I'm on vacation this week, and we have some old friends and their family staying with us. Last night we got to talking about therapy (like psychotherapy) and how valuable it has been for me over the past few years. Maybe four years ago I started seeing a therapist on a bi-weekly basis. There were a few specific things that were stressing me, and also a more generalized sense of anxiety that I wanted to work on. And then, over the next few years a few specific difficult situations came up that we worked through. My guy comes from a Zen / mindfulness background, which really works well for me. When I think about what I've been working on and dealing with over the last few years, I can point to this first step of finding a therapist (I refer to him my "shrink") as the single most important thing I've done. It's really amazing how much just having someone there to help makes a difference -- whether there's something specific going on, or nothing at all -- having someone there to help just unlocks a lot of stuff. At around the same time, I got a new primary care doctor, and also a new accountant. Both of whom are amazing and have helped get things in better order, in terms of health and finances. I remember thinking, back then, "wow, it's OK to get help with things". That may be so obvious to people, but for some reason it really hit me as profound. For the first time, I felt like I had a great team backing me up, helping me improve on all the things I wanted to improve on. There is a lot of stigma around getting help, in particular around getting psychological help. Like, what's wrong with me that I need this, or why can't I just deal with this on my own, or with my friends, or with diet and exercise. It took me a while to take the plunge and get help for the things I needed help with, and I got stuck on all of those questions before I did. But I can say without hesitation that getting actual dedicated help was the best thing I've ever done, and it has really unlocked a whole lot for me. And if you think about it, it would be ridiculous to expect anyone who wants to excel at anything to do it all alone -- the Patriots don't coach themselves, and Roger Federer doesn't go it alone either. In those cases, it's so obvious that help is good and necessary, and that's true for your mind, your health, your finances, etc. At USV, many if not most of our CEOs have an executive coach, and I can't recommend it more. A good executive coach can play the role of therapist in a lot of ways, but a dedicated, non-work therapist is a great thing too. If it's available, and if you can find it, I'd encourage anyone out there dealing with anything hard to get help from someone good.
I was out last night with some of the little league coach dads, and we got to talking about whether it's better for our kids to be bumped up a level (but be at the lower end of skills/experience) or stay back a level and have a chance to really excel. The consensus was that you want the kids to stretch, and learn from people who are better than them, but not to take it so far that they feel demoralized and tiny. It got me thinking back to the time in first grade where I got bumped up to the higher math group, but then couldn't hack it and got bumped back down. I can still see the workbook where I doodled all over the pages because it was easier to do that than to engage in the work. And then I thought about the time I took intro to computer science my freshman year at Stanford (never having done any coding before) and feeling so left behind by the rockstar kids in the class, who seemed as though they'd been coding since they were six. I dropped the class. That one really stuck with me -- I really enjoyed coding, but didn't stick with it (at that moment in time -- I came back to it later). But for years, I regretted not giving it a better shot. Then, 5-1/2 years ago, I was out to lunch with Brad Burnham from USV, intending to pitch him on funding one of our spin-out projects at OpenPlans, and he asked if I wanted to come and do some work with them. The area of work that Brad wanted to focus on at that time (tech policy) was something I had touched on during my time at OpenPlans, but I was by no means an expert. And stepping up into a big name VC firm was exciting but intimidating. I remember going home and weighing a bunch of options -- at that time, things were changing at OpenPlans, and there was one opportunity there, another opportunity at another tech company, and then a very unformed (and kind of terrifying) opportunity with USV. As I thought about all of that, I remember thinking that going in the USV direction was definitely the most interesting, but it would mean getting in way over my head. I obviously decided to go that route, and it has been a steep and amazing learning curve ever since (starting with the policy work, then getting into everything we do at USV). And I think I have learned a whole lot from people who have been doing this for decades. I'm glad I made that decision -- and more importantly that I stuck with it, even though there have been plenty of times when I doubted whether I could do it. I think this is particularly relevant in the startup world, where things are changing constantly, and there's plenty of opportunity to step up into bigger roles as things change. My colleague Bethany
Last month, I went to the (most beautiful city in the world) Amsterdam, to speak at The Next Web Conference. I did two talks, one at a sub-event focused on tech & social issues, on the topic of Data & Power, which I will post when it comes online, and a main stage talk on the topic of Purpose, Mission & Strategy -- how to connect the three to align efforts within a company. In the talk, I take examples from throughout our portfolio of how leaders define and communicate their purpose, within their organizations and externally, and then use that to make tough strategic calls. For example, I wrote last week about how Cloudflare is fighting hard against patent trolls, and how deciding to do that is not just a narrow corporate decision, but a tough strategic call that draws from the company's sense of purpose and mission (frankly, I explain that example much better in the post than I did in the talk). For another example, Brian Armstrong from Coinbase just posted their long-term strategy yesterday, and this another example I discuss in the talk. I've been impressed by how Coinbase's efforts are aligned internally, and by the way Brian has connected the company's purpose and the strategy. You can watch the whole video (about 25 min) here: And you can see the slides here: This was my first time giving this talk, so of course there are things I'd tune for take two. I would in particular like to thank the awesome folks at
I'm on vacation this week, and we have some old friends and their family staying with us. Last night we got to talking about therapy (like psychotherapy) and how valuable it has been for me over the past few years. Maybe four years ago I started seeing a therapist on a bi-weekly basis. There were a few specific things that were stressing me, and also a more generalized sense of anxiety that I wanted to work on. And then, over the next few years a few specific difficult situations came up that we worked through. My guy comes from a Zen / mindfulness background, which really works well for me. When I think about what I've been working on and dealing with over the last few years, I can point to this first step of finding a therapist (I refer to him my "shrink") as the single most important thing I've done. It's really amazing how much just having someone there to help makes a difference -- whether there's something specific going on, or nothing at all -- having someone there to help just unlocks a lot of stuff. At around the same time, I got a new primary care doctor, and also a new accountant. Both of whom are amazing and have helped get things in better order, in terms of health and finances. I remember thinking, back then, "wow, it's OK to get help with things". That may be so obvious to people, but for some reason it really hit me as profound. For the first time, I felt like I had a great team backing me up, helping me improve on all the things I wanted to improve on. There is a lot of stigma around getting help, in particular around getting psychological help. Like, what's wrong with me that I need this, or why can't I just deal with this on my own, or with my friends, or with diet and exercise. It took me a while to take the plunge and get help for the things I needed help with, and I got stuck on all of those questions before I did. But I can say without hesitation that getting actual dedicated help was the best thing I've ever done, and it has really unlocked a whole lot for me. And if you think about it, it would be ridiculous to expect anyone who wants to excel at anything to do it all alone -- the Patriots don't coach themselves, and Roger Federer doesn't go it alone either. In those cases, it's so obvious that help is good and necessary, and that's true for your mind, your health, your finances, etc. At USV, many if not most of our CEOs have an executive coach, and I can't recommend it more. A good executive coach can play the role of therapist in a lot of ways, but a dedicated, non-work therapist is a great thing too. If it's available, and if you can find it, I'd encourage anyone out there dealing with anything hard to get help from someone good.
I was out last night with some of the little league coach dads, and we got to talking about whether it's better for our kids to be bumped up a level (but be at the lower end of skills/experience) or stay back a level and have a chance to really excel. The consensus was that you want the kids to stretch, and learn from people who are better than them, but not to take it so far that they feel demoralized and tiny. It got me thinking back to the time in first grade where I got bumped up to the higher math group, but then couldn't hack it and got bumped back down. I can still see the workbook where I doodled all over the pages because it was easier to do that than to engage in the work. And then I thought about the time I took intro to computer science my freshman year at Stanford (never having done any coding before) and feeling so left behind by the rockstar kids in the class, who seemed as though they'd been coding since they were six. I dropped the class. That one really stuck with me -- I really enjoyed coding, but didn't stick with it (at that moment in time -- I came back to it later). But for years, I regretted not giving it a better shot. Then, 5-1/2 years ago, I was out to lunch with Brad Burnham from USV, intending to pitch him on funding one of our spin-out projects at OpenPlans, and he asked if I wanted to come and do some work with them. The area of work that Brad wanted to focus on at that time (tech policy) was something I had touched on during my time at OpenPlans, but I was by no means an expert. And stepping up into a big name VC firm was exciting but intimidating. I remember going home and weighing a bunch of options -- at that time, things were changing at OpenPlans, and there was one opportunity there, another opportunity at another tech company, and then a very unformed (and kind of terrifying) opportunity with USV. As I thought about all of that, I remember thinking that going in the USV direction was definitely the most interesting, but it would mean getting in way over my head. I obviously decided to go that route, and it has been a steep and amazing learning curve ever since (starting with the policy work, then getting into everything we do at USV). And I think I have learned a whole lot from people who have been doing this for decades. I'm glad I made that decision -- and more importantly that I stuck with it, even though there have been plenty of times when I doubted whether I could do it. I think this is particularly relevant in the startup world, where things are changing constantly, and there's plenty of opportunity to step up into bigger roles as things change. My colleague Bethany
Last month, I went to the (most beautiful city in the world) Amsterdam, to speak at The Next Web Conference. I did two talks, one at a sub-event focused on tech & social issues, on the topic of Data & Power, which I will post when it comes online, and a main stage talk on the topic of Purpose, Mission & Strategy -- how to connect the three to align efforts within a company. In the talk, I take examples from throughout our portfolio of how leaders define and communicate their purpose, within their organizations and externally, and then use that to make tough strategic calls. For example, I wrote last week about how Cloudflare is fighting hard against patent trolls, and how deciding to do that is not just a narrow corporate decision, but a tough strategic call that draws from the company's sense of purpose and mission (frankly, I explain that example much better in the post than I did in the talk). For another example, Brian Armstrong from Coinbase just posted their long-term strategy yesterday, and this another example I discuss in the talk. I've been impressed by how Coinbase's efforts are aligned internally, and by the way Brian has connected the company's purpose and the strategy. You can watch the whole video (about 25 min) here: And you can see the slides here: This was my first time giving this talk, so of course there are things I'd tune for take two. I would in particular like to thank the awesome folks at
The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
-- how a startup is almost like a completely different organism every six months, with different holes to fill and different ways to contribute. It can be scary. I remember back at OpenPlans, when I went from managing a small product basically by myself, to inheriting a 20-person engineering team, and then 2 years later running a diverse division of the company. The first time I had to decide someone's salary I was like, oh shit, and the first time we did a restructuring, I was like really oh shit. Going through all of this, the earlier failures that continue to haunt me (and believe me, there are others) have continued to serve a pretty good purpose: reminding me, when things get hard or intimidating, or when doubt creeps in, that I want to stand up though it and learn from the situation, rather than shrink from it. I hope we can teach our boys (and girls) to do the same.
who hosted me for a dry run of the talk and gave me great feedback and questions. And of course I would like to thank all of the USV leaders who, over the years, have shared their stories, which were the foundation of the talk.
-- how a startup is almost like a completely different organism every six months, with different holes to fill and different ways to contribute. It can be scary. I remember back at OpenPlans, when I went from managing a small product basically by myself, to inheriting a 20-person engineering team, and then 2 years later running a diverse division of the company. The first time I had to decide someone's salary I was like, oh shit, and the first time we did a restructuring, I was like really oh shit. Going through all of this, the earlier failures that continue to haunt me (and believe me, there are others) have continued to serve a pretty good purpose: reminding me, when things get hard or intimidating, or when doubt creeps in, that I want to stand up though it and learn from the situation, rather than shrink from it. I hope we can teach our boys (and girls) to do the same.
who hosted me for a dry run of the talk and gave me great feedback and questions. And of course I would like to thank all of the USV leaders who, over the years, have shared their stories, which were the foundation of the talk.
