Our Man in Nirvana

Imprecise language, messy communications

An email popped into my inbox this morning that got my attention because of three intersecting connections.  First, it was from my favoured news source the Economist.  Second, it featured my wife Rachel's former colleague (and our neighbor) Michael Mankins at Marakon Associates. And third, it was on a topic near and dear to my heart - the gap between strategy and execution.  One of my professors at Stanford, Jeffrey Pfeffer, has written cogently on this issue in his book "The Knowing-Doing Gap".

So I read through the email and saw that I was being invited to "to attend an audio webcast on turning great plans into great performance"  Eager to hear the latest empirical findings on this topic my first question was "when is this?".  Strangely, the email was devoid of time/date information.  Frustrated (reminded me of the annoying email evites which don't show the time/date until you click through), I clicked on the registration button hoping to find out more.  I went through the registration process and then another email popped into my inbox with links to the ARCHIVED webcast and an article.  I felt fooled - invited to a great party AFTER the event.

So I went back to the original email, thinking I had misinterpreted the word "webcast" which I had always taken to mean a live audio or video broadcast on the web.  After a quick reference check on Wikipedia, I have to confess it can also mean "archived" so maybe it was my mistake and not the Economist's who are normally so precise in their use of language.  Something was still nagging me though, so I re-read the original email and saw the words " get ready", "online forum", "register" and "exclusive event" which have no meaning for an archived webcast, only for a live webcast.  Clearly the Economist had screwed up their communication. 

So this taught me three lessons

1.  Information clutter is so high that even when an event that is so clearly targetted at me (3 connections), it fails to reach me in a timely manner.  So much for the promise of personalization?

2.  Language to cope with the plethora of new media consumption patterns is messy, ambiguous and evolving.  Don't take for granted that new terms mean the same thing to different people.

3.  Traditional news companies are a long way off figuring out how to build and manage their relationships with their readers given the explosion of formats, patterns and modes of consumption.  The problem is getting harder faster than the solutions are addressing the problem.

Rant of the day over.  Feel better now.

Not the grunge band from Seattle

For those that care, the title of my blog is a two part reference to my indefinite sojourn here in Silicon Valley.  I was born, raised, educated and worked in the U.K. before moving to the Bay Area in 1997.  So "Our Man in Nirvana" is a play on my expat existence and Graham Greene's "Our Man in Havana" (made into a great movie with Alec Guiness (aka Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars)).

I know that my colleagues Ryan McIntyre and Jason Mendelson shall be disappointed that I was not paying homage to Kurt Cobain et al.

When I came to California I was pretty much expecting it would be similar to the UK - just with better weather and better dentistry.  I was woefully wrong.  California is a different way of thinking, living and being and until I got used to that I suffered from a strange sense of dissonance (side note: my favourite Christmas present this year was a map dated 1736 from my wife Rachel showing California as a separate island from mainland America - I think they had it right).  Churchill was on the money when he said America and Great Britain were two countries divided by a common language.  Once I internalized this I reached nirvana with the variety of cultures, landscapes, activities  and stimulation available to California residents.

If a tree falls in a forest and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?

So here it is: the first tentative steps into the blogosphere inspired by (among other things) my colleagues Brad Feld and Ryan McIntyre at Mobius Venture Capital.  Life is after all a participation not a spectator sport so I thought it was time to add blogging to my New Year resolutions.  The first post is a daunting task - finding a name for your blog, finding a theme for your first blog, figuring out the difference between manage and configure on typepad.com - but I have read and studied other contributors enough to know what I want to accomplish.

The first key choice is content.  What am I going to write about?  As a VC nearer the beginning of my career than the end (I hope) my primary topic shall be the art of VC. VC is still something of a black art which has many schools of thought and practioners so I want to use this medium to share my own perspectives with entrepreneurs, CEOs and fellow VCs.  As I believe the great cellist Yo Yo Ma said (I can't find the actual quote) the world does not need another musician (or VC) you have to create a place for yourself by touching people with your playing (or investing) so they'll remember you and spread the word.  As a VC I am fundamentally interested in innovation so I shall also attempt to draw widely and eclectically from other fields such as the nexus of politics/economics/history even when it does not have a direct connection to venture investing.

The second key choice is style.  Do I want to be a primary contributor writing a small number of lengthy articles, or more of a critic/reviewer offering opinions on other people's primary contributions?  As with most dichotomies I believe this is a false choice although a helpful framework to thing about where to place the emphasis.  I shall attempt to write one lengthy cogent article a month on some aspect of VC, interspersed with pithier musings and observations.

BTW, I believe the answer to the title question is "no".