Come on feel the noise
So tonight I went to the NY Tech Meetup with Brad. I have to say, its really cool to be around so many people really into what they're doing--and somewhat tangentially thinking about the money aspect. From what I've experienced so far, this scene, at least the people that strike me and leave an impression, are so much more focused on building on great ideas. Its a few derivatives later that the idea of cashing in comes in. The people I relate to want to build on great ideas, and from what will come great companies, and great companies will bring great returns, which is what the investment side of VC is conceptually supposed to result in anyway. The focus in our office has definately been about the ideas... that's hugely evident even in the first three weeks of me being here. We sat down with an entrepreneur that we really like tonight who started talking about possible revenue streams and partnership deals and Brad and Fred definately pushed him back to just working on the idea... get working on the idea and building up a great product and the rest will come in time. It really made me feel like I'm in the right place with the right people.
The funniest moment had to be when these two guys from a startup were presenting, and it was so obvious that they were in Beta... like... not even in Beta... more like, "We built this for ourselves and it came out pretty cool so here it is." Anyway, someone asked how you make money from the deal... Its just too hard to explain not only if you weren't there, but you aren't in this world... this little NY tech circle of lots of exciting things going on. Who knew that in a city of 8 million people you had a few passionate people with great ideas that were not too worried about VC fundable business plans? Their answer to his suggestion of what they might do? "Um, yeah.. sure." Love it.
PS... I had somebody use the "chips and routers" term to me. For a second, I was like, "Hey, that's what I call it."
Duh.
He reads my blog.
I know how many hits I get and how many Feedburner subscribers I have, but when you meet an actual human being who reads and actually remembers... well, that's faaaantastic.
Jeez... now that I think of it... that's a lot of pressure. If I have actual human beings reading, and not just numbers on a Feedburner stat page, I better go work on trying to be interesting.
What a Snowjob
Ok, so this one is doctored, but its getting really hard to keep the letters small in the snow, so I'm kind of limited as to how much I can write. Anyway... I also took some normal pictures as well. Last night's snowfall was a very photogenic snow. It was wet enough to stick everywhere, but fluffy enough to build up to some size. However, it wasn't too much that it just covers everything, and there wasn't so much wind that it knocked the snow off the trees. 
How do you know?
In private equity, investors sign up for ten year funds, often with the possibility of being extended for another two or three after that. Investments are made in the first four or five years and harvested in the latter years. Since the investments do not trade, its often difficult to tell, even three or four years into the life of a fund, whether or not your initial decision was right.
How does that compare to your own life? How long before you know whether or not your decisions were right? Can you ever really know? Job decisions seem to have a somewhat short payback to them. I think you often realize within the first few months whether or not you joined the right firm and its going to work out. Decisions to go out and party? Those have an even shorter feedback loop. You know the next morning whether or not you should have gone out the night before.
What about relationships? My friend's grandparents got divorced last year after over 50 years of marriage. Is that how long it takes to get viable results on a relationship decision? I think the tough part is, you never really know, and if you think you know, you're missing a lot of deals and just glossing over a lot of the intricacies. I used to have this idealistic conception that when you find the right person, you just know... and that was comforting, because then you didn't have to get caught in this gnawing uncertainty of whether you were with the right person. Something would come along and be clear-cut--obvious through its completeness. Sometimes, to further complicate things, you make the right decisions, but you're just not the right person to carry them out. Did a relationship fail on its own or fail because of you? Right decision, bad execution? The worst part is, you never really get the answer to whether or not you made the right call. You can become more or less certain about that decision, but there's no way to really ever be sure---too many variables. And that's why I think we're so nostolgic about relationships. We need to constantly sift through our past as not only a reference point, but as a study of our own behavior. Are we messing things up or has chance not favored us?
I got to do a lot of thinking about this over the weekend, and I have to say, to be honest, I have the track record of a good train wreck. I think perhaps it would be best for me not to invest in this part of the CEOCorp business because it may not be one of our core competencies and may be in need of a restructuring.
Weather Update
Well, this is just getting out of hand now... Weatherbug is reporting a tie-die blob headed straight for the city. 
We could have 6-10 inches of love-ins, Country Joe and the Fish, and pot starting as early as this afternoon. And you thought snow was going to be an inconvenience...
Snowball This!
Last night, the team dropped three games and tied one as the snow fell outside PS 191. They weren't blowouts, but now next week's game becomes even more important. Dodge This! will be fighting for our lives (or running for them)! And, if that doesn't work out... we always have kickball, which we just signed up for.
The team name? "Kick this!" of course. I took a few pictures at Lincoln Park, a proud sponsor of the Zog Sports league and on my way there, I snapped off this pic on Broadway looking down from 49th street.
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Dodgeball Standings
Here's the mid-season update... We're in 6th place out of 12 teams in our division. Dodge This! is holding its own at .500.
Lazer/Blazer Division
Name W L T Pts
Dodgy McShady KG 10 1 1 21
Balls of Furry PR 9 3 0 18
First Picks GO 9 3 0 18
Moral Victory RB 8 3 1 17
Get Outta Dodge IV 5 4 3 13
Dodge This! HG 6 6 0 12
Jajballers CH 5 7 0 10
Orange Crush OR 5 7 0 10
Blue Evaders BL 4 8 0 8
Special Olympics BK 3 8 1 7
Snoop Dawgs From LIC OL 3 9 0 6
Team Voltron LG 2 10 0 4
The Door Gates
Link: The Door Gates.
I haven't posted about The Gates yet, but this link is inspiring.
In all honesty, I suppose The Gates because it is bringing in lots of revenue to the city. I know someone in the hotel business and she told me that her hotel was packed on what would otherwise be a slow week when this thing opened. So, since it didn't cost the city anything, and it brings in tourists, I'm a fan, even if I don't really see its artistic value. To me, it just kind of looks like an orange obstacle course for oversized dogs at Westminster.
On Confidence
Link: Branding Blog: Confidence - Where to Get it and How to Keep it.
I've been thinking about the subject of confidence, and its close cousins cockiness and brashness, so its fitting that I came upon this Branding Blog post. This is an excellent post and I'm posting it on all my sites. What makes it even better is that Baltasar Gracian was a Jesuit. I'll add another quote from him here:
"Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed."
While I've often been noted for my confidence, I've just as often been called overconfident and cocky, but I never thought those descriptions were particularly fitting. I think people have a tough time discerning between people who think they are great and people who earnestly desire to accomplish great things. In all honesty, I don't believe that anyone can be great, existing in a state of greatness. We are nothing save for the aggregate sums of our actions. Many people have contributed greatness in their deeds, on many different scales. At the end of the day, we are all just people. None of us is any better than the next guy (or girl). That is why my blog is called "This is going to be big." Its not "Charlie is going to be big." That's a major distinction as far as I'm concerned. While I may often promote the things I'm involved with, I never actually promote myself, and I don't plan on starting to either. Its interesting how that line seems to get blurred sometimes. It seems difficult for others to seperate the two when it comes to my activities, because I am indeed so passionate about them. Perhaps there is something in my style that seems to elevate my persona over and above the activity or the content, but its by no means intentional. In fact, I try to avoid it. I've never liked being in the spotlight and would much rather have my accomplishments get into the spotlight turning myself into a small byline.
The other aspect of this is that my blog is not entitled, "This is going to be bigger than you." I am a vervent believer in the potential in every one of us to succeed on our own terms and positively affect the world around us, and in no way do I see life as a winner take all game. It should be win-win all the way around, and just because I'd like my accomplishments to be great, doesn't mean that yours can't be as well, or that I don't want to see you succeed. Everyone out there should make "This is going to be big" the tagline of their life. I don't have a patent or copyright on it, and by no means do I want to live in a world where people don't believe themselves capabile of big things. (And, for the record, by big things, I mean what is "big" to you... not big as defined by monetary gain.)
But, to be fair, the blog is definately named "This is going to be BIG", which is a rather unapologetic tagline. Why do I brand my contributions this way? Its because of what I believe about how goals translate into accomplishments. I don't believe success is accidental, and I certainly don't believe that people with small goals stumble into larger accomplishments. I'm sure it probably happens once in a while, but for the most part, I think you never quite get where you want to be, so you need to try and overshoot. This is me overshooting, and I'm also the one that needs to deal with the "disappointment" which equates to the distance between what I was shooting for and where I wound up. Of course, I need to keep in mind that usually, where I wind up is a pretty good distance from where I started from in the first place--underscoring the need to put everything in perspective as you set and reach goals. So I toss my hat in the ring, starting out with huge visions and winding up with reasonable deeds.
Take my Success Blogging site, for example. I definately want to be to career blogging to what Steve Rubel is to the blog marketing world. I want someone to "discover" me and ask me to write a book. I want my Learning Annex class to be packed... maybe 100 people will show up. Its all going to be very BIG.
But you know what will probably happen? I'll make a handful of good contacts... we'll probably have about 15-20 in the class and maybe I'll speak on an occasional panel now and then. No book. No 1000 people on my Feedburner.
And, in all honesty, that's just fine with me, because I'm 25, and I've only been blogging about a year. I've only been talking about career blogging for a few months and I already have three speaking engagements. That's pretty darn good and I'm very pleased with that, and had I not aimed higher, I wouldn't have had what I got.
Why do I want the opportunity? Its not to promote myself. Its because I want to contribute and I believe I can. I believe I have great accomplishments in me waiting to get out. I feel the same way at work. I want Brad and Fred to look back and what I've done and think that it helped make the firm better--something really special. Isn't that the way we should all be approaching our efforts?
I'm not special. In fact, I probably have no more great accomplishments in me than anyone else. I just don't want to waste mine and look back and wish I had done more. You shouldn't either.
CNN.com - Author Hunter S. Thompson commits suicide - Feb 21, 2005
Link: CNN.com - Author Hunter S. Thompson commits suicide - Feb 21, 2005.
I think we all need to be challenged a little more in our lives.... to have people pick our snowglobe world up, turn it upside down, and shake it up a little. We cast aside and discount a lot of the people who push limits... who think out of the box, but they're the ones that really keep things interesting, and I think, in a way, we secretly envy them. Its comfortable to think of ourselves as "regular" and to think of people who walk through life turning over unturned stones as some sort of fringe element. This way, it makes us feel as if we're not missing out on anything by not testing the limits ourselves. Its like when someone blows past you on a highway. You yell at them and say they're going to hurt someone, but part of you wants to know what its like to drive that fast. Sometimes, when you do that, you realize how little of the world we've limited ourselves to makes sense, and how the far the accepted reality is from where you think it should be, and that's where it takes a toll. It took a toll on Hunter Thompson yesterday. Yesterday, the wave finally broke and rolled back.
"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."
New trains... to me, anyway.
Check out the snazzy new Metro North trains! The things you learn when you've lost your wheels...
Regis High School
Link: Regis High School.
So, I may have found the answer to my recent banishment to the sidewalk since I turned in my GM car.... Regis is auctioning off a Mercedes C 230. The price? $500 a ticket. hmm.... Feelin' lucky?