VC Confidential

How to Introduce a New Associate to VC

We are very happy to announce that we recently hired Eric Olson as an Associate at DFJ Portage. We originally got to know Eric when he was in publisher services at our portfolio company, FeedBurner. He also co-founded TechCocktail which is now in several cities around the US and is one of the key tech networking events held quarterly. He has a strong interest in making the tech community stronger and in helping to build it up...a strong philosophical match with our mission.

So, today I took Eric out on his first due diligence trip to see a local medical clinic that was using the services of a potential investment. I thought the clinic was on the south side of the Chicago loop. However, as we drove on, the navigation system showed that we had another 5 miles west to go. The next thing I knew, we were in North Lawndale, which is one of the poorest communities in the city, if not the state. I had spent several months there when I was younger and researching the plight of inner city poverty. As we turned onto the clinic's street, I noticed a youth in a padded Bears jacket hand another gentleman a small clear bag with one hand and take cash back from him with the other. Eric asked me if it was often that VC due diligence trips happened around drug deals in front of burnt out houses. I said it was first for me (though I have been around many a burnt out portfolio company...).

We parked the car and as I got out, Eric noticed that the youth was now on our side of the street and two plains clothes officers pulled up suddenly, jumped out and surrounded him. In the melee that followed, the officers cuffed the kid (who was about 220 lbs) and were pushing him into their car. Eric had to step around the officers to get forward on the sidewalk. The meeting and interview at the clinic went fairly routinely after that.

Eric said he could hardly wait for his next assignment. I mentioned that we had some interviews we needed to do in Kenya with Raila Odinga. Who said VC isn't an exciting and adventurous job?

Don't know what we'll do to orient our next hire...

I'm Back: Pausch Lecture

"The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough."  -- Randy Pausch

Well, I am back after a prolonged absence. With the Holidays, several company sales and New Year efforts, I had trouble finding time to post. Once you begin to drift, it is easy for habit and firedrills to take over. I did enjoy one comment from a reader who asked "Is this blog dead because of the credit crisis?". The good news is that we don't use much leverage in venture, so the blog is back.

I have my mother-in-law to thank for bumping me out of blogging retirement. She sent me an article to read from the WSJ "A Beloved Professor Delivers The Lecture of a Lifetime". In academics, professors will do "Last Lectures" in which they give parting words of advice as if they were dying. Well, Randy Pausch at Carnegie Mellon has pancreatic cancer and actually is dying. Rather than feeling sorry for himself or dropping deeply into depression, he decided to pull a presentation together for his three young children. He gives an amazingly motivational talk that I think all entrepreneurs should see. It has an incredibly deep array of messages in such a short period of time.