I had great heart-to-heart conversations this week with many of our portfolio company CEOs. The themes spanned a number of topics, but they all revolved around, more or less, “grit.” I’ve found that grit takes form in many shapes, depending on the person’s personality. For some, grit means getting angry. For others, it is about
Category: Personal
The Boston Fire
A few days ago, I was in Cambridge for a board meeting. Across the river, we could see a building on fire, surrounded by fire trucks. As you may have read, two firefighters perished. This morning, I saw the Tweet below. I’m going to end this post here, out of respect for the dead and
Why I’m Limiting Facebook
I’m a huge fan of social media. It is fun to connect to new people and read curated content. But, I’ve decided that, over time, Facebook has become less relevant in my life. I hate saying that since my classmate Sheryl Sandberg is the COO, and I owe her for coming to speak in Boston,
Free Speech and Racism
I yesterday was pretty stunned to see a Facebook post making fun of Asians. As the comments and “likes” rolled in real-time, I frankly couldn’t believe it. But, after thinking about it, I’m going to assume that the author (someone from my high school class) meant it as a harmless joke. The topics which I’d like
Walking Down Memory Lane
My Mr. Mom role will end in a few days. I am here on a Saturday morning at a ballet school, where one of my children takes lessons. Lots of kids and adults in the waiting area. The latter are under-caffeinated. The former appear overly so. With an hour to kill, I went for a
Back in the USSR
A college classmate shared the above photo recently. It was junior year in college, in 1989, and our merry band had just returned from the Soviet Union. We were having a mini-reunion, which I hosted (I’m at the far right in the photo). We were part of the Yale-USSR Project. Every spring, for two weeks,