Last week the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization (CEO) hosted its national conference at McCormick Place in Chicago and I was invited to speak to a couple hundred aspiring entrepreneurs in one of the breakout sessions. This is the first time I had been exposed to the organization and was very impressed with both the organization itself and the caliber of the students attending the conference. I wish I was aware that this organization existed when I was in college as it is definitely something I would have participated in. Also, there was a video recording of the talk that is supposed to be posted online, so I will post that on this blog as soon as I can locate it.
The theme of my talk was about why I believe bootstrapping is the only way to go and how the venture capital model is broken. For readers unfamiliar with the term bootstrapping, it is the practice of using cash generated by your product or service to grow your business and not relying on outside investment. Bootstrapping our business was worked out very well for us, and while we have talked to a number of potential investors from and institutional and personal level, I am happy to say that we have never taken any outside investment. I have sacrificed taking a healthy salary (which would come via an outside investment) in order to hire ahead of growth and pay our other 7 employees. This is because I wholeheartedly believe that my return will be greater in the future as a result of maintaining a greater equity stake in my growing business.
I could go on and on about why everyone should bootstrap his or her business for as long as possible but will step off of my soapbox for now until I can find the video. However, I would like to share the presentation below which was posted on TechCrunch yesterday. It was given by Adeo Ressi, founder of theFunded, at Harvard Business School.
I heard this song in the car on my way to work this morning and it is already my favorite song. Click on the link below and it will open a new browser window. I think you might need QuickTime to play it.
Yeah, don’t let them say that it’s just a game.
Well, I’ve seen other teams, and it is never the same.
When you go to Chicago, you’re blessed and you’re healed,
The first time you walk into Wrigley Field.
Heroes with pinstripes and heroes in blue,
Give us the chance to feel like heroes do.
Whether we’ll win and if we should lose,
We know someday we’ll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we’ll go all the way.
We are one with the Cubs,
With the Cubs we’re in love.
Hold our heads tall as the underdogs.
We are not fairweather, but farweather fans.
Like brothers in arms, in the suites and the stands.
There’s magic in the ivy and the old scoreboard.
The same one I stared at as a kid keeping score.
In a world full of greed, we could never want more.
And someday we’ll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we’ll go all the way.
Well, someday we’ll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we’ll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we’ll go all the way.
And here’s to the men and the legends we’ve known.
Giving us faith and giving us hope.
United we stand, and united we’ll fall,
Down to our knees the day we win it all.
Yeah Ernie Banks said, “Oh, let’s play two!”
I think he meant two hundred years.
Playing at Wrigley, our diamond, our jewel.
The home of our joy and our fears.
Keeping traditions, and wishes anew,
The place where our grandfathers’ fathers they grew.
The spiritual feeling if I ever knew.
And when the day comes for that last winning run,
And I’m crying and covered with beer.
I look to the sky and know I was right today.
Someday we’ll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we’ll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we’ll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we’ll go all the way.
As you might have noticed, I have neglected my blog for almost two months now. While I have certainly been busy during this time, I could have found time to post something so it really does just come down to neglect. My bad.
The timing of this post does not come with any special announcement like the last one (PerkSpot in Knowledge@Wharton, which was very cool and generated a lot of buzz for us), but it does come at a very interesting time in the economy. There are some crazy things going on … to say the least.
If anyone would have told me last year that Lehman Bros, Bear Stearns, Fannie May, Freddie Mac, and AIG would be bankrupt or government owned, I would have told them to get right wtih God and head for the hills. Well, these things have come true and, quite honestly, I am nervous to see what comes next. And with Merrill and Morgan Stanley both in talks/negotiations with potential suitors, Goldman Sachs is the only bulge bracket investment bank left. Wow.
It will be interesting to see what our economy has in store for the next couple of months and years. Maybe I will save my speculation for another post.
PerkSpot made the news this week in two very reputable publications, Knowledge@Wharton and the Chicago Tribune.
The Knowledge@Wharton article discusses trends in the benefits/perks offered to employees and it was sparked by the recent news of Google raising the price of its day care program. I was asked to comment on the trends that we are seeing in the space:
Some companies are extending perk packages that their employees can choose to accept or ignore, according to Chris Hill, CEO of perkspot.com. … “We have seen an expansion into voluntary benefits. As the costs of health care and traditional benefits are rising, employers are looking to provide — at no cost to them — something that’s perceived of as valuable to the employee.”
The Chicago Tribune article discusses one of the many perks available to PerkSpot employees. Specifically mentioned is the PerkSpot office futon and the respite it provides during long weeks of work.
“We thought it would be a nice place to sit. It just turned into more of a napping-focused piece of furniture,” Hill said. “It has been used on occasion when we pull all-nighters. Get a couple hours sleep on there, then back to work at 9.”
The Trib article was also picked up by the Seattle Times.
Last Friday, Lauren and I met a number of our friends at Ravinia to see Feist. While most of our group was only familiar with her 1-2-3-4 song from the Apple iPhone commercial, the other songs that we did actually hear when not talking or opening a new bottle of wine seemed pretty good. We had a great time despite leaving all of the planning to the males in the group (always a recipe for disaster) and Metra’s best efforts to ruin our night.
I would recommend anyone planning on taking Metra to Ravinia to have a backup plan in place. We waited at the Ravenswood station along with hundreds of other concert goers hoping to board one of the many trains that passed through our station. However, every single train was full and although a number of people exited the train at Ravenswood, the Metra conductors decided they did not want to let any new passengers on the train. We ended up waiting nearly two hours before boarding a train and will be taking an alternate route next time we head to Ravinia.
I am very proud of my college roommate, Joshua Craig Olson, as he is currently in a USGA commercial that got a lot of airtime last weekend during the US Open. I would recommend that you check Josh’s IMDb page often because there is a very high likelihood that he will land a starring role an upcoming blockbuster film. Below is Josh’s USGA commercial where he says, ‘approach 18 with a 3 shot lead.’ Unfortunately for me, Josh played on the Taylor University golf team and whenever we played golf together he would approach 18 with a 20 shot lead.
A lot of smokers litter. Too many. I don’t know if smokers feel that throwing a cigarette out of a car window or flicking a cigarette butt on the street or sidewalk does not count as littering or if they simply do not care. Either way, this is becoming a major problem that results in 1.7 billion pounds of trash every year. The Chicago Tribune recently published an article that stated:
Experts say cigarette butts rank at the very top of litter problems—not just for their ubiquity, but for their toxicity and non-biodegradable nature.
When you couple the number one litter problem with the fact that the material being listtered doesn’t truly biodegrade … you have a recipe for disaster.
Estimates on how long it takes a cigarette butt to turn into a fine powder vary, but the consensus places it at somewhere between 10 and 15 years. Yet butts don’t biodegrade, they only break down. The distinction is important to environmentalists, who say butts end up as a plastic residue that stays in ecosystems for decades. A substance that biodegrades, by contrast, is usually organic: plant or animal matter neutralized by enzymes or sunlight.
The bottom line: Old cigarette butts only get diluted or buried. They never truly vanish.
An estimated 1.7 billion pounds of cigarette butts accumulate in lakes, oceans, on beaches and the rest of the planet annually.
The moral of the story … smokers, please understand that your waste adds up and your fellow denizens would appreciate it if you would clean up after yourself.
I love Craig’s List. However, one of the necessary evils and also one of my pet peeves is selling items to people who commit to purchasing and then change their mind at the last minute.
I have had a lot of luck (and made a lot of people happy) selling Cubs tickets for games I was unable to attend for one reason or another. There have been two occasions, though, where I was ’stood up’ by buyers who had committed to buying my Cubs tickets and then either changed their mind at the last minute or decided not to show up to buy the tickets. This is extremely frustrating given that I fulfilled my commitment to the buyer in not selling my tickets to anyone else but then end up having to eat the cost of the tickets.
Please heed my warning: if you receive a ‘commitment’ from one of the following ladies, I would recommend that you ignore them and move on to your next buyer.
I just read an article on TIME.com that discusses the findings of a very large sleep study. The article is a quick read and basically runs contrary to what I have always believed about sleep: 8 hours is good, anything less is bad, and anything more is great.
Q: How much sleep is ideal?
A: Studies show that people who sleep between 6.5 hr. and 7.5 hr. a night, as they report, live the longest. And people who sleep 8 hr. or more, or less than 6.5 hr., they don’t live quite as long. There is just as much risk associated with sleeping too long as with sleeping too short. The big surprise is that long sleep seems to start at 8 hr. Sleeping 8.5 hr. might really be a little worse than sleeping 5 hr.
