the cornice

Archive Page 2

Good Bye Summer

20Oct08

Congratulations to the Tampa Bay Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies. There’s some tremendous baseball ahead in the World Series. In Boston, 2008 was a great season but there will be no joy in Red Sox Nation this year.

For me, it’s time to turn the page on a baseball season that began on a Saturday morning in the dry March heat of the Cactus League. Now, on a Sunday evening the first chills of October have arrived, the hot stove is readying and the wait for next year has begun. Until then Bart Giamatti’s “Green Fields of the Mind” has special resonance. Good bye Summer ‘08.

Green Fields of the Mind by Bart Giamatti

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

That is why it breaks my heart, that game–not because in [Tampa Bay] they could win because Boston lost; in that, there is a rough justice, and a reminder to the [Rays] of how slight and fragile are the circumstances that exalt one group of human beings over another. It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.

Filed under: baseball | 1 Comment
Tags: bart giamatti, baseball, red sox

Announcing: First Round Capital Office Hours (and free coffee)

14Oct08

Remember when you were in college and you had lots of questions about how the world worked and yet being around a university environment you still felt safely isolated from the crazed gyrations and threats of the real world? If you wanted to think of the world off-campus, you could sign-up to meet a faculty member for Office Hours and discuss the world in theory (realty was still Graduation Day and Senior Week away).

Well, all of the recent doomsdayism and naysaying has made me a bit wistful for campus life. I remember the safety of those college days. And I miss them. So do my colleagues. In that spirit, Rob Hayes and I will be holding our own Office Hours. On Tuesday, October 21st from 11am to 1pm, we’ll be camping out at the University Café in Palo Alto.

Despite what others may be saying, at First Round we still think it’s a great time to think about starting a company. At Office Hours, we’d love to meet with entrepreneurs, people thinking about becoming entrepreneurs or folks who would like join a start-up. We’ll be available for a bunch of informal ~15 minute chats. There’s no agenda. Ask us what we think of the market environment or share an idea for a company – we’ll be sure to have plenty of napkins available to help draft that first product plan. We’ll listen, share our perspective and pay for the coffee (which may be of more value than our advice).

When: Tuesday, October 21st , 11am – 1pm
Where: University Café, 271 University Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94301

More details and RSVP (not required) here.

We’ll plan to meet people as they arrive, but if you have time constraints send me a note and we can lock down a slot.

EDIT 10/22/08: Thank you to everyone who attended the event. Please let us know how we can improve for next time by posting your feedback in the comments section of our “thank you” post.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Upside of the Downturn

30Sep08

“Get busy living, or get busy dying.” - Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

There has been a great deal of doom and gloom written about the impact of the current financial crisis’ impact on start-up activity. Doubtless, there will be difficult days ahead for many companies, their employees and their investors. But there is a silver lining to this cloud. We will all fail faster.

It will be painful, but this isn’t as crazy as it sounds. Failing can be a good thing. Especially when it is done quickly and efficiently. In a previous post, I drew a parallel between evolutionary biology and product management. Looking at the current environment through the lens of evolutionary biology, we will see the time between generations narrow and newer offspring generated more quickly. Successive generations of companies will be started more quickly. In other words, the pace of start-up evolution will quicken.

In the coming years, I suspect that the many companies will be shuttered before they are ever started. The tightening angel funding environment will mean that many ideas never receive funding. These challenges will force entrepreneurs to re-evaluate and adjust their ideas. Concepts that would have been funded in a flush economy won’t be funded now. And so the talented and courageous entrepreneurs who start businesses will revisit their ideas and create newer more potent products. In doing so, they will ensure that their time, the sweat of their potential employees and the capital of their potential investors will be used more efficiently. The financial environment will hasten their evolution.

Great ideas will continue to be funded - we’re lucky, we get to see a lot of them at First Round Capital. And I suspect that the companies which receive their initial funding during the next 12-18 months will prove to be one of the strongest “classes” of businesses we have seen in some time. In this environment, only the best ideas and best teams will be funded. This is good news for everybody. If you have been thinking of becoming an entrepreneur, don’t let the headlines scare you. This is a great time to have a conversation about starting a company. Get busy living, or get busy dying. Evolution is a great co-founder.