Greek Complexity

Cycling gives you a better brain and brings you happiness

So say various studies reported in "The cycle path to happiness", even leaving aside all the other benefits cycling brings. What's not to love?

Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/the-cycle-path-to-happiness-8422706.html

Things Investors Never Confess to Their Entrepreneurs

Someone came up with this funny list a while ago (Things Entrepreneurs Never Confess to Their VCs), which contains gems like:

• We had our management team meeting yesterday and we've concluded that we're kind of screwed.
• We have 11 months of cash left in the bank. [...] Our landlord is clueless and doesn't understand the importance of the strategic deals we're doing and the raw brand-value of the logos we're collecting for our website.

Here's my version in reverse. Like the other guy says, don't take this too seriously.

• You remember that clause we argued endlessly over inserting into the investment docs, which looks like gobbledygook? Well, since our lawyer retired, we have no one to decode it and I'm pretty sure it is gobbledygook.
• Here's some money so I can live out my entrepreneurial fantasies vicariously through you.
• All the successful VC-backed companies are in cloud/e-commerce/social/big data. Tell me again why we aren't doing that? So what if we're a chip design company? Pivot, baby, pivot!
• Hang on, you want MY advice? I thought I'd learn about this industry from you.
• I'm getting tired of all these fancy lunches at swanky restaurants I'm forced to go to. I wish I could be down to earth like you.
• What?! You're going to fancy lunches at swanky restaurants? Did we give you too much money?
• I wish I worked for a mutual fund so that I could just focus on hard numbers, not on all this touchy-feely people stuff and pie-in-the-sky "projections".
• All the other investors in your company are idiots. Unlike me.
• All the other investors in your company know so much more than me!

How many of the above have I actually heard said out loud? Hmm.

What's wrong with the venture capital asset class?

First of all, it's not an asset class, says Charlie O'Donnell. Gotta love this rant, dripping with unconcealed contempt and biting irony. Sample:

If you have money or connections to other people's money, you too can be a VC or superangel or whatever you want to call it.  With such stringent restrictions and that high of a bar, is it any wonder that lots of ridiculous stuff got funded and isn't making it to the next level?

And when our best engineers and creative talents spend tons of venture capital money to analyze the complex web of social relationships, just to show them discount yoga deals, or use social location data to crowdsource the best artesianal brussel sprout pop up shop, isn't it more of a failure of the individuals behind these companies themselves than there is something inherently wrong with the "asset class" or that there's an industrywide lack of investor interest in VC.

I agree with a lot of what he says and a lot else isn't applicable to our part of the world (e.g., entrepreneurs who've "made it" here still love sinking their moolah into real estate rather than turn angel, unlike where he comes from).

I rant like this myself about some of these points and others that are more specific to my own day-to-day, but I mostly do it in person, rarely online. Too lazy, too busy, too procrastinaty, can't be arsed, take your pick.

Link: Don't blame the game, blame the playas

Surprising ideas on how to go faster on two wheels

Revenge of the Nerds

"...a nonaero helmet creates four times the drag of a nonaero wheelset. So you can spend two thousand dollars on a wheelset, or spend two hundred on a helmet and be faster."

For VC-Backed Companies, Understanding Investor Expectations is Key

http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2012/11/16/for-vc-backed-companies-understanding-investor-expectations-is-key/?mod=WSJ_article_outbrain&obref=obinsite

Important and useful advice for entrepreneurs raising their Series B rounds and beyond.