A Goofy Foot in Mouth

I follow a lot of VC’s and I have been trying to grasp exactly how it is that the tech industry works at a startup level.  For a while now, I have been dreaming of building my own company.  I have lots of ideas but not the time nor funding to really get any of them off the ground.  As you get older, you have less ability to focus on ‘side projects’.  Certainly, having a family means that there is no way your dependents are going to tolerate some sort of life altering change where you take a risk that jeopardizes their lifestyle.

This all means that you really can’t do it on your own.  I read Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village and one of the things I remember most was her overarching theme that needing a village is more than just for raising kids.  The Village is a metaphor for everything we do and that for the most part we can’t do much entirely by ourselves.  I guess that’s why I like obstacle racing so much.  It’s one of the few times when I can push myself in a way that is truly about self reliance.

So inevitably, my dreams of success as CEO of one of my companies, relies on a pretty extensive village.  Family keeps me grounded in reality.  Friends keep me sane.  Athletics keeps me spiritually fit.  And VC’s are my only source of real capital.  This last part vexes me the most.

There is an almost single-minded focus in the VC world that founders should be the technical developers.  That somehow, only computer geeks can be ‘product’ guys.  What is really crazy, is that they expect most of these founders to be young.  Considering the need for a portfolio 30% return, this one kills me.  Here is the logic.

If you hire real young kids, they live on the cheap, with mom and dad, and no spouse/kids.  So if they somehow manage a big return, our cost basis is so small that we can yield a single-point 10x (1000%) return that will offset all of the other investment failures (also in high risk young kids).  Thus netting to 30%.  So we pull these kids, with mediocre ideas, straight out of college or their first job.  We throw them in an incubator/accelerator program in the belief that surrounding them with smarter people, will invoke some sort of fast-track osmosis.   In the end we hope for great execution on an idea that might not even be the original premise.  We bet on a person, that we acknowledge knows little.

I remember being young and wondering why no one trusted me to do anything meaningful, now I know why.  Maybe I was the exception like some of these kids.  I wish someone had given me a shot.

I’ve read commentary in the VC world claiming that inexperience specifically enables risk taking that a calculating experienced person wouldn’t touch.  Thus unlocking the potential for a 10x return.  eg. You want to build a platform for sharing 140 characters of your most recent stream-of-consciousness thought?  Seriously? 

Lets unpack this a bit.  If you are going to throw money at a kid to take an extraordinary risk, why is it inconceivable to throw a little bit more money at someone with 10x the experience to take the same risk?  Wouldn’t that effort have a higher probability of success?  Let me be blunt, are you so against paying me a livable salary, that might yield an 8x super-payday, to build you something extraordinary just because while I am building it I won’t live on Ramen?

I’ve done failure.  I’ve planned a complex rollout, having to overfactor server demand.  I’ve coordinated installs on 3 continents.  I’ve managed $2M of dev spend in a calendar year.  I am an architect on a $20m program.  We build stuff that can’t fail.  But my coding skills are best served for self-deprecating humor (I’m working on it ).  I feel a little like Stephen Hawking; there are great thoughts in my head, but my body is preventing them from coming out.  I simply can’t quit my job to focus on building a product any more than a brilliant physicist can’t conjur an ALS free body.

In big companies, developers are relatively cheap.  Designers, architects, thinkers…those are the product guys.  We write specs and coders code.  If a $12B company will pay me to build what they want, why won’t some VC fund me to build something the world might want?

Everybody makes a list, why should I be any different.  I think you are supposed to do resolutions before the New Year starts, but with the Pats game, I just didn’t get to it.  I am going to do this a little differently.  First off, 2012 is the year I turn 40, so that is a more remarkable target date than the end of the year.   July also makes a nice mid-point because waiting a whole year to evaluate your goals is just too long.  Joe refers to them as “goals” and not “resolutions” and I agree.  Normally I would like to do some sort of quarterly review, but that is too short a time frame to make meaningful progress.  So right before my b-day, I will take stock of what I have done and figure the rest of the year.  Here is the list

Personal

• Read books
• Post 26 times, add comment to form auto-biography
• Start tailgate site as coding test case, use squarespace
• Finish House projects, inc water and parking at skihouse
• Surf at least 3 times
• Break 100 in golf
• Organize life and schedule each week on iPad

Business

• Start coding
• Beta for 1 business, have something to pitch
• Pitch medical idea internal Fido
• Figure a way to fund development of something in house

Fitness

• Break 20 min for 5k
• Sub 170 lbs
• Run 3 obstacle races – Finish top 5 for my age group
• Keep up SEALFit

During every debate there are questions to the candidates about their judicial philosophy, what kind of judges they would nominate, which judges do they respect, do they have litmus tests, etc.  All anyone ever walks away with are two things:

1. Liberals want judges to view the constitution as a living document that can be flexible.  These are labeled as “activist” judges.  They are criticized for “legislating from the bench.”
2. Conservatives feel that judges should interpret the constitution as it was written.  These are known as “originalists.”  They are criticized for not taking into account the context of the case and the latest public thinking.

Most people only consider the Court in the context of their opinions on Row v Wade, Bush v Gore and the coming Health Reform decisions.  But the court rules on roughly 80 other cases each term.  Many of the other cases are unanimous opinions, implying that judicial philosophy and the seriousness with which they do their jobs, is far more uniform than the “divided court” that we hear about so much.

Don’t get me wrong, I am no legal expert.  I took Intro to Law in college and I was horrible at it.  I probably got a B, which at the time would have been frustrating to drag down my GPA.  Prof. Salimbene I think is how you spell his name.  He was a really good teacher, I just couldn’t analyze cases in the way that other people did and I couldn’t memorize them at all.

That which I know comes from listening to a podcast for the past 2 years (and reading George Will).  Supreme Podcast.  I think these guys are awesome.  They have made me into a Supreme Court junkie.  The best part is that they summarize everything that happens at the court each week of the session.  They detail all grants of certiorari (granting review of a lower court case), oral arguments and most importantly written decisions.  I have also listened to podcasts from CSPAN with interviews of each of the justices.

It’s hard to say exactly why I am such a fan of the court.  A lot of it has to do with the very simplicity of its charter.  Nine justices and 36 clerks accomplish so much work in very little time.  I love the formality and respect they have for each other.  The way they all shake hands at the beginning of each day of work.  The order with which they sit in chambers reflecting the years of service and seniority.  The little traditions like having the newest justice open the door when someone knocks.

I am not quite the purist that Scalia is, but I understand why conservatives think the way they do and in fact I support their logic.  Having a court that stays pure, forces the government to act the way it should and evokes a consistency and certainty that makes for a pleasant economic and political environment.  It forces the administration to enforce laws as they are written and it forces Congress to be specific with the legislative process, amending statutes that don’t behave as intended.

Here is an example.  Cavazos v Smith –  a grandmother was convicted of killing her grandchild via shaken baby syndrome.  There was a wealth of evidence that this was just a horrible mistake, but the same evidence could also have been indicative of SBS.  Her lawyer was awful, is now no longer practicing in California and is up on disciplinary charges from the bar.  The reviewing magistrate and district court agreed that she received a fair trial (denied her petition for habeas corpus – relief from her conviction) and that while some of the evidence was conflicting, it was “rational” that she could be convicted by a jury of her peers.  The 9th circuit court of appeals found that the evidence at the trial was not enough to convict her and granted her petition for habeas corpus.  The Supreme court has twice reversed this decision and twice the 9th circuit ruled the way it wanted, spurning the Court.  On this last reversal (#3) the Court ordered the 9th circuit to deny the petition because the 9th circuit could not make a judgement about evidence heard at a trial in which it did not sit.  That makes sense, who are they to determine what the testimony looked like in court, you can’t get that from reading a transcript.  The grandmother was sent back to jail.

This is a sad case and most likely the grandmother truly does not belong in jail.  But here’s the thing about the law and our constitutional process; it may be messy, but there are escape valves to clean things up.  In specific, the governor of California could grant clemency.  The point of ruling on the merits of the case and not how a court wishes things would turn out is that we have consistency in our legal framework, something that countries like Libya, China and Iran cannot claim.  Just because Bill Clinton’s Mark Rich pardon fiasco has tainted the clemency process and cripled Governors and Presidents from utilizing one of the most specific powers granted in the Constitution, does not mean that judges should go around righting the wrongs in every case.  Justice Breyer told me that (see time 1:01).  (Link to Transcript page 29) As he explained it, Chief Justice Taft once said that ‘we are not a court of error correction’.  That can sometimes be painful but it is what is right.

In another example that will show a strange legal twist, a group of Nigerians is suing the Royal Dutch Petroleum Co for human rights violations (Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum).  But how can you sue a corporation as a perveyor of crimes against humanity?  Well it just so happens that a few years ago the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruled that corporations can act as though they are people.  Here is an example of a case that liberals hate because of its effects on campaign finance, becoming a crucial point in harming big business.

So what type of justice would I like?

I find Justice Alito’s opinions hard to read but I really like that he dissented in the court’s refusal to hear a case (Harper v Maverick Recording Company) where a 16yr old girl was fined $27,000 by 5 record labels because she didn’t know downloading 37 songs was illegal. According to the 5th circuit she should have read the warning printed on the albums. Certiorari takes 4 justices, meaning the right-wing Alito couldn’t get 3 liberals to stick up for the little guy.   I respect that.

I have long been a fan of Justice Breyer.  I like the way he thinks, the way he talks, the way he explains things.  I like the way he conjurs hypotheticals to contrast with Justice Scalia.

Speaking of, Justice Scalia’s hypotheticals in oral argument are legendary.  I like the way he reveres the court and the respect that he expects the lawyers to have for it.  I find his opinions very easy to read, but I don’t like the way he chastises the minority, that’s just unnecessary.

I was a big fan of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.  She has an amazing life story.  I like the way she stood up to the old boys on the Court and poked fun at them while still standing her ground on legal merits.  I’ve only read one or two opinions, but I liked her style and the way she used logic to get through them.

I really like the way Justice Thomas is a regular guy.  He and his wife travel the US in the summer in their RV staying in trailer parks right next to ordinary Americans.  He talks about going into a Home Depot looking for parts while on the road.  I like that he has an opinion that oral argument is overrated.  Between all of the amicus briefs they read (usually 20-40 documents of 20 pages each for each side of the case) he feels that he doesn’t need to ask challenging questions.  So screw those idiots on Boston Legal.  I like the way he criticizes the court’s lack of clarity over the years (establishment clause) like he did by writing the (rare) dissent in not granting cert for Utah Highway Patrol v American Atheists.

I think it was absolutely irresponsible for President Obama to appoing Justice Kagan.  Did you know that she had to recuse herself from almost half of the cases that the Court heard last year because as solicitor general she prepared the government’s position on those cases?  How do you hire someone who fundamentally can’t do that job?  I think she should have returned half her salary.

Justice Sotomayor is either clueless, lazy or just full of herself.  Everytime she talks in oral argument, I cringe.  I can’t find the cases now, but just a few weeks ago she interupted Justice Ginsburg so rudely that Justice Roberts had to stop her.  There was another case recently when a lawyer presenting an amicus brief was allowed to testify before the court and before he got out a full sentence she interupted him to ask which side he was supporting…read the brief you lazy bum.

So when I think of the Supreme Court I recognize how lucky these people are to go to work everyday with some of the top minds in the country.  Who among us can say that they actually are surrounded ONLY by smart people.  You may disagree with the way their intelligence interprets certain facts, but you can’t deny that they do their job seriously.  As long as someone seems like a person who has seen something of life and the world, and understands the importance of consistency in legal jurisprudence, and can show some of the positive traits I listed above, that’s the judge for me. 

I’ve been thinking of this post for a few weeks now.  At the last Republican debate there was a question about the future of foreign aid.  This was an easy home run question, and I don’t even have a staff that can research this stuff for me.

On one of my podcasts, I listened to an AEI and Brookings Institute speech given by a congressman from California. He was presenting an idea, actually he called it a proposal, for reforming Foreign Aid.  His idea to present this as a proposal and not introduce as legislation, was to get the documents out in public, gather feedback and spur debate.  Doing this in the absense of formal legislation, keeps the political posturing to a minimum. Brilliant.

Now most people don’t know this, but Foreign Aid isn’t just the US Treasury writing checks to governments to do anything they want.  It is a collection of programs administered by the US AID department of the Federal Government.  They work with foreign governments to establish programs that meet the requirements of the creating statute and then implement and fund them.  While proponents cite that US AID is only .5% of the federal government budget, I would postulate that there are many families that don’t give .5% of their annual income to a charity for which they do not receive a direct benefit, like a church.  Giving away money, whether ours or the government’s is like giving charity, and when you have no money, you tend to not want to give.  That is sad, but I would guess largely an axiom and why the richest nations in the world have a moral and strategic interest to be charitable, even when it is difficult.

This congressman described some really great changes to USAID that would focus strategies on 8 specific goals, define a G&A maximum, create mechanisms for tracking and even a review process based on goals and metrics that would enable cancellation of programs that are not meeting targets.  These are all conservative ideals and what we want government as a whole to do for us.  The congressman was introduced by Paul Wolfowitz and even fielded a somewhat complimentary question from the neo-con.

So a great answer to the foreign aid question goes something like this…

You know Bret, I don’t think we need to scrap Foreign Aid entirely.  But like everything else government does these days, it could use some reform.  Most people think we just cut checks straight from the Treasury and hand them over blindly.  Not so, there are hard-working civil servants partnering with foreign governments, trying out new ideas and programs to solve real problems.  I don’t think the American people want to cut off aid to countries that are in need of our help, but they recognize the need to do it better.  When tax dollars are scarce, they want to make sure their money is spent wisely.  I just read a proposal by a congressman from California to do those exact things.  He has been working on this issue for 3 years now, and I like what his proposal is trying to do.  It sets goals, assigns accountability, creates provisions to measure, report, evaluate and even cancel programs that aren’t working.  And you know what, it comes from Howard Berman, a Democrat from California and now the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee.  This is the kind of cooperation and partnership that the American people are looking for, a Republican president seeking out the best solutions to problems and then working to get it done.   We need a way to move forward and act responsibly for the voters who sent us to do a job, and work together to make change real.  Little things like this are a great way to start.

I just read that out loud and stayed at just about 1 minute.  Imagine a debate answer like that?

A few months ago I submitted an article to the Business Intelligence Journal, published by TDWI.  Unfortunately, the journal is for TDWI members only.  My company paid the $275 for me to join.  They changed some of the language in the article which is kind of irritating.  As my good friend Dr. Eric Burger  has described to me, they messed with my ‘voice’.  Since it is their publication, technically they own the rights to the published article.  However, I own what I submitted, and so I will publish it here, in all of its original glory, peppered with the sarcasm that befits me.  So there, you editorial blowhards.

This is a paper about Metadata and how in the data warehousing world there is too much focus on technical metadata and not enough on the engagement model.  I also cover scenarios in which data consumers would actually want to use that metadata in their jobs.  It’s some geeky warehousing stuff, but I tried to write it for a business person.

Click the link below to launch the pdf

Is It Really Bad Data?

Several weeks ago I went to an open house at Lancaster School in Salem.  This is Haley’s school and where Taylor went before her.  I’ve always thought it was a pretty good school.  There are great teachers, the building is well maintained, they run creative programs, and the administration is solid.  At the least, you can see that they try new things and genuinely show an interest in improving the lives of students.

Two years ago, Salem organized and funded a ballot measure to expand four of the city schools.  A very creative addition and remodeling of Lancaster followed.  It was nice to see the people organize around actually putting money into something that counts.   The construction is just about complete and now Lancaster is a modern facility.

At the open house I learned that Lancaster is now categorized as a school in need of improvement as directed by the standards set forth in No Child Left Behind.  This got me to thinking about two competing and contradictory forces in education today.  But first, an anecdote. 

In high school we had these things called Usage Tests.  I think we did them twice a year.  They would cover things like “their” vs “there”, “buckets full” vs “bucket fulls”, “affect” vs “effect”, etc.  Yes, the teachers taught the test, but I would argue that this was a good thing.  I see the writing of colleagues at work today and I am astonished at the inability of many to form basic sentences.  I work in technology and I have an email (yes I saved it) from a peer with the word “cache” spelled as “cash” at least 10 times.  A group of us forwards his emails as jokes; he has become the joke.  In many ways, if he had just been taught some simple lessons that appear on a usage test, his writing would be much better.

I know people hate the idea of testing.  As a data guy, I don’t understand the problem on two fronts.

1) How do you impove something if you can’t measure it?  How do you establish a baseline and measure progress or regression?  There will be obvious issues with the individual tests; we can work through those.  But surely the notion of testing and using the scientific method (a scholastic theory) on the evaluation of schools themselves can’t be all that inflamatory.

2) Inevitably the process of taking a test and the act of studying for that test, makes you learn at least something that is evaluated by that test.  Our old Usage Tests are a great example of this.  Let’s say that you can make a list of 25 things that are absolutely core to any secondary education, why not test them and then…wait for it…teach those things that will be tested?!?

So here is what I find contradictory.  We constantly hear about the gap between the upper class rich and the lower class poor.  This income/wealth/education gap has been growing over the years.  Nearly everyone agrees that the surest way out of poverty is a good education.  So well-intentioned NCLB comes along and says something like…

Let’s make sure that those at the lower end get out of their downward plight in life and get a minimum education.  And when we see they are falling behind, we are going to have programs specifically to remedy the situation.  We are so serious about this effort and so committed to making sure that NO CHILD IS LEFT BEHIND in this endeavor, that we are going to sacrifice special programs for the upper tier students to make sure that we devote resources for those at the lower end. [quoting myself]

This really is a noble goal.  I don’t care who you are, the sentiment behind this logic is compelling, which is why George W Bush and Ted Kennedy shook hands over its passage.  From a performance perspective, the idea is even sound, we can increase overall test scores and the average capability of the US student population by eliminating the down-side drag on test scores by the lower tier students.  Brilliant.

But there is a cost to this, hence the competing perspective.  Over the past years we also see that the US is no longer leading the world in the top-tier of students coming out of secondary education.  Is this really surprising?  Imagine you are the teacher of a class of 25 students.  You are teaching multi-digit subtraction and 4 students don’t understand the concept of ‘borrowing’.  What do you do?  When I was a kid, we moved on and those kids had to fend for themselves.  We started learning multiplication.  But in today’s world, the teacher has to make sure that NO CHILD IS LEFT BEHIND in that classroom.  The top-tier students get bored, while the teacher is forced to continuously review a simple concept.  Most importantly, the class is a week behind in moving on to multiplication.

So what is the net efffect?  On the plus side, the gap in that classroom between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ is eliminated.  At some point in the future as these kids mature, it can be inferred that income equality will ensue.  Every kid gets an equal footing, an equal chance and is prepared for an equal job.

But there must be a downside.  Along with equality, you lose exceptionalism.  You lose the ability to cultivate the high performing students because resources are finite.  The choice to benefit all means that we end up with blandness, commonality, and a lack of creativity.  A few months ago I heard an NPR story where China, which as part of its communist doctrine gave all students the identical education and forced them to memorize facts, was trying to be more like the US and promote critical thinking and creativity.  How is that for irony?  We are pushing to be like them and they want to be like us?  Who is heading up and who is trending down?  It really scares me.

I really don’t know the solution.  But I also don’t know why this isn’t painfully obvious to each of the chicken-little factions (the disparity-gap criers vs the we-lost-our-leadership-position complainers).  Why can’t they each make the simple observation that I just detailed?  Is this stuff really so hard to figure out?

Clearly, the world is not black and white, and when we try to promote ideals in absolutes, everyone loses.  The Republicans and Tea Party with the ‘no new taxes’ mantra vs the Democrats and ‘no new cuts’  axiom are in a lose-lose stalemate.  It’s stupid.  Imagine saying no to a 10:1 ratio of cuts to revenue, and then turning around and insisting that every dime of new spending needs just a 1:1 spend to cut ratio (pay-go)?  Me?  I’m playing the odds.

Bottom line, NCLB is a noble pursuit of an absolutist goal.  At some point there has to be some grey.  It may be painful but we have to let some drift behind, at least just a little bit.  We need to make a better effort than when I was a kid, but we also have to realize there is a law of diminshing returns, and it is a proven doctrine.  We do it with Superfund sites.  We do it everyday with the choices we make.  Liberals want us to do it with national defense (ie we can’t fight EVERY war).  At some point, someone will be smart enough to level with people and set expectations of what we realistically can do.  Maybe that person will even be bold enough to say, “We have to sprinkle fertilizer on some of these young minds because for whatever reason, God made them special, and they grow faster than anything we’ve ever seen.  Rather than stifling their growth to save our ego, let’s celebrate their grandeur.”   It would be ok if we drew a line that pointed us in that direction and then negotiated some minor points, just like we did with NCLB v1.

Its not an line on the sand, we could go reversed and change it.  But its the firstest place to start.

And maybe that sentence wouldn’t sound so stupid.

I have been driving since I was 16 and a half (Mass state law).  That’s about 23 years.  In that time, I have owned 16 cars.  That pins my cars:years ratio at about .7  Some of Megan’s friends make fun of us for getting new cars all the time.  I love cars and yearn for a little of what Jay Leno has.  I don’t know why they fascinate me.   I just think they have a great combination of utility and form that makes them truly unique in the scope of material posessions.  Plus, I seem to always have a new need that justifies a new car.  (Dad, please give me the vette as a dividend payment).   I posted my number on FB a while back and everyone said I was crazy. 

To keep track, I just posted the list on another page from this blog.  I will keep adding to the list and post pictures as I find them.  I’d love to hear what people think about the list and my commentary (even though no one reads this blog).

I am so sick of the fan cam at Patriots games. Every commercial break they flash some yahoos in the 100’s section sitting there nice and calm. All of a sudden “look we’re on the jumbo-tron, I have to jump and yell and act like an idiot”. Please just give me a replay, or highlights from around the league, or even advertisements. Anything but those annoying fans. Watch the game not fake actors.

Oh and while I’m at it, stop doing the wave at Fenway. Grow up you morons. It’s like the only stadium in the world that is not a high school that still does the wave. It’s dumb, annoying, and distracts the players.

This morning, John Dickerson of Slate, posted on FB, “A question I’m noodling: What attributes (not issue positions) do you think a president needs?”  I liked my response so much I will post it here.  It’s a thought I’ve had for a long time and inspired a speech I wrote years ago for the HH at the Temple.  I still haven’t worked out how it all fits together but someday I will.  Or maybe if I am lucky someone will write about it when talking about how great a presidential candidate I am!  🙂  Ahhhh the dream.

On June 7, 2011 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a 79 page report entitled Retirement Income: Ensuring Income throughout Retirement Requires Difficult Choices.  This sounds like really exciting stuff.  Although why would the GAO want to study that?  I wonder what the GAO does…

We advise Congress and the heads of executive agencies about ways to make government more efficient, effective, ethical, equitable and responsive.

Now that is somewhat interesting.  The report talks about people’s personal choices and 401k contribution rates, defined benefit plans, use of annuities, etc.  What on earth has that got to do with making the government more efficient?  Does the government spend money on private retirement income sources?  No, I seem to recall a pretty definitive rejection of an attempt to direct 4% of Social Security funds into private defined contribution plans.  So what does this accomplish?

Even if there was a goal, a useful outcome to Congress, this was in no way necessary.  All of the major private market recordkeepers are regularly studying this exact issue.  Companies like Fidelity, TIAA-CREF,  Vanguard, and numerous other colleges, think tanks and non-profits already do the same exact work.  Why not use it.  There is no need for the GAO to do something at taxpayer expense, that I could find on the internet for free. 

So why did they do this report?  It was requested by the United States Senate.  The letter is in the beginning of the report.  So while everyone knew that a single set of “fair, and balanced” (that expression is in the GAO’s mission statement) facts about entitlements would be useful for a Congressional debate this summer, what did the Democrat controlled Senate ask for?  A private industry study.  Great job guys.  If I were the Congressman from the NH 2nd or junior Senator from the Granite State, I’d call them out on it.