tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27139033227652171772024-03-05T00:24:46.004-08:00The Grassy RoadA CEO at work and play in Silicon Valley and beyondPenny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.comBlogger478125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-39686430536766586862017-11-21T15:16:00.001-08:002017-11-21T15:16:23.221-08:00When to apologize and when not to<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>I recently got a question in email from a woman (who is early in her career) which I answered, but then as a few weeks passed, I began to think about all the times I wish my coworkers had apologized and when they did it too much.<br />
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The question was:
"Should I apologize when I make a mistake at work, and if so, how? If not, what should I do instead? I notice I am apologizing for mistakes that are mostly my responsibility, but not only, and that nobody else is apologizing."<br />
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The hard thing about apology is some people do it, and some don't. Some are comfortable making mistakes and being imperfect, others are not. But done thoughtfully apology is a powerful way to build trust.<br />
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So first - why not to apologize unless absolutely necessary<br />
<br />- Some men (and some women, although fewer) see it as a sign of weakness and will use it against you, bringing up your ownership of a mistake to weaken you in the future. Be conscious of when, where and to whom you apologize.<br />
<br />- If you are trying to manipulate or being insincere to achieve some other end then you will erode trust because most people can tell when you are insincere.<br />
<br />- If you are not the one who made the mistake. Again, not dealing in the truth erodes trust, even if you are trying to show you will own problems. Don't throw someone else under the bus, but don't step in and apologize if it is not your mistake because it may also be used to undermine you in the future as someone who can themselves be thrown under the bus.<br />
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The bottom line is mistakes are a normal part of learning. If you make a mistake admit it, see if you need to fix it, and move on. Don't apologize unless someone else is hurt by your mistake. Don't apologize unnecessarily, or profusely.<br />
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But then again, why apology is powerful<br />
<br />- Owning your mistakes openly builds trust, so if you have hurt or inconvenienced someone then take the time to apologize and try to do it one-on-one so you can be sincere and open.<br />
<br />- It takes courage to apologize which is why so many people don't. You make yourself vulnerable when you do, but being strong enough to admit your imperfections (within reason) will make you a more compelling leader. Being authentic is a very powerful way to lead.<br />
<br />- The people who can't admit their mistakes have a huge issue building trust as leaders. Too many times I have heard the comment "well s/he can't admit when s/he's wrong so s/he'll make it someone else's problem."<br />
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These examples are all internal, but the one area where you need to be courageous and ready to take ownership is with customers. Your customers often need to hear from someone senior that you recognize a mistake has been made and you are going to fix it or make sure it gets fixed. If you are the senior person in the room and your company has made an error or let a customer down then own it, whether or not you are directly responsible.<br />
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In the end it is important to be thoughtful about how and when you apologize so your apology is both authentic and appropriate for your level of ownership of the issue. And make sure you do apologize when you own a problem and you don't become one of those people who can never admit their mistakes.<p /></div>
Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-31920194125973133062017-11-10T08:40:00.000-08:002017-11-10T08:40:16.842-08:00Five tough lessons on being a mentor<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>Coaching and mentoring is increasingly popular, everyone wants one, everyone has one. This is somewhat a result of the explosion in the number of startups over the last ten years, but also because the word is out that getting a good mentor can really help you grow faster at any stage of your career. And women want to help women!<br />
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I have mentored on and off for the last 20 years but in the last 2 years since I <a href="http://pennyherscher.blogspot.com/2015/11/why-im-stepping-back-from-being-ceo.html" target="_blank">stepped down as CEO</a> I have focused almost entirely on women, especially new CEOs and entrepreneurs. And I have learned some hard lessons in this process - all of which are obvious, but all of which can be easily forgotten.<br />
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1. Not everyone who asks for your help is a good match<br />
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The chemistry has to work. The mentee has to truly want your advice, and you need to enjoy being with her. Trust your gut. If you find the interaction tough on the first meeting then it is unlikely to get better (a bit like dating). If you find the mentee talks more than they listen take a deep breath and assess whether you can be effective (unless that is the issue she is asking for help on). If you are irritated, or even bored, in the interaction ask yourself honestly can you be helpful.<br />
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2. Trust is essential<br />
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And the trust needs be to two-way. You must trust enough to be truly yourself and give the honest advice you believe in as constructive a way as you can, and vice versa. If you start to believe that either of you cannot, or is not, being open and honest then gently end the relationship.<br />
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3. Again, trust is essential<br />
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Growth is hard and takes introspection and vulnerability; it takes the mentee having the ability to admit when she has messed up, or to hear difficult feedback. Only by facing mistakes can you get to the bottom of why it happened and then talk through a change in knowledge or skills to be pursued. If you are mentoring someone who has answers for everything, or who cannot admit their challenges, then again, gently end the relationship. Likewise if you don't feel emotionally safe in the relationship.<br />
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4. Be clear about motivation, especially yours<br />
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Because coaching becomes a labor of love it's important to be clear about what is motivating you in the relationship. I get asked many times a week to be a mentor and I have learned, the hard way, to pay attention to what is driving me. It's not about making money (because even if you charge for your time as a consultant or take stock options there are easier ways to make money). It might be about responding to a friend who has asked you to help someone they are vested in in some way. But in the end the most productive relationships develop because you care; you care that she grows and becomes successful. I recently started mentoring a future star who was willing to pay for basic workplace skills coaching in her first job but I feel so privileged that she is genuinely seeking my help that I signed up and said "no I won't take your money". Sometimes I do, if many hours are needed and the company will pay, sometimes I don't.<br />
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5. Have integrity about your standards<br />
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I'm passionate about women achieving economic equality. So passionate I am leading a delegation of women into a tough part of the world next year to help female entrepreneurs. But I am realizing equality also means no short cuts for women. Women leaders need to be held to the same ethical and legal standards as men, no matter now much I may want to cut a female leader some slack when I see bad behavior. And I need to hold myself to the same standards. So sometimes the process hurts because I want so much for women to win, but not at the cost of my integrity.<br />
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All that said, mentoring and coaching can be incredibly rewarding, especially when I work with smart young women who are becoming amazing leaders and I get to participate helping them in some small way (ladies you know who you are!).<br />
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<i>Photo of the ladies in Caravaggio's Judith and Holofernes - taken by me in Rome Oct 2016</I>
<p /></div>Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-76562019652331133552017-08-11T15:19:00.000-07:002017-11-10T08:58:27.201-08:00Five practices you can learn so that “I told you so” is a gift<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>Does it irritate you when someone says “I told you so” to you?<br />
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You’d be quite normal if it does. There is nothing quite as annoying as having a know-it-all tell you that they knew better than you all along and you did not listen.
And yet, if you can check your ego, and if he did actually tell you so, then you’ve been missing a gift. Of course, this only makes sense if you are getting advice from someone who is often right, and who cares about you, otherwise it could be the blind leading the blind!<br />
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I have been fortunate enough to have two mentors who were not shy about telling me what they thought, and that I was an idiot when I didn’t listen. I saw one yesterday who, as we talked about the last couple of years, found not one, not two, but three times to say “I told you so”. By the last one he gave me a big grin and said “I think I told you that too!”<br />
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On the heels of the laughter, and the chagrin I feel that he was so often right, here are five practices that can help you milk your mentors for their wisdom and make sure you can hear it!<br />
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1. Learn to listen to business advice from <b>people who have done it before</b>. Whether it comes to building your engineering or service team, designing a big customer contract or hiring your first sales people if you are working with someone who has done it before, and who is respected, listen carefully. While their advice may not be perfect, and you may not like what they have to say, if they are willing to put the time in to work through an issue with you listen, take notes, and if you don’t follow the advice have a damn good reason. And frankly the argument of “you are not current” or “things are different now” is bs. While pace, technology and regulations changes, the fundamentals of what it takes to build a team and a thriving, profitable business are in common across a huge range of styles of company (as my mentor and I agreed yesterday comparing notes of the range of companies we are both working with now).<br />
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2. Pay attention to when someone is <b>sharing a personal story</b> with you. A story which is painful to tell probably has a strong lesson in it. If your advisor is sharing a major mistake they made dig in and try and understand what do they wish they had seen beforehand, or what did they see and ignored? Are there parallels for you today where you are avoiding something that is in front of your eyes but you don’t want to see it? This could be as far ranging as a personnel mistake, or a personal mistake!
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3. When someone tells you <b>something you don’t agree with</b>, and your first reaction is to think in your head that you don’t agree - and so to argue - stop yourself and ask questions. I love the Covey habit “seek first to understand, then to be understood” and too few people use this habit. As someone who coaches every day now, I pick up very quickly whether an entrepreneur understands the power of questioning to figure out what they should know that they don’t know.<br />
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4. Pay attention when someone is <b>angry with you</b>. Either they are a jerk and have no business being angry with you, or they care enough that your reaction is upsetting them. Now you can’t take on everyone else’s issues, of course, but anger or intense emotion or stress is a guide that is often worth following. Don’t react with anger, take a deep breath, apologize that you have upset them, acknowledge that they care, and ask questions (see above) seeking to understand the source of their emotion. Maybe you’ve heard them but you are not being skilled in acknowledging that, or maybe you have not been listening. For myself, I have found the skill of active listening “I think you said xxxx, did I understand that correctly?” can be very powerful when an advisor is frustrated with me.<br />
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5. <b>Follow the joy</b> in business. Too often we spend time talking through what’s going wrong, and yet some of the best lessons I could have learned (and got an “I told you so” about later) were about where/how I was going to be happiest. Work can be terrific fun if you stay grounded and don’t get wrapped up in your ego so if someone who cares about you is trying to give you advice to “lighten up” (as one of my early mentors told me) do yourself a favor and find a way to ground yourself.
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And if you can do all that you'll be a better able to hear advice than most!
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<I> My photo Villa Farnesina, Rome June 2016 </I>
<p /></div>Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-80407687988870186172017-07-20T05:53:00.000-07:002017-12-02T05:31:20.008-08:005 reasons it's critical to truly understand your P&L<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>In the last month I have had the experience of three small business leaders talking to me about their P&L in moment-in-time terms. Something like this... for this quarter (or this year) we'll make $X, we spend $Y less than I thought so we're $Z ahead. Usually followed by why $X and $Z are so great, and how they'll spend those extra dollars they are ahead, or why their company is successful as a result. Naive.<br />
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Unless you have a steady business that has been the same for a while, is not growing and is profitable the moment-in-time view of your business tells you very little. It might make you feel good that your bottom line is black and not red, or not as red as you thought it would be, but all you're getting is the warm and fuzzies - no insight.<br />
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So, five reasons it's critical you truly understand your P&L over time - to be able to answer what is your revenue, costs, profit/loss and collections every quarter (or month depending on the cadence of your business) for the last year and the coming 2 years?<br />
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1. Cash<br />
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Cash is Queen for a growing business of any size; it's the fuel for growth and the security for longevity. So you need to see how cash flows every month for the foreseeable future. Unless you are selling products for cash in the local market, every sale comes with a delay in collection. Sometimes it's when the credit card vendor pays you for your product, sometimes it's 90 days later when your customer's AP department pays you, but there is typically a delay. But you are paying your people anyway, and maybe opening up new offices, hiring etc ahead of being paid for your sales.<br />
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This means the collections line item in your P&L is critically interesting. What cash are you collecting every month, and so what is your ending cash every month after your expenses? You need to have this carefully modeled over the next 18-24 months, and intimately understand it so that as your business fluctuates and changes you know what it will do to cash flow. Combine this with a need to always have at least 6 months of payroll in the bank and this will tell you how much risk you can afford to take with your business at any moment in time.<br />
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I've seen businesses where the CEO is telling him/herself how great they are doing because of all kinds of positive indicators but the cash collections line is not changing over time, it's not growing. You can't hide from cash flow and so it's a great indicator of the true underlying health of the business. Are the dogs eating the dog food and, more importantly, are they paying for it?<br />
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2. Measuring your progress<br />
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If your business is immature (less than 10 years old) then almost no matter what business plan you build for the next 24 months it will not be what you actually do. Something will change, you'll do better, or worse, or differently than you thought. But having a 2 year outlook and then measuring yourself against it is how you'll learn the nuances of the business and learn how to predict and measure the changes.<br />
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Going through the discipline of putting an 8 quarter plan together together to present to your stakeholders and your management team forces you to think through what assumptions you are making about your business. Don't tell me you don't know enough to do this yet - if you take someone else's money, or even hire other people to work for you, then you are responsible, and that means you need to put your assumptions down on paper and fold them into a P&L model so you can measure your progress against your assumptions and course correct accordingly. You can't correct your course if you're not on one.<br />
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And don't fall into the trap of comparing your business to last year's business at the same time. While an interesting statistic it tells you nothing except whether you are growing. It does not tell you how you are doing against your plan and so how your top line and expenses are flowing into cash. See #1.<br />
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3. Learning financial management<br />
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No-one comes out of the womb knowing how to manage a P&L. Most students graduate college without ever learning how to read a P&L and a balance sheet (a crime I think) so no one expects you to just know it. If you are not a trained financial professional, but you want to lead a business team or be a CEO then you need to learn it. Step 1 take a class. Step 2 learn on your own P&L. Do the spreadsheets yourself until you understand the relationships between revenue and collections, costs and margin.<br />
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Yes you'll need a CPA to do your books, but when it comes to forecasting the next 2 years of your business there is no reason you should not be able to build a simple model yourself. I despair of entrepreneurs who hand the financial modeling off to someone else, and never really grasp the financial dynamics and dependencies of their business.<br />
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4. Valuing your business<br />
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As I mentioned up front, unless your business is mature and not growing then how it is doing at any single point in time does not tell you much about it's true value, except a low value such as 1X revenue, or 1X profit. If you want to establish and communicate the value of your business to, for example, a potential investor, you need to tell a story over time. Last year, and next 2 years at a minimum.<br />
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Except with mature businesses that generate cash, businesses are valued on their potential. How much revenue and profit will the business generate in the future? Is it growing, and so what does that mean for future cash flows? Should it be valued as a multiple of LTM (last twelve months) revenue or NTM profits?<br />
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Building, and deeply understanding, your business' next 2 years of growth and being able to present it in a believable way (because you understand the dynamics so well) is how you establish value with an investor or buyer.<br />
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5. Communicating with your employees<br />
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Your employees, or partners, are following you because they believe. Hopefully you're paying them a fair wage, but they are probably with you because they believe in what you are trying to do. Even in a large company this can be true - people join a team because they believe in the mission.<br />
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So given they are following you, you need to keep them updated on how the business is doing so they can both help you solve problems, and celebrate with you when things go well. I am a big believer in sharing the basic P&L of your business with your leadership team at a minimum, and with your employees once it stabilizes. If they don't have a good understanding of the future of your P&L how are you going to enable them to fully participate in the building of the business? And how will you celebrate the wins with them if they don't know whether you are making the plans you set out or not?<br />
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I don't buy the argument that employees are not able to handle the numbers - that it will "scare" them. Yes you don't tell them you are running out of cash, but if you are hiring college graduates you can at least share your top line plans with them and if they don't understand the basics of a P&L you can teach them. They will thank you for it, and be much more vested in the end results of the business if you share progress with them. I recently put together a 2 hour class on the basics of reading a P&L for a friend's business (where most of the employees have liberal arts degrees) and it was not only great fun for me and the employees, but it gave them a starting point to understand the terrific progress the company they are working for is making.<br />
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Bottom line - whether your business is wine or weather prediction, if you are leading a team with financial targets, or are the CEO of your own venture, you owe it to yourself to learn and truly understand your own business' P&L.<br />
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<i>Photo: Frescobaldi Winery, Tuscany 2016</i><p /></div>
Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0Paris, France48.856614 2.352221900000017748.6894645 2.0294984000000178 49.0237635 2.6749454000000177tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-15156950574409372852017-07-16T09:21:00.000-07:002017-07-20T04:45:31.958-07:00The importance of being humble<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<p>We’ve all met this person in our professional lives. Smart but self-absorbed, in love with their own success so far, or with the self-importance of their title, or the size of their business, or how attractive they are. Executives who are so used to everyone catering to their every need that they forget to be courteous. VCs who are so used to entrepreneurs beating down their doors they forget to be kind (or worse). Entrepreneurs with hubris who think because they have raised money they are already a success. Lawyers and bankers who have been making so much money for so long they think their time is more important than the people around them.<br />
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The behavior is irritating, but why does it matter? It’s not my place to moralize in the greater sense but in my experience the behavior does catch up with most people in their careers, one way or another, in the end.<br />
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Unless you have fast runaway success, or true genius (very rare), or are <b>the</b> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaphod_Beeblebrox" target="_blank">Zaphod Beeblebrox</a>, you are going to need the people around you for you to succeed long term. If you are arrogant it is hard to get your peers to want to work with you, or for you. Weaker people will, but the strong ones will move on. And, in the end, you are only as good as your team. People might stay with you while the money is good – attaching themselves to your coat tails – but when your company/responsibility hits a bump in the road, or they don’t need you, they will leave you.<br />
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Being self-absorbed might not hurt you at work because you’re the man with the big, hard-driving job… but chances are you are hurting the people who love you with your self-absorption. Yes, I am speaking from personal experience here both as the one doing the hurting and the one being hurt, and now observing professional friends who, in their self-absorption, forget who they are hurting.<br />
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As a good friend (and mega-company CEO) once told me: for the smart, strong, over-achievers it helps to think about life as a three-legged stool and all three legs need to be stable for your life to be balanced.<br />
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The first leg is work. How you get intellectual satisfaction and earn a living.<br />
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The second leg is fun. Family, friends, good times. How you find pleasure and love.<br />
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The third leg is spirituality, whatever that means to you. How you remind yourself that this is a huge, mysterious world and you are (no matter how important you think you are) just a small part of the grand scheme of things. <br />
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When the world is beating a path to your door, the money is rolling in to you or your company and the people who want things from you reinforce how terrific you are… how do you keep the third leg planted firmly on the ground?<br />
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A shock might do it for you for a while. A project fails, you lose a customer, you have a health scare, maybe you lose your job, but if you’ve done well in the past chances are you will do well again, so how do you keep the humbling realization that you are not the center of the universe with you?<br />
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<i>At the Jordan river where Christ was baptized and</i></div>
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<i>Israeli and Jordanian soldiers watch each other, guns cocked</i></div>
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<p>Me, I find it in many ways. Through understanding history where the complex, messy story of our world and our humanity puts my insignificance squarely in perspective. Or through nature by hiking into the beauty of the mountains or the desert where I am reminded just how small I am. For some it is their God and faith. For some it is volunteering to help other people in need. What is it for you?<br />
<br />
In my experience of powerful business leaders the truly great ones stay humble. Yes, they have strong opinions and expect to be listened to, but they also never forget who they are. The great ones treat admins, junior staff and vendors with respect, they put time into their family, they vacation with their friends, they are far from the entitled, the-one-with-the-most-toys-wins culture. They are the ones that people follow from company to company and remember with a smile for the rest of their lives. <br />
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How do you or I become one of them? I think that along with all the professional skills and opportunities in the world it is critical to remember who you are, truly, in the grand scheme of things and stay humble.<br />
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<i>Written for a dear friend who tells me he is working on it</i>.<br />
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Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-8890953385854202942017-06-27T16:15:00.000-07:002017-06-27T18:16:34.368-07:00Why, what and really? Yet another surreal week of sexual harassment in Silicon Valley<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>Yet another <a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2017/06/silicon-valley-vc-resigns-after-harassment-claims.html" target="_blank">scandal of sexual harassment</a> is unfolding in Silicon Valley this week, and after several nights lying awake, angry, thinking about the last 30 years, and expressing my ongoing frustration to a group of friends over dinner I was asked by a friend to answer 3 questions:<br />
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1. Why this still happens?<br />
2. Are we really surprised that it does?<br />
3. What does speaking up accomplish any more?<br />
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First to the news. As has happened thousands of times before a venture capitalist, Justin Calbeck of Binary Capital, sexually harassed women entrepreneurs attempting to raise money from him. But in an extraordinarily brave move 6 women spoke out, and 3 spoke out by name. The allegations were specific enough that despite an initial denial Justin Calbeck has now resigned and the firm no longer has strong support from its LPs. Its days are numbered.<br />
<br />
Given that even the most egregious sexual predators don't want to be publicly outed by the women they hit on, and we live in such a public online world, why does this still happen?<br />
<br />
The reason is the incredible imbalance of power that exists in the venture fundraising world. Most VCs are clean cut white men. Most have been very successful financially.... and they think it is because they are smart. Some truly are. Company founders, old school VCs who have bankrolled winner after winner, VCs who are true company builders, but with the huge increase in capital coming into the venture market there are many VCs who got where they are by being in the right place at the right time. They were just lucky to be at a company that did well, they know the right people, they talk a good game and next thing you know they are raising a small fund from LPs who are desperate to find enough places to put their money and share in the phenomenon.<br />
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Venture partners get paid a lot of money to administer a fund, and entrepreneurs beat a path to their door to try to impress them. The entrepreneurs struggle to get their deck looked at, struggle to get a meeting, work hard to make an impact and as a result many VCs develop a sense of hubris and superiority. Rude, abrasive... and blend that sense of superiority with sex and you get some men who think it's OK to proposition young women who are raising money.<br />
<br />
The extraordinary generation of wealth going on in Silicon Valley now (and over the last 20+ years) will lead some people to behave badly. Behave badly to get access to that wealth (Uber being today's poster child) and behave badly abusing their positions of power. Twas ever so when money is being made.<br />
<br />
So why are we surprised? I am not. In fact I think in some ways the issue is worse and more pervasive now than it was 20 years ago. The objectification of women in media (see <a href="http://therepresentationproject.org/film/miss-representation/" target="_blank">Miss Representation</a> or https://seejane.org if you want to gather statistics on this) continues unabated and so some people forget that the young woman in front of them is not to be sexually objectified.<br />
<br />
The prevalence of the bias against funding women should lead to a huge competitive advantage to the partners and firms that DO fund women and ARE gender blind. I get asked so often for a list of VCs who would be truly unbiased I think I need to create the list! If you have a fund that is actively looking for women founders, or have had a great experience with one, send me an email!<br />
<br />
But the really tough question here is does speaking out accomplish anything?<br />
<br />
I chose not to speak out in the 80s and 90s (and if that makes you angry stop reading here). I became very practiced at simply ignoring the sexual actions - the hand on my knee all through a coffee meeting - the hand on the back of my neck under my hair while talking with me - the stroking of my shoulder - all while I was clearly married. In my head I was made of stone, the action did not touch me, I believed if I simply ignored it and pretended it was not happening it would stop. Most of the time it did. Sometimes I would have to lift the hand off my body. And then sometimes the action would be so aggressive I would get upset and not be able to turn off my anger and I would need to remove myself from the situation before I blew up.<br />
<br />
I did not believe speaking up would change anything, and was sure to backfire. Unwanted male attention was my responsibility, and shameful (perchance the influence of the nuns in my middle school). So I was not surprised when the one time I did go to HR for help with the unwanted attention of an executive I was told that if I made a fuss and sued I could get a settlement but my career would be over. Instead they gave me the words to say to get him to back off - turns out he had been warned before (but he was a valuable guy) and they were confident the right language would get the message across. I did, and it worked, but their words "you'll never work in this business again" stuck with me.<br />
<br />
No question the very brave women who have spoken up recently, including Susan Fowler who wrote the blog post <a href="https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber" target="_blank">Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber</a>, will make local change happen. The situations they call out will change for the better in the short term. I do believe the tactic of brushing the complaint under the rug won't work now so that is good.<br />
<br />
But to get to systemic change in the long run we need to get away from the boys club, to get away from situation after situation being dominated by men, often with no peer-level women in the room. For most of my career I have been the only woman in the room, and often treated as an honorary male. I've heard my share of locker room talk, even now, and every time I choose my reaction - usually a blend of humor and outrage - just enough to get the message across without damaging my relationship with the speaker.<br />
<br />
I frequently raise the need to have more women on management teams and in the board room, although it often falls on deaf ears, and I have to be careful not to be "difficult" (and I am sure some think I am). But I know for certain that once there are 2 or 3 women in a partnership, or in a management team, or on a board not only do the decisions improve (lots of research coming out about this now) but also the locker room talk and unconscious bias decreases.<br />
<br />
I have great confidence that most of the men I have worked with are not sexual harassers, and do not wish to be biased. But we all have unconscious bias and gender bias is one that we are only now really starting to grapple with in the technology industry. The industry is big enough and the bro culture prevalent enough, particularly with many of the new economy companies, that we must deal with it. To do that we need to attract women into tech, help them stay in tech, coach them, promote them and get them into leadership positions in venture partnerships and companies so we can build a better culture in the industry.<br />
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So does speaking up accomplish anything? The answer is maybe. Depending on your role sometimes you can make more difference working from the inside. But huge credit to the women that do, and to the men that are outspoken about the need for change.
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Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-12564001669563381082017-05-12T17:43:00.000-07:002017-05-12T17:43:28.584-07:00When to tell your employees to take a hike<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>Small companies are like families. They are full of tension, tight relationships, dreams and disappointments and they form a culture all of their own. And when they are small how each and every employee behaves affects the culture of the company. What it is like to come to work every day, how people solve problems, how they interact and help each other, or don't.<br />
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In every group of employees you hire you are bound to hire a few non performers, and it's management 101 that you know you have to move the non performers out. That's what having an accountable team or a performance culture means.<br />
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But there is a group of employees that is harder to move on. I'm sure you've worked with people like this. They are good at their job but they are like dripping poison. They talk about "this place" or "this company" in negative terms. They make snide remarks about the leadership or about their coworkers. They work for you because it's a good job, but nothing is good enough.<br />
<br />
Clearly if the behavior is egregious you can move on the employee and treat it as a performance problem, but what if it's borderline?<br />
<br />
One way to handle this is to invite your employees to leave.<br />
<br />
The most valuable resource an employee has is their time. Especially when they are in the early stages of their careers. In terms of personal growth and future earning power every year before 40 is more valuable that five after. Your millennial employees are investing in your company with their time learning, growing, inhaling everything they can do to improve their future. So if they are negative why are they there?<br />
<br />
I talk to many teams and my logic to invite people to leave goes something like this:<br />
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"If you love this company and our mission, if you love working here, then invest your time wisely. Pour in your passion, work hard to make the company and your career they best they can be. Be a part of creating a positive, winning culture. Share your observations with your leaders but bring solutions, not just complaints. Support your leaders - they are human too and doing their best. Be positive.<br />
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But if you are unhappy here, if you see all the things that are wrong and you feel a need to continuously complain, if you think your leadership is incompetent, or the work is too hard then please leave. Get out.<br />
<br />
Because life is too short to work in a company or a job you don't like for people you don't respect. If you think things could be better then make them better or please leave."<br />
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Sometimes I am even more direct - "There's the door".<br />
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Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-39899334370848630302017-04-26T07:34:00.000-07:002017-05-12T18:19:32.572-07:00Startups and adrenaline are a potent mix<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>Fred Wilson's post a few days ago "<a href="http://avc.com/2017/04/starting-is-easy-finishing-is-hard/" target="_blank">Starting is Easy, Finishing is Hard</a>" speaks to the grind going on for many tech startups today. He says the easy exit days feel as if they have gone and for many it is taking raw tenacity to finish.<br />
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And he's right. When you are the CEO or in the founding team of a startup the years are long. It feels as if it will take forever to get to the next stage of product, or growth, or market development.<br />
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But the days are short, and it's what makes the days short that draws in many founders. It's the adrenaline. Yes they should have a vision, and passion to change the world (a passion to get rich typically backfires) but without a love of the adrenaline rush they would not last a year.<br />
<br />
You feel the adrenaline every single day. When you close a deal, when you talk with your team about your dreams, when you pitch a VC (whether or not they bite), when you have a vision match with a huge customer, when you can feel the forward progress. Your heart beats faster, your hands may shake. It's hard to come down (many startup CEOs I have known, me included, self medicate with a stiff drink at the end of the day), it's hard to sleep, but it makes 5am exciting because you know the rush is going to start again the next day.<br />
<br />
In many ways you need the drug (it's a hormone) in your body. It makes your mind sharp, it increases your intensity, it helps you focus on exactly what you need to do second to second to win in each situation. And succeeding is all about having the tenacity to win against a million people/circumstances/barriers that want to stop you every day.<br />
<br />
Getting a new company up and running and successful is SO hard that I don't advise people to do it unless they simply cannot stand not to, and only then if they have the stomach for the stress and can manage themselves through it. I am working with a brilliant founder today who is swinging from the heights of heaven to the depths of hell as her company leaps forward and who has designed a swimming and yoga weekly schedule simply to help her manage the stress.<br />
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And what's interesting about the adrenaline phenomenon is one day it all stops. I ran into a girlfriend at the airport this week who ran a hugely successful company, and is now retired, and as we compared notes she told me she just stopped enjoying the rush, and then she knew it was time. When you dread the 5am calls, and you dread taking another redeye, and while you can still get the rush in front of a customer, but not every day, then it's time to hand the baton to the next woman who wants to change the world.<br />
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Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-28508929353426611462017-03-21T11:44:00.001-07:002017-10-23T12:33:43.965-07:0010 reasons to visit Jordan this year<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<p>This post has been moved to my travel site <a href="https://www.raptroaming.com/home/2017/5/12/10-reasons-to-visit-jordan-this-year" target="_blank">RaptRoaming</a> - please click through and read it there!<br />
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Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-62563690579870942892017-03-09T11:52:00.000-08:002017-03-09T11:52:06.373-08:00Video: Diversity on boards - how and why it's important!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-87949590538214197362017-02-23T20:09:00.001-08:002017-02-23T20:57:18.564-08:00It's time for Tone at the Top on Diversity - or Why Uber is Yet Another Wakeup Call for Boards and CEOs in Tech<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>Uber is just the latest company caught in the act of discriminating against women in it's workforce. Sadly for many minorities in tech this is an old story.<br />
<br />
As Ellen Pao writes in <a href="http://time.com/4681336/ellen-pao-uber/" target="_blank">today's Time article</a> it is an indication of "tech's existential rot". In a world that "started off seemingly harmlessly by white men funding white men with few exceptions. When only white men were given opportunities, only white men were successful. White men went on hiring only white men, because it seemed to be a common trait of successful employees. Then investors who were white men decided only white men could be successful and doubled down on white men. White men who succeeded in the system decided it worked and saw no need for change. Fifty years later investors can’t break out of that pattern."<br />
<br />
But it is time for the pattern to break for many reasons. There is mounting evidence that diverse teams build better products - they are more likely to understand the buying behavior of their customers if they reflect the customer. There is also growing research that companies with diverse boards and management teams produce better returns for investors -so now some investors are encouraging boards to take on diverse board members.<br />
<br />
But more importantly it is no longer acceptable for companies to allow employee harassment to continue while HR departments stand by or worse become part of the problem, as Uber is finding out to it's detriment. The #deleteuber campaign has been due for a while and will hurt. (note, I switched to Lyft a year ago after reading about the leadership culture at Uber.)
<br />
<br />
So if it is no longer acceptable at the board level, in the executive team, and in the engineering ranks what can we do to make change happen faster?<br />
<br />
I have worked in the "bro" culture of tech in Silicon Valley for more than 30 years. I have repeatedly experienced unconscious bias (sometimes not so unconscious ), being underestimated, being dismissed, being propositioned etc. and I have worked hard to over come it as I became a CEO who grew my company through a successful IPO and acquisition. And as I have done so I have been open and public about my wish to be a role model to other women that you can be technical, and be in a leadership role, and have a family in the technology industry. It's possible to do and be happy.<br />
<br />
I was conscious of the challenge I was facing from day one when I was one of only a handful (I think 5) women majoring in math at Cambridge in my year, out of about 300. And so, to be a role model, I have always tried to hold a leadership position in any situation I am in, especially if everyone else in the room is male.<br />
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It is so clear to me now that the problem we have in tech is not a pipeline problem. Yes, we need more little girls to like computers, and more little african american boys to believe they can be Mark Zuckerberg, but we have plenty already who enter the tech world. But the women leave in droves within 10 years because the environment is hostile. Our problem is keeping women in an industry that makes life difficult for them.<br />
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It is time to set the tone at the top. To insist that boards have at least 2 or 3 women on them (not just none, or the "we have one so we're done" you see on so many boards). There are now several recruiters who specialize in finding qualified women with the right experience for boards. For example <a href="http://www.trewstar.com/" target="_blank">Beth Stewart of Trewstar</a> would tell you there is no shortage of qualified women to serve, but a shortage of boards who think this is an important issue.<br />
<br />
It is also time for boards to insist that the CEO builds a diverse leadership team. This takes real work to find diverse, qualified executives but it can be done in most fields. Uber is just one of many examples where a mostly male leadership team is simply deaf and blind to the issues facing their female employees. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_at_the_top" target="_blank">"Tone at the top"</a> is an expression used by boards when reviewing the results of the annual audit. They discuss whether the management team is committed to honest, ethical behavior and whether they operate with integrity. The discussion is important to sign off the financials - after all what audit committee chair would want to sign off the financial filings if he did not believe the CEO and CFO had integrity with the numbers?<br />
<br />
It's time for companies to embrace a "tone at the top" discussion around equal opportunity for all employees. It is time for every board to pay attention to the diversity statistics within their companies. How many women are employed at every level, has the company done an audit of pay across gender to check that women are not paid less than men for the same job? Are the percentages of women in leadership growing or shrinking? It is just not hard for HR to run reports and track progress over time - but it takes a serious discussion on the importance of diversity from the board down to build a world class company in the 21st century.<br />
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I am hoping this is what Eric Holder and my friend Arianna Huffington will now do for Uber.
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</div>Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-65660856439712805702017-01-26T07:40:00.000-08:002017-11-21T13:29:57.024-08:00Breakfast in Gaza, Dinner in Efrat: Impressions from my trip to Israel and Palestine<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>This post has moved to my travel blog - please click through and read it <a href="https://www.raptroaming.com/home/2017/5/12/breakfast-in-gaza-dinner-in-efrat">here</a>.<br />
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Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-80739783153279432352017-01-03T20:02:00.000-08:002017-01-03T20:02:27.297-08:00How 2016 rocked my world as I talked with women entrepreneurs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>I am more convinced than ever that there is a bright future for women entrepreneurs and 2016 proved it to me!<br />
<br />
I <a href="http://pennyherscher.blogspot.com/2015/11/why-im-stepping-back-from-being-ceo.html" target="_blank">stepped back</a> from being a full time CEO a little more than a year ago. It was time, for family reasons, and I set out to change my life. I still work (I serve on two public company boards) but I decided to spend a great deal more time with my father and my family than I have ever been able to do before, and to prioritize my time to giving back. But I had no idea what that really meant for me – what could I do that was meaningful other than work as a CEO?
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<br />
I decided that I would just say “yes” to every request for help from entrepreneurs, especially, but not exclusively, women. Not that I would be a pushover and do anything I was asked, but I would say yes to any request for a meeting from an entrepreneur who wanted advice. A first meeting at least and if I thought I could make a difference I'd keep saying yes. I wish I could say I was inspired by <a href="http://pennyherscher.blogspot.com/2015/11/why-im-stepping-back-from-being-ceo.html" target="_blank">Shonda Rhimes’ TED talk</a> but I did not see it until I was well into the year. Instead I was thinking of it as following breadcrumbs without knowing where they were going to lead.
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It's been an extraordinary year, it's taken me in directions I never would have expected, and it's changing me.
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<br />
I've met with many amazing female entrepreneurs. Aged twenties to sixties. A psychiatrist who has figured out how to use technology to dramatically reduce the cost of cognitive testing for veterans with PTSD or the elderly with dementia, a media executive with a passion for travel who's changing how people explore the world, a technologist who's figured out how to measure skin tone so you can buy the right makeup for your skin, a CEO with an IoT product that can tell you all about the water leakage risks in your commercial property assets (something I did not know was a big problem), a woman revolutionizing the sex tech industry, a woman with breakthrough security technology to protect your phone, a visionary who set up the first and only incubator in Gaza... a new calendaring app, a better travel itinerary planning app, a next generation geospatial model, better on-chip failsafe technology, the artistic director of a ballet, networking technology, machine learning technology ... the whole gamut! I have found I love talking with entrepreneurs and CEOs. I love listening to their stories about their businesses, what’s working, what’s scaring them, how they are getting funded.<br />
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I ask questions, ad nausea, and then focus in on one of two challenges they face and discuss with them how to overcome them. It's fun for both of us, and I realize I can help many of them. No judgement, just the experience of being there myself more than once before. And I now believe, more than ever, it is much harder for women to get venture funding than men. I have far too many data points now!<br />
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I've met with women hedge fund managers who only invest in women led companies, recruiters whose only business is placing women on boards, bankers who want to do deals for women CEOs. The movement is happening. Women are, more than ever, proactively helping women. I threw a book party for <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Earning-Hard-Won-Lessons-Trailblazing-Business/dp/0062407473/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483501522&sr=1-1&keywords=earning+it" target="_blank">Joann Lublin’s new book Earning It</a> - the party was 3 days after our horrific election - and I saw ~60 women (eating my husband's terrific food and drinking good wine) talking to each other about how this cannot be our future and becoming even more committed to make a different future for women.<br />
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But I also visited Israel for the first time and I was hooked. I found Israel fascinating and a historical goldmine but then I spent time in the West Bank with family who are orthodox settlers, and at the same time joined a small group trying to help Palestine with Silicon Valley technology. Wow, that is a complex area. I am reading like crazy trying to understand, but it's also an area where young women are starting businesses and where I can help.<br />
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2016 wasn't all about female entrepreneurs. I've spent 25% of the year in Europe. Driving with my Dad through France, quiet days with him in England helping him write his life story, Italy with my daughter, with my husband, with my sister. Enough time that I know I was truly present for my family, for the first time in a long time.
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I am not unaware that it is a privilege for me to be able to do this, but I also now recognize that it is not only money that holds us in our jobs. It is also social status, recognition, a sense of being important. One of my new friends, now in her seventies, and who had a very big, high profile CEO job, told me one of the things she found most difficult about retiring was not being important any more. We are all, in our own ways, driven by ego and giving up the identity that defined me for most of my adult life has had it's hard moments, like when a man asked me at a fundraiser what I do for a living and when I said I am retired he said “oh” and walked away. I've had plenty of "invisible" moments this year and it takes some getting used to.<br />
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We may feel it's hard for women entrepreneurs in 2017, but the groundswell is growing. The number of smart women building businesses inspires me. The number of powerful female CEOs inspires me. And in 2017 I am open for business to help them in any way I can!<p /></div>
Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0Cupertino, CA, USA37.3229978 -122.0321822999999937.2219618 -122.19354379999999 37.424033800000004 -121.87082079999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-66337756702293147262016-12-20T10:15:00.000-08:002016-12-21T13:28:09.641-08:00So you want to join a board: Advice to help you prepare<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>If you want to join a board, you are not alone. Some people want to find a board in the middle of their career because they like the idea of learning about board life, or for the status of it; some people are looking for board work towards the end of their career because they want to stay engaged and give back. Either way it's a common, serious interest for many people.
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But what does it take - how do you prepare yourself to be qualified?
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First off, determine why you want it - and be able to articulate that. Are you looking for income or interest? Be clear about this because there is a huge difference between the two. Non-profit boards typically don't pay, in fact they expect you to give money. For-profit private company boards may pay cash, or they may only pay in stock (which may, or may not, ever be worth anything) and for-profit public company boards pay, but the pay varies widely depending on the size, industry and country of the company.
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Once you can clearly state what you want and why, the next step is for you to determine what value you are going to bring - what is your value proposition? What experience do you bring, how will you be helpful, why should a board want you on it? I had never done this formally until a few weeks ago when I was on a panel and the moderator asked us panelists to write down our value propositions. This is what I came up with (late at night in a hotel room!):
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<i>As someone who has 20 years as a high tech CEO, has been through an IPO and many M&A deals and who is very technical, I bring experience in what it takes to create the strategy, execution plans and leadership teams necessary to drive growth. As a compensation committee chair on two public boards I team with the CEO to create the right incentives to execute the
operational plans and create shareholder value. I tend to be the voice in the room focused on strategy and the needs of the leadership team in a rapidly changing world.
</i><br />
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Try writing yours - what would you say?<br />
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Another way to approach this is to inventory your skills. Make a list of what you're good at - what makes you unique. This is your experience - what types of jobs you've had - PLUS what is it about your intellect and personality that will be helpful? Are you good under pressure, are you energized by solving hard problems, are you good at negotiation, are you natural coach, do you have strong P&L management experience? These are skills that are often not on your resume, but when a recruiter asks you what you would bring to a board it's good to be able to confidently state the top 3 or 4 skills that you would bring.<br />
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The next challenge is that while you may feel you are ready to contribute on a board, many boards will not want to hire someone with no previous experience. This is one of the top objections that prevents boards diversifying - boards tend to hire people they know, who are like them, who have served on boards before. It's less work than hiring someone who is different and needs training. But as the trend towards building more diverse boards continues, nomination committees are coming to terms with hiring board members without previous experience.<br />
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One of the ways you can prepare yourself is to go and take training. I am a member of the volunteer faculty at a two day intensive training course - the <a href="http://directorsacademy.com/" target="_blank">NextGen Directors Academy</a> - designed to take a small group of diverse, aspiring future board members through the nuts and bolts of being on a board. We cover the basic responsibilities, what each committee is responsible for, what your institutional investors care about and case studies of boards who got off track with activists. It's an interactive, peer to peer format, and there are no stupid questions. There are several courses around like this, but not all have deep, intense content so make sure you talk with previous attendees before you sign up.<br />
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Another way you can prepare is to make sure you have the business basics covered. Most of the top business schools run executive training classes, from a few days to several weeks, ranging from general management preparation to specialized skills like cyber security. Once you have inventoried your own skills and experience, think about whether you have a gap you need to fill with some training, or whether you want to develop a skill that is currently in high demand for board members.<br />
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One of the ephemeral requirements of many boards is "fit". Boards are expected to be collegiate, to get along, to voice difference but in the end come together on decisions. (I could write a tome on whether this is healthy for the shareholders or not, but not here). If you want to get onto a company board, but have no experience to point to, try joining a non-profit board first. Pick one that is a decent size (>$500k a year in budget), that has a real board that meets 2-4 times a year and that is run by an experienced chairperson. Reading the prep materials, listening to the management team, sitting in the meetings contributing to the discussion in a balanced, collegiate way will bring you confidence and experience that you can then refer to when you discuss your first for-profit board.<br />
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Make sure you have the time to be an effective board member. Being on a board carries status with it, it sounds important, and it may pay well. And many boards have 4-5 meetings a year so it doesn't sound like much. But actually board work can take a huge amount of time. On a regular basis you need to put the time aside to read, to prepare and to attend the meetings. But in addition you will have countless phone calls and phone meetings outside of the regular meetings. You will need to meet with the CEO and members of the executive team and if the board needs to find a new CEO (for whatever reason) expect to spend days and days, over a series of months, meeting candidates and discussing them with the other board members. So before you pour time into preparing yourself to sit on a board make sure your day job allows you enough time to truly contribute.<br />
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And finally, don't be shy. If you want to get on a board say so. Tell everyone you talk with about boards that you are, yourself, looking for a board seat. Network with recruiters who specialize, and stay in touch with them so you are current in their minds. Talk to people who are already on boards. Finding the right board is a pretty random process and so getting the word out will help the right board find you.<br />
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<p /></div>Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-27678724150578007232016-11-08T17:28:00.000-08:002017-10-23T12:37:28.632-07:00Exploring 2500 years of Sicily<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<p>This post has been moved to my travel blog <a href="https://www.raptroaming.com/home/2017/8/25/exploring-2500-years-of-sicily" target="_blank">RaptRoaming</a> - please click through and enjoy it there!<br />
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Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-21529220001394900762016-10-29T13:57:00.000-07:002016-10-29T13:57:03.693-07:00The difference between being right and getting the right answer<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<p>Entrepreneurs can be a hard headed lot. It takes courage, determination, a lot of luck, and sometimes just old fashioned, bull-headed persistence to create a company but as a result entrepreneurs don't always listen well.
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But even if you know you resemble this description, ask yourself - is it more important for you to get to the right answer, or to be right?
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You want to be right because your team wants to follow someone who knows what to do. You want to be right because it's more efficient, and it increases your confidence, and if you're right more often than you are wrong you have a good chance of winning. And if you believe you are right you are more likely to take risk.
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But your potential investor wants you to be more interested in getting to the right answer than being right. When you are building your company you cannot predict what's going to happen. You may switch markets, your customers may show you a different direction, the company may almost die more than once, you are certain to make some bad hires along the way. It is almost guaranteed that your journey will not be smooth.
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As a result, it is much more impactful as an investor to work with entrepreneurs who are seeking truth, seeking to understand, seeking the right answer. These entrepreneurs ask questions, question themselves and try out ideas without fear of being wrong. As an investor you can dig in and problem solve with them. It's more fun, it's less frustrating, and you are more likely to get to a great end result together.
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So when you are talking with potential investors, or even potential senior team members you want to hire, ask yourself how strong is your need to be right?
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</div>Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-57961090077127998192016-09-01T15:43:00.000-07:002016-09-01T15:43:47.502-07:00Three critical questions to ask a startup before you agree to work for it<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>So you want to work for a startup!<br />
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You've been talking to one that you think is going somewhere and will give you the experience you want, you like the people and the title, job and salary sounds right for you. They make you an offer. Great!<br />
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But now is the point where you need to ask three critical sets of questions to determine if this is actually a good company to work for or not. Remember each job you take influences your future career. What you learn, who you get to know, what opportunities you get as a result. Many people peak in their forties (career wise, and for a myriad of professional and personal reasons) and so the job choices you make in your twenties and thirties will affect how you peak.<br />
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After 30 years in Silicon Valley, 20 of them as a high tech CEO, and now talking almost every day to people who want company and career advice, I've seen too many bad company structures to take any offer at face value. I recommend you (respectfully) ask questions to explore these three areas - the health of the business, the capital structure and the organization - and if a company won't answer then that in itself tells you this is a not a great situation for you.<br />
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<b>1. Understand the health of the business</b><br />
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Health is all about rate of growth. What is the revenue, how is it growing and what other metrics are critical health indicators for the business? so ask:<br />
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- What was the revenue for the last 2 years, what is the forecast for this year and next year? You're listening for consistent, sustainable growth and a management team that is making its plans. There is no right answer here because it depends on the stage of the company, but you're listening for b.s. or inconsistency.<br />
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- What percentage of the revenue this year is recurring (ie. it renews every year)? Do you expect this percentage to improve? You're listening for the quality of the revenue. Recurring is higher quality than one-time revenue and drives a higher valuation. If a high percentage is recurring then you want to understand how many of the customers renew - i.e. what is the customer retention rate? How much do they churn.<br />
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- Are you profitable? If so for how long? If not when do you plan to be profitable? If not, when do you need to raise your next round of investment? Note, if your hiring manager says "we're not profitable and we don't want to be" don't buy the b.s. The ONLY time you don't want to be profitable is when you have easy access to lots of cash and you're truly investing for growth but most good companies would like to be profitable, while still growing, so they stop burning cash. They should be able to talk about how much time and cash it is going to take to get profitable if everything goes to plan.<br />
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- What are the other important metrics you track for your business? For example customer acquisition rate and costs, customer retention rates etc? Be sure to listen for real metrics that are about the true health and growth of the business, not just marketing metrics (clicks, downloads etc) but which are not metrics leading to revenue growth.<br />
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<b>2. Understand the capital structure and cash</b><br />
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Startups run on cash from investors, not cash from operations and so it's important you know what the terms are and how they might affect the future of the company, so ask:<br />
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- What is the capital structure? How many preferred shares are outstanding, how many common and what is the total number of shares including the unallocated options in the employee pool? You want to know the total number of shares so you know what your options may be worth in the future.<br />
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<i>For example</i><br />
<i>The company has raised $5M selling 5 million shares at $1 per share to preferred sharesholders</i><br />
<i>The founders have 5 million shares</i><br />
<i>The option pool has 1 million shares priced at 10 cents per share</i><br />
<i>=> there are 11 million shares and the post-money valuation is $11M</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>The company is sold for $49M. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>$5M is returned to the preferred shareholders so now there is $44M to share</i><br />
<i>This means $4 per share - you make a gain of $3.90 per option you have vested at that time</i><br />
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- What are the basic terms of the preferred shareholders? Are they participating? - this means they take their money back first as in the example above and then what's left is divided across the total number of shares.<br />
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- Do the preferred shareholders have any control on the sale of the company? For example, can they veto a sale below a certain valuation, or veto a capital raise below a certain threshold valuation? You want to know this because if they can, and you think it's unreasonable then you should discount the potential value of your shares. These kind of terms are not typical with high class VCs, but you do see them with PE firms and newer VCs who don't have a lot of experience on the downside effects. And I know of too many founders who lost their companies because of these types of terms. If you are unsure, ask around or check out <a href="http://www.thefunded.com/" target="_blank">The Funded</a> to get a measure of the quality of the investors.<br />
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- Do any of the executives have 100% vesting on change of control? Some VCs say no to this for everyone, some say only the CEO, some say only the CEO, CFO and VP Sales and so on but most executives want it. This tells you a lot about whether the executives are looking to ramp quickly and sell vs. build a long term company.<br />
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- And if they suggest you buy your common stock don't. Look at what happened to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/technology/when-a-unicorn-start-up-stumbles-its-employees-get-hurt.html?_r=0" target="_blank">the employees at Good Technology</a>, and there are thousands of examples like this where the common holders lost their money because they were behind the VCs. Be patient and pay a little more tax when you make money.<br />
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<b>3. Understand the org chart and politics</b><br />
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- Figure out where you fit in the organization. How many layers are between you and the CEO? What is the span of control of your VP? You're looking for a relatively flat organization where you are in a strong part of the organization - i.e. your exec has power.<br />
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- Does the organization make sense to you? Do you see what looks like politics between founders (odd titles, responsibilities in places they should not be)? Do you see one CEO by name, but two CEOs by organization? Does the balance between R&D and sales make sense to you? Again, does it pass the sniff test for you?<br />
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Remember, you want to work for someone who is really good at their job, a great manager, and who will invest in you and your skills. And someone who you will work for for a decent period of time - like a year. You don't want a weak manager, a revolving door of managers, or ill defined responsibilities between you and other people/teams. The <a href="http://nyti.ms/2c5Dxyc" target="_blank">chaos being reported at WrkRiot</a> is certainly unusual, but there are many aspects of this story I have seen and heard when founders don't know what they are doing and don't have good advisors - so be selfish and do your homework.<br />
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Most good companies will help you understand these three areas because they will respect that you are making an important decision for your career. The most precious thing you have is your time and the best thing you can get is experience. Not money, or options, or a title but experience. Training, education and opportunity. So measure your startup against those metrics too before you fall in love.<p /></div>
Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-59137596110024429772016-08-22T14:29:00.000-07:002016-08-22T17:06:25.703-07:00The Silk Roads - and other Summer reading which may make me live longer<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>I was highly amused to read the New York Times article that <a href="http://nyti.ms/2aiys73" target="_blank">people who read books live longer</a>!<br />
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According to the NYT <i>"Compared with those who did not read books, those who read for up to three and a half hours a week were 17 percent less likely to die over 12 years of follow-up, and those who read more than that were 23 percent less likely to die. Book readers lived an average of almost two years longer than those who did not read at all."</i><br />
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Well I am on my way to changing my longevity to a long old age surrounded by piles of books. Hooray!<br />
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And this Summer, as my first Summer not working full time as a CEO, the books are certainly piling up but by far the best book I have read in a long time is the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Silk-Roads-New-History-World/dp/1101946326/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1471899733&sr=1-1&keywords=silk+roads" target="_blank">Silk Roads</a> by Peter Frankopan. This book is a retelling of world history by looking at it through the lens of the development of trade routes, specifically the silk roads, through the center of the world (Persia and it's neighbors). It does a beautiful job of weaving a complex story of how these economic relationships developed in a completely compelling and riveting way, while at the same time it ties the trading relationships into world events as diverse as the discovery of the New World and the Second World War.<br />
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It's not perfect - as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/29/silk-roads-peter-frankopan-review" target="_blank">Guardian review</a> says "The need for brevity has led to some troubling misrepresentations" but at 646 pages of dense type it is hardly brief. And the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/tracking-trade-inspired-globalization-over-more-than-a-millennium/2016/04/20/aa5a0cc2-e276-11e5-846c-10191d1fc4ec_story.html?tid=kp_google&utm_term=.192b12cce0d1" target="_blank">Washington Post review</a> is fair in both praising the book, and pointing out it's shortcomings.<br />
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But for me much of the fascination with this book comes not from learning any specific new history but instead to see how intimately everything is connected. I, like the author, was raised with a Eurocentric point of view and my education was very pro British Empire. I cringed at times at how critical the author is of the British in the 19th century, but my discomfort was even more acute reading his perspective on the Americans in the Middle East since the second world war. He's harsh, and maybe a little biased against both my countries (I'm a dual national after all) and yet his perspective was thought provoking.<br />
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If you are interested in world history this is a book truly worth making the time and effort to read. And even if you are not, this book will open your eyes to a new way of thinking about the history we were taught.<br />
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For the rest of my Summer... of the many books I have read I recommend:<br />
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1848548974/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1" target="_blank">Sicily</a> by John Julius Norwich - a loving walk through the history of this fascinating island and a must if you are thinking of visiting.<br />
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385521715/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1" target="_blank">My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel</a> by Ari Shavit - gorgeous, rich description of the birth of modern Israel, although a little biased.<br />
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jerusalem-Biography-Simon-Sebag-Montefiore/dp/0307280500/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1471899512&sr=1-1&keywords=jerusalem+montefiore" target="_blank">Jerusalem: The Biography</a> by Simon Sebag Montefiore - deeply researched sweep through 2500 years of this fascinating city's history, also well written.<br />
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Augustus-First-Emperor-Adrian-Goldsworthy/dp/0300216661/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1471899609&sr=1-1" target="_blank">Augustus: First Emperor of Rome</a> by Adrian Goldsworthy - a nerdy feast on this fascinating man.<br />
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And for a scented confection that makes you want to cook with lemons and get on a plane to Italy my current delight is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Land-Where-Lemons-Grow-Citrus/dp/0241952573/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1471899860&sr=1-4" target="_blank">The Land Where Lemons Grow</a> by Helen Attlee. It is simply perfect!
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</div>Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0Cupertino, CA, USA37.3229978 -122.0321822999999937.2219618 -122.19354379999999 37.424033800000004 -121.87082079999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-44460654186203662532016-08-18T09:54:00.000-07:002016-08-22T17:05:25.687-07:00When Thomas Paine went back to high school: Or how Thetford Grammar saved my father<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It's strange how the tendrils of history weave our lives together in unexpected ways.<br />
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This Summer my father told me that he had decided to give a 1925 copy of the complete works of Thomas Paine to his old school in memory of his brother. He asked me to go with him and, thinking it would be a pretty drive on a summer day, I said yes, not knowing I'd peel another layer of his story.<br />
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My father's school is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thetford_Grammar_School" target="_blank">Thetford Grammar School</a> in Norfolk, England. It's a very old school, dating back to Saxon times with old flint buildings that were part of a Dominican Friary and a Norman cathedral in the past, and where ruins still stand in the parking lot.<br />
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But more importantly, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine" target="_blank">Thomas Paine</a> went to Thetford Grammar from 1744 to 1749. One of the founding fathers of the United States, and author of the radical work <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense_(pamphlet)" target="_blank">Common Sense</a>, went to this little market town school all those years ago. It's in a rural part of England which was surrounded by farms and wealthy landed gentry back then; I have to wonder how many of Thomas Paine's ideas were formed by the feudal attitudes still prevalent in England in those days.<br />
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I knew the school meant a lot to my father, but I didn't realize quite how much until I went with him.<br />
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My father grew up in Thetford in the War surrounded by air bases, Yanks and the excitement of a war going on around him as a young boy. But he also grew up in a tough household because his father had a drinking problem. He was a bright kid with a positive outlook on life and his schooling had a huge influence on his life - he would say it was how he got out. He was pushed ahead early, supported by his teachers and did so well he got a scholarship to UCL and so escaped his family's life in Thetford.<br />
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Without the school he would still be there instead of traveling the world. And this is what he had the chance to tell some of the kids when we went to the school. Little did we know that the new headmaster made an event of my father coming up! We had the local press and a photographer there, the heads of the boys and the girls schools, the chair of the board of governors all there to receive the gift.<br />
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The <a href="http://www.buryfreepress.co.uk/news/local/latest-news/onions-presents-special-gift-to-thetford-school-1-7424805" target="_blank">front page report</a> in the Bury Free Press!</div>
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<p>The headmaster, Mark Bedford, gave a speech, my father gave a speech, and I teared up. I looked up at the wall and saw his name on the wall board of Bartram Gold Medal winners in 1949. There was his name (with the old apostrophe put into the name in the late 19th century and removed again in the late 20th) recording that his teachers and his own ability pulled him out of a dead end situation at home and put him on a path to an international career in tech. Not surprising that at age 84 he still remembers the names of all his maths teachers!<br />
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And he's been asked back to give the speech at the Speech Day at the beginning of term in September, with teachers, parents and students. I'm so proud of him!<br />
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Norman cathedral ruins in the parking lot</div>
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Smiling for the local press</div>
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The medal winners - he is F.A. O'Nians up there in 1949</div>
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<span style="text-align: left;">The "old school" where Thomas Paine studied</span></div>
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In Old School, telling the students why he's giving the books</div>
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Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0Cupertino, CA, USA37.3229978 -122.0321822999999937.2219618 -122.19354379999999 37.424033800000004 -121.87082079999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-41702945814261169912016-08-08T08:00:00.000-07:002016-08-08T08:00:06.682-07:00Are your investors double dipping in your startup?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>I've been working with a number of small companies this year. I'm on a mission to help CEOs, especially women, figure out how to grow their businesses, manage their investors and boards and to create a level playing field for themselves.<br />
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But as I have spoken to some of these CEOs I've seen several data points which are very worrying, and which I hope don't make a line! These data points are investors putting money in to companies, and then taking the money back out for services - so effectively reducing the cost of their investment. Double dipping.<br />
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For example.... The professional service provider:<br />
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This is the case for a small software company, lets call them W. W has developed a software technology to improve building management, and so reduce insurance costs. It wasn't an easy company to raise money for and in the end the CEO raised from angels, one of whom invested $480k. Nice.<br />
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But he then turned around and sold W the development service to create the product from the technology for $490k. He didn't require it, but it was "expected". Assume a typical margin of 50% then the service cost for the angel to deliver is $245k and he has a profit of $245k. So he got $480k worth of equity in W for $235k. And to make matters worse, when the product delivery was not to the satisfaction of the CEO she found it very difficult to push back on him in the way she would have been able to push back on an independent contractor. It's awkward to say the least, but I think it's what in a public company would be called a related transaction - it is simply not independent and so has the potential for conflict of interest.<br />
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The investors with a side business:<br />
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Another small app company, raised money from an angel group. The angel group has a strategy of creating an ecosystem from their companies, and providing services to them to drive the market adoption. But, unlike the old school VCs like Mayfield and KP, or even the new large scale guys like <a href="https://a16z.com/" target="_blank">Andreessen Horowitz</a>, this group turned around and charged the company (which had only raised $1.5M) $11k/month for marketing. That's $132k per year - which could have been spent on another engineer or a lot more marketing consulting from an independent.<br />
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The board member who wants a salary:<br />
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This time a technology company in the security space. Killer technology, but a turnaround from a prior (not-well-run) incarnation so raising money was hard. In the end money came in from a PE firm. But after the close the PE firm put in an executive chair to "help" and insisted he be paid $180k a year for a few days a week. Now I am supportive of a board deciding a CEO needs some help and adding in an exec chair if the CEO agrees (or even if she doesn't if it's really needed) but to pull a salary out of a company that is not profitable is very tough on the company. And in the end it's not in the best interest of the investors; it doesn't make sense.<br />
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I wonder if I have seen a few outliers and this is not the new normal, or if this is a new trend? Is it a result of the number of angel groups out there who are not professional investors (and so to give them the benefit of the doubt we could assume they don't realize the impact of what they are doing), is it a result of the tightening of investment (and so they can get away with it) or it is a result of the simply huge number of startups and first time CEOs who can be taken advantage of? If you have an example in your own company inmail me on LinkedIn.<br />
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Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-9465600610816777622016-08-06T04:40:00.000-07:002016-08-06T04:59:43.400-07:00Living the life of an eighty four year old and the lessons that teaches<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>When I <a href="http://pennyherscher.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/why-im-stepping-back-from-being-ceo.html" target="_blank">stepped back from being a full time CEO</a> 9 months ago I knew there were a few things that would take an adjustment. Most have been a good change for me. And some are just very different.<br />
<br />
One of the choices I have made is to spend a great deal more time with my father. He's 84 (almost 85!), lives in England and is physically fit. But he's alone, and slowing down, and long periods alone get him down. So this year I've been going to the UK every other month, and he's come to stay with us, and we've vacationed together in France. And next Winter he's coming to us for several months to escape the long, cold, grey days which England serves up after Christmas.<br />
<br />
Life's a very different pace when you're 84. There is routine. Breakfast always at the dining table which is set with china, a trip to the supermarket every other day, time with the paper in the morning after breakfast, the big meal (meat and two veg) in the middle of the day (if possible), a walk through the woods by the house (only if it's not raining), project work (his life story, sorting out photos...), lunch and dinner at the set dining table, and TV after dinner.<br />
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It's idyllic. One day each trip we go to London because he has a meeting at the Dyers and I go to a museum, although this time I stretched the day when I arranged to meet one of my young cousins for a drink after work and got a later train home. But I realized it is very tiring to have such a long day if you are 84 (although it was "great fun"). My sister comes by at the weekends and breaks up the routine for us, and some days I leave for a few hours to see old friends. But in general, it's a gentle way to live.<br />
<br />
And it's an education for me. An education to help him write his life story, and hear the stories over and over and so realize how important they are to him. An education we are now getting together on self publishing. An education to see how important his lifetime of collecting furniture, art, china etc is to him and how each piece is attached to a memory. An education to hear how important each job was to him, and how much he loved his work, and yet an education to see that all the b.s. he put up with as he was climbing the ladder isn't really meaningful in comparison to the time he had with my mother, and with family, kids, vacations and adventures. I know this myself, and yet it's very grounding to actually live in the reality of someone over 80 for a while.<br />
<br />
In 48 hours I'll be on my way back to the hustle of Silicon Valley. Board responsibilities, coaching, the daily tumble of a household and pets. So I try to treasure this gentle pace. And know when it's all over, hopefully many years from now, I'll look back on this as a magical time. But it's also a good reminder that I am not ready to check out of the rat race yet...<br />
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Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-14251966154460220612016-07-20T10:27:00.000-07:002016-07-20T15:42:10.922-07:00Why you need a CEO on your board when you are the CEO<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>
One of the first decisions an entrepreneur needs to make once she has raised money for her great new idea is to build a board.<br />
<br />
This is a conscious act. Yes, your investors probably have board seats, at least the lead investor will. If your investors are angels maybe 2 or 3 of them have demanded to be on your board. But beyond this crew you owe it to yourself to step back and think about who do you want on your board to help you build your company.<br />
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It is entirely reasonable for you to put one outside director on your board, and it's an unusual set of investors that will not allow you to bring one new director on. And when you do, you want to bring on a current/former CEO.<br />
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Why a CEO? Why not a technologist, or a family friend, or your cofounder? Fundamentally, a current/former CEO is going to have seen your movie before and will bring a wealth of unexpected advantages to your board and your company.<br />
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<b>Independence</b><br />
Your board has a duty to represent all your shareholders, but more than that they have a responsibility to care for the company first. For your employees, your reputation, your probability of success. Having a board member who is truly independent of the investors can help bring a broader perspective to the board discussions. I have seen investors who are so focused on their own issues they lose sight of what's best for the company. An independent director can take her role - as the one person who is not worried about the timing and size of liquidity but is instead worried about the long term success of the company - very seriously.<br />
<br />
I met with a big time PE partner (let's call him Adam - not his name) recently, who is sitting on a private technology board. As we talked he told me the CEO was dealing with the issue that he, and the other big time PE firm on the board have different agendas. One is a long term investor, one is interested in liquidity sooner, and the difference is a strategy problem for the CEO. The investors are balanced in ownership and the CEO is caught in the middle. I asked Adam "Why is this the CEO's problem? Surely the CEO's responsibility is to grow a great company and create the greatest value he can, not worry about negotiating between the two of you on the timing of an exit. It's a ridiculous waste of his time". Adam (figuratively) took a step back and agreed. I'm not on this board, but I can still make the case for the CEO not being distracted!<br />
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<b>Resources</b><br />
You're going to need advice as you build your company, great advice. Yes your investors may know a few people, but you want to be referred to people who are not looking to your investors for future referrals, again who are truly independent. You'll need lawyers (you want a pit bull in your corner unless you have truly world-class VCs), recruiters, marketing consultants etc. etc. And when you hire them you want to know they are loyal to you, not back channeling to your investors. An independent CEO should have a quality network for you to tap into.<br />
<br />
<b>Working for you</b><br />
There will be times when you need to get something done but you are out of time and need some sleep. You can use your CEO/director to give you capacity. Maybe you need her to build a model for you, maybe you don't know how to present an issue to your board and your director can build a sample presentation for you to help you frame the issue. At a minimum your director can do deep reviews for you of your own presentations, legal agreements, offer letters, compensation plans... with the eye of someone who has done it before.<br />
<br />
<b>Role experience</b><br />
A high quality former CEO will bring experience of what the job really entails. What are you truly responsible for vs what decisions your board can make (which is very few in reality)? What does it take to build a world class team? What does it take to close your first few big deals? How to focus. Only someone who has done the job for many years really knows what it takes, and there are many investors out there who like to give you advice, but have never been in the role. Your director can be a sounding board for you in the role of CEO.<br />
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<b>Being the bad guy</b><br />
Your CEO director is not your friend, and sometimes she may feel like your enemy, but because her only reason to be there is to help the company, you can trust her even when you hate her. I've always had a former CEO on my boards, and sometimes it's been absolutely maddening.<br />
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For example, the time my director attacked me in a board meeting and took me to pieces for a plan I proposed. Afterwards I asked him what the hell was he thinking coming after me in a board meeting? He humbled me by telling me he could see my main investor was winding up to attack and so he decided to attack me first so I did not get into a fight with my investor. He knew me well enough to know that if attacked I would attack back, and hard, and that could damage my relationship with my investor.<br />
<br />
And for example, the time my director had a one-on-one with me and decimated my forecast. Destroyed my faith in every deal. Ripped every one of my sales campaigns to shreds. His motivation? To wring every piece of optimism out of my forecast so I knew the worst case and could then focus on what needed to be done to bring the probability up on each campaign.<br />
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<b>Daily coaching</b><br />
There are times when things go well, and then there are times which are rough. Raising money can be one of those times. Having someone you can call every day to review how things are going is so very helpful, and you cannot be calling your investors. You need a safe place to call. Someone who has no other agenda but to help you and the company succeed. And someone who has been there. That is a current/former CEO.<br />
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You may be thinking "well that's self-serving of her given she's a former CEO who sits on boards". Yes, probably right, but right now I am meeting with many, many interesting entrepreneurs, only one of whose boards I have joined so far (www.savonix.com) and I am hearing too many worrying stories of entrepreneurs who need better board advice and support.<br />
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<i>Photo from <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/summeranne/15-pictures-from-the-worlds-cutest-ever-easter-photoshoot?sub=2110811_1017382&utm_term=.rl2DQ8PKBZ#.ulGLYOXQx2" target="_blank">Buzzfeed</a></i>
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Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0Cupertino, CA, USA37.3229978 -122.0321822999999937.2219618 -122.19354379999999 37.424033800000004 -121.87082079999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-41494801295535302702016-07-14T17:07:00.000-07:002016-08-22T17:05:52.965-07:00Selling with Silence: How the power of the sale is in the silence you create<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>What do you think of when you think of being sold to? A salesman? Speed and feed? Talking your ear off with feature function? Closing you with obvious closing questions?<br />
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Sadly, still today, despite everything we know, many people sell this way.<br />
<br />
But actually true selling is just the opposite. The sale is made in the silence.<br />
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There are a thousand B2B sales training classes and self help books you can read but they all basically say the same thing. Do discovery, qualify your customer, understand the org chart, understand their needs etc. etc. And yet, despite what we know, the simple concept that the power is in the silence gets lost and sales teams talk too much. They talk more than they listen.<br />
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One of the best enterprise sales people I ever sold with told me "Ask a question, shut up, and the first one who speaks loses". People are fundamentally uncomfortable with silence and they speak to fill it up. And when they do they reveal what they are thinking.<br />
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When you are selling working with silence allows you to truly deeply listen. Prepare and ask your questions about their needs, process etc. and then listen carefully. Let them speak and then be able to speak some more because you don't jump in to fill the silence they leave.<br />
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It also allows you to show respect. I'm always astonished at how often sales people talk over the customer or interrupt them. There is respect in silence. I am giving you the respect to fully express your needs and interests before I jump back in and tell you how great my mousetrap is. People buy from people and showing respect is a critical step to establishing trust.<br />
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And it allows you to close. When you ask for the order ask and then shut up. Too often people ask for the order and then immediately gabble on about why, when etc., justifying why they are asking for the order. You should not ask for the order until you know you can provide real value to your customer, and when you know you can, then ask, and wait. Don't explain, talking will not help by this point. And if they speak, they either say no (and you talking wasn't going to change that) or they reveal where they are at and you're on the path to close.<br />
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And the same concept applies whether you are selling an idea or a product. People want to be heard. Master the art of asking questions and being silent. Present, silent and listening.
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Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com1Cupertino, CA, USA37.3229978 -122.0321822999999937.2219618 -122.19354379999999 37.424033800000004 -121.87082079999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-68089135341176181102016-06-20T16:30:00.001-07:002016-06-20T16:30:28.123-07:00Give yourself permission!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>I was struck by the interesting interview with <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/business/granting-permission-to-try-something-new.html?_r=0" target="_blank">Beth Comstock of GE in the NYT today</a> - where she says "you have the permission to try something new". In this case she is talking about innovation but innovation is not the only area where we are held back by the need for permission. Too often we are stymied in areas that lead directly to our happiness.<br />
<br />
Too often, as working professionals, and especially women, we are held back by our fears. Fear of failure, fear of what other people will think, fear of the unknown, fear of being less than. We live in the world of Lean In and male-dominated tech, where I know and have personally experienced that to get ahead you have to work twice as hard, and be twice as smart, as the men around you. This doesn't leave much room for permission to change, or to be rested, or happy.<br />
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So what's the solution. I think it's to consciously, and overtly, grasp the nettle and give yourself permission.<br />
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Permission to stop caring what other people think. As Cindy Gallop (entrepreneur and <a href="http://www.howdidshegetthere.com/cindy-gallop/2015/7/21/cindy-gallop-on" target="_blank">change agent extraordinaire</a>) says "Fear of what other people will think is the single most paralyzing dynamic in business and in life. You will never own the future if you care what other people think". And yet so often we worry endlessly about what the people around us think. Our boss, our peers, our parents; the people who have opinions about our title, or car, or house, or how much money we make. But in the end, the only people whose opinion really matters is our closest friends (who if they love you will support you no matter what you do, or how your screw up) and our partners in life (who do have to be in the boat with us). No one else matters. Truly.<br />
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Permission to try something completely new - like start a company. Scary. What if I am no good at it, don't like it, fail at it? Well, so long as you do some basic financial planning so you can survive a temporary misstep what are you afraid of? Chances are you can always go back to what you did before. I have seen this many times in Silicon Valley - value accrues to failure. People try something completely new, it fails and they go back to what they did before. But they are often now actually more valuable. They have more experience, they may be humbled and so be a better leader and more compassionate. They will be changed, and usually for the better. Or maybe permission to try something completely new for yourself means going to back to school and taking the chance you can create a whole new career path for yourself.<br />
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Permission to not check your email 24/7 on vacation. Permission to not keep a perfectly tidy house. Permission to wear flats to work. Permission to leave a job you hate, or a boss you hate, even if it means making less money. Permission to pursue a sports passion which may mean you don't climb the corporate ladder as fast as your peers. Permission to experiment with your career.<br />
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I had to take myself through this process as I made the decision to <a href="http://pennyherscher.blogspot.com/2015/11/why-im-stepping-back-from-being-ceo.html" target="_blank">change my professional life</a>. I can get wracked with guilt that I am no longer driving the feminist CEO agenda. I can get down on myself that I stepped back when other women are running companies and setting the agenda for key technologies in the valley. I, like so many successful women, continue to fight the demon of <a href="http://pennyherscher.blogspot.com/2013/10/feeling-like-failure-every-day-and.html" target="_blank">feeling like a failure inside every day</a>. And so I give myself a talking to - sometimes physically in the mirror! Permission to try a new way of life. Permission to be with my family, and travel, and read, and write. And to stop caring what other people think.<br />
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For a while at least!
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Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com0Cupertino, CA, USA37.3229978 -122.0321822999999937.2219618 -122.19354379999999 37.424033800000004 -121.87082079999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2713903322765217177.post-71562476961263658292016-05-25T13:45:00.000-07:002016-05-25T14:34:41.813-07:00The strange story of the lost Poussin the "Destruction And Sack Of The Temple Of Jerusalem" and my Uncle Ernie<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<p>Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. This is a true story of a great masterpiece, lost in time for 350 years and found in our family.<br />
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My great-uncle Ernie was born Ernest Onians on August 14th, 1904 in Liverpool. He was the youngest of 6, and his immediate elder brother Frank, with whom he was close friends as a young man, was my grandfather. After working together as salesmen selling animal food in East Anglia, Ernie recognized a huge business opportunity - taking waste food at the back door of London restaurants and turning it into pig food which he would process at his mill in Suffolk and then sell to the farmers. He was very successful, a ladies man, and became wealthy.<br />
<br />
As he traveled around Suffolk he became interested in art and to educate himself he read extensively, subscribed to art magazines and developed an eye for beautiful things. During and after the War many large houses were being forced to sell their paintings and furniture because of death, taxation and the poor economic situation in the country. As my cousin John wrote "during the 'forties and early fifties' he visited many a house sale and county auction, bidding - or more frequently leaving bids - for literally thousands of objects which, like the girlfriends of his youth, caught his curious and sensuous eye. The honied toned ivories, the fresher colors of porcelain, the weave of tapestries, the smooth escapements of watches, the chimes of clocks, the polished veneer of furniture, and above all the flesh, flowers, fruit, animals and landscape found in paintings, all called him to possess them."<br />
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But sadly, although married for a while, he became a hoarder and a miser. He collected so many pieces that he filled up his house and three sheds in his garden with paintings stacked vertically in dirty conditions. As a child I remember my uncle and my father taking me through the piles of paintings, tapestries and clocks which were not insured because Ernie didn't want anyone to know. My father would visit him frequently (out of loyalty to his own father) as would two of my father's cousins who were in the art world themselves, one John the professor, the other Dick the artist.<br />
<br />
Typical family stuff - until one day one of the sheds burned down. As a result of the fire Ernie did ask his nephews for help to get a review of his pictures. Christies came to the Mill for 2 days and told Ernie and his nephews that there were 7 paintings that should be fully researched before they were sold.<br />
<br />
But as is so often the case, his treasures obsessed him. Arguments erupted about what was going to be in his Will and Ernie decided he did not want anyone to get the benefit of his treasures after he died. My father, despite having spent 30 years visiting his uncle and trying to help him, in the end would not be a part of it because, after many iterations, Ernie insisted that his whole estate be tied up in a trust that would last for 30 years after his death. Only a few of his great nieces and nephews who he hardly knew would benefit, and only if they did not get divorced in the meantime.<p />
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<i>Uncle Ernie, as I remember him, </i></div>
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<i>in the doorway of his home Baylham Mill</i></div>
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<i>Sale catalogues from some of the</i></div>
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<i>auctions he attended</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<p>As a result, when Ernie died at age 90 in 1994 the paintings were not researched and his executors gave the sale of the estate to Sotheby's. A quick one day sale later the estate fetched £2M.<br />
<br />
But unbeknown to the experts, and to my cousins who administered his estate, there was a treasure in among the paintings.<br />
<br />
This painting had a small, very dark photo in the glossy catalogue (a copy of which my father keeps on his shelf as a reminder of life's ironies). It was "Attributed to Pietro Testa" as The Sack of Carthage and estimated to fetch £10,000-15,000. But experts watch the sales and as the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/nov/17/fiachragibbons" target="_blank">Guardian reported</a> four years later it was "picked up at the Onians' auction for £155,000 by the London gallery Hazlitt, Gooden and Fox, after its advisor, the distinguished Poussin expert Sir Denis Mahon, spotted a photograph of it "the size of a large postage stamp" in the catalogue and ordered them to acquire it "at any cost"."<p />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqlZna_RnTwGga2yBsxwuzwyZpS_v1LXNO2mkqXijCb1Ea5Sy45GdXSdwmwOTUsbpVziotmkpoQgZJSwAfmtbFJIhPg5dVbxEOEQuwedgvur5ftXEpSkO_GwelUlChR8Ku9ErMV4zGs7U/s1600/IMG_4764.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqlZna_RnTwGga2yBsxwuzwyZpS_v1LXNO2mkqXijCb1Ea5Sy45GdXSdwmwOTUsbpVziotmkpoQgZJSwAfmtbFJIhPg5dVbxEOEQuwedgvur5ftXEpSkO_GwelUlChR8Ku9ErMV4zGs7U/s200/IMG_4764.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>
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<i>The catalogue cover</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSV5Wrdb8ag5UGLXI0RhZr0Z7BXM4Nvgx7WBA6N6kxG8AB2mF_mjVaG0wkhgMecuQJlUhJAeze6qL8qfEugqNzkZT2jOOR0sB5BI6aZQ6MvGDksp2xZCZaLhSUpF184ea3DtWlgtl6j4c/s1600/IMG_4762.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="148" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSV5Wrdb8ag5UGLXI0RhZr0Z7BXM4Nvgx7WBA6N6kxG8AB2mF_mjVaG0wkhgMecuQJlUhJAeze6qL8qfEugqNzkZT2jOOR0sB5BI6aZQ6MvGDksp2xZCZaLhSUpF184ea3DtWlgtl6j4c/s200/IMG_4762.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_s3Ni52C0Y_p0RdFIiozqhzsdR7bZkOVKM7AzuSKMoS7FIOcWaYvBitetEwOrgLLtGx12-qtXGhq70GF4jb66pGluoztWvQJX_UZNOMMIKvTvWJZWbHiYgGxtKBcD7MJsxqmM6vSBQ_s/s1600/IMG_4763.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="102" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_s3Ni52C0Y_p0RdFIiozqhzsdR7bZkOVKM7AzuSKMoS7FIOcWaYvBitetEwOrgLLtGx12-qtXGhq70GF4jb66pGluoztWvQJX_UZNOMMIKvTvWJZWbHiYgGxtKBcD7MJsxqmM6vSBQ_s/s200/IMG_4763.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<i>The thumbnail and description</i></div>
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<p>Hazlitt's cleaned it, restored it, had it confirmed by the Louvre and it was then that we learned that it was actually the glorious masterpiece the Destruction And Sack Of The Temple Of Jerusalem. Painted by Nicholas Poussin in Rome in 1625-1626, it had been commissioned by the Pope's nephew Cardinal Barberini as a gift for Cardinal Richelieu! It fetched £4.5M when it was sold to the Rothschild foundation who gave it to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem where it is now the pride of the museum. <br /><p />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1kXPiTbM9aJITLNM77qNhFU72_aKm3CMZSPkmQMVOUQM44OJfAKc4k_2ym-iwfC8Thr4fYNP-wbTv5mH2TA9LB3j7Mz7aQMawHb2MWprAF2XVj5IvO7hsXrXgDtX8syj74cIehPFqpQQ/s1600/Nicolas_Poussin_-_The_Destruction_and_Sack_of_the_Temple_of_Jerusalem_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1kXPiTbM9aJITLNM77qNhFU72_aKm3CMZSPkmQMVOUQM44OJfAKc4k_2ym-iwfC8Thr4fYNP-wbTv5mH2TA9LB3j7Mz7aQMawHb2MWprAF2XVj5IvO7hsXrXgDtX8syj74cIehPFqpQQ/s320/Nicolas_Poussin_-_The_Destruction_and_Sack_of_the_Temple_of_Jerusalem_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<p>I visited the painting in Jerusalem in March of this year and as I stood in front of it I wondered at the mystery of its journey.<p /><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy67mf3SkVVWkZIeDqI0QFCtWwdsFkdQuG1wayWkeKSgIRTAR3dbzwQuwkr_FHZxN60Ew7Qkrfs_MX9yu-ev_xAZnyqLJSad5tN_Deg37zcVTW_KCB_surb-txxCcQzpy5o8efT7B_juY/s1600/IMG_4534.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy67mf3SkVVWkZIeDqI0QFCtWwdsFkdQuG1wayWkeKSgIRTAR3dbzwQuwkr_FHZxN60Ew7Qkrfs_MX9yu-ev_xAZnyqLJSad5tN_Deg37zcVTW_KCB_surb-txxCcQzpy5o8efT7B_juY/s320/IMG_4534.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<p>If the executors of Ernie's will, or Sotheby's, had had it cleaned as Christies had advised, they would have known what it was immediately. In the middle of the painting is a large menorah being carried out of a Roman temple. And it is the traditional shape of menorah that Poussin would have seen in Rome on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_of_Titus" target="_blank">Arch of Titus</a> (who was the general, and future emperor, who sacked and destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70CE in a brutal, fiery battle to put down the Jewish rebellion - and until 2009 that was the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menorah_(Temple)" target="_blank">earliest depiction of a menorah found</a>). Any historian would have known it to be destruction of the Temple as documented by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus#The_Jewish_War" target="_blank">Josephus</a>, an event that was the beginning of the diaspora and is mourned even today by Jews around the world.<p /><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA-bHpF2Wz_8OCo4Y1Hjrx4-6kSS7euoU8kEU98zbOjBq23Rjj-rjQJVTEDs9ndzWs89vvGbsW-3ClgdR2ymAbvTfW5bH-cQuEjyOePNbTa2I_rL8zs2PpXMlLq1mQyfeJ2BJ82G5MQl0/s1600/Nicolas_Poussin_-_The_Destruction_and_Sack_of_the_Temple_of_Jerusalem_-_Google_Art_Project+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA-bHpF2Wz_8OCo4Y1Hjrx4-6kSS7euoU8kEU98zbOjBq23Rjj-rjQJVTEDs9ndzWs89vvGbsW-3ClgdR2ymAbvTfW5bH-cQuEjyOePNbTa2I_rL8zs2PpXMlLq1mQyfeJ2BJ82G5MQl0/s200/Nicolas_Poussin_-_The_Destruction_and_Sack_of_the_Temple_of_Jerusalem_-_Google_Art_Project+%25282%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif;"><i>The menorah in the painting</i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioXbOMBL0spQz9RLxJnY8ug-DSXG4HOuNHIcm-ymA9fLr28hiPYqZ6Ol4g1w-s2bK35wy6QIonyNtZTmJI2iUjz139C9kqVywHeurRd8VRxjejwDkZeo9_q9e8FDvg3ynUY0AxFINjnhM/s1600/Titus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioXbOMBL0spQz9RLxJnY8ug-DSXG4HOuNHIcm-ymA9fLr28hiPYqZ6Ol4g1w-s2bK35wy6QIonyNtZTmJI2iUjz139C9kqVywHeurRd8VRxjejwDkZeo9_q9e8FDvg3ynUY0AxFINjnhM/s200/Titus.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0RoFq-m4ZzvA4FGaIEkCTbpgQiyoS5SMcY8KMlCAK8S7geAsBCDHLQcMqaeNYROBKW4qAx1IT4AdDbBPC2CjbM1wgqEaXu-9UyMbyrT5o_oyIFs3p7f9F7ULaPIKdWW2lLeFq2Uk5wBY/s1600/TST_TitusArch_Israel_photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="101" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0RoFq-m4ZzvA4FGaIEkCTbpgQiyoS5SMcY8KMlCAK8S7geAsBCDHLQcMqaeNYROBKW4qAx1IT4AdDbBPC2CjbM1wgqEaXu-9UyMbyrT5o_oyIFs3p7f9F7ULaPIKdWW2lLeFq2Uk5wBY/s200/TST_TitusArch_Israel_photo.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif;"><i>And on the Arch of Titus on the Via Sacra</i></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif;">in the Roman Forum, </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'guardian text egyptian web', georgia, serif;">celebrating </span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'guardian text egyptian web', georgia, serif;"><i>the sack and destruction of the Temple </i></span></div>
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<p>But the story didn't stop there. My cousins <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/nov/17/fiachragibbons" target="_blank">sued Sotheby's</a> for negligence in 1999 when this all came to light. The suit went on for several years until, in 2002, as Sotheby's realized their £3M insurance policy was running out, they settled (the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1800588.stm" target="_blank">BBC reported</a> "Pig swill estate wins Poussin war" !! ) and £1.4M went to the estate with the rest going to the lawyers.<br />
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In the end my father bought a beautiful painting and a clock out of the estate which he cherishes in his home, and a cabinet which was in our house for many years as he lovingly had it restored for his uncle is now in a museum in Los Angeles and known as the <a href="http://collections.lacma.org/node/198923" target="_blank">Onians Cabinet</a>. Hopefully many people are enjoying the many paintings Uncle Ernie saved, and millions of people will have a chance to marvel at the Poussin in Israel.<p />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZe42kWUsHBHMJBebaRijllcdhso6w3eyOJGinfyFIQbGHtE4jCSwSR7B014LNZi1C0qV-d96xpJCVTza5-oGucpRzMjmX1C0FypwnItVd7M87AyPknKnuvmm0fxKA5bhj5SfmfAR1Gfk/s1600/ma-2393369-WEB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="127" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZe42kWUsHBHMJBebaRijllcdhso6w3eyOJGinfyFIQbGHtE4jCSwSR7B014LNZi1C0qV-d96xpJCVTza5-oGucpRzMjmX1C0FypwnItVd7M87AyPknKnuvmm0fxKA5bhj5SfmfAR1Gfk/s200/ma-2393369-WEB.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<i>The Onians cabinet Naples, Italy circa 1600</i></div><br />
<p>Is it sad that the family did not recognize the painting? After all, the children will get plenty of money from the estate in the end. Or is it instead perfect that a painting that depicts such an enormous event in Jewish history was lost, picked up for pig swill cash, not researched by the family, and so was available to be bought by a benefactor who gave it to Israel so Jews from all over the world can cherish it? Personally, I think it's ironic and perfect. <br />
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Notes on the painting from an <a href="http://www.imj.org.il/exhibitions/presentation/exhibit/?id=280" target="_blank">exhibition</a> at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem<br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Nicolas Poussin was the foremost exponent and practitioner of seventeenth-century Classicism. This work from his early Italian period (1625-1626) was commissioned by Poussin' patron Cardinal Francesco Barberini, nephew and secretary of Pope Urban VIII, and was offered as a gift to Cardinal Richelieu, the French head of state. Barberini led a papal legation in a vain attempt to reconcile France and Spain, at the time engaged in a bloody war. Poussin draws a parallel in the painting between his patron, the would-be peacemaker, and the enlightened pagan emperor Titus, who tried unsuccessfully to prevent the ruin of Jerusalem and its temple. The composition is divided between the image of the Temple engulfed in flames in the background and the chaotic struggle, dominated by the striking figure of Titus on his white mount, in the foreground. A sense of drama, with the clash of arms and flashes of golden light from the Temple vessels, suffuses the entire work. Classical Roman architecture and sculpture provided sources for Poussin's painting. The scene seems to be a Roman city: the soldiers' dress is taken from reliefs on Roman sarcophagi; the facade of the Temple resembles that of the Pantheon; the figure of Titus was inspired by the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in the Capitoline; and the menorah derives from the famous depiction on the Arch of Titus. After Richelieu's death, the painting was inherited by his niece, who then sold it. It changed hands many times and eventually reached England. Its whereabouts were unknown from the late 1700s until 1995, when it was rediscovered by the art historian Sir Denis Mahon, restored to its original state, and donated to the Israel Museum in 1998.
<p /></span></span></div>Penny Herscherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09644292941777984227noreply@blogger.com1