Aural Abuse
It’s 5:12pm, and I still haven’t had lunch, as thus far today I’ve been on the phone for a total of 6 hours, 21 minutes.
Can you hear me now, indeed.
Like a Blind Date
I’ve been going to a bunch of biz dev meetings of late, with people I’ve previously only met via email. And, inevitably, just before such meetings, I end up standing at the front of the restaurant or coffee shop, looking at each middle aged man coming in the door, trying to divine whether he looks like a DVD distributor, casting director or foreign sales agent I’d be meeting.
Ninety percent of the time, oddly, I get it right. Oh, I think. Of course he’s the guy I’m meeting. But the other ten percent, I don’t have a clue. So, five or ten minutes after the appointed hour, I start asking anyone standing around, from most likely candidate to least, whether they’re Bob or Ted or Chris. Usually, I don’t get it right until the fifth or sixth ask. And, on each I get wrong, the guy who isn’t Bob or Ted or Chris quickly and vigorously explains that I’ve most definitely got the wrong guy. It took me a while to realize, from the weird face they also give me at the time, that they’re assuming I’m not looking for a potential business partnership, but rather for a discreet tryst with an older sugar daddy I’ve met somehow on Craig’s List.
Just one of the many dangerous side effects, it seems, of dressing filmmaker-hip business casual.
Talk to Me
This Wednesday evening, I head off to Paris for a long weekend with Jess.
But, before I do, I train up to Connecticut to keynote the next stop of the Extreme Entrepreneur Tour, which brings “the world’s top young entrepreneurs to college campuses”. Ah, how disappointed these kids will be to get me instead.
(As an aside, the tour is spearheaded by Michael Simmons and his wife Sheena Lindahl, who were just named to this year’s BusinessWeek’s Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25. The final ranking is vote-driven, and I personally vouch for these two as more than worthy of the top slot, so go cast your ballot in their favor.)
For the keynote, I’m apparently supposed to babble for forty-five minutes or so about how to start companies and take over the world. But, as of this evening, I don’t actually have anything prepared. So, armed with a legal pad, a fountain pen, my keen insights and biting wit, I’ve sat down to map out a rough outline of the wisdom I can pass along.
In the process, I flashed on a clear image of the last time I gave a similar talk, a few years back, to a group of Ivy League business school students. And I started out that talk by telling the students they were older and smarter and more experienced than I, and that they shouldn’t really even be listening to what someone like me was saying. During which, every single one of them was dutifully writing down in their notebooks “don’t listen to what this guy is saying…”
As my suggestions of skepticism seemed to have little impact then, this time through, I’m falling back on one of the wisest poets I know, Dr. Seuss, for a poem that should hopefully more clearly set the tone. As it’s one of my personal favorites, and a great one to keep in mind as you slog ahead through any life path, I’m copyimg it here below:
My Uncle Terwilliger on the Art of Eating Popovers
My uncle ordered popovers
From the restaurant bill of fare.
And, when they were served, he regarded them
with a penetrating stare…
Then he spoke great Words of Wisdom
as he sat there on that chair:
“To eat these things,” said my uncle,
“You must exercise great care.
You may swallow down what’s solid…
BUT… you must spit out the air!”And… as you partake of the world’s bill of fare,
that’s darned good advice to follow.
Do a lot of spitting out the hot air.
And be careful what you swallow
Darned good advice to follow, indeed.
For the Film Biz Dorks
A quick note for all aspiring film entrepeneurs in New York City:
The Institute for International Film Financing, based in San Francisco, is now branching out to our fair city. It’s a great group in which to network with other business-minded film folks, and their inaugural NYC event this Thursday evening has an impressive lineup of speakers. Plus, me.
I’ll be talking about finding and seducing investors, and I promise the talk itself is far better than the name (which I didn’t come up with myself), “THE FILM ENTREPRENEUR’S GUIDE TO SUCCESS: Strategies for Funding Your Film Co & Keeping Investors Happy”.
Other folks will be talking about deal structure, courting hedge funds, tax credits, profitably distributing documentaries, and approaching film investment from a quantitative perspective.
While I realize most of you fell asleep even just reading that last sentence, I also don’t doubt there are a handful of folks who wet their pants a little bit at the prospect of that lineup. If you’re one of them, come on down, and certainly pop over to say hello.
Cohabitation
Rob Barnum, who heads up Cyan’s West Coast office, arrives in town early early early tomorrow morning via JetBlue red-eye, with his fiance Sophie in tow.
On past such trips, with both of us decidedly more single, and with our company equally bastardly cheap, Rob opted out of hotel booking, instead taking over my living room’s fold-out couch.
So, out of old habit, we didn’t book him somewhere to stay at the time he booked his flight for this trip, about a month or so back. We thought nothing of it, until late last week, when we realized that wedging a nearly-married couple along with me into my Manhattan-size apartment would, in short, be remarkably, awkwardly cramped.
So, for the balance of the week, I’m essentially gifting my home to those two crazy kids, and invading Jess’ instead. It will be, by far, the longest contiguous stretch of nights she’s had to put up with me; I give it four nights, tops, before my insisting on alternative pronunciations of words like ‘equinox’ leads her to punch me in the face.
Update: Jess texted to say she wouldn’t punch me in the face. She’d kick me instead.
Easy IPO
The girl is head of marketing for a high-end maternity-wear company; as such, I got a chance to visit their New York boutique, and was quite impressed by the stylish pairs of women’s jeans stocked there, with top few inches of fabric retofitted with stretch spandex.
And while, certainly, the market for such pregnancy-friendly women’s clothing is well documented, I’m convinced a men’s version of those same jeans could easily become the anchor of a similarly succesful product line.
Consider this: you’ve just eaten Thanskgiving dinner, or an overly generous mid-summer helping of baby back ribs. Your pants are uncomfortably snug around the waist. If only your jeans were able to stretch accomodatingly around your distended stomach. If only, in short, you were wearing a pair of of Eatin’ Pants(tm).
Despite what seems to me a compelling business case, the girl remains unwilling to jump ship from her current job to launch such a no-fail startup. So, entrepreneurs of the internet, I gift this concept to you. All I ask in return is a free pair from the sample run. 30″ length; 29″ waist before I start eating, and perhaps 36″ after a third helping of turkey, stuffing and cranberry come November 24th.
Professionalism
Annotated last paragraph of an email from me to the CEO of a successful digital distribution company:
That said, I’d be happy to meet up for drinks, though would also love to get you on the phone with [San Francisco-based Cyan VP] Josh [Pincus] at some point, as he’s our point-man for all things digital. Would Wednesday or Friday afternoon work for a call? And, sometime next week for a round of drinks?
Last paragraph of the CEO’s reponse:
As for drinks, my drinking schedule is COMPLETELY OPEN next week, and I am ashamed. Monday at 8:30 AM EST before work?
Then, capping it all off, an email to both of us from Josh Pincus:
A call at that time on Wednesday works for me. Drinks sound good too; I’ll be at a bar at 5:30 AM Monday so that we’re all drinking at the same time.
other Josh
Worst part is, come Monday at 5:30/8:30 AM, there’s at least a 50% chance we’ll actually be having those drinks.
Cyan Pictures: we take this shit serious.™
Things I Hate
1. 7:00am Breakfast Meetings
Leveraged
Nearly nine years back, I and a college friend named David Fischer started up a database software company called SharkByte.
It grew faster than we expected, and, in the process, he and I had to write lots and lots and lots of RFP’s for potential clients. These pitch documents are mind-numbing to write for the first few, and then get progressively worse from there. So for each one, we’d try to invent a new buzzword.
Inevitably, when we’d go in to pitch the client live, they’d quote back our invented word like it was in common usage, happy to agree with our utterly meaningless, but highly technical-sounding, assessment.
Over time, a few of those invented buzzwords became favorites, appearing in long successive strings of RFPs and other documents. At the top of the heap was ‘core technology fulcrum’ (as in “we believe the software interface will allow you to leverage your company’s core technology fulcrum.”), which never failed to land the deal, and which I still occasionally use.
Yesterday, however, David emailed along this informational gem:
Newman,
Was reading the 2003 edition of A Random Walk Down Wall Street and what do I see on page 61 but the phrase “core technology fulcrum” mentioned as a nonsense phrase invented in the 60s conglomerate craze.
Clearly genius is destined to repeat itself.
Indeed.
Note to Self
One of Long Tail’s investors just doubled down on our second round; after his wire hit, he sent along this email, summarizing the secret of entrepreneurial success in five sentences:
Stay focused and attack your plan. We grew from $3 million to $165 million in sales over 15 years. Step by step. Intense focus. Blocking and tackling, innovating, executing.
I know you can make it happen.
best,
Mike