Miles To Go.

DC in Bloom, early morning

The shots of DC mornings have been rolling in from friends this week with cherry blossoms in full bloom. Got me thinking.

I once had a great mentor in Washington DC who simply adored Johnny Walker Red. Pounded the stuff, well into his seventies and deep into the night. Though we were 50 years his junior, we tried to keep up while he showed us around the social scene of DC in the 80′s: big ballrooms full of taffeta gowns, art auctions with amazing numbers, crazy black gas guzzling limos. We made a lot of noise. Thankfully, he paid.

But, he had one rule: breakfast is at 8.

Now matter how late the night went, no matter how far we walked with Johnny Walker the night before, we all got to the breakfast table by 8, and to work by 9. He went off to practice as a partner in a very large law firm. We were in school. But the bargain stuck.

And so, I’ve gone on to my world of creating, building and leading start ups with some great co-founders over the years – most of them slightly younger than I. We often blend their urgency with my long range vision, their naturally updated thinking with my tried and true processes. Their tequila to my Burgundy. But somehow, it works, and often the work spills deep into the night. And the next night. And the next.  Much like those parties in Washington I remember so well. But every morning as the sun rises on our start up and every other throughout the country, we have to answer the bell. Make the great pitch. Push the next release. Counter the next punch from the marketplace. There simply is no room for sleeping in. No tolerance for being less than sharp when presenting or hosting at trade show or conference. No excuse for being late. Sorry, doesn’t work that way.

Yes, the late nights of my younger days marauding through the streets of NW Washington had some enduring value. But only because of that one hard truth: the bill is due in the morning. So do what you must to blow off steam. Enjoy yourself, often to the fullest. But never, ever let that effect how you perform the next day, or how others see your performance.

It wouldn’t be right.

(this was written well before 8 btw)

360 respect for Someone that looks up to you

I recently read “On Raising Boys” and it brought out some very interesting points that I think apply to start-ups as well. One of the three key phases to development for a boy is having mentors in his teen years that are outside their main family unit, that have perspective, and come with authority in some field.  He can rely on this guidance to make important decisions outside of his direct family unit while building interdependence and confidence on his own.

Same goes for mentoring entrepreneurs.

I recently wrote about my mantra of Discover. Develop. Deliver. Which in very broad terms means I am always looking for young-at-heart entrepreneurs with fresh ideas. But equally important is the willingness to develop themselves  their product, the message, etc.

So here are some experiences I have drawn from mentoring lots of entrepreneurs over the years:

Know what you are mentoring to

Sounds crazy, but often the mentee does not know what they want out of the relationship. “Sounding board” is often the catchword for “ I need someone to talk to”. Rather than that generalization, I find I have always been more effective when we focus on a specialty need. It could be finances, business models, business development, partners, motivation, time management, you name it. But knowing what the mentee wants out of the relationship allows me to think on their behalf through the lens that they asked for guidance.

I don’t give personal advice when business advice is asked for- or vice versa.

I try to share my experience wherever possible. I tried this… I realized this…. I once had trouble with this… so that the entrepreneur can see things through another lens, and not be defensive about hearing “you should do this.. try this… break that. Entrepreneurs are tense enough; they don’t need an office parent telling them to eat their vegetables. I was reminded recently of one of my classics in this category: breakfast begins at 8. I work with so many younger entrepreneurs, who has a quite different idea of “bedtime” on “school-nights”. Rather than try to correct that behavior, I simply scheduled important meetings at 8am. They soon got the message that no matter what is done the night before, the bill is due in the morning. Here’s the link from Richard Dinan ‏ breakfast is at 8

And I try to help people discover the talents within themselves by asking questions. Lots of questions. Lots and lots of questions. Eventually, we run the table from vision to execution and are ready to make some bold decisions. Having what Covey called “the courage of our convictions” means all the available facts have been surfaced, and intelligent discussion held, and the best course chosen. It’s never a lock, but it sure helps to enter the rapids with some sort of thought out plan.

And, most importantly, I try to behave like someone whose opinion is often sought. That’s perhaps the most important lesson of all.

Work with a mentee that actually is coachable

Some mentees want window dressing: so-and-so is on my Advisory Board. Some want a sounding board, but have their minds made up anyways. Some are just lonely. To me, neither are a great use of mentor time.

The mentee that has a thirst to learn, a gift for presenting situations with options, a curiosity to experiment and learn gives the mentor a sense of usefulness that is so key. Good mentees have the elements of challenges or opportunities worked out in their minds, but often lack the confidence to make a decision or fear some blind spot they haven’t considered. Those are great examples of where mentoring can really help cut to the chase, or save some dead ends.

The biggest gift you can give someone is to beleive in themselves – AJ Joshi

If you are doing it to make everyone money, let everyone know. If you are doing it for charity, make sure it’s worth it.

 Ah yes, why do we do this. Mentors are rarely ever paid by the hour (though some coaches are, but I contend that is different). I mentor a lot of CEO’s and Founders where I own stock in the company and have quite a vested interest in their success. So by teaching them, I expect to add value to my position. Sometimes, the lessons actually shrink value in the short-term; but that’s why they are called lessons. The worst sin there is to repeat them. Good way to lose a mentor relationship.

But some mentor relationships are just plain charitable. While I have very little free time to take on non-commercial mentorships, sometimes I run across someone who I really believe in, and believe they could use my help. I guess the key point there is that both mentor and mentee know what the other is doing it for, and the ground rules are set and respected.

I’ve been told that time spent and value delivered does not necessarily correlate: you can do just about anything in two minutes… if you spent thirty years perfecting how to do it.

I’m about the x’s and O’s. She’s about 1′s and 0′s. (Notre dame photo)

I was saddened to hear of the death of Manti Teo’s girlfriend. It was a moving story of courage and recovery for Manti, and  demonstrated the empathy possible in a close knit nation called Notre Dame.  A truly moving story in time for the Heisman Media machine’s annual award.

And after the fact, it turned out to be all bullshit.

Manti was catfished in a hoax, whereby the girl he met online was… not what she appeared. I have written about this phenomenon extensively since the movie Catfish hit the screens a few years ago. Manti was focussed on x’s and o’s, she was all about 1′s and 0′s. If I recall, thousands of people wore lei’s to mourn the loss (of his mother as well) at a game, and the cameras couldn’t get enough of it. It has happened since, and it will happen more until people realize that, for all the time they spend online, they have to build and monitor a trust system they can rely on, or face the consequences of what is called Peer to Peer “P2P” risk. In short, buying through the classifieds has risks that don’t exist at Bergdorfs. And there is simply no way that could have happened if she had a TrustCard, or he had asked for one. DISCLOSURE: I am an angel investor in the sharing economy, including TrustCloud.

We are being more mobile and social everyday. believe me, I sit at the vortex of some 100,000,000,000 mobile impressions per month at Mojiva. People should start growing accustomed to being fooled with 1′s and 0′s, or not be shocked with the consequences. Manti is a telling tale for what is surely coming for most of America (except the jaded metro-skeptics) as we use mobile and social to power our interactions. Consider what Manti represents:

• Most of America still harbors vestiges of Classic Innocence that wants- indeed hopes- that what you see is what you get.
• Time demands and focus elsewhere – Manti had his dreams, and he spent 99% of his time (ok, still not enough) on his football. An expert on one field, but a rookie dater. And not much of a fact checker either.
• Doesn’t have time to track down all he sees online – and who does? And how would you?

It can suck to get catfished. Because we WANT to trust the peer to peer relationships we develop online. Sometimes, it means the car you rented on a sharing site comes back smelly. Sometimes worse. I’ve written extensively about the whoopsies in the Sharing economy here, here and here. Kickstarter has its case of the week, where Seth Quest may or may not have been forthcoming with his bona fides. And now on to dating, the ultra peer network  where Barry Diller will hook you up with a CRAZY BLIND DATE. Hmmm, can you say risk?

This will continue to accelerate as sure as mobile and social keep generating more P2P opportunities. And the risk will not be mitigated until there is a portable trust solution that people can rely on to quickly vet P2P prospects, reduce friction in transactions, and provide a trail of digital footprints if something goes wrong.

Until then, would someone please get Manti a real date?

BTW; The P2P networks have been working on trust within their networks, but unless they become the AMAZON of P2P, people will begin to demand that their virtuous data is partially theirs, and easily portable. More on Data to the people another time!

Pretty much sums it up.

A recent post had me going on about my three word manta: Discover. Develop. Deliver.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be around five companies from founding to past the Dunbar line, and that’s where the people stuff gets real interesting. (see the Develop section of the post). Well, 2013 started out with recruiters ringing employees and we decided to fight for what we value: A Players.

Ironically, just as you are seasoning a team and kicking into growth mode, the rest of the market often takes notice and starts trying to poach your best. The more competitive the marketplace, the worse the soliciting gets (I’ll submit mobile ad-tech ranks right up there). It won’t stop, so what we have done is create every possible intangible and tangible benefit to being happy while working with us. So here’s what we’ve done at Mojiva for example, to deal with it:

First, I learned more about the Dunbar line, a fairly interesting social study about leading groups.

Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar’s number. It has been proposed to lie between 100 and 230, with a commonly used value of 150.

As we were approaching 100 employees I worked with my co-founders and core team to describe our core values. Everyone knows we try to govern by those values; it’s an early test as to whether a prospect matches up well with us (and if not, it’s eventually not going to work anyways). Once in the house, we all try to live and work by them. I’m proud to share them here

BOLD & NIMBLE // 360° RESPECT // INNOVATE // OPEN // SCALE AND BE PROFITABLE // LAID BACK LEAN FORWARD // TEAM UP

Next, I worked with our HR team to come up with every imaginable intangible program for start-ups (many of which I have to credit my EO group, Maximus for the ideas). We have bi-annual MAPs that people can self-assess their skills against their peer’s assessments, and identify places and skills to improve. We have bi-annual performance reviews, but so does everyone. We have Quarterly peer awards, where individuals are nominated for recognition (and swag!) by teams for their superior effort. We have a recruiting and retention program fashioned after GH Smart’s Who process, where most everyone who interfaces with new hires has a say in their fitness for offer. We have a 401k. We have a disaster recovery program that had 100% check-in within 3 hours of hurricane Sandy. We pay bounties for finding, and keeping people rated A Players. We have a cool office in SoHo. We have a 90 day leave bonus (yes!) where we actually look at people’s mojo after a quarter and offer them to leave if they want. We figure the cost of searching, recruiting, and training a new hire is expensive, so if they don’t confirm a perfect match in 90 days the company will suffer going forward. Better to part ways sooner.

But far and away, the reason people want to be around is to make their dent in the sky. We really believe that what they do in the coming years will echo through the rest of their careers. Working at a mobile ad-tech company growing 100% is about as exciting as it gets. They can point to that and say “I helped build that!”.

So if you’re looking to hire away someone from any of my portfolio, rest assured: we know who the A Players are, our core values are matched, and we serve them well. Most are just too busy for the flattery, and rarely do they take calls (we have a program for that too).

Face it: if your are a recruiter calling, you are likely speaking to someone who is not many of the above, and you will likely overpay for them. Happy hunting.

Twinkies

Only in America would people violently trample each other for discounts, exactly one day after being thankful for what they already have.

Consumption of calories.

The Twinkee headline this week got me thinking about, with all our bounty we are unable, unwilling or incapable of  governing our intake.  Look, 150 calories of processed corn syrup won’t kill anyone in one sitting. But who in America eats one? And who does it just once. This food group has been a best seller in America for a generation. Later in the week, another caloric orgy takes place; It’s hard to believe, perhaps, that the average American Thanksgiving meal equals 3,000 Calories That would mean a 160 lb. person would have to run at a moderate pace for four hours, swim for five hours or walk 30 miles to burn off a 3,000-calorie Thanksgiving Day meal. Most do not.  Trying to work that off with the halftime football toss is as futile as try to get warmth from the slanting sun as the ball flies through a deep winter sky.

Consumption of natural resources.

How much gasoline does the United States consume? 1.18 gallons per person per day, every day. This figure includes every man women and child, (only 89% have licences, and about half of them in my neighborhood deserve to be retested regularly). 33 Gallons a month, enough to drive a little less than 1,000 miles on any of our great highways for the princely sum of about $4.00 per gallon. In France, that would run you about $10.00 per gallon, which is a) realistic , b) forces conservation, c) reduces the number of escalades tooling around in Paris. Add that to the amount of plastic we consume (another pertro-product) and you have the makings of a genuine addiction.

Consumption of Media.

The one that bothers me the most, and demonstrates the worst lack of self control is couch potato TV time: 2.5 to 2.9 hours per day. Worse as you get older. I’m not sure if this accounts for time spent on other screens like tablets and phones. I doubt it, and I will concede that at least most of that screen time is spent learning, communicating and socializing (in a mild form). But almost 3 hours per day in front of  the TV tells me people need something better to do.

So, the point is this: if even the French can point it out (and do so with empathy) it must be pretty obvious. If we can spend a little more time being thankful for what we have, consuming in more reasonable proportions, and buying and wasting a little less of what we don’t really need… we’ll be a little better off.

Giving up Twinkees is a good start.

This way, or that way? (Photo ABC News)

This year’s Presidential Election will be the most important in my lifetime… as per usual.

I was a fan of politics back in the day, when the process itself didn’t make me puke. I tuned in to the weekend talk shows eager to see who would say what, and even the most sold-out of hosts played it pretty middle of the road. I did the same this weekend: the most memorable prognosis was David Gergen who went so far as to say we may see a landslide, but he didn’t know for who…

Though I’m just a guy from Pittsburgh, I ended up living in a data driven world, and dealing with a lot of coastals. So I’ve been fascinated with a few interesting graphs like the Path to the White House from the NYTimes and Nate Silver’s BET THE FARM prognosis called 538. After 18 months, there are still hundred of permutations on the path to to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue… which the rest of the world thinks is another exhibit for America’s case for self-inflicted insanity.

I also live in a world driven by Mobile and social – in fact I helped create it. I’m impressed (or bored or perturbed) by the frequency of Facebook or Twitter posts from friends who feel it’s a good time to share the scoop on the latest Gotcha charge from either camp. Events move dramatically, though they are played out before less people than back in the day, on network TV. Witness this week’s Sandy Storm; it featured the horror of Boardwalks falling into the sea (they are boards!), to cancelled marathons, to inter-party wet kisses on the jersey Shore in exchange for first dibs on FEMA help. Yet most of the rest of the country was faurly clueless as to the true effects of the storm. Or take the singular issue of the election:  jobs. That’s the one thing that will save our economy, but that debate turned to offshoring, tax burdens and the auto bailout. The real value added jobs created by entrepreneurs are too often overlooked.

Those that follow are more engaged, more vocal… and thank god only carry just one vote apiece. This Presidential Election has certainly set a record for skewing of the truth and for willingness to play for the margin of error in states that still count. Nixon campaigned in 49 states in the last month of his election… Romney and Obama, more like a handful. The rest didn’t matter. Data has allowed us to zero in on the few votes that hang in the balance. And our mobile social world have allowed us, even driven us, to magnify differences among ourselves in order to make a breakaway move, left or right.

“If we are victorious in one more battle, we shall be utterly ruined.” King Pyrrhus once said. And indeed, my prediction is the winner tomorrow will face an impossibly divided Congress, a debt burdened Treasury, and a society whose place in the world would best be managed as a soft landing.

Good luck with that.

I think it’s a lock: our next President will be Pyrrhic.

Doug Krugman, Greg Matusky, Roo Rogers, (M) and Xin Chung @S2 Learning Even

the woods are lovely, dark and deep
but I have promises to keep
and miles to go before I sleep
miles to go before I sleep

Robert Frost, in a poem of simplicity itself, captures the essence of the foundations of trust: promises kept.

I was at Shared Squared NYC’s monthly learning event last night, where a whole lot of people made good on a whole lot of promises. And there was lots of chatter about trust, as the social networks have spawned so much peer to peer interaction (and the P2P has spawned its share of weird interactions).

In short, the problem that is emerging is that people, for better or worse, form  judgements based upon online information, make promises and commitments, and then are disappointed with the related offline episodes. Happens all the time, across a variety of peer to peer actions. There are a gazillion examples of the difficulties of this toggle, like

• Lady GaGa tickets bought through Craigslist for cash at the last-minute
• A Wimdu rental, where the pics were great, but the pillows just plain smell.
• A RelayRide renter who changes his plans last minute and screws up the rest of your calendar

But the upside of getting trust right in the sharing economy (and in P2P lending, and in dating, etc etc.) is that more trust leads to more and faster transactions and interactions within a community. I think Stephen MR Covey (son of 7 Habits Stephen) had it right quite awhile ago when he wrote The Speed of Trust. You can add his good work to these recent pieces on the subject:

• The Trust Projects recent manifesto…
• Letters and outreach to the community by Scaffold and Legit
• Neal Gorenflo doing everything possible to forward the sharing conversation via shareable (Nice work!)
• Shared Squared finally announcing an event calendar in NYC

But, at some point, in order to truly scale, I really passionately believe the sharing economy must deliver an indicator of trust between the two parties in a transaction increases if not ensures the assets at risk. The only product in the market that is out there, doing it today and in increasing numbers with both communities and users is TrustCloud. (You can claim your TrustCloud here). And yes, I am an investor and have blogged on the topic here, here and here.

Eventually, they will be compelled to ensure trust is sufficient. And just as airbnb has done, others will need to underwrite that risk. People- and perhaps their insurers! – will want better answers to questions like:

• Will my car be returned in good order?
• Will my apartment be sacked while a couchsurfer is there?
• Will my boat he left on the rocks by this drifter that borrowed it?
• Is my daughter safe with this tutor who comes to the house?
• Will I ever see my lawn mower again?
• Will this ride share going to get me to work, or roll me out of the car in Mexico?

And all that attention has forwarded the discussion, but trust is not an absolute from the get go. We as humans observe behavior and actions before trust is earned,  and we frequently reassess trust levels along the way. It can work between online and offline as long as it is observed, recorded and elegantly presented in context.

So, not unlike the man in Frost’s Poem…

The accumulation of recorded behavior, events and affinities that leads to the confidence to exchange something of value, tangible or intangible is IMHO the most accurate and applicable definition of Trust that any P2P marketplace can rely on.  

And this is why, simply, behavior trumps reputation every time.

PS: I’d love to hear what you think of the new TrustCloud. Enter your comments below, or on their site. Mine is above at the top of my blog.

No, they don't.

It’s been said 2012 will be the year of Social Media in Business; for the meta travel site KAYAK, it couldn’t come soon enough.

While some businesses are evolving or even transforming how they buy and sell products, many are fast becoming social businesses. In a Fast Company article by Drew Neisser, “Move Over Social Media; Here Comes Social Business” he explains the reasons why every company should be thinking about becoming a social business. According to Neisser, IBM is moving themselves and their clients “well beyond social media into a new era of collaboration, insight sharing and lead generation it calls social business”.

It only takes one disaster, and the whole company focusses on getting social media right.

So big news this week was KAYAK pulled some ads from TLC recently on a previously under the radar show called “All-American Muslim”. In fact, seems 65 other advertisers have done the same, including Lowes. None cited any reason for pulling ads, and so the logical media man assumes it was for underperformance. Advertisers advertise because they are in business. They want to reach customers and have a finite marketing budget to do it.

KAYAK is a small entrepreneurial company, the type that we need badly in America. Unfortunately, KAYAK’s explanation came out in the form of a (likely) hastily written blog post from the CMO right out of the classic Gas-on-the-fire PR strategy. It starts with a typo (as I often do as well), and rambles just enough to contradict between backing a show for moral reasons and pulling out for performance reasons. I’ve written worse. (full disclosure: I know the CEO and have shared beers on occaision).

Here’s that first post:

We would like to apologize to anyone who was offended by how we handled our decision not to continue advertising on All-American Muslim when it
returns in January. We decided to advertise on it in the first place because we  adamantly support tolerance and diversity. Our 150-person team includes people
from all over the world, and from all walks of life. Our team includes people who are descended from early Europeans who came here escaping religious
intolerance, and newer Americans who include many religions. We get what America is about.

For the record, we didn’t “pull” our ads. Our ads kept running on this program, but we have made the decision not to give TLC more money when the show returns in January.

Unfortunately, this decision comes across as bending to bigotry. It also appears that we did not support people who deserve support as people and as Americans. For that, I am profoundly sorry.

I should have communicated more clearly. We would not want anyone to think that we caved to hatred. I wish I could share some of the emails I’ve received from our team. They are also very unhappy with how I handled this. Please allow me to explain the decision. First, our approach to advertising decisions is to choose advertising based on who watches it, not the political leaning of the program.

When we decided to give our money to TLC for this program, we deemed the show a worthy topic. When we received angry emails regarding our decision to advertise, I looked into the show more thoroughly. The first thing I discovered was that TLC was not upfront with us about the nature of this show. As I said, it’s a worthy topic, but any reasonable person would know that this topic is a particular lightning rod. We believe TLC went out of their way to pick a fight on this, and they didn’t let us know their intentions. That’s not a business practice that generally gets repeat business from us. I also believe that it did this subject a grave disservice. Sadly, TLC is now enjoying the attention from this controversy.

I then checked the Florida Family Association website to see how this was portrayed. Besides the regrettable hatred, I also noticed that we weren’t listed. The email was a template, so people who sent thousands of emails seemed to be unaware they were sending it to us. The amount of vitriol in the emails was saddening, but I didn’t exactly feel pressured (not to mention we wouldn’t bend to such pressure). Many of the emails I’ve received expressing disappointment in our decision have been much more civil, and I applaud you for that.

Lastly, I watched the first two episodes. Mostly, I just thought the show sucked. Based on our dealings with TLC and the simple assessment of the show, I decided we should put our money elsewhere. Apologies again.

- Robert Birge, KAYAK Chief Marketing Officer

But then social and traditional media kicked in, picking apart the post and accusing the company of pandering to religious groups (who pointed out, correctly, the show had no bomb makers). This, to them, implied TLC was going light on Islam and they called for support to be pulled. Meanwhile, support was being pulled, likely for entirely different reasons- economics. But I think the big lesson learned is that businesses are beginning to wade into social media, and they have to get a handle on the tremendous benefits and swift dangers of living in that world. As for KAYAK, the best thing they can do in this Holiday season is to focus. Sure enough, this clarification just came out from CEO Steve Hafner.

This is actually my first blog post ever. Frankly, I wish it was on a different topic.

I want to respond to the questions and comments we’ve been receiving about KAYAK’s advertising on the TLC show “All-American Muslim”. We’re a small company with fewer than 200 employees, and we advertise on a lot of TV shows. We don’t have the resources to vet the content of each show. We also continually adjust our media mix – meaning we start, stop,  and restart advertising on specific shows periodically.

Our decision regarding advertising on All-American Muslim was in no way influenced by demands from third parties such as the FFA. We do try to avoid advertising on shows that may produce controversy, whether we support the content or not. We simply don’t want people to confuse our choice of where we spend our TV dollars with a political or moral agenda. Plus there are plenty of shows that are just as effective from a marketing perspective.

We’re not bigots, and we’re not experts in TV programming. We are trying to make the world’s best travel site. I hope this blog post puts this issue to rest and allows us to get back to work.

Please enjoy the holiday season. Steve Hafner

 Simple, focussed and to the point. Good CEO reaction.