Continuations

Last year when there was a big debate about carry taxation, I came out in support of taxing carry as income (even though that will clearly mean a much higher tax bill for me personally). With the budget battle in Washington reaching ever new heights this issue is coming back in full force. I missed Nic Kristof’s column on this last week. I am completely in agreement until he gets to the point about taxing founders:One important proposal has to do with founder’s stock, the shares people own in...

I just ran across an article titled “Skilled Immigrants on Why They are Leaving the U.S.” in BusinessWeek (via Techmeme). It is not surprising to find diminished job prospects in the U.S. as a key reason, but I was shocked to read that the wait time for a Green Card for Indian and Chinese citizens is now 10 years (that’s a decade!). That is a very long time for anybody to wait and live with the uncertainties faced by visa holders. Just entering the country when you are here on a visa can be a...

At our wedding, Susan’s mother – a professor emeritus of English literature – read Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham. While some guests may have wondered about the significance, most knew that I had been rather persistent in my pursuit. Tenacity has served me well in other aspects of life too. It was in 1999 that I decided I wanted to be an investor in startups. From there it took me seven years and two major setbacks before joining Union Square Ventures. Tenacity is a quality that I think is es...

It’s been a while since I have written a post in my Scylla and Charybdis series. As a quick refresher, the basic premise of the series is that startups are hard because on pretty much anything you can do too much or too little and the path to success thus requires navigating a narrow straight with deadly obstacles on both sides. Today’s post is about listening. As an entrepreneur you can do too much or too little listening. How can you do too much listening you may ask? Well, by listening her...

Last night at dinner while waiting for the food we played the “Google autocomplete game.” Here is how it goes. You go to Google and type the beginning of a search query. Then you tell the others the possible completions and they have to guess which is the most popular (you can even try to guess the whole order – this is loosely based on Family Feud and if you want a more elaborate version check out Google Feud). So when it was Susan’s turn she typed “VCs are” and got this, which is pretty fun...

I don’t have the time or interest to look at the latest in the Winkelvoss and Ceglia vs Facebook/Zuckerberg sagas. But even just the headlines serve as good reminders that as an entrepreneur you need to know some things about IP law so that you don’t run afoul of it. In particular, I continue to meet people starting businesses while employed elsewhere without having looked at their employment agreements. That is not a good idea as these run the gamut from letting you do what you want (as long...

Fred wrote about tenacity this morning prompted by a post from Mark Suster about tenacity being a key trait for an entrepreneur. As per usual there is a long comment thread on Fred’s post and also quite a few comments on Mark’s. There is, however, only a limited discussion of the potential conflict between tenacity and the ability to “fail early and often” (before and after this comment). With the low cost of operating many startups these days, it should probably be called “iterate early (and...