Today we are giving a presentation at the Union League Club for lunch. Kevin Willer is always engaging and I have seen Raman’s slide deck. Looks pretty good.
Raman and I were laughing about my Powerpoint slides. I don’t do Powerpoint. I hate it. I’d rather just talk and interact with the audience, but it seems Powerpoint is de rigueur. So, I made some slides and will upload them to Slideshare.
My mission in the presentation was to talk about angels and what we do. In practice, it’s really fun. When you talk about it, the topic can be dry. So, what I want to try and do today is energize people. Check out the hashtag on Twitter, #beonfire. Get motivated. Create. Don’t be afraid. Someone will be there to catch you when you fall.
Certainly, there will be some illustration of what goes through the mind of an angel. But more importantly, what I want to do is tell the community how they can build up an ecosystem that angels, start ups and everyone else can thrive in. Over the past five years, I have learned some amazing things about all of that.
I traded my own money for years. I loved being a trader. The action, the excitement, the instant gratification. It was a constant puzzle that you figured out everyday. It was just like trying to program an app and figure out how to position it in the market. When traders get bored, they tell stories and play tricks on each other in the pit. Programmers get bored they play ping pong and beer pong.
Trading behind a screen isn’t like that. It’s depressing. Monolithic. Boring. The market is run by robots now and humans have a hard time competing. Plenty of people I know today are sitting in dark rooms wondering what the hell just happened to them. To them I say, don’t despair. Hide the knives and guns. #beonfire. You used your wits to survive in an environment where most people couldn’t. You can do the same thing again with an good idea.
That’s why I love to be around entrepreneurs. They are so positive. Full of hope. Some of them change the world. Recently, one of my portfolio companies, Cloudbot launched their product. At first, it was really buggy. But they quickly fixed the problem and now my address book is on STEROIDS.
They are the classic story. They met, had an idea for a product. Put it together really quickly. They raised money. Then they went into seclusion and began programming. Hard times. They were in their Cloudbot cave. Nothing was launching and some investors began getting frustrated because they didn’t see progress. But, Cloudbot’s team persisted. They were on fire. Finally, they launched! (Yea!!) But the product was kind of buggy(Darn). Some were dismayed, but they fixed it(Yea). Now the application works incredibly and I find I am using a lot more everyday to communicate. Cloudbot hasn’t reached the end of the road. They have a lot more to do accomplish. But they are on the right track.
But, the Cloudbot story isn’t new. Jimmy Doolittle was an entrepreneur too. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Doolittle began planning an audacious raid on the Japanese. He figured out how to retrofit, load, and take off B-25 heavy bombers from an aircraft carrier in enemy territory. It had never been done before.
He had to work through the bureaucracy of both the Army and Navy. And, he had to do it in total secrecy. Not only that, he didn’t even have a workforce when he started. He had to get people to volunteer. I met one of them, Bill Cole. He said after they took off from the carrier they had to read the manuals on how to work a parachute. None of them had jumped out of a plane before. Once they dropped their bomb loads, they didn’t have a place to land, so they knew they were jumping.
It’s that entrepreneurial spirit that drives people to do amazing things. Preserve freedom, create incredible apps. The stakes are different but the mindset is the same.
We are entering a new age. It’s going to be amazing. The 20th Century was about creating things to make our lives easier. Washing machines, Air conditioning, cars, in essence; automation of drudgery. The 21st Century is going to be about taking the limited time we have on earth and making each second count for something. Our lives are going to be incredibly efficient. Randomness of meaningless mundane tasks like having to remember a phone number (or maybe even having a phone number), or when to change the thermostat are going to be relics of the past. It’s going to free our brains up to be more creative than humans have ever been.
I am making seed stage investments in two companies this week. Both follow the thesis of solving a huge pain point, freeing up time to make people more productive and have huge upsides if they execute. One of them, Smarteys, was selected by the White House to be on a conference call this week on entrepreneurship. Both are start ups that were formed right here in fly over country. (Don’t worry, I will blog about the other when the time is right)
This sea change we are about to witness isn’t confined to Silicon Valley. It’s going to happen right here in the midwest. We have the people. We have the know how. We have done it before. The tools at your disposal aren’t about time and place. They are clicks away on a keyboard. All you have to do is pick them up and use them.
So go do it. #BEONFIRE Make something happen today, and everyday. No one is holding you back.
