A few months ago, I had lunch with my friend Daniel Adamson, who runs the very intriguing (to me, at least) Blue Funds. The company, in short, manages a family of mutual funds that invest in public companies that both ‘act blue’ (meet a list of social and environmental responsibility requirements) and ‘give blue’ (give at least 50% of their campaign contributions to democrat candidates). It turns out – both in historical back-testing, and the first year of actual investing – that these companies handily outperform the S&P. So, they’re succeeding on sort of a triple bottom line.

Anyway, he spent lunch telling me about his company and what they have planned for the next year or so, and I told him about what we’re doing at Cyan, the First Cut Film Series, and some bigger institutional financing things we’re brewing up (both a tax-arb production fund, and a capital-protected distribution fund).

By the end of lunch, we both wanted leave our own companies to work for the other’s. Which, it seems, happens almost every time I meet up with another young entrepreneur.

The reason, I think, is that entrepreneurs tend to thrive on hope, on possibility. We get excited about new ideas, about big-picture innovation. And when you’re hearing about someone else’s projects, all you have to think about is that fun, strategic, high-level stuff.

But then you go back to your own company, where you have to worry about cash-flow and execution and all of the detail that actually makes or breaks a company. Which, frankly, often sucks in the doing, the day to day.

I still haven’t figured out a way to reconcile the two. But I have, at least, penciled in a few times a week for me to sit down and formally re-pitch myself Cyan’s plans, the big-picture fun stuff that we’re trying to achieve. It doesn’t spare me the pain of executing, but it does, most of the time, get me re-excited about why I’m doing it in the first place.

This clause was in a contract Cyan just finished drafting:

14) Headings. The headings of the paragraphs of this Note are inserted for convenience only and shall not be deemed to constitute a part hereof.

We therefore changed the clause to read:

14) Fishsticks. The headings of the paragraphs of this Note are inserted for convenience only and shall not be deemed to constitute a part hereof.

I am embarrassed to say we then laughed so hard as to almost wet ourselves.

Yes, we are losers.

Everything, apparently, hinges on everything else. Which is how a handful of minor delays and small problems can cascade their way to a slew of disasters that consume months with non-stop firefighting.

Or, at least, that’s how things have been going here of late. Fortunately, looks like all the flames are nearly extinguished, and I’m still holding my breath. Here’s hoping I end this all no worse scathed than thickly covered with soot.

Back to it.

Update!

As hoped, I survived this latest stretch of standard startup-wrangling disaster with company, sanity and personal relationships all fortunately and firmly in tact. Regular blogging now to continue apace.

People often ask me what I actually do as CEO of a small company. In short: fundraise. First for seed capital to turn the notional company into something real. Then for more capital to keep the young company moving ahead while its expenses still outpace its income. And then, once the company turns profitable, for capital to fund expansion, to underwrite the large new projects that drive growth.

And, frankly, fundraising sucks. Not least of all because you have to ask people to give you large sums of money. But also because, even when they want to, you’re still a far, far back priority to the main concerns of their own lives.

So, in short, you wait. You wait for emails and calls and faxed contracts. And you balance a ‘squeaky wheel gets the grease’ tack with the knowledge that if you pester them too much, they’re more likely to wash their hands of the whole thing, rather than cough up cash.

Even once papers are signed, things are often no better: by then, you’re waiting for their wire to arrive, obsessively reloading the online banking site.

And, the whole time, bills pile up, along with demands for that still-not-arrived money, money that you can’t really make arrive any faster than it is. But, since you’re the middle man, the face that they see, people tell you again and again to do the impossible: to make all of this process, which moves on investor time, move instantly, on their time instead.

That said, if it’s the film business, then at least once every couple of months you get to walk down a red carpet somewhere. So it’s all worth it. It’s all worth it. Or, at least, that’s what you repeat to yourself, like a mantra, as you reload, reload, reload Chase and WaMu.com.

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.

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.

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.