On MLK day, I decided to take my kids to the Chabot Space Center to explore and take in one of their amazing planetarium shows. As we were getting seated, our baby, who is notoriously fussy, was doing what she does. Kind of whining, kind of talking, kind of screaming. As parents do, we were trying to get her to settle down, but she wasn’t having it.

As this was going on, the couple in front of us leaned into their little boy sitting between them and whispered “oh, she’s probably tired or hungry”. Fact of the matter was, she’d just woken from a long night’s sleep and was holding a bottle. So I gently leaned forward and jokingly said, “no, she’s just a brat”. 

Shortly after the movie started, the baby officially lost it and I was up and out of the theatre. Not 10 mins later and the family who I’d whispered to passed by with their child holding hands between them. Their kid had acted up and they had to remove him from the theatre. The father and I exchanged knowing glances and smiles. 

Fact of the matter was, our kids weren’t tired or hungry and probably could have held off a bathroom break until after the show finished. We were making excuses for them. Because, if they really were just brats that might hurt their self esteem, or worse, reflect poorly on us as parents.

The Atlantic has a fantastic piece every parent should read. In it the author, a psychiatrist, outlines a new phenomenon arising in her field: young adults from terrific homes with loving parents packed full of talent were showing up in her office feeling lost, adrift, unfulfilled.

She goes on to trace these feelings to a societal shift in parenting styles. Parents who once wanted respect from their kids, now desperately want to be their BFF. And in doing so, seem to be creating unintended second order effects. From the article:

When ego-boosting parents exclaim “Great job!” not just the first time a young child puts on his shoes but every single morning he does this, the child learns to feel that everything he does is special. Likewise, if the kid participates in activities where he gets stickers for “good tries,” he never gets negative feedback on his performance. (All failures are reframed as “good tries.”) According to Twenge, indicators of self-esteem have risen consistently since the 1980s among middle-school, high-school, and college students. But, she says, what starts off as healthy self-esteem can quickly morph into an inflated view of oneself.

In early adulthood, this becomes a big problem. “People who feel like they’re unusually special end up alienating those around them,” Twenge says. “They don’t know how to work on teams as well or deal with limits. They get into the workplace and expect to be stimulated all the time, because their worlds were so structured with activities. They don’t like being told by a boss that their work might need improvement, and they feel insecure if they don’t get a constant stream of praise. They grew up in a culture where everyone gets a trophy just for participating.

The trophy metaphor continues:

At the end of the season, the league finds a way to “honor each child” with a trophy. “They’re kind of euphemistic,” the coach said of the awards, “but they’re effective.” The Spirit Award went to “the troublemaker who always talks and doesn’t pay attention, so we spun it into his being very ‘spirited,’” he said. The Most Improved Player Award went to “the kid who has not an ounce of athleticism in his body, but he tries hard.” The Coaches’ Award went to “the kids who were picking daisies, and the only thing we could think to say about them is that they showed up on time. What would that be, the Most Prompt Award? That seemed lame. So we called it the Coaches’ Award.” There’s also a Most Valuable Player Award, but the kid who deserved it three seasons in a row got it only after the first season, “because we wanted other kids to have a chance to get it.” The coach acknowledged that everyone knew who the real MVP was.

Pulling this behavior forward, I’m beginning to see this parenting style taking root in startup culture.

As investor FOMO and entrepreneurial access to capital have increased, so too has the level of entitlement to that capital. Swap the trophy for a seed round, and that’s directionally where things are headed in startupland. Everyone gets a seed round. Everyone gets to be CEO. Everyone starts a billion dollar company. Everyone can be the next Zuckerberg. 

Just as with the kids lying on psychiatrist’s couches above, eventually the founders will come into contact with the real world. But the bullies on the playground they were protected from will now be unhappy customers. The encouraging teacher will be the mismatched cofounder. The coach who shielded them from wins and losses will be the investors looking for a return on their capital. For those who entered into entrepreneurship with that feeling of entitlement, they too will beginning to feel aimless, unfulfilled and adrift (although they’ll call it “pivoting”).

Tho I believe everyone ought to approach their careers as entrepreneurs, I don’t believe that means everyone has the skills or temperament for growing and running successful startups.

Not everyone gets a seed round, despite what you’re reading on Techcrunch.

PS- pretty sure the Atlantic piece inspires this SNL skit from over the weekend.

In her final episode, Oprah was asked if there was a common thread throughout her 25 years on the air. As she reflected on decades of interactions and interviews she distilled it down to one thing all of here guests shared:

I’ve talked to nearly 30,000 people on this show, and all 30,000 had one thing in common: They all wanted validation. If I could reach through this television and sit on your sofa or sit on a stool in your kitchen right now, I would tell you that every single person you will ever meet shares that common desire. They want to know: ‘Do you see me? Do you hear me? Does what I say mean anything to you?’

Understanding that one principle, that everybody wants to be heard, has allowed me to hold the microphone for you all these years.

This morning, as I woke to the news that the aggressive push to pass the controversial SOPA bill had been suspended (even if temporarily), I was reminded of the above sentiment.

In a post highlighting this change of direction on SOPA, the Examiner notes:

The online protests about the bill were surprising and large. They ranged anywhere from calling Representatives, companies, and senators to get them to change their mind, to actively moving domain’s away from and targeting the business model of the companies that supported/lobbied for the bill. GoDaddy lost well over 100,000 domains in the space of about 10 days due to their involvement with these bills, along with other various targets. Reddit in particular has been influential in turning the tide against SOPA and PIPA, and is a good demonstration of how the Internet enables Democracy.

I’m sure there were other forces at work that helped push the White House to take a position on the bill over the weekend, but the groundswell of activity from the technology community was certainly a factor.

As I engaged on this issue, I was blown away at the tools and resources that lowered the barrier for n00bs, like me, to be heard.

With just a few clicks I was able to find and contact my representatives and let them know my position on the bill. When there was new information available on arguments for or against the bill or proposed changes to the legislation, it spread like wildfire across my various social networks. Through these social networks and community sites, collective actions were organized and mobilized- from simply changing an avatar to moving domains to real world rallys and website blackouts. 

I know that there is still much work to be done and that these grassroots tools look like toys up against the power and influence of special interest groups and their lobbying dollars, but they’re an important and impactful start.

We’ve seen the power of these tools to organize and impact change on foreign soil. And now we’re seeing it on our own shores. 

It’s true that everyone wants to be heard, and today I’m especially grateful for the technologists and activists who are building the tools that allow us to be heard from the White House to the Senate floor.

Onward. 

Peer pressure has never really worked on me. 

In fact, it tends to have the opposite effect.

So when my friend Hunter started pushing his little #stopsopa avatar trick on Twitter, my reaction was a hearty, “meh”.

I’ve posted my thoughts on SOPA here. I’ve written and called my senators. I’ve even channeled my dollars away from SOPA supporters.

So I didn’t add his little banner on my profile because I don’t think it matters.

What does matter is taking real action.

There are many in our community who know executives at the companies that support SOPA. Call them. Explain why they’re wrong. Burn a bridge if you have to.

There are many in our community who have have donated to Senators who are supporting SOPA. Call them and explain why they’re wrong. Threaten to divert your dollars and votes to their competitors if you have to.

Put yourself out there.

Target the companies and individuals behind this terrible bill with real collective action (look how quickly GoDaddy changed their tune when they found themselves in our collective crosshairs).

Don’t just scream into the echo chamber.

Actions speak louder than avatars.

Last week, Renee and I dropped by Facebook to grab lunch with a friend of hers who has been at the company for a little less than a year. After the obligatory tour and oohs and ahhs over the new campus, we settle into lunch at the cafeteria. As we talked of his transition into a new company culture, I started noticing a reflexive response to how decisions were made and how teams operated.

Multiple times throughout the conversation he would repeat sayings like, “we think that done is better than perfect” or “we move fast and break things” followed by stories of corporate folklore wherein engineers and employees exemplified those axioms. It was clear that employees who embodied these values were celebrated and held out as examples to the rest of the company.

These mantras aren’t unique to Facebook. Google has their “Don’t Be Evil”.

Nor are they unique to technology companies.

Athletic coaches have used similar training techniques with athletes for ages.

I’m reading a book now by Daniel Coyle called The Talent Code. In it, Coyle tries to distinguish between raw talent and teachable talent through a process he calls “deliberate practice”. 

Summarizing a key point of the book book John Coyle observes:

Daniel Coyle describes the unique characteristics of the coaches who create the right environment for focus on deliberate practice. In one chapter he details the key elements of a master coach, by documenting the actions of a certain famous athletic coach. This coach’s “teaching utterances or comments were short, punctuated, and numerous. “There were no lectures, no extended harangues…. “He rarely spoke longer than twenty seconds. “What made this coach great, “wasn’t praise, wasn’t denunciation, and certainly wasn’t pep talks. “His skill resided in the Gatling-gun rattle of targeted information he fired at his players.”

“This, not that. Here, not there. “His words and gestures served as short, sharp impulses that showed his players the correct way to do something. “He was seeing and fixing errors. “He was honing circuits.”

This maps to what I was hearing at Facebook. Short, oft repeated phrases that reenforced the values of the culture and “honed the circuits” of employees. As I pecked around, I found they’d gone so far as to hang posters with these value statements around the company to reenforce them. 

The value of this reenforcement was clear in our lunchtime chat. When making decisions on how teams should operate, or what they should do in a given situation, the entire company had these touchstones they could point to in order to see if the decions they were about to make or the actions they were about to take, mapped to those well understood values.

This seemed to have an empowering effect at Facebook.

And I would argue that every company, particularly in our little corner of the world, could benefit wildly from having a similar set of guiding principles, captured in their own voice, and repeated frequently that can serve as the foundation for conditioning the kinds of cultures they want to build.

5 years ago today the iPhone was launched. The relationship with my mobile phone was forever changed. What was once singularly a device for emails, and occasionally calls, transformed into something much much more. And I began spending much much more time swiping, pinching and unlocking my way into a new world of connectedness.

Since that launch, AMR and I have stayed up to date on each subsequent iPhone release. As a result we’ve built up a stash of used iDevices. Some I’ve sold, some I’ve given away and a few I’ve handed down to my oldest kids to use as their primary phone or as iPod Touches. They love them, and I’ve loved seeing how they use them and what apps capture their imaginations.

But, over the holidays I began to notice a troubling trend. I hand’t just handed down an old device to my kids, I’d handed down to them the unhealthy relationship I had with my phone.

I often found myself saying, “will you please put that phone away” instantly followed with the pangs of guilt that can only come from a hypocritical heart. Like the dad from my favorite Saturday morning anti-drug PSA, they’d learned it from watching me.

Despite various strategies for curbing my phone usage, none of them stuck. 

So, I was intrigued to see one of my favorite thinkers on persuasion and behavior change, BJ Fogg, running a little personal project of he calls Tiny Habits.

The premise of Tiny Habits is pretty straight forward. Big changes begin by making baby steps of progress. And, just as babies can train themselves to walk, anyone can train themselves to change habits by breaking them down to an atomic level and creating context to instigate them.

You’ll have to apply for BJ’s program to get all the details, but one of his insights that I benefitted from was the idea of attaching the formation of a new habit to an old one. To do this, he encourages you to form a new habit statement like this: “AFTER I brush my teeth, I WILL floss one tooth”.  Note- these are decidedly tiny habits, so starting with only one tooth as opposed to the whole mouth is intentional.

What I found equally interesting was BJs approach to a Minimum Viable Product. Rather than build an app to enter progress, and push notifications as reminders, and badges for accomplishment, he executed the whole program with off the shelf parts and 0 new code. Instead of an app, he used Google docs. Instead of push notifications, he used email. And instead to badges, he simply congratulated or encouraged with a one line response in his daily reporting email.

The program ended for me on Saturday, and the results were really encouraging. After years of struggling with the habit of not looking at my phone between when I get home and when the kids are in bed, I finished the week with a 100% success rate. Interestingly, the habit that broke this wasn’t that big or ambitious at all- it was simply to switch my phone to airplane mode after I got off the train home.

I’m not much for self-help schemes, but my week long experiment was a much needed reminder that the biggest most overwhelming change can be made if broken down into the smallest, most attainable, parts. BJ’s framework was a simple and elegant way to demonstrate just that.

Over the holidays I had a chance to spend lots of time with my two oldest daughters. They’re in that awkward phase of life where they’re not really little kids anymore, but they aren’t adults, or even teenagers yet either. It’s a phase marketers have come to call “tweens”.

Wedged between these two developmental phases, tweens flit around, trying to figure out who they are. They run through different styles of clothes, music, foods, gadgets, looking for the ones that will help define them as they shed the old and put on the new them. 

The real challenge for tweens is they just haven’t found their place in the world yet, but they can’t go back to where they once were. So they’e stuck in between trying to figure themselves out.

We’re less than one week into 2012 and I’m finding myself surrounded by tweens again.

But this time it’s not my kids.

These tweens are the startups that raised between $500k and $2M last year. They’ve made some progress, but not enough to be be burning up servers. They’ve raised enough capital to prove or disprove some of their original theses, but are still uncertain about what the results from the tests are telling them. They’ve taken on the dilution and expectations that go along with the seed round of funding, but they can’t convince VCs they’ve achieved enough to warrant the $5-$10M round they really want.

It’s an awkward phase. 

Not a brand new idea anymore, but not a household name either these startups are struggling to find their place in the world too. Some have investors who are willing to continue supporting them as they figure out who they are. Some don’t. Many of them should go out of business or get bought for scraps, but some of them shouldn’t. 

Often these aren’t bad companies. Many of them are run by founders who have learned a tremendous amount suffering through that awkward discovery phase. They’ve validated their market, they’re energized to build and ready to tackle the world of opportunity they’ve discovered. problem is, they’re broke and burdened with an already heavy cap table and an overly optimistic valuation.

Some will give up. Some will hold out. And some will recognize the early mistakes they made around their execution and cap table then take this window of time to make the needed corrections to build their little kid of a business into a full grown adult. 

I’d like to see more do the latter. And if the emails in my inbox are any indication, I think this will be one of the more exciting phases of investment opportunities in 2012.