At some level, I know people read this site. I open the server log every week or so and pour through the statistics, marveling at the number of visitors who make their way to this corner of the internet. Yet that count is so much staggeringly higher than I can possibly account for among friends – real-life or digital – that I don’t really connect the list of IP addresses with actual people sitting at their computers.

On the other hand, after years of running companies, I’ve amassed a few thousand colleagues in my Outlook contact list, and certainly any of those people might also be Googling me up, stumbling across this site and following along. Still, for whatever reason, I simply never assume that any of those people – the ones I know through business rather than pleasure – regularly read what I say here. It’s therefore a shock when, for example, an investment banker Cyan is working with tells me his daughter is wildly amused by the photo of me with a finger up my nose.

Similarly, I vividly recall, just before starting Cyan, going into the office of the CEO of the company I was consulting for to tell him that my new startup would force me to pack up my bags and leave his company. The CEO was a personal friend, and as the company was already rather short-staffed for its burgeoning workload, I felt rather guilty about it, didn’t quite know how to have the conversation. “I have something I need to tell you,” I told him. “As much as I’ve enjoyed working here, I think I’m going to have to leave soon to start a new company.”

“I know,” he replied. “I read that on your site about an hour back.”