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Ann is the co-founder of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners which opened its doors in 1989. It was the first VC firm to focus exclusively on software. Since that time, 45 of its portfolio companies have been acquired or gone public. She began her career as a systems programmer at the Federal Reserve Bank. In 1976 Ann co-founded Open Systems, Inc., a top selling accounting software company, with a $500 investment. She operated Open Systems profitably for six years and then sold it for over $15 million.

$15 million in 1982 dollars is worth approximately $50 million today using GPD per capita measure, which is the appropriate metric for this kind of thing.

From page 299 of Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days:

When I went there, it was the first real business experience I had — although I had had part time jobs. I'd never been in a corporation, and it felt so glamorous to have a cubicle. Minneapolis is a bright city. There's the Nicollet Mall and you were right downtown in the city. It's like getting a job in San Francisco.

But it just wasn't inspiring. No one was chomping at the bit. I actually can't remember — I knew I was going to quit, but I can't remember the moment where I thought, "I'll quit and start a company." I still felt very empowered, like, "This isn't this hard a job. This is a big job and I've already gotten promoted once in the first 3 months and I know I can earn money. I can always come back to this, so why don't I break out?" So the three guys from the Federal Reserve that started the company with me — one guy did quit his job and the other two took a year sabbatical, just in case this didn't work. They held on to the safety ring.

There were not a bunch of people saying, "Start a company, start a company. Let's do this. Let's build something from scratch." It's so long ago now that I just remember the general feeling that there was very little to risk. I was somehow already fully trained for anything that might confront me. Of course, all that is false; there's a lot of risk and you are never fully equipped to… you just have to be very adaptable. It turned out that I was adaptable. I didn't know that until I did that, but it was just a feeling of fearlessness. "What's the risk? What will I have to lose? I'm sure I can do this." It was not cockiness, just that moment you feel in your youthfulness that you are sort of empowered to achieve.

I think what does separate some entrepreneurs from other entrepreneurs is we're not handwringers. We don't worry about the unknown. We don't really worry about the risk points ahead. As you get older and you get more experience, you train yourself to think ahead about the risk points versus just to take the next hill. But non-risk-takers and non-entrepreneurs would have really big headaches about this. They would need some level of comfort and safety.

That's something that we look for in entrepreneurs — that they have the courage to do the job. That they'll have the ability to judge the business situation. They'll have the ability to lead people. They'll have the ability to interact with the marketplace and to really build confidence into strategy.

It's pretty common to hear people make comments about others like "He's forgotten more about X than I've ever learned." Or they say it about themselves in a self-aggrandizing fashion.

Well I'm here to do the latter. I wrote this blog entry back in 2005, and while I remember being proud of the entry because it was well-written, informative, and had a snazzy title, I felt like I was reading someone else's writing. Because I'd forgotten every last bit of information recorded there.

So apparently this particular aphorism does have some basis in reality.

I've been doing a lot of reading lately, and today I was reading "Hiring is obsolete" by Paul Graham. I loved it, and the section on risk really stood out to me, and I'd like to highlight some specific bits.

So what you should invest in depends on how soon you need the money. If you're young, you should take the riskiest investments you can find.

All this talk about investing may seem very theoretical. Most undergrads probably have more debts than assets. They may feel they have nothing to invest. But that's not true: they have their time to invest, and the same rule about risk applies there. Your early twenties are exactly the time to take insane career risks.

The reason risk is always proportionate to reward is that market forces make it so. People will pay extra for stability. So if you choose stability– by buying bonds, or by going to work for a big company– it's going to cost you.

Riskier career moves pay better on average, because there is less demand for them. Extreme choices like starting a startup are so frightening that most people won't even try. So you don't end up having as much competition as you might expect, considering the prizes at stake.

…

But it's not necessarily a mistake to try something that has a 90% chance of failing, if you can afford the risk. Failing at 40, when you have a family to support, could be serious. But if you fail at 22, so what? If you try to start a startup right out of college and it tanks, you'll end up at 23 broke and a lot smarter. Which, if you think about it, is roughly what you hope to get from a graduate program.

Even if your startup does tank, you won't harm your prospects with employers. To make sure I asked some friends who work for big companies. I asked managers at Yahoo, Google, Amazon, Cisco and Microsoft how they'd feel about two candidates, both 24, with equal ability, one who'd tried to start a startup that tanked, and another who'd spent the two years since college working as a developer at a big company. Every one responded that they'd prefer the guy who'd tried to start his own company. Zod Nazem, who's in charge of engineering at Yahoo, said:

I actually put more value on the guy with the failed startup. And you can quote me!

So there you have it. Want to get hired by Yahoo? Start your own company.

The entire essay is absolutely worth reading for anyone interested in starting their own business.

Back in January of 2007, I wrote a list of 52 things that I want to do before I die. To this day, it stands out as one of the most vividly-remembered things I've ever written. Turns out that writing a list of your life goals is actually pretty useful. It's sort of like writing a business plan for your life, and you might discover some things about yourself that you didn't know along the way.

[ 2007 list | All lists ]

1. Fall in love and get married
2. Stay married
3. Have a son
4. Have a daughter
5. See them both become self-actualized, successful people at whatever they choose to do
6. Meet my grandchildren
7. Never stop moving towards self-actualization and always make forward progress in self-improvement
8. Own my own business
9. Start my own financially-successful website
10. Be out of debt by age 29
11. Have a net worth in excess of $1 million by age 30
12. Have a net worth in excess of $50 million by age 35
13. Have a net worth in excess of $1 billion by age 50
14. Be on the cover of a prominent business or news magazine
15. Write a book
16. Go to South Africa
17. Visit Egypt and the pyramids with Fabien
18. Own a collection of fine watches. (God I love watches!)
19. Go to a professional driving school
20. Drive an open-wheel (Indy) car
21. Design my own home and have it built for me.
22. Own a new Ferrari
23. Order and pick up a brand-new Porsche 911 Turbo in Europe
24. Participate in a Porsche event on two seperate continents
25. Buy a Dodge Viper for Rich. Just to say "Thank-you."
26. Visit Australia, Fiji, and New Zealand with my dad
27. Visit Antarctica
28. Visit Iceland
29. Visit Norway
30. Go on an African safari (non-hunting)
31. Get my SCUBA license in Guam and go diving with Nick there
32. Dive the Great Barrier Reef also with Nick
33. Go to China and see the Great Wall
34. Throw a huge birthday party for myself when I'm old since I've only had one in my life.
35. Get rid of the bittersweet feeling that the holidays brings by having my own family where we stay home and celebrate and people come to us, rather than having to figure out where I'm going on what day. Be the center rather than participate in other people's centers.
36. Own a beautiful home somewhere in New Hampshire
37. Contribute something meaningful to a great charity or organization
38. Take my grandmother to a Red Sox-Yankees game
39. Take my grandmother to a Red Sox World Series Game
40. Go to the summer Olympics in another country
41. Do something truly extravagant with my close friends, just for the hell of it.
42. Create a full college scholarship to a worthy institution based on need and merit that can only be won by a white male.*
43. See a Josh Groban-Charlotte Church duet. Live. Somewhere in the first five rows.
44. Start a news-media company
45. Start an angel/venture capital fund for startups
46. Retire and run my own (or someone else's) charity.
47. Have a library in my home.

* There are many scholarships for women and minorities. At this point in time, however, boys are the minority in college. Society may have forgotten about them, but I have not.

As I mentioned in my last post, there's a lot going on right now, and for the first time in quite a while, everything that's happening is positive. I thought I would share my short term plans with the small number of readers I have more for accountability purposes than to say "Look at me!"

I firmly believe that getting others involved in your success is just as essential a part of the process as anything else. It's an extra measure of external accountability.

Finishing school

My first goal is to finish school. I've been struggling with motivation problems as it pertains to schoolwork, but I've recently been jazzed because I found out a piece of good news that I didn't anticipate: rather than graduating in December of 2009, I can graduate in May instead.

I can't even tell you how exciting this is. As someone who has struggled to finish anything, I can truthfully say that this will be a huge weight off my shoulders. I've never finished anything in my life. I'm just not one of those people that can put there shoulders down, dig in, and finish something. I have to believe in what I'm doing to get anywhere, otherwise I give up.

Things must have their own intrinsic merit. Merit cannot be imposed by an external force, otherwise I will not do it.

Starting my own business

I mentioned in my last post that David and I have something going, and that the business plan is largely written. While I don't think it was technically necessary to write the plan, I think it's been a worthwhile exercise, because it allows you to get a better handle on what you want to do; refine your income sources; learn about your competitors in a structured fashion; and just generally get a better handle on where you stand.

Getting a small amount of funding will be the next big challenge, but frankly I'm not really worried about that. It's a solid idea, the plan stands on its own, and I've done the hard part of asking for money to fund a business idea before. It was uncomfortable, but this time I'm actually looking forward to it because I believe in this from my toes right up to my (thinning) hair roots.

Wrapping up OnThePharm

I've been thinking about how to wrap up OnThePharm for a little while now, and I've hit on a good way to close it out. I won't share it here, but it's a topic close to professional students' hearts of all stripes and colors. I hope to get the two to three posts written in the next month.

Unlike some med bloggers, I won't be deleting the blog or taking it down or selling it. (Though I could probably sell it for $10K or so.) While I don't ever envision myself moving back to the medical field in any front-line capacity, I do still have a love for the field, and I would like to eventually be in a position to use the property to build a nice pharmacy publication. I'd like to hire a couple of pharmacy and/or medical students to write current news articles and opinion pieces for me on a pay-per-post basis. Get a nice theme, get a couple of premium advertisers and go to town. More as a hobby than to actually make a significant profit from it.

That will likely be 2-3 years from now, though.

Keeping my head above water

I haven't had a panic or anxiety attack since February. Before that it had been since ~November. I want to keep that going, and I think I'll be able to. My life hasn't felt this in line with my inner desires since I was back in high school, ready to charge off to university to conquer the world.

I'm able to exercise — I bought a nice road bike! — and I'm loving it. I just wish the roads around my house were less trafficked, and had fewer potholes. As it is, I have to keep my bike at my dad's house, because riding it is too painful (literally) to do so around here.

Over the last month, I've unconsciously begun moving forward again in a personal development sense of the word. I've started several new things, and dropped several others during that time. I've begun studying economics formally, and while I've struggled with motivation at times, I'm moving forward. David and I have something interesting in the early startup stages that will quite likely be incredibly profitable, but more importantly, it's relevant to anyone with a driver's license. While it's not interesting from a low-level, implementation point of view, it is interesting in that it does solve a big, higher-level problem.

So while the business plan for that is ~60% written, I'm juggling some other things as well. One of them being elimination. You see, one of the quickest ways to make progress when you're trying to work on yourself is to simply eliminate that which adds no value to your life. Here are some of the things I've done over the last two years…

Cut down time spent on discussion forums

As of this writing, I have 22,409 posts on the Ars Technica discussion forums. I'm sorry to say that most of that time has been wasted. Yes, I've made several friends, and many acquaintances during the time spent there, but there's been an inordinate amount of time and mental and emotional energy expended there, with little to show for it.

When I backslide and start posting more, I'm quickly reminded that I could better spend my time doing other things when discussions quickly devolve into dog-piling and other similar kind of uselessness.

Pruned my RSS subscriptions

Unlike many who enjoy technology, I don't find that having tons of RSS feeds essential or even particularly interesting. Lately, I've found it counterproductive, as seeing whatever new thing is coming tends to lend itself to a consumption mindset — so I've been religiously pruning subscriptions that don't add value to my life in any meaningful way. Even some of the blogs that I've followed for years. Indeed, this is a natural extension to cutting down on the amount of time spent on discussion forums.

I find that the less time I spend taking in information, the more time I actually spend doing things that are worthwhile. Things like biking, working on our business, and talking and spending time with friends or family.

I'm using RSS for three things now: to keep up with those I care about, to take in blogs that add value to my life — I've been loving Success Soul lately — and to take in a very limited amount of information in two narrow channels: technology and medicine. I have literally three feeds for news, and of the content they push, I read maybe 5% of what's published. I hit that "Mark all as read" button religiously.

Decreased my media consumption

I watch far less television than I did even two months ago. I actively avoid watching sports, because it's such an amazing sinkhole for time. It's currently baseball season, and someone in my family watches every single game. At six games a week at 3.5 hours per game, that's about 21 hours per week spent in front of the tube. Almost a full day.

What a complete and utter waste of time.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy sports. Particularly playoffs. I would even like to own my own professional sports franchise at some point down the road — most likely basketball — but then passive consumption becomes smart business.

Decreased my alcohol consumption

I've never been a big drinker, per se. Maybe once a month I'd have a couple of drinks. Now it's more like once every two or three months. I find that as I spend time doing things that are worthwhile, my desire for alcohol has decreased to levels even lower than they were before.

Marx once said that religion is the opiate of the masses, and I believe that he was right. But I also believe that alcohol is, too. (And if you want to get technical about it, alcohol uses the same reward pathways that opiates use, which is why opioid antagonists show quite a bit of efficacy in alcohol dependence. )

Along with alcohol, I'll throw in cigars. I haven't smoked a cigar since my birthday, and I haven't really wanted one.

It should be noted that both cigars and alcohol are expensive hobbies relative to the satisfaction one derives from them. Worthwhile activities don't leave you with a foul taste in your mouth or a hangover when you're finished.

Pruned some friends

The greatest change that I have made in terms of lasting impact has been on friends. It's hard to cut loose the dead weight in one's life, because it's uncomfortable. Giving up booze and cigars is easy because they don't talk back. They don't call on the phone.

But it can be done, and I would urge those that are in unhealthy relationships — both romantic and otherwise — to reconsider. Life can be so much more rewarding without dead weight dragging you down.

–

You'll notice that a common theme here has been changing my mindset from that of consumption to that of abundance. I find that the less passive consumption I partake in, the happier and more buoyant as a person I become.

I have a couple of more personal development posts in the works, but not many, and they're less in the way of pontification, and more in the way of explanation. I don't find writing about personal development rewarding so I tend not to do it, and others are far better at it than I. What IS interesting are the results that come about as a result of making constant effort to better yourself.

Ben Franklin is one of my all-time favorite historical figures; there are few people who have been universally successful in all they've done: business, politics, science, and humanitarianism. Franklin was one of these, and he's left a guidebook for those who wish to follow in his footsteps. (And really, how can you beat $2.50 for a brand-new book?)

I've been reading through it lately, and while it's easy reading, it's so chock-full of wisdom that I find it slow going. Lunchtimes and evenings find me with pencil in hand, underlining and annotating the bits that especially speak to me, and there are many.

I came across this paragraph, and I was astonished. With the anti-vaccination crazies gaining influence and mindshare, this earthy bit of common sense was a breath of fresh air, written in the 1700s by someone who knew a world without vaccines, and saw the devastation caused by these diseases — smallpox, polio, and many others — first-hand.

In 1736, I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by smallpox, taken in the common way. I long regretted him bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it, my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and therefore that the safer should be chosen.

Simple and profound. Alas, I don't think the anti-vaccination types will take his advice to heart, and we are all the poorer for it.

Zimbabwe has been experiencing mind-boggling inflation. So much so that they've recently printed $100bn bills.

The sad thing is that these bills are worth more on eBay than they are as actual currency (click for larger):

This harks back to the time when it was less expensive to burn money in post-WWI Germany than it was to use the money to buy wood, which is the origin of this famous picture:

Mind-boggling.

While going through my RSS reader this morning, I came across one of JD's daily links posts, and one of them was to A History of Debt in America. It's quite a long article, but well worth reading. Unfortunately for people like me, reading large quantities of text on a screen gets to be painful after a few minutes.

I whipped up a quick PDF of all of the pages, and Tom, the author of the article, has graciously allowed me to post it here.

It's 21 pages long, and will take you a little while to read it, but it's worth the time.

PDF link.

If you enjoyed this, you may enjoy my post on how paying off debt is like folding laundry — a behavioral, as opposed to mathematical approach to paying off debt.