You Can’t Catch Fish Without Bait

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My cousin’s son, Dan Maki, was a greenhorn on the Wizard last spring. It was his job to bait the traps. He hauled thousands of pounds of bait in terrible conditions—freezing wind, snow, ice, huge swells and no sleep. You can watch him and the rest of the crab fishing fleet on Season 7 of Deadliest Catch.

The men of the Bearing Sea crab fleet have taught me a thing or two about courage and execution this summer. I’ve watched captains and individual deck hands do brilliant things to keep their crews focused. I’ve watched them crack, come close to blows and face down Mother Nature scared as you know what and keep on going.

So why am I writing about Deadliest Catch on a blog about startups? Because watching men perform their job well under those conditions reminds me of the importance of keeping it simple when the stakes are high.

I’m in the middle of helping a startup founder negotiate her first round of seed funding. It’s gotten complicated because some people came to the negotiation with a different agenda. It didn’t need to get complicated. In fact, it should have been very simple. The only agenda a high tech startup founder has is to build a great company around a strong team who can do a world class job of executing to create something people want to pay for. If she and her team do their job well, they’ll make a lot of money for their investors. The investor’s job is to recognize a good founder and team by their track record, idea and plan of execution. If anyone in the process is making it complicated or harder than it should be, your only choice is to close the gap or back away. After that, just like crab fishing, it’s binary—you either succeed, or you don’t; you hit the crab and get them in the boat and back to port on time or you don’t. While there are varying levels of success the goal remains the same: we’re all out here to make money.

It gets complicated when people forget that the goal is simple even though the job is very, very hard. A prospective investor in the startup I’m advising mistook the founder’s consistency in communicating her goal as a lack of interest in closing on his investment. He expected her to adapt to his goals, which it turns out, weren’t in line with those of a high tech startup.

When you talk to VCs and angels who have experience investing in startups there doesn’t need to be a lot of discussion of the goals because everyone understands them. What is discussed is your plan of execution. If you find yourself having the same conversation over and over with someone who acknowledges you have a great idea, team and track record but they can’t get “comfortable” with the investment and can’t articulate why, you are talking to someone who isn’t telling you the truth, doesn’t share the goals of a startup, or may be too inexperienced. It’s up to you to decide if it’s worth your time to close the gap. Most founders don’t have that kind of time.

In Episode 13 of this season’s Deadliest Catch, I watched Captain Keith of the Wizard remind his crew, and teach my cousin, how to keep it simple. His crew was going on hour 18, at night, in freezing weather with the usual amount of water washing over them. Dan looked like the walking dead after moving 15-20K pounds of bait. Everyone on the crew was exhausted and several hours of work remained before the boat would be full. They were on a deadline and filling the boat on time meant a lot of money for all of them.

Captain Keith decided to send Dan down below before the boat was loaded because he felt Dan was bringing everyone else down with his attitude. If you watch the episode you know that Dan didn’t agree. He didn’t feel he had a bad attitude and half the crew didn’t either. But, that was the problem, they were all starting to give in to the exhaustion and Dan was the first to fall. They’d lost sight of the goal and Captain Keith had to get them refocused quickly. In sending Dan below, I saw a leader take a calculated risk in order to push each member of his crew past exhaustion to success.

Captain Keith’s gamble worked. After getting his ears pinned back in the wheelhouse for questioning the captain’s decision and then being sent below to think about it, Dan suited up, went back out on deck and kept working until they were done. Captain Keith’s response? “That’s a good sign.” The crew’s response? “That’s a team player.” Together, they reached their goal at sunrise and headed in to port.

Fishing the Bearing Sea can get you killed or it can make you money. Founding a startup can leave you bankrupt and broken, or it can make you a lot of money. Clearly, these jobs are not for everyone. To succeed at either you must keep the goal front and center and cut out everything that does not support it—ego, attitude, distractions, everything. You need to understand exactly what and how you contribute to the goal or step aside. Nothing else is needed from you.

So here’s a little secret. While you don’t have to agree with the goal—and the act of defining a goal that pure and clean scares a lot of people off—you can still accept it. It provides something to strive against, and as Ueli Steck says during the film of his record breaking climb on the Eiger, that’s really what life is all about. Accepting it leaves no room for bullshit, no way to hedge, no tolerance for excuses. There’s beauty in that. You either execute on the goal, or you don’t, and you must make the choice because executing successfully may call upon you to give everything you’ve got and confusion could get you killed or left behind.

When Dan made his decision to finish the job that night in the Bering Sea, he accepted the goal on its terms and rose to it. I don’t think I’ve heard a person sum up that choice more simply and beautifully than he did as he walked back on deck with the words:

”You can’t catch fish without bait.”

No “A” for Effort

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I was thinking about elite performance today. Some people go after it, some are scared of it, some reject it, some are content to sit and watch it on TV. No matter your stance I challenge you to deny that not all people are created equal, or if we are, we sure don’t end up equal in the end.

Nature, nurture, does it matter? Each of us face a moment or maybe moments in life and choose to make something of them, or not. Our choices and opportunities are as unique as we are—they are a function of our place and time, of our different strengths, weaknesses, talents and challenges.

I’m not talking about gender, race, or any of those other easy fall-back excuses as to why one or the other of us didn’t see and take our chances, I’m talking about elite performance at the individual level, not a demographic one. Some people just explode onto the scene and define it. I’m reminded of Craig Kelly who you may not know because he died way too young in an avalanche doing what he loved. He’s a legend in snowboarding, in the NW and on Mt. Baker, his home mountain, where I learned to snowboard.

The Craig Kelly’s of the world are one in a million—although timing may be everything—the rest of us build our elite performance one training session, one life experience at a time. Call us late bloomers. We see the top and strive because to strive is to live.

I was reminded of this recently after attending a meeting where women presented their startups to an investment group focused on funding women-led businesses. Now, to start, I think it’s great that someone out there is interested in giving women a leg up. Women need to help women succeed—that’s where, in my opinion, group effort is useful and worthwhile. However, toward what level of performance? In entrepreneurship, only the elite succeed and it is important to fail when you aren’t good enough, learn from it and try again (or get out while the getting is good). I came away from the meeting disappointed that women are not holding other women to a high enough bar. The women contemplating investment were not consistent in demanding that the women presenting to them be, or be working hard to be, elite. And, that’s a problem.

I don’t think any of us really believe that we get a ticket in to every club just by having a pulse. Strapping a snowboard on my feet doesn’t make me Craig Kelly. But, wow, can I appreciate who he was! I have snowboarded at a high level and I’ve taught it. I know what elite level snowboarding is, I know the bar, and that’s how I know I haven’t achieved it even though I’ve done scarier, harder stuff on a snowboard than most. Craig Kelly was in a class of his own. In his time, he defined the sport and the experience and it was beautiful. Having him out there made me better.

We do each other and ourselves a disservice denying that there are multiple levels of performance to everything we do. While we all choose different challenges in life, we can all choose to excel at the ones we do. There is room for only a few who are the best at each pursuit, who set the bar for the rest of us, and to join that club you must, bottom line, be that good. Life is not a game where everyone wins and I do not support any program or fund for women, or anyone else for that matter, that does not paint an honest picture of what’s required to win even if its focus is to offer a stepping-stone toward that goal.

So what does that mean for women in tech, practically speaking? The list of successful female entrepreneurs in the tech world is so short it’s almost non-existent. I want to increase the number of talented women in tech; I’m tired of being the only woman in the room meeting after meeting, job after job. But, we do not help women become successful entrepreneurs by making them think they’re in the club when they aren’t. We help them by setting the bar high, communicating it clearly, recognizing those who have the potential to hit it and respectfully but firmly telling the rest to go home. I’m even sceptical of women only programs–when was the last time you trained for an event in conditions that did not mirror or exceed those you expect to encounter in competition and still expect to win? Oh, and by the way? You don’t have to have gone to math camp or be able to write code to have a job in tech but that’s a topic for another blog.

Learning is a process and there are programs out there that teach entrepreneurship in a very real way and women should compete to be accepted. Venuetastic’s recent funding by Y-Combinator is a great example. However, getting a firm “no”, particularly when it is honestly delivered by another woman who’s been there is equally if not more instructive. Women should absolutely mentor women…brutally. Let us push each other forward as we rip the scales from our eyes. This business is not for everyone, male or female. It is hard, scary, and fraught with very real danger. To compete you must be able to swim in the same pool as the men and be better, what the heck do you think they’re doing? Competition means everything will be used against you, including being a woman. Men are using everything against each other to win why should it be different for us? If you’ve ever played a team sport you know this is the rule. The difference in entrepreneurship is that the stakes are real and they don’t end with the buzzer. Use every tool you’ve got. But wait, do it with integrity—I didn’t say it would be easy.

Know this, high tech entrepreneurship is one of the most dangerous games on earth; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. If you are really playing the game you are bound to lose everything, at least once, as well as everything you borrowed from the friends and family that love you. Your ego will receive an extreme beating and if you can’t recreate a tougher, more balanced and self-aware version of your ego you will fail. Train! Study your competition, learn from them and then develop your own unique style based on your strengths. I don’t want to read any more posts about whether or not it’s ok to cry at work. That is irrelevant. What you need to perfect is the ability to decide the appropriateness of any emotion at any given time in the course of your day as an entrepreneur and the leader of your company—when to cry, when to tell a joke to break the tension, when to shut up, when to motivate and when to wait. If you screw up, own up and keep going. Seek out brutally honest mentors (especially men) and re-evaluate your strengths and contribution every day. Remember, you don’t have to be CEO to be an entrepreneur so be honest about whether or not that’s your best fit as founder—the success of your company depends on it.

As in life, the key to succeeding at entrepreneurship is “know thyself” and there is nothing quite like entrepreneurship to strip the extra away. Once you do, you will never again mistake mediocrity for a helping hand.

Good luck, don’t settle, fight hard.

Opportunity is Not Convenient

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One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received was from a surfer who said, “Surfing is just like life, it’s all about timing and position.”

I was thinking about those words today and how life brings you opportunity when you least expect it and almost always at the worst possible time. It’s one thing to catch a wave, it’s quite another to catch it at the right time and place with foot/pounds of water swirling all around you and numerous other dangers (reefs, rocks, sharks) awaiting your slightest mistake or hesitation. The confusing part is often you will be in the best place and position to catch it when you feel the least prepared. This is a theme repeated throughout the ages—carpe diem—to rise above the routine, all the obligations and seize the day even when it all conspires to drag you back.

Four years ago I decided to sell a home in Seattle that I loved, pack up (or, in most cases, sell) everything I owned, leave all my friends and family and move to Charleston, SC (a place I’d never been to before), to stand up a high tech start up. I was over 40 and a woman – we just don’t do things like that, what was I thinking? My friends gave each other those knowing looks, my family was upset. While I’d made software since ’89, I’d never done my own startup. I’d recently met a co-founder/CTO I knew had both the vision and experience I needed and we agreed to go into business together. I decided to ignore convention, practicality and good sense. What the hell was I going to do with the rest of my life anyway, garden? I took the proceeds from my house sale and invested it in the company.

Some believe we each only have one moment of “grace”. I believe there are moments there all the time, right under our nose, waiting for us to notice. Moments that can be accepted or ignored, amplified or left to disintegrate into the vapor they’re made of. Who knows, maybe the universe gets tired of waiting, but lately I’ve noticed that some moments walk right up and hit you like a 2×4. For me, the decision to found a start up was like that—it was a choice to take a very different path than the one I was on and I knew it was an opportunity that would not come around again.
It couldn’t have been a worse time for my family – my father’s health was deteriorating rapidly and I’d always been there to help. I was leaving them when they needed me most. But, opportunity doesn’t ask if it’s a convenient time, it only cares if you’re ready, and ready doesn’t have a thing to do with convenience for you or anyone you care about, or if it’s appropriate, or whether or not people will think you’re being selfish. It also doesn’t mean you won’t feel guilty, confused, scared, angry and sick to your stomach. It just means you’re ready to survive the experience. Neither of my parents wanted me to go, but as they had done before with each one of my hair-brained adventures, when it was clear I would not change my mind they sent me off with these words: “do a good job”.

Two and a half years after we founded our startup we sold it. It wasn’t easy. Let me restate that, it was awful. There were people involved who wanted more than their fair share and it took a long time for me to get everyone to agree to the original terms. Money, as I’m sure all of you know, tends to bring out the worst in people. That, and my Dad started to die in the middle of it.
My Dad was a huge figure in my life. As a little girl he taught me how to find my way in the woods, the names of plants and birds, how to swim (by throwing me out the back of a boat, of course), how to fish and most importantly, how to conduct myself. He had funny sayings like “no holidays”, referring to those places you miss when you’re mowing the grass. What he really meant was “no holidays” in life. If you’re going to do it don’t half-ass it.

My Dad made Buddhists look mean. He was a gentle, soft-spoken man who would carry Wolf spiders outdoors (if you’ve ever seen a Wolf spider you know what I’m talking about). But, he was also the man who, when our dog bit a kid on the street in front of our house, picked up a shovel and his .22, walked the dog out into the woods, dug a hole, shot the dog and buried him. He loved that dog.

My dad died the morning after I signed the papers to sell our startup. I had stayed in town thinking I had time. I didn’t mention my dad was dying to our investors or the buyer because, well, he would not have wanted me to use his death as a negotiation device. That’s poor form. The buyer had putzed around all week, stalling, to get us to agree to a lower price and finally scheduled a time late Friday night to sign. I had a ticket to fly home on Sunday. Dad died Saturday morning.

When the call came, I was standing in a karate seminar taught by the head of our dojo. It was a big deal, the man had traveled all the way from Hawaii and people, shoulder to shoulder, surrounded me. When I heard my phone ring I knew it was my Mom calling me to tell me Dad had died. Sometimes you just know. I thought about walking out of the seminar then but knew that Dad would have wanted me to finish—no holidays—so I did.

The following week, along with my Mom, cousins, aunt and a couple friends, I dug a hole for Dad’s ashes in the Maki family plot, a mile down the road from the farmhouse where he was born. We used the same post hole digger my cousin’s had used to dig the hole for their father, Arne, and we buried Dad’s ashes next to Arne’s—the last of their generation. I had paid the full price for my choice to leave but I knew my Dad wouldn’t have had it any other way.

I think about my dad just about every day now and when faced with tough decisions I ask myself “what would dad do?” and it always seems to bring the right answer. I was thinking about him again today as I prepare to set out on a new, crazy adventure and watch the people that might join me make their own tough decisions. Most of us are small town kids, now grown up, who have made the most of the opportunities presented to us—education, career, family—and it is difficult to choose to embark on a choice that puts ourselves first. Country kids are loyal and tend to stick close to home and the people who have helped them along the way.

But I say to them, like my Dad taught me, there is nothing you can’t do. But, to truly seize the day, you will have to shed all attachments, even our small towns and families (not forever, just a little while), and go big like they raised us to do, even when you feel you’re not ready or it’s not the right time. It’s never the right time for anyone else, only you. If it’s a huge opportunity worth risking it all for, you will recognize it by the fact it requires more than you’ve ever sacrificed before, maybe even the good regard of friends and loved ones (again, not forever, but maybe a little while).

If you make that choice, dive head first, carpe diem, do a good job and no holidays.

There Is No Other

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There’s a particular hill in Menlo Park, CA. A coveted address where an unusual clustering of the most powerful venture capital firms in the world resides. It’s considered a right of passage for a startup founder to visit the firms on that hill. Some will tell you they don’t need them, or they hate them, but no one ignores them–if they say they do they’re lying. These firms and the founders who successfully navigate them are the “sharks” books have been written about. If the firms, or founders they invest in, ignore you you’re probably dead out of the gate or they just stole your idea. If they take an interest, (hot damn if they invest!) they can take you on a rocket ride that will change your life forever. Some waste your time and both my co-founder and I have written about how. But there are many rock stars, and then, there are a few who are the rock stars among rock stars who will make you and your business better with just an hour of their time.

I’ve spent the last two weeks in the Valley (as my co-founder says “there is no other”) on that hill pitching our startup to those VCs. If you’ve never done it is an exhilarating, humbling experience. Once you’ve done it, like me, I suspect you’ll be ruined forever. Preparing to place a fledgling idea out for scrutiny by professionals who have already invested in four companies just like yours, founded by hot shit 25 year olds from Stanford will have you wide-awake at 3am for two weeks reworking your slides and talking to the tomatoes at Whole Foods (because it’s Menlo Park, dammit, where else would I shop). Just like high-level, competitive sports you know exactly when you commit an error that loses the game and exactly when you say something that wins you the money-there are no second chances. You cannot hesitate, you cannot dwell on the previous meeting and what you did wrong, you must drive forward constantly adapting and refining your idea as you shamelessly sell yourself and your company to whomever will listen and listen to whomever will tell you something you don’t know. It is a dangerous place. Show no fear.

There is a ridge that separates the two canyons above Salt Lake City–on the one side lies Alta and Snowbird, on the other Brighton and Solitude. If you hike out of the ski areas, past the ropes and on to that ridge you agree to take your life in your own hands. There is no avalanche control, no lifts and no ski patrol to steer you clear of danger and pick you up when you fall. If you choose to head back toward Brighton and Solitude you will have to negotiate Wolverine Cirque–a series of steep, rocky chutes that drop you into fields of untouched powder. You must pick your chute and your own line–there are no friends on powder days–and finally, you will find yourself staring straight down at a narrow opening between unfriendly rocks and beyond to open powder.

There is no turning back, no do-overs. The only way to safely navigate these chutes is to commit. You’ve got to commit or else you will not hike through the very real danger of dying in an avalanche to get there. You’ve got to commit in order to push off the lip of that cirque even though the height is making you nauseous. You’ve got to commit enough to look past the rocks to where you want to go because otherwise you will hit them, guaranteed. Your commitment must come from knowing that everything I’ve just described to you makes you feel alive and that’s a feeling you seek, not one you avoid.

That is the closest analogy I have, personally, to what it feels like walking into a Sandhill VC’s office with a startup to pitch. The Valley is the epicenter and that hill feeds it; makes or breaks it. Just like dropping off the lip of Wolverine Cirque, when you walk in that door you put it all on the line, you use every bit of knowledge and experience you have to improvise and adapt in the moment (because they always ask you something you didn’t expect), and you completely commit to the process.

Yesterday, while getting ready to pitch one of the luminaries in the VC world—an individual with an amazing track record and more degrees and national awards than I thought a person could earn in one lifetime—and a more junior partner I expect to read a lot about, my computer keyboard broke. I was forced to give my pitch from memory—no screen shots or visuals–Sandhill’s equivalent of standing on that cirque and watching the rocks get higher and closer together. But, I’d already walked in the door. No do-overs. I committed. Half way through the beginning of my pitch they interrupted me to say I’d said something very profound about digital information consumption they hadn’t realized before. Ten minutes later the VC interrupted me to say I’d changed the way they think. They were talking about a knowledge domain they’ve devoted their entire career to studying. Wow, open powder.

That VC asked me really hard, thought-provoking questions and I and my pitch are better for it. I didn’t get all the answers right but the conversation left us all wanting more. It was the kind of conversation you only have a few times in your career as a startup founder and one I’ve never had so far on the east coast. That VC was working with me, in the moment, to understand not just a new market opportunity but also a complete shift in how they understand the market and that excited them. They didn’t once ask me for a financial spreadsheet, or a business plan, they were looking for creative, disruptive ideas that made them stop and say “huh”. Because if, as the guy I’m recruiting to be my CEO said, “you know before you start that lots of people currently in your market are going to hate what you build, then that alone is reason enough to build it. It means you’re really on to something.”

Only in the Valley. Only on that hill. It’s where markets are made, and markets are destroyed, in the space of one conversation. There is no other.

West

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Who knows what the future holds
Or where the cards may fall
But if you don’t come out west and see
You’ll never know at all

Come out west and see
The best that it could be
I know you won’t stay permanently
But come out west and see

- Lucinda Williams

I’m from the West. My grandparents immigrated from Finland to Washington State in the early 1900s. They scraped a subsistence farm out of a rural hillside with an ax, a horse and a plow. Surrounded by other Scandinavians, they never bothered to learn English, leaving the little they needed to their children who learned to speak it in school. By the time my father died last year he had ploughed a field with a horse, and then, a tractor; seen the outhouse and lanterns replaced by indoor plumbing and “the electric”; was around for the first TV, watched it show him a man walking on the moon, and raised a daughter (born in a hospital, not a tent or the farm house like he and my uncle were) who made her living from something called a computer.

The West’s history is my history. I am used to its condensed and strange juxtaposition of primitive and hyper-modern but I have never experienced the sheer speed of history creation and associated adrenalin rush that is the West until now.

I went to Stanford University in the early ‘80s. A small town girl from rural Washington State, I didn’t have any idea what I was getting myself into. Stanford was full of sophisticated students who’d already traveled the world, done research, published and knew what they wanted to be when they grew up. I hadn’t been on a plane. The excitement and sense of limitless possibility was intoxicating. Attending Stanford was like a four-year love affair—there was nothing outside those sandstone walls that could compete for my attention.

But, that was before the Valley exploded.

It had started by the early 80s, for sure. Santa Clara’s beautiful orchards had long since been plowed under in favor of office buildings and apartment complexes. More and more students were taking computer science and going on to work at companies with goofy noun names like Apple, Sun and Oracle. I would ultimately end up at Microsoft in 1989—not early but early enough.

It first peaked in the late 80s/early 90s and then again as the dot com bubble burst in all it’s devastating glory—taking me and most of my tech friends and colleagues down a peg or two. It’s peaking again now, as the rest of the country wonders how long this recession will last. The latest national stats show that high tech startups are, on average, creating more new jobs than any other sector and I believe it. I’ve been in the Valley for the past week meeting with VCs and angels to pitch a startup and the amount of activity, the sheer number of startups and available cash is staggering. VCs are creating incubator funds to compete with the angels; Facebook and Google are handing out fists-full of cash to their top engineers to stay put, and everyone is competing for resources—yes cash too, but mainly resources because the cash is here.

The pace is light speed. I have missed more opportunities to pitch my startup in one day because my schedule is just too crammed than I could find in six months in the Southeast. I have had to completely change my mindset from the Southeast focus on business model engineering and “do you have revenue yet” to go big (or go home) and data is the new cash. The founder of one of the oldest VC firms here said to me “no one knows how these things will be monetized, but they will and we want ideas that can be built into big companies”. Rebecca Lynn, Partner for Life Sciences at Morganthaler Ventures, told a room of entrepreneurs that “free sells, if you’re collecting good quality data you will find a way to monetize it.”

My co-founder is fond of saying “if you haven’t done it in the Valley you haven’t done it” and he’s right. The sheer speed and volume of opportunity, ideas and activity is unparalleled and necessitates you get rid of everything that isn’t essential. You are creating your own reality in the moment and so is everyone around you.

When my grandfather got on the boat to find their future in America he was 21, the seventh son of a tenant farmer, with less than nothing. That’s pretty much what it takes to clear your mind and your attachments and set off out West. If you’re game, I highly recommend it. As I responded to one old friend who asked how long I would be in town, “there is nothing else I need to be doing right now”. Or, as Jimmy Buffet put it, “Is there something else a doin’ we’d be doin’ if we could?” Standing at the epicenter of it all I can honestly say, “Nothing.”