I recently did five in-depth reviews of what I felt were the top lightweight social network posting automation solutions:
And, at the end of the day, here is the summary of what I found: Read the rest of this entry
Whatever your company does there is someone doing something fundamentally similar (from the perspective of a VC building a portfolio of companies). So, ceteris paribus, VC's will always invest in the management team that is willing to sign the worst contract.
How you feeling about that termsheet now?
Read the rest of Negotiating (or Not) Your Term Sheet.
Ryan recently posted three reasons why he prefers working with girls, er, women. My wife came into my home office (she needed a break from working on her book's index, I guess, so I was voted to take a break from what I was working on.) and read the article over my shoulder.
I started to dive for my bomb shelter but she only said: You should write about how your most important bosses have been women.
Which really halted me in my tracks because I hadn't really thought about that. But it was true. I hate it when she does that - must be that listening stuff she's always going on about. I should listen to it someday.
I've had three female bosses (6 years total) and they taught me things that I have never even gotten a hint about from my male bosses. Since we all *love* lists, and I'm competitive, I'm going to give you more than a 200% list improvement:
-> Feelings matter
-> Management style is who you are
-> Listening is more important that talking
-> It's a long game, play with joy
-> Harmony is important
-> Teams are more than leaders
-> Sometimes it is a fight to the death
It's not always about what someone has accomplished but how they felt about it. I use this advice all the time, though it is really diametrical to my 'get er done' mentality. Sometimes your people need to emote more than they need to work. Or they have some technical problem stuck in their craw and they need to solve it rather than go around it. I don't do it all the time (this isn't a Montesorri school) but sometimes I just let them go on and do what they need to do. My teams are better and, overall, more productive because of it.
You can't be a jerk at work and nice at home. Natch.
This is especially true for smart people (I'm moderately bright) and for men (let me check ... yep) and when you put the two together you get Interruptions-Are-Us. I had a boss give me five Tannen books and it was great for my job and my marriage.
You don't win every battle, nor get every promotion, so enjoy your work when you can.
Sometimes we do just have to all get along. Over aggressive joking or brutal code reviews or sullen drinking at the bar are not team spirit activities. So you have to plan and design tasks that bring people to work together in a positive fashion. Very California touch-feely, but, oh, it does work a trick.
I admit it, I'm a proponent of "Great Man History" and that bleeds over into my work life. But, really, above, say, Lead Engineer, we're all pretty replaceable in the medium term. So you have to listen (that word again) and nurture at all levels.
I didn't learn this the first time. My (female) boss pulled the group in and said another engineering group was trying to absorb our group and that we had to take X, Y, and Z actions immediately. Like everyone else I just went ahead with my tasks since X/Y/Z weren't on my to-do list. Six months later she was reporting to her peer, we were all working the new team's maintenance, and you can guess the rest. The next time I got a new (female) boss who said that she wanted to look at reorganizing my dozen or so person team and could I please prepare a list of my accomplishments for her review? I read that one and got my resume out - she chased me out of the company in a quarter.
Your mileage may vary. Contents may settle during shipping. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. Nobody knows you're a dog on the internet.
Could I have learned that stuff from a man? Probably. But I didn't, though I've learned other stuff. I've been around everything from startups to SME's to Mega-Corps over the last 25 years, so I've had quite a variety of bosses. The guys have varied a lot, with good nuggets here and there, but nothing outstanding.
Are all female bosses Yoda like and wise beyond Ghandi? Even my wife would admit to only 98%. Please note that my last female boss basically hectored me out of a company and cost me a bundle in stock options. (nota bene: that upped my political radar to 11 and has saved me more than it's cost me, so no grudges) I'm just saying that, on average, the women who've been my manager have been singular. As a group. You know what I mean.
Got a quarter? Flip it twelve times and call it every time. Get ‘em all? Then you can easily choose the successful startup when you interview. More seriously here are your options:
1> Know someone who has done a lot of successful startups. Follow them around.
2> see <1>
Really. At the end of the last boom I watched a telco equipment supplier emerge unscathed from the carnage. The did a D round (up!) for $125M when companies were selling themselves for less than cash on hand. They had key patents. Three major telco’s were putting their equipment in. Cisco was sniffing around. Two years later: money gone, E round (12:1 reverse) for $15M floundering, zombie staff. All that with a superstar CEO, Vince on the board, etc, etc. The people who ran that business and joined it did everything they could, even in hindsight.
Read about Joining a Successful Startup.
We came up with several domain name options for our new company and surprisingly, Promote-My-Site.com was available. So we grabbed it. But no Google love after a month. We took a look at the wayback machine and we found that this was pretty much a sponsored listings page. Great. We bought a spam domain.
Read Google Hates Us.
No, not daylight savings time (which I hate, but only because it messes up the kids sleep) but early in a project is the only time where you can put some time in the Oh Crap Bank & Trust. Really, you know it's true.
Read more here....
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