For me, today has been a day for conferences. In the morning, I attended Scott Kirsner’s “Future Forward” gathering, and, in the afternoon I spoke at the MIT Sloan CFO Conference. Serendipitously, the theme was “The Future Forward CFO.” Two completely different events. Scott’s conference was in town and featured founders with a lot of
Category: Entrepreneurship
From Brown, HBS and Senior Exec…to a B&B
Here is an unusual résumé: Brown University, General Mills brand manager, Harvard MBA, SVP at Darden (the large company that owns Olive Garden, Capital Grille and Red Lobster), and…bed-and-breakfast owner/operator. That is the résumé for my close friend, John Hatton. You might think that he has lost his mind. You might think that this is a
How to Make Money: Concentrating Risk
Eric and I have been emailing this morning about a blog post on seed rounds (here) and how they’re getting larger. As the number of Series A check-writers has remained flat at best (and, down in some sectors) it’s forcing seed-stage companies to prove more momentum before they can raise a new round. So, they’re getting
When the VC-Entrepreneur Honeymoon Ends
Eric and I have been on quite a few boards. That’s another way of saying that we’re in our 40s, which qualifies as “old age” in today’s hip and young entrepreneurial world. But, with age, hopefully, comes self-awareness. For example, one thing for which we are prepared is when the honeymoon period with a founder
A Good Evening with NEVCA
I had a good time last night at my last New England Venture Capital Association (NEVCA) Board gathering. I ran into some prior colleagues, and it was great to see them (fun to catch up with you, Dan, Bob and Sean). I also had a chance to meet up again with C.A. Webb and
‘Priceless Pieces of Crap’
I caught up recently with Patrick Morley of Bit9 (I was a Series A investor there while at a previous VC job). He and Tom Erickson of Acquia are the independent directors at our portfolio company VoltDB. We started talking about the start-up life. Patrick has been a CEO of multiple start-ups and is quite