At first I thought it best to completely stay away from this story, then I realized after a conversation in our office tonight that there are some interesting details in this story that may make sense for me to collect and reflect on. This is a collection of the posts on the AngelGate drama going around in the venture financing world. If you read the following articles in order, and some of my personal insights provided below, you’ll understand what’s going on and  have a great understanding of the topic from multiple, differing, but all intelligent perspectives.

Format is:

Name of author (sentence summary)

My insight/review, blah blah blah.

Enjoy.

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TechCrunch (this is where it all started)

Mike Arrington of TechCrunch, went to a dinner with some super angels, meaning people who invest early stage, but with other peoples money (some definitions may vary). Arrington was tipped off on the dinner and had a hunch that it was about price collusion in early stage deals. So, he just showed up in typical hard nosed journalistic fashion…

http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/21/so-a-blogger-walks-into-a-bar/

Dave McClure (we’re not bad, we’re hustling & a healthy fuck you)

Dave’s approach is consistent and honestly I kinda like it. He basically makes the claim that these meeting happen but no, they weren’t colluding on prices. They generally meet with some of the big names to make good things happen and help direct the industry in a positive direction.

http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2010/09/fire-in-the-valley.html

Ron Conway (blasting super angels)

Ron is a stand up angel and I hope someday I get the chance to work with him. This letter (that was intended to be private) got out and of course published on TechCrunch. He basically calls out some negative super angel behavior and attempts to disassociate with the crew that is potentially acting in an unethical fashion. If there’s anything I took away from this, it’s that some nasty things were going down around that table.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/23/ron-conway-angel-email/

Brenden Mulligan (can’t we all just get along)

This post is probably the least circled of all the posts here. However, its one of the most honest and innocent summaries that I’ve seen and I have a huge amount of respect for it. Brenden is a good friend and he literally nailed this one. If I were to write a post with my thoughts, I’d probably just ask to repost his. The gist is chill out, we all need each other.

http://bmull.com/dont-let-this-angelgate-crap-drag-out-communi

Mark Suster (reality sets in, advice for entrepreneur)

Like I posted on Marks blog tonight… Every time I have an interaction with Mark, whether twitter, or reading his blog, I have a growing respect for his perspective and realistic, balanced approach to business and life. This is the best response yet to a very sticky but interesting topic. It’s fair, it’s real, and it like most things I agree with, sides a bit with the entrepreneur about how to handle what is inevitably the real world. His advice is a little bit deal with it, and a little bit, how to deal with it. Thanks Mark.

http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/09/23/what-entrepreneurs-should-do-about-price-fixing/

This is going to be a short post, because the reality is that I don’t know a ton about this topic. But I’m right down in the mix of it and I’ve got a few first lessons that I think might be valuable for the folks who are as fresh as I am. I don’t mean to discredit what I’ve learned and I don’t mean to state this as gosspil or any kind of genius, it’s just real and from the trenches.

Title does matter.

In posting a job, it’s absolutely critical that you get the job title correct. It matters for the company to guide the structure of the team, it matters for the individual to provide clarity on what her responsibilities may be, and it matters for marketing and getting people interested in applying for the job. It needs to be clear and descriptive enough that in one glance the persons applying will have a solid idea of the work they will be doing. Similarly, it helps to have enough buzz words that it’s at least some what appealing to an applicant…if not sexy. There’s trends in job titles and as an executive hiring for those roles it’s pretty darn important to understand those trends.

UberCab is currently hiring for an awesome business side startup role that will be responsible for huge growth of our company if executed on correctly. The job started out as ‘City Manager’, thinking that this person would own the overall operations of a city. We thought the generality of the title would imply great responsibility and opportunity, I was wrong. We realized that nobody understands what the hell a City Manger would do. The title had to change.

We rewrote the job post and title to read ‘Operations Mgr’. This seemed closer to what we needed but soon realized that Operations Mgr was attracting a type of person that’s was way off from what we needed. It attracted an older crown who had “operations” experience doing projects with construction companies and the like. Not our target. Operations Mgr could also be misread in the startup world for a technical operations role, which this role is not.

Finally, we’re on Business Operations Analyst, first because it captures the unique business side startup opportunity that we’re offering. Second, the role is heavily operational in that there will be management of our fleets on a day to day basis. And third, the title of analyst implies someone that may be a bit junior but will be data driven and work their ASS off. In the consulting world analysts are the grunts, well in the startup world we’re all the grunts. Our understanding of this role and the title that we’ve chosen to recruit for it are optimized and iterated upon and now we’re really starting to see the type of resumes we originally setup for.

I’ll keep this post update with our hiring status & you can apply here > http://ubercab.com/jobs

The importance of being represented well online is as high today as it has ever been. With the potential of being hired (or not) riding on a Google search, or a look through your Twitter feed, the name you make (or break) for yourself on the internet is critical. With social media going from nerd to main stream the projection of your reputation from the real world to the web has happened quickly and people have made their careers riding that momentum.

Whether you’re Gary Vaynerchuk turning a daily internet wine show into a career building and advising web businesses, writing about using a personal brand to build a business, and eventually owning the Jets ;) …

OR

If you’re Tila Tequila strutting your way from MySpace to MTV and beyond…

The web acts as a megaphone for a persons reputation. An individuals reach and impact is expanded at zero cost, and because of it, everybody should embrace their reputation or if I have to say it, personal brand on the web.

But, the idea of a “personal brand” has been taken too far. Personal brand is just a trendy way to say, my ego! Get over it. Over the past few weeks I’ve had one too many experiences where an individual loved talking about the way that sharing certain content or associating with certain people (on twitter) or venues (on foursquare) might affect their brand. Stop talking about your brand and start living it. If you’re trying to project something different onto your online personal brand than you project into your offline real life, then your online reputation is first, flawed and will not be sustainable. Second, you’re a fraud and your ‘personal brand’ is just a fasle projection of your ego. So give it up.

The great personal brands out their are the one’s that are 100% consistent with their offline counterparts. That is all.

In hind site it’s really too bad that these interviews didn’t come with any equity exchange because our third interview was with now CEO of Groupon, Andrew Mason. Andrew shared his ideas for his startup ThePoint.com, which transformed from an idea to bring people together for collective action, to a company focused on bringing people together for collective purchase, Groupon.com. Both brilliant ideas but the latter turned out to be incredibly profitable.

In the interview Andrew talks a bit about how ThePoint secured their first funding and how and where the team worked. It’s always fascinating to see the origins of startups and I’m super happy for Andrews incredible successes over the last couple of years.

Also, please excuse the amateur nature of the intro. We were Gary V inspired and really excited about ActionsTalk :)

So a few weeks ago Zappos sent me a couple books for free :) …

Then on the flight back from SF last week, where/when I do most of my reading, I wrapped up ‘Delivering Happiness‘ by Tony Hsieh of @Zappos. I got the books as a part of their blogger out reach campaign. As far as I know it’s worked really well. I’ve seen a ton of posts around the interwebs today…

In short the book made me really happy, seriously. It was a cool mix of personal stories from Tony’s young entrepreneurial endeavors, all the way up to the sale (or marriage as he calls it) of Zappos to Amazon for $1.2B. His accomplishments are freakin amazing… let’s do some quick math…

He started a company called LinkExchange in 1997-ish and solid it after 2.5 years for $260 million dollars. Then he joined Zappos in 2000 and sold it to Amazon for $1.2B 10 years later. This means that each year he’s with a company, over his career he’s added $100 million / year of value to those companies.

Show me another entrepreneur with that track record!

The book starts out with Tony’s first venture, a worm farm. And in his pursuits for profit he learns he must have a passion for his work in order to succeed. Then with Zappos, a truly brilliant company, he’s realized that a purpose must back that passion in order to create LONG TERM sustainability. The book details the 10-Core-Values of Zappos’ culture and provides indepth letters from employees about how that culture and the Core values have impacted their lives and experiences at Zappos.

Tony is a brilliant entrepreneur and someone I really look forward to meeting someday soon.

Thanks Tony & Zappos for the books! I’ll surely be passing them along.

Back in March on the plane to SXSW I read Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson’s new book called ‘Rework‘. In short, it was a phenomenal read. A very inspiring collection of lessons for entrepreneurs, but maybe more important than it’s inspiration, it was actionable. In standard 37Signals fashion it was a collection of blog posts essays that keep your head spinning about your own endeavors and how you could handle situations differently.

Then on a recent (long) flight to SF I decided to reread Rework because I really wanted many of the lessons to sink in. It quickly became clear that more entrepreneurs need to read this book. Brad Feld’s thoughts on the book were interesting…

Rework nails it on every dimension.  I was annoyed during the first chapter since the book started out with the typical “bootstrap your business rather than raise money from clueless investors” screed that Fried is famous for.  While I strongly agree that is one way (my first company was started with $10 and that was all the money we ever raised), it’s not the only way and I get tired of hearing polarizing rhetoric around this.

It turns out that was Fried and Heinemeier’s way of getting my attention.  Rather than passively rolling into chapter two, I was fired up.  And then, in the style of Gary Vaynerchuk, they Crushed It (another awesome book, BTW).  I was glued to my couch for the next hour as I pounded my way through the book.  It’s a collection of short essays and cool drawings built around one liners that everyone running a business should ponder.  As a bonus, they have a great essay on four letter words and why “fuck” and “shit” are not ones you should be concerned with.  And, in a demonstration of their mad skills, they have an awesome attack ad for the book.

Hilarious right?

I got to meet Jason when I helped run Chicago Tech Meetup a few months back and although his views on VC are a bit polarizing, it’s crystal clear that the man is an entrepreneur through and through and knows how to create value and keep his customers needs and situations in mind. In one interview he talked about how in the last couple weeks before publishing they cut the book in half. David & Jason wanted to keep it simple and powerful, the less is more mantra continues to resonate through their products and they’re are better off for it. The value is compact and doesn’t take a lot of time away from an entrepreneurs already wacky schedule. It’s ideal for a flight or long drive (audio books are awesome).

Last I checked Rework was on the top of the NYTimes best sellers so you don’t have to take my word for it. Let me know what you guys though in the comments.

So I just spent the wildest 4 day weekend down in Austin, TX for South by South West (SXSW), affectionately known as ‘South by’. The first 5 days of the conference are dedicated to ‘interactive’ which brings out all of the ce’web’rities. Only two weeks into running UberCab and this biz trip takes me to one of the best parties in the country, with some of the most influential folks on the web. Being around so many people who understand what works and what doesn’t on the web is an incredible opportunity and I was ready to just soak it up.

Driskill Hotel

When we arrived in Austin on the first night we cruised over to the Driskill Hotel on 6th Ave. It became obvious that the apps that are games back home are tools in Austin. Foursquare & Plancast became invaluable in finding out who was where, and what not to miss. By the end of the night at the Driskill there were 370 people checked in and I earned the “Super Swarm” badge. I met the guys behind Next Big Sound, bumped (literally) into Scoble, and was so pumped to finally meet Tristan (<– 4SQ biz dev bad ass) who I’d worked with for 3 months all over gchat/skype/email.

I was giddy at the Driskill because as most Midwest web entrepreneurs know, there is a small number of big things going on in this area of the country. So, to see and meet all the people that I’ve looked up to and learned from over the past 2 or 3 years was very exciting for me. At the end of the night we ended up at a room party jamming on industry news and ideas. Overall, amazing start to ‘south by’. I knew that this was going to be an awesome time.

Pitch Mode

If I didn’t mention it, I did SXSW in full budget startup style. I didn’t buy the $500 badge for the conference events, and I didn’t even book a hotel room. In fact, I actually packed a sleeping bag and it’s a damn good thing that I did. I used it   and was saved by some plush couch cushions (thanks Frank Gruber!).

So because of the fact that I didn’t have a conference badge, on Saturday I set off on my own. I was in full pitch mode. My goal was to tell as many people as I could about UberCab, get feedback, and practice my ‘pitch’. You’d be surprised how much better the pitch got after babbling over and over. I’m normally pretty out going and it doesn’t take much to get me comfortable but going into true pitch mode to randoms challenges anyone. It was awesome and the feedback I got was incredible. It’s fun to hear people excited about what you’re working. In the end, it was a very motivating and successful day.

More tomorrow

This post is getting way to long but I’m only half way through the weekend. Cruise back over here tomorrow and I’ll tell you about Gary V’s hotel room & more details about sleeping on the floor budget entrepreneur style!

If you went to SXSW this year, what was your favorite party, panel, pitch, startup, salt lick, bbq, beer, babe?, or band? What was your favorite whatever?

I’ve been thinking about how my new startup adventure is going to be different than my role with GE and a few things have risen to the surface. So, I’ve decided to do a series of posts on those topics. You’ll be able to follow the series under the tag ‘corpvsstartup’ here.

When I joined GE at the very end of 2007 I had expectations of what opportunities the job would provide. I had just finished reading US News & World Report about how GE had the absolute best training opportunities in the country and it was the best place to start a business career. Since I had interest in technology, I joined the Information Management training program to follow the path of Jack Welch. There was an ‘unofficial’ promise that if I was the top of my class at the 1-year point I would be able to work abroad, there was the off program salary that was very appealing, there was the job titles, and the opportunity to work directly for a CIO. With wide eyes and butterflies in my stomach, I worked my ass of for these opportunities.

At the one year point, I was the top of my class; no chance to work abroad. At the 18 month point I hadn’t yet worked directly for a CIO. At the very end of the program, salaries had dropped “because of the economy”. In the corporate world there are systems, and people must operate within those systems. The people are only able to give you what the system will allow them to give you. It’s not their fault if something that was promised isn’t delivered.

While this sounds like I have serious distaste for my experience at GE, I really don’t. I loved it and learned more than I can tell in a hundred blog posts. My distaste isn’t at all with GE, it’s with the corporate system. It’s with the lack of accountability or even ability to deliver what you promise. The origins of my distaste grow from the inability to trust the system, and thus the people in it. I learned that…

In corporate there isn’t trust in the system, so you can’t trust the people.

Before joining UberCab, I read this post by @altgate and I’m so glad I did. He did a wonderful job of getting my head into the startup mind state. The transition from GE (uber corporate) to startup (UberCab) is a drastic one and having some idea of what to expect is helpful, but understanding that not knowing what to expect is the reality. One of his gems was:

Calibrate your expectations. – Unlike mature organizations with an HR department, formal recruiting programs and on-the-job training, your startup probably doesn’t have any of these.  The recruitment process will seem jerky, but that’s probably because the people you are interviewing with just pulled an all-nighter preparing an investor pitch, writing some code or otherwise doing something that, in their ideal world, you would have been helping them with.  Mature companies can afford to have people dedicated to recruiting but you won’t find that in most early stage startups so it’s best to reset your expectations now before you get disillusioned.

Also read about expecting the unexpected & getting to know the team.

Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot says about recruiting that you need to “make sure someone on the team will go to bat for the person when things are shaky.” In joining this team I felt that the people recruiting me would go to bat for me when/if/as things get tough. Because I trust that they will it gives me all the confidence in the world to deliver. And, there is not system stopping them from doing that.

I think there is a powerful result from trusting the people around you. I completely trust my family and something special happens when we’re together because of it. The level of comfort allows for you to forget about the cover my back mentality and focus on what’s really important. The mission (i.e. next release, mock-ups, code, release party). I’ve learned that…

In startups there is no system so you have to trust the people.

In this short interview of Jeff Bezos, now CEO/Founder of Amazon.com, he talks about how he decided to leave his safe cushy job for a startup, Amazon.com. I’ve shared many of his exact thoughts in the process to leaving my safe cushy job at GE to join a startup, UberCab. I really dig his outlook on the decision and his ability to simplify the decision making process.

No matter what your doing, in order to invest well you must be able to look past the immediate to see the future potential return. Luckily for me the decision to join a very early stage startup is an immediate gratification as well. I now have passion for what I’m working on, and this passion is a highly underrated thing. Passion is what will get you up in the morning with a hop in your step. It’s what will push you to call 5 more numbers after being hung up 10 times in a row. It gets you through the suck, and onto the fun.

I think the immediate passion Bezos had for the potential idea of Amazon is what allowed him, and what now allows me to to look past the potential short term risks, which probably aren’t even that significant, and invest in the future. When we define success in the shorter and long term with some level of passion required we see the best possible outcome. Amber says it well:

when we establish a personally relevant framework for success, we become more decisive and action-oriented. when we focus on minimizing regret rather than risk, we become more comfortable in the notion of taking risk. (which i then ask, which involves more risk: having regret or embracing uncertainty?)

establishing a framework allows us to make more decisions faster as we’re able to more easily see the big picture.

My framework for success includes enjoying the process. I wasn’t enjoying that process until very recently but keeping passion for my work at the forefront of my framework allows me to minimize the risks of a startup and invest in the future. Thanks Jeff.