough to let them name their terms.

The second one rings true to me because you know when you meet someone who is passionate about what they are doing or the story they are telling, you feel the love.  The stories and the people who you tend to remember most exude passion and love.  All great stories and works of art have love involved. What would the human condition be without love?

As for the last one, I just thought it was very cute and reminded me of being young, shy and having a school girl crush on someone.  As a little kid, I was naturally outgoing but was shy as a pre-teen and teenager, but I have always deep down been a very passionate person.  I never felt like I could express my passion legitimately through my writing and singing when I was younger for a variety of ‘life logistics,’ support, and inspiration reasons. But now I’m discovering that not feeling safe to express it, pretending to be someone you are not, or going through the motions for so long leaves one empty and longing for more.  I became less shy externally as I got older, but that shy girl is still in there and she’s working on being brave about love!






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Gapingvoid Daily Cartoons – Love and Entrepreneurs – Part 1
Feb 23 2010

So some of you may know Hugh MacLeod who is the guy behind @gapingvoid.  He started a series of original cartoons via his daily newsletter at the beginning of this year.  I’ve found several of his cartoons so appropriate for entrepreneurs and passionate people in general.  You can buy prints of his art.  In this post, I’m linking to some of his cartoons that highlight entrepreneurs.  Please click on the image to go check out how to buy a print.  In Part 2, I will share some of my favorite in his Valentine’s 2010 Love series. Be still my beating heart. 🙂

I know that many entrepreneurs feel delusional at times.  I certainly do and I have found myself doubting recently whether I am really an entrepreneur given the characteristics mentioned in my Are Entrepreneur’s Born or Made post.  Plus, I seem to be in between entrepreneurial gigs right now.  We have to believe against all odds that what we are doing is going to work when in the vast majority of cases, it doesn’t work out the way we expected…but we keep trying and in many great cases the stars align and the people appear to support you and it does!

I also believe that entrepreneurs are artists.  They take a blank page and create something that didn’t exist before that often ends up employing other people to share in the dream.  Entrepreneurs and artists come in all shapes, sizes, and vocations from technology, to cartooning, to non-profits, to singing, to painting, etc.





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Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?
Feb 22 2010

Am I back to consistently blogging?  I’m not sure yet.  Believe me it’s been hard not to write.  I’m still sorting out a lot of personal stuff.    But I’ve run across a few blog posts on this age old question recently and felt compelled to do a post about it.

Fred Wilson did a post called Nature vs Nurture and Entrepreneurship and he says “WEP is run by Professor Raffi Amit and as we were making our way from one meeting to another, I said to Raffi that “you can’t teach people to be entrepreneurs but you can teach entrepreneurs business.” He replied to me that his research into the topic suggests that “there are no unique and defining characteristics of entrepreneurs” which leads him to believe that you can in fact teach people to be entrepreneurs.”  Fred lists his characteristics of an entrepreneur.  The post currently has 278 comments.

The topic of women entrepreneurs was raised by Rachel Happe by her comment below and many others had a discussion around her comment.

“At the risk of making this a feminist position… which it’s not really, I would like to add the female perspective because I’ve been a woman on management teams a couple of start-ups and am now starting my own thing. I have to say, I find that the whole VC/young entrepreneur vibe makes me roll my eyes a lot. A lot of older, richer men with money stroking the egos of a bunch of younger men who have an idea and think a lot about themselves. Ugh – turns me off of the entire VC model. So I offer an alternative set of characteristics that I feel more accurately portray me (and I think may be generalizable):

1) A stubborn belief in an idea or alternately a stubborn belief that there is a much better/more efficient way of doing something

2) Confidence (I actually think arrogant people are some of the least self-assured people I know but I digress)

3) A belief that the reward vs. risk of starting a new venture is higher than the reward/risk of working for someone else.

4) An ability to see and articulate a solution

4) An ability to construct a vision and sell it to many others

5) A magnetic personality – to attract talent, partners, investors, etc.

Just my 2 cents.”

I left the following comment:

Having taught entrepreneurship myself at the UT Austin McComb’s school of business and falling into the entrepreneur category myself (2 tech start-ups), I tend to agree more with ‘you can teach entrepreneur’s business’ rather than you can teach people to be entrepreneur’s as you define their characteristics. There are many entrepreneurs out there in high-tech, to restaurants, to non-profits, to retail, to motels, to singers, to artists that limiting them to the characteristics as you define them is limiting. I think your characteristics of entrepreneurs tend to define those in high-tech.

Now I think that all of those people in those different industries have a drive to make a difference or an impact on their world and that is, to me, a defining trait. Whether they are confident or arrogant or otherwise doesn’t really matter to me. Confidence comes with practice which helps with one’s belief in oneself.

As for the gender discussion, as I mentioned earlier make it a goal to invest in more women led businesses whether in tech or not. Hire a women venture partner. People hire, work with, and are attracted to people who are similar. Once women were more accepted in the medical profession, there has been a drastic increase in women doctors. In the accounting profession which used to be mostly men, now at the mid manager and lower level it’s almost 50/50 women…women still have a harder time getting to partner because of the lifestyle.

I’ll be interested in reading about your research into this topic.

I then happened upon a post on TechCrunch by Vivek Wadhwa called A Fix for Discrimination: Follow the Indian Trails.   He discusses how Indians have managed to achieve success in Silicon Valley, and he starts the post by saying:

Women, Hispanics and blacks have always been underrepresented in the ranks of the Valley’s tech companies.  A new analysis by the Mercury Newslast post on the dearth of tech women shows that from 2000 to 2008, the proportion of women tech workers in Silicon Valley dropped from 25.3% to 23.8%, and that the national numbers dropped from 30% to 27.4%.  In 2008, blacks and Hispanics constituted only 1.5% and 4.7% respectively of the Valley’s tech population — well below national tech-population averages of 7.1% and 5.3%. It seems that the problem I highlighted in my is actually getting worse, particularly in Silicon Valley.  And it’s not just the women who are being left out, but also important minority groups.”

He later says:

Thirty years ago, there were hardly any Silicon Valley firms with Indian-born founders.  UC-Berkeley’s AnnaLee Saxenian documented that 7% of tech companies started in 1980–1998 had an Indian founder.  A survey conducted by my research team at Duke University found that this proportion had increased to 15.5% from 1995 to 2005. My team also determined that in this period, Indians started 6.7% of the nation’s tech and engineering firms.  These are pretty astonishing numbers considering that according to the U.S. census, in 2000 less than 0.7% of the U.S. population and only 6% of the Silicon Valley high-tech workforce was born in India.

So whether people tell you that you have entrepreneurial characteristics or not, if you want to do something and make a difference…JUST DO IT!  You may make it, you may not but you’ll never know if you don’t try.

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High Tech Entrepreneur’s Raise Money for Haiti
Jan 18 2010

A short, but important, interruption to my blogging break for the benefit of the earthquake victims in Haiti.  The Entrepreneur’s Foundation of Central Texas is coordinating a fund raising effort among technology entrepreneur’s to raise money for the victims in Haiti. Even if you aren’t a technology entrepreneur or don’t work for a technology company, you can donate! 🙂

The Austin Startup blog did a great post about this today is copied below.

Austin Tech Leaders Create Matching HelpHaiti Fund

“If you haven’t yet donated to help out the victims of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, or even if you have and can offer a little bit more, Austin Ventures and the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas are providing a way to double your donation. They are calling upon Central Texas tech companies, their employees and friends to provide assistance to the rescue efforts in Haiti, and have established a $600,000 High-Tech HelpHaiti Fund to match donations.

You can donate at a website set up by the Entrepreneurs Foundation at http://www.GiveToAustin.org/HelpHaiti. The $600,000 contributed to match the contributions has been donated by Austin Ventures, Donna & Philip Berber, Dave & Isabel Welland, MFI Foundation, the Garber Family, Silicon Labs and the Entrepreneurs Foundation.

“The Austin entrepreneurial community is a tightly-knit group from which we all benefit. It is important that we use this great bond to mobilize and help others in time of need. The tragedy in Haiti is one of these times for us to step up,” said Phil Siegel of Austin Ventures, who is also chairing the committee to distribute the donations. Also serving on the committee are MFI Foundation’s Lynn Meredith, Glimmer of Hope Founder, Philip Berber, Silicon Labs founder Dave Welland and Eugene Sepulveda, CEO of the Entrepreneurs Foundation.

The committee has already wired $250,000 to two groups that are assisting directly with the efforts in Haiti, choosing to immediately donate what they could now rather than waiting to match the contributions of the Tech community. Austin Startup encourages all of Austin’s entrepreneurs and members of the tech community to give to the HelpHaiti fund in whatever amount you can.

Additional information is available at http://www.GiveToAustin.org/HelpHaiti and by emailing HelpHaiti@GiveToAustin.org.”

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Once In A Blue Moon – It’s Complicated
Jan 1 2010

Last night, December 31, 2009, we had a blue moon.  Most years have 12 full moons but every 2 to 3 years we have an extra full moon and it’s called a blue moon.  We saw it coming back from the airport after a really nice visit with my cousin and her family.  On the way out, after getting up at 3:30 a.m. to make a flight that was 3 hours delayed, we ended up being almost 7 hours late getting to our final destination because of an issue we had leaving Austin having to do with de-icing our plane.  Just before they had us get off the plane to wait it out, my son said loudly “I knew we should have flown Southwest!” which caused all the people around us to laugh.  He doesn’t even have to try to be funny…this wonderful kid of mine. 🙂   This was the first time I traveled by myself by plane with the kids, and they did really well.  I told them how happy I was with them because despite the delays, it was one of the least stressful times traveling with 2 kids that I’ve ever had.  We even had a 4 hour layover in Memphis, TN and by a stroke of luck some of my long time family friends who live there (who I hadn’t even told we were flying through Memphis because we were only supposed to be there for 45 minutes) interrupted their plans to come hang out with us for a couple of hours at the airport!   I was so happy to see them…kind of like seeing land when you’ve been lost at sea for a while.

My favorite aunt and uncle (we spent summers and other times with them growing up) were supposed to have left earlier in the day from my cousin’s place, but they waited for us before driving back to their city a couple of hours away.  I was so grateful that they waited…kind of felt like a pilgrim lost in a fog coming home.

So back to the blue moon.  It’s a rare event and thanks to Erin, who picked us up at the airport, it was probably the first time in my life that I was aware we were having one.  He had seen something about it on CNN, so I looked it up on my trusty iPhone.  The moon last night was uncharacteristically huge and bright and to me seemed full of hope and promise.   I started singing the song Blue Moon by Ella Fitzgerald (lyrics) and thought about the upcoming new year and new decade that was upon us.  Although I was invited to a friend’s New Year’s eve party, I was so tired I called it a night at 10:30 p.m.  Lame I know, but I figured it was best to start the new year rested so I could think about whether I should make some new year’s resolutions.

So today is the first day of the new year and last year I made non-resolutions:  “So my non-resolutions for 2009 are to sing more, laugh more, write more, make more funny faces at my kids, be less repressed, empower people, unashamedly love people, continue to take yoga, find a purple hat (any suggestions?), make some life changing decisions (I already got my hair cut short), and move the ball forward one day at a time on Babble Soft and at ATI.”  The funny thing is that I think I achieved all of those to varying degrees with various outcomes and some I didn’t even do consciously (a higher power at work).  I guess I should be careful what I non-resolute!

One of my friends, Julie Fergerson, who happens to be a leading expert in identity theft, got me a purple hat.  I transferred majority ownership in Babble Soft to my fabulous partner, Nicole Johnson, who I finally got to meet in person while visiting my cousin because she lives in the same city.  My cousin had met her before I did.  Nicole also runs the Baby Sleep Site and our online meeting has got to be a case study (GigaOm) in successful partnerships between two people who have never met in person.  It was like we were old friends catching up when we met with our kids at a nearby mall.  As far as writing more, I didn’t write more on the blog, but I wrote song lyrics and did a lot of personal journaling (I’m already on my second spiral notebook).  My daughter likes to hang out with me when I write in the mornings and, of course, add her personal touch to my pages. 🙂 Maybe she’s a budding writer despite not being able to even read yet…

So I think I’ll stick with most of the same non-resolutions for 2010 and maybe add something about making upward progress in my career and doing more cardio exercise.  I’m not planning to eat black eyed peas or kiribath (rice cooked in coconut milk – yummy), a Sri Lankan new year’s tradition for auspicious occasions, so I’m throwing caution to the superstitious winds and hoping for the best.

And in case you are wondering why the title of this post includes the words “It’s Complicated.”  Well it’s because I saw the movie today with my movie buddies Michelle Ewalt (a great business/life transitions coach) and Cindy S. (she’s an offline kind of gal).  We see a lot of movies together and our next one might be Sherlock Holmes.  It’s Complicated was hilarious and included fabulous actors and actresses including Meryl Streep, Steve Martin (so cute & funny), and Alec Baldwin.  It was much better than the Alvin and the Chipmunks – The Squeakquel movie my cousin and I suffered gladly sat through for the kids.  While watching “It’s Complicated,” I kept thinking, while laughing out loud, that although my life seems complicated, thank God it’s not as complicated as that!

Happy 2010 everyone…

Author: | Filed under: babble soft, entrepreneurship, holiday, national holiday, random stuff | Tags: , , , , | 5 Comments »

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year
Dec 22 2009

005I couldn’t end the year without at least one more post!  It has been quite a year, and I needed to take a break so that my off blog/real life wouldn’t bleed too heavily into my online blog life as it seemed to start to do.   For those of you who are writers, you know how hard it is not to let your real life affect your writing even if it’s only subtly profound.  For those of you who are writers (or creative people), you know how hard it can be not to write.  It’s like holding back the tears or your laughter when you want to cry an ocean or laugh uncontrollably.

Not only did I cut down on blogging (although I am the main blogger for the Austin Technology Incubator blog in case you really miss my blogging), but I also significantly cut down my twitter usage (probably by 90%) so I tweet maybe once every couple of weeks but they haven’t been very inspiring ones. 🙂  However, I do find myself on facebook every couple of weeks which is up from every few months.  Maybe 2010 will be the year twitter and facebook figure out a winning business model?!

I hope to be blogging more in the new year about one of my next entrepreneurial endeavors which currently involves music.  In lieu of blogging, I have been singing more.  I continue to take voice lessons from my great voice coach, Gene Raymond at Octave Higher.  He is so encouraging, and I know my voice and singing confidence have improved significantly since I started taking lessons from him some 6+ months ago.  Singing is such a personal journey that to find someone you feel safe enough to miss a note, croak, or fall flat occasionally is priceless.

I was introduced to Gene by Scarlett (who is featured on his home page), who I met when taking the Landmark Forum.  Being involved in Landmark was the beginning of me finding my inner voice and facing my fears, and I wrote about the forums in a couple of posts called A Transformation In Process and Who I Was Being Was Not Exactly Who I Am.  I also took a course recommended by one of my business advisers/mentors and his wife called The Search Within, which was much more music, heart, and soul based, that totally knocked my emotional socks off!  As I re-read those posts, I am reminded of how much has changed in my life since a year ago this month when I took the first course.  As a child who experiences growing pains, the pains are just as real when you are an adult but it’s not in your bones…it’s in your mind, heart, and soul.  There are too many changes to list here, but suffice it to say I will be heading in new directions in 2010!

So you’ll probably see more entrepreMusings about my musical endeavors next year and maybe more purple hat wearing.  I’ve been writing lyrics and Gene introduced me to another student of his who plays guitar and wants to collaborate in songwriting.  To me, lyric writing usually comes easy although I have no idea if they are any good or not.  I’ve never written music but according to Gene and the guitar player, the lyrics are the hardest part and to me the instrumental is the hardest part.   I don’t know how to play an instrument so if the easy parts for them are the instruments, then we just might create something!

My boss introduced me to a fabulous musical guy called The Fat Man who hosts jam sessions from time to time.  Oh how fun and uplifting they are!   I feel so honored that they include me.  I can’t always keep up because my voice is comfortable in certain vocal ranges and they play some songs in keys that don’t work for me as well as play songs that I don’t know…like for example written by the Rolling Stones.  I can imagine some of you rolling your eyes.

Anyway, that’s a long winded way to say Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!  May the entrepreneurial road(s) for you and/or your loved ones lead you to peace, love, and success.  May you find an IDEA that is worth fighting for as much as this mother fought for the life of her successful son who is 27 years old and should have died 26 years ago.

“To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.”
–Confucius
from Jeffrey Fry’s Potent Quotables

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Happy Thanksgiving!
Nov 26 2009

I’m interrupting my blogging break to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!  I have so much to be thankful for, and I hope all my readers feel the same.  Here’s a short list:

  • My wonderful, beautiful, healthy kids
  • My health
  • My family
  • My precious, caring friends
  • My job
  • Living in Austin where the weather these days is pretty nice
  • And many more things too numerous to list here

May you all be living the life of your dreams or at least like most of us working towards it… 😀

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