Gotham Gal

More thoughts on motherhood

Last week Josh went up to visit his sisters for spring fling.  He left on Wednesday night.  Thursday morning I got up at my usual time, 7am and began the day.  I work out Thursday mornings so I got into my workout attire, came downstairs, walked the dog, posted a blog, sat down for breakfast, coffee and the daily read of the NYTimes but something was different. 

It is not as if Josh comes down and has a leisurely breakfast with me but it was that he was not there.  He did not come down to say good morning, take a look at the paper, grab a cup of coffee and have a quick convo about the day ahead.  Instead Fred came down and we had a brief convo about the day and off he went and there I sat.  The silence was deafening. 

I have been thinking about that moment since it happened.  Over the past six years I have slowly rebuilt a new career for myself.  The first angel investment I did closed in June 2007 with Curbed Media.  I made a conscious decision to start down a new path for several reasons.  I looked at where our kids were in their lives and realized that in seven years we would be empty nesters.  The amount of time that I devoted to them from running errands to making dinner took up significant hours.  Those hours were slowly going to be diminished to a very small percentage of my day over the next seven years.  I wanted to start filling that time so when seven years were up I would have my days filled with other things that I enjoy.  I do enjoy building businesses and so the path I chose made perfect sense. 

So what have I been thinking about is that the path I took was to make sure I had balance in my life between fulfilling my own intellectual curiosity yet being available whenever for our kids and family.  It has worked beautifully.  Yet the other morning I thought now I can do whatever I want.  I do not have any intention of stopping what I do from angel investing to the Womens Entrepreneur Festival to blogging but I do not really have to find balance anymore.  I can be completely unbalanced.  Certainly I am lucky to be in that position but last Thursday morning it was a strange realization.  I thought I could just blow off that meeting and go to the art show.  I could just sit on a couch and read a book.  I could jump on a plane and go to Europe for a few days.  I could, I could, I could.  I was letting myself dream big. 

I might have prepared for the year when Josh becomes the last kid to leave the nest (he has one more year left at home) but I am not sure anything prepared me for the thoughts that seemed to ramble around my head.  The good news is that I have not lost that sense of self that I felt seven years ago that I got back six years ago.  Being a mother is one of the most rewarding incredible experiences. Women that are beginning to sit on publicly traded boards or women who are starting their companies or women that are CEOs of major companies or women who change the world through non-profits or women who get involved with their kids schools is personally rewarding yet the part about being a mother is still prominent in our lives no matter what. The feeling of our children leaving the nest and our job being shifted when that person is no longer under your roof is something that hits home for all of us in different ways.  It is beginning to hit me and I am thrilled that we raised our kids with wings to soar from our nest but it is still a very very very strange feeling. 

Moms are big influencers

Moms influence their daughters (and sons) at every level.  My Mom, Judy Solomon, had more than a handful of careers.  She started out as a teacher because for her generation being a teacher or a nurse were top on the list in regards to a career path.  After having me, her first child, she stayed home to be a Mom.  I am pretty sure she never embraced being home with the kids.  She was always looking to do something else and the opportunities were not endless.  Once her kids were in school full time she began on an entrepreneurial path of starting a variety of businesses.  She had a head for business.  Growing up, her father owned a shoe store in Bakersfield.  After he died her brother took over the shop and within less than two years he had run it into the ground.  We used to say that if she took over the shoe store it would have become a chain. 

Her first venture was opening up a plant store in Georgetown called The Green Scene.  It was the early 70's.  Geraniums, macrame plant hangers and house plants were big.  She always had a nose for the future.  I am not so sure how the store did financially because her location should have been about three blocks south of where it stood. No doubt that was based on the fear of a rent too high to meet.  She grew the business from the back end working with home owners and businesses putting plants in their spaces.  For a variety of reasons particularly because her partner wanted out she had a couple of year run and then closed the store.

Her next business was working with a few crazy women starting a magazine geared towards teens.  Again she was on to something.  The articles were honest and dealt with the issues of the time.  If only the Internet was around she could have built a large content business. That was a short term business.

My parents got divorced and she knew that she needed to bring in a real income.  She took a class at night getting some type of masters.  After that she landed a job as the head of sales for a trade magazine.  She loved what she did and she was really good at it but hated the management.  She began to make a name for herself and was offered an opportunity to work with a company that was from Japan expanding their industry focused magazines into the US.  She was savvy.  She got a contract with them insuring her job for a full year with a golden parachute to kick in if they weren't able to get the company off the ground.  Smartest thing she ever did.  She quit where she had been working and two weeks into the new company they decided not to expand in to the US which left her with a nice chunk of change to figure out what she wanted to do next without the pressures of having to jump back into the game quickly.

She liked the industry that she was in and had plenty of contacts.  She decided to build a company that she called JSA (Judy Solomon Associates) where she would represent a variety of industry trade magazines selling their ads.  She built that into quite a business.  By the time she retired she was financially well off which is something that really drove her.  She wanted to live her life a particular way and she knew it was up to her to make that happen...and she did.

My Mom was multi-talented.  She was an artist (there was a point where she painted), a great cook, she loved to read and do the NY Times crossword puzzle daily and stay on top of politics.  She loved to work, be challenged and use her brain to think about voids in the marketplace.  She had many careers while keeping balance in her life and challenging her intellectually.  There is no question that I learned from that.  I could use a variety of words to describe her but I think she would have liked to be described as an entrepreneur. She probably did not think of herself as one but trust me, she was.

The Spiritual Meaning of the Internet

There are not that many friends at my age that are as romanced as Fred and I are with the power of the Internet.  I have one close friend who is as passionate about the web as I am yet her passion is about the spiritual meaning where I am all about how many incredible businesses we can grow.  I love talking to her about this. 

She believes the Internet is a spiritual gift.  This tool has given us the ability to connect with people across the globe.  That the Internet fills us up and gives us each the access to people that we would have never had the opportunity to connect with before. 

This conversation really started me thinking about so many different things.  How people in areas of this world who in the past had limited access to education can now (through the web) use their brain to learn and perhaps think differently.  In turn that might be the key factor in changing what is happening in war torn countries.  How about the artisans in countries that had a very small audience to sell their wares to now has the entire globe.  How through those transactions the income will change the way they live by just putting a roof over their head and food in their belly. 

I have probably told this story before but in the 90's I had a friend who had started an interactive agency.  He understood the power of the net.  He owned more simple one word domain names because he fundamentally knew that each of them would be worth something down the line.  His sister lived in Pittsburgh and had a teenage daughter who felt lost in her own community.  She really did not find a connection among her peers based on her own interests.  That can be incredibly lonely particularly as a teenager.  She happened to be a They Might Be Giants fan.  Their website had a community that had grown around it.  She'd come home and get on the computer and talk to other people around the globe that had that one connection which was being a fan of the music group.  This online community made her feel empowered and connected and that translated to feeling good about herself and the future.  She knew that she would go on to college and find other people who she could connect with.  To me, that is the spiritual meaning of the Internet.

The web continues to transform the way that we live our lives starting with a constant connection in our pocket.  An ecommerce platform to buy anything around the globe, the access to content, the ability to constantly communicate, to share our experiences, photos and thoughts, the ongoing daily flow of new music, to ability to build unique business models that would not existed even 10 years ago, to crowd funding and crowd sourcing the web is an amazing place with powers that most of us just take for granted.  Can we all remember when we did not even have ATM cards or wireless phones.  As we move forward with technology it is easy to forget what life was like before hand.

Thinking about the world wide web as a world wide tool for community is the one piece that not only connects us to each other across many divides but also has given us a reason to take a breath, stand back and connect with the people we see every day at a different level because no matter what the web provides us in regards to finding our way and a community that we connect with, being able to sit around a table and break bread becomes even more important as we all ride this technology train that is taking us to a place that none of us are quite sure of. 

Transparency in Legal Documents

I had to do something this week that I have never done before which is almost walk away from a verbal commitment I made towards giving money to a company.  It has to do with legal documents and zero transparency.

I can't stress enough the importance of having a company being built on smart legal documents that create transparency for every investor in the company.  Over time there will be more documents drawn up as more money comes into an organization but those first set of documents set a tone for everything going forward. 

Investing in a company is risky but when the documents are anti-investors then there is nothing legally covering your risk.  If you have intellectual property the documents need to be shared.  When a company shares documents with me that are a mess it sends a lot of red flags.  It makes me want to dig deeper to find if there are other deals that I don't know about that might crop up later from employment contracts to advisor shares.  When you start to take money from the first round of investors particularly ones that have seen more documents than they care to, listen to their advice about cleaning up the legal part of the company before moving forward.  It is for the good of everyone.  Documents are not like a diner where everybody gets a different order. 

I felt terrible thinking that I would have to walk away from a commitment but it was the company/entrepreneur that was putting me in a situation where I had no choice.  I can't participate when I know that we will discover information after the closing that will put all the investors in a situation that did not need to take place. 

Politics

President Barack Obama addresses the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference in Williamsburg, Virginia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The last few weeks there have been many articles written on why new legislation on guns did not get passed.  Now we are going to watch the Senate attempt to pass new legislation on immigration. 

Entrepreneurs are a rare breed.  They are people with a wealth of ideas or sometimes one brilliant idea that starts out as a thought that eventually evolves into a company, product, non-profit, etc.  Sometimes no matter how great the idea is the concept fails.  It is not the idea that failed but the execution.  Many times someone else might end up taking that concept and because they are better at execution making it work. There are so many mountains to climb and successes to achieve at many stages of a company. It isn't all about the idea.

I do believe success has a better chance with leaders of a vision that can get down in the weeds with each top manager in their company to nurture, challenge and motivate them to execute on the vision.  That energy and leadership bleeds into an organization from top down.  Each company has its own culture and vibe and that comes from the top.  Certainly a leader also has to take time to think out of the weeds in order to see the big picture or otherwise you end up with weeds.

I have been a Democrat since I was born.  When I think of Obama as an entrepreneur this is what I see.  He is great at marketing the vision to the masses but he isn't very good at marketing his vision to his company.  That company is the Senate and Congress.  When companies grow and the entrepreneur who originally founded the idea isn't able to move up another mountain many times the board brings in another candidate who might be better suited to run the company at the stage that it is at.  I believe it is important to keep that entrepreneur engaged because they see the big picture.  In our Government the founding fathers were the entrepreneurs who wrote the constitution that set up the foundation of our country.  They are obviously not running the country anymore but many CEO's (aka Presidents) have come in to run this organization for 4 and sometimes 8 year runs. The board is essentially the voting public.  It is up each President to move the company forward based on the original principles set forth.  Some do a better job than others. 

I do believe in Obamas vision for change. The changes in the private sector are so way ahead of our government that it is creating problems.  We can begin with education.  20 years ago we should have started STEM curriculum in all junior high schools as the supply of jobs is exceeding the demand because there are not enough kids graduating with the skills for the jobs available.  That is causing the price of these jobs to go way up.  Obama has set forth a vision that he is simply not executing on.  I am pretty sure our forefathers were happy for everyone to have a musket because there wasn't huge law enforcement and the country was very spread out but if George Washington came back today to see the arsenal of guns including the automatic shotguns with magazines that can fire off 150 rounds in seconds I bet he would be aghast. 

It is not pretty how our Government works and perhaps that is why Obama isn't getting down in the weeds with our Senators.  Yet this company has been at it for a long time and I am not so sure that preaching to the people who agree with what he says is how to get bills passed.  When you come into a company as the President you have to understand how a company works to get things done.  It is the same in Government.  Obama has been at it for more than four years and I would hope that he would figure it out sooner than later that he has to work in the system as ugly as it is to get his vision executed on or we will all end up no better off than we were when he took the job. 

The Reality of how you get Elected

I wonder if any of the US Senators who voted against the proposed law to expand background checks for gun purchases woke up the morning after watching the manhunt for the Boston bombers regretted their decision.  As a country we watched sections of Massachusetts be locked down for one lone man yet as a country we were not able to pass laws that just make common sense.  I get the desire for many American to own a gun.  We are a gun society.  How do we pass laws just to insure that people who own guns are licensed and vetted.  Why is that such a big deal? 

The majority of Americans would have liked to see this law passed but unfortunately it was not.  Certainly the NRA will be supporting the campaigns of each of the US Senators who said no on this law.  Here is the reality of the next go-around for these US Senators who voted no even if they believe in their hearts that they voted for their constituents is they will have a really hard time getting re-elected at their next election.

Here is the the reality of getting voted in to the US Senate even if you are a Democrat or a Republican is you have to raise money, a lot of money.  I know because years ago I had fundraisers at our house.  They were for people running for the US Senate in states around the country.  Alaska, North Carolina, Ohio and others.  If you do a search for the biggest donors of the four US Senators that voted against the gun law; Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota you will discover that they came from NYCity.  Maybe the NRA will make up those dollars but I seriously doubt it. 

So these four US Senators not only voted against a law that the majority of Americans wanted and one that would have been a good step in the right direction for gun legislation because they were concerned about their own jobs going forward in their own states.  They have each sealed the deal that they will have a very difficult time financially on their re-election.  They did not vote with their head and I am not sure what their reasoning was behind the vote they each cast.  It was a sad day for the country. 

It was a strange week and now we are all holding our breath on the next law to be voted on when it comes to immigration reform.  Based on the last performance of our senate I sincerely doubt that anything will change. 

 

Marlboro Lights

Marlboro Lights (Photo credit: jon|k)

At this point we all know how terrible cigarette smoking is for you.  I was sitting in the airport and heard a raspy womans voice say she was going to go get a case of cigarettes in duty-free and I thought of course she is.  Her voice sounded like she had been smoking since she was 10 and she was in her early 70s. 

Regardless I have had a relationship as many have with cigarettes my whole life.  I don't know if it is my dna or my pure will power but I have been a casual smoker and never had a problem with cigarettes. They also feel and taste better when you smoke them.  It is the next morning when you realize how gross they are. 

When I was a kid my Grandmother would keep little jars of cigarettes around her apartment.  She did not smoke but it was what people did.  My how times have changed.  At 14 I snuck a few into my pocket and brought them home.  I actually told my Mom about it and asked her what they were like.  She had smoked before I was born and went cold turkey when she was pregnant with me.  I remember sitting on her bed and lighting up.  She then said "ok now inhale".  I did and coughed for what seemed like minutes.  Then she looked at me and said "did you like it'?  Pretty smart on her part.

In High School I was a casual smoker.  I'd bum a cigarette off people but never ever bought a pack for myself.  That would mean I smoked.  When I went to college in London I started to smoke.  Everyone smoked over there.  I would buy a pack ever two weeks or so.  I was able to do that without ramping up to become a 5 cigarette a day smoker.  When I got on the plane to return to the states after six months I decided no more.  I didn't touch a cigarette for a year.

Fast forward I would bum a cigarette every once awhile at a party but I was a random even smoker.  Super casual.  When I am in Paris I always buy a pack and sit at a cafe and have a few cigarettes while watching the world go by but after I am done I always give the rest of the pack to the lucky table sitting next to me.

We were in the Bahamas this past weekend for a quick trip.  Perfect recharge of the batteries.  Our friends have a house down there.  We have known them for 20 years.  We met them when both of our daughters were one years old.  We met in the suburbs of Chappaqua through a city friend.  We used to drink wine on Friday afternoon and smoke cigarettes while the kids played.  The boys would come home and join in on our wine drinking and her husband would also join in on the smokes.  It was fun to buy a pack with them over the weekend and resume our old ways..  Yet I woke up the next day and my mouth tasted like an ash tray. 

I am lucky that my life long enjoyment of cigarettes has been an ebb and flow yet never an obsession.  I won't touch a cigarette probably until I return to the Bahamas next year but I am sure when I light up the memory of the ashtray mouth will completely be gone and I will just enjoy the moment. 

Applauding every choice that a woman makes

This week after being overwhelmed with articles on womens choices from one end of the spectrum to the other I decided to take this Monday to write my thoughts on the subject.  A substitution for the Woman Entrepreneur of the Week.

I started thinking about this when I caught a glimpse of the front page of New York Magazine this past week and was looking forward to reading the top story; The Feminist Housewife. 

The timing could not be more perfect for this article.  The past month have been filled with endless articles about Sheryl Sandbergs book, Lean In.  The weeks before was the conversation on Marissa Mayer and her policy changes at Yahoo.  The chorus was singing, rise to the top, be the woman we all can be, break through those glass ceilings.  You can do it all even if you get blasted from the press and everyone around you. 

Bottom line is nobody can have it all if you are a man or a woman.  It is not possible.  No matter what choice you make as you go down the path of life there are always compromises to be made.  Being honest about them is a whole other ballgame. 

The article about the Feminist Housewife was interesting.  It portrayed women who have made a conscious decision to stay at home.  Some women depending on their generation believe that these women, who are educated with solid jobs that are seeing an upward trajectory in their careers are making a mistake by opting out of their careers.  We worked so hard to get here how could you possibly decide to stay home like a 50’s housewife? 

The answer is simple.  We live in a fast paced world that is very different from the land of Ozzie and Harriet.  Years ago when I was running a company in garment center I would hear the same story from many of the women buyers over and over again.  They worked incredibly hard with serious long hours and so did their husbands.  They would get home and most evenings just bring something home for dinner to make life easier.  The kids would either be picked up at daycare on the way home or they were teenagers who were doing whatever they wanted in the afternoon with zero supervision or guidance.  Dinner would be stressful as the night was filled with angst of homework, household chores and catching up.  The night would end and they would all go to sleep and do it again the next day.  On the weekend the majority of Saturday would be spent running errands in order for the weeks to run semi-smoothly.  It was terribly stressful on everyone including the kids.  So if one of the parents salary is just covering childcare, if they even have that, then the idea of having one parent run the household and the other person bring in the cash makes for a less stressful environment of course if both people have bought into that concept.  What would be wonderful is if half the people who choose to stay home and run the household are men.  Maybe some of those men are better at keeping schedules, doing laundry, making dinner, helping the kids with homework and organizing their lives.  Then nobody would even have the conversation about women opting out of their career to stay home.

Here is the other challenge, once you get off the train, for lets say 10 years, how do you get back on.  Sheryl, Marissa and others have been groomed their whole lives just like Jaime Dimon (Chase), Lloyd Blankfein (Goldman Sachs) and Robert Iger (Disney) to graduate from college then go on to on to graduate school and run a largely traded companies. These are not people who started their own companies with an idea but run these companies. 

I stayed home for four years when our kids were young. We went apple picking, we baked chocolate chip cookies, we spent plenty of time at play dates and parks, I even ran the soccer division (the only woman on the field ).  I managed our lives and for a time it worked for me until it didn’t. It didn’t because I wasn’t happy doing that anymore.  I mentally needed more.  I wanted to think about growing businesses instead of what was for dinner.  I still think about what I am making for dinner but I wanted to do that while thinking about business.   I was able to get back on the train and reinvent my career. 

There are more choices now than ever for everyone. More women are starting their own businesses and more men are too.  There are opportunities to work in flexible situations where you can be a bit more balanced.  Technology has changed the workplace but it has also changed the home life.  You can order your groceries on line yet we are also running at a very insane pace.  I get the reason why someone in the household wants to stay home and be the constant with their kids.  I also get the reason why someone does not want to stay home but figure out how to have their career and kids too.  I understand both sides.

At the end of the day, it is all about what works for you and what works for you and your partner.  I was sitting at the playground at my nieces school this week watching the 4-10 year old kids running around the playground.  As gender issues are the constant hot topic these days, I zeroed in on the boys all over the basketball court slamming into each other trying to get the ball in the basket and only one girl joining in on that fun.  Across the court was the swings where most of the girls hung out and played while chatting.  Is that nature or nurture?  I am a believer that most of it is nature.  So, the beauty for women is that we have options galore, actually more than men.  We can get educated and lead the charge like Sandberg, we can get educated and choose to take a different career path, we can stay at home, we can go in to non-profits, we can become anything we want.  We can leave the game and we can come back to the game.  But at the end of the day that one thing that we have zero choice in is that we all need to applaud each other no matter what choices we make.  I want to stop reading about other women disrespecting choices that women make.  We are women and we can make any damn choices that we choose to.  Life is long and we should each do what makes us happy in our own personal life without anyone passing judgement on the choices we make.  Bravo to the woman who choose to leave a career of law and stay home and bravo to the woman who choose to start her own law firm when she has three kids under 4 at home.  It is her choice and we should applaud the fact that we get to make those choices. 

The History of the Internet

I spoke the other night at Aaron Cohens class.  He teaches at NYU and his class is called The History of the Internet.  Considering I lived through the history it was a perfect place to speak. 

When I walked into the classroom they were discussing a paper that Mary Meeker wrote in 1996.  She believed in certain companies to invest in although cautious.  She also was bold in her prediction of how many people would be using the Internet in 10 years.  She fell short by about 30%.  Ended up that the Internet actually turned out to be bigger than many thought. 

The class was also discussing social media.  Will Facebook still be as important ten years from now as today?  One kid said he would short Apple and be long on Facebook.  As always interesting to hear the perspective from a group of college students.

It is great that Aaron is teaching this class.  It doesn't seem that long ago to me and so I am not sure I would refer to it as history but it is.  In order to know where we go from here it is always important to understand the past. 

The first generation of entrepreneurs were different than the generation of entrepreneurs who rethought the web in 2006 and the next generation is going to be different again. Each generation grows up incorporating technology into their lives in different ways and that usage creates ideas on what could be next. 

I talked about what I wanted to do when I was graduating college.  What I would tell my 20 year old self if I went back again and about what road should I follow.  I basically told my life line story, the career I have had, the hiccups along the road and where I am today and what I do.  Questions and answers to the students and to Aaron.

All and all a really wonderful evening.  I am definitely looking forward to speaking to a room of bright eyed students again.  There really is nothing else quite like it. 

Are all entrepreneurs big thinkers?

I have always been brutally honest.  Although with age and experience I am not as harsh as I might have been in the years prior.  An area that I will always need to work on.

Entrepreneurs come in all sizes and shapes.  There are entrepreneurs that have been coming up with ideas in their head from the get-go that have gone on to build businesses on those ideas some starting with a lemonade stand.  Then as they get older they have come up with really big ideas that have been funded to grow.  They have not only come up with the business model they have had to raise money which means getting other people excited about what you are building.  That money raising piece can be one of the most difficult components. 

There are entrepreneurs who create businesses and are able to self-fund or just raise money from friends and family because that is all that they need to execute and succeed. 

Then there are those entrepreneurs who have boot-strapped businesses and have never raised a dime.  Their businesses are at a point where a little bit of cash would be a great thing but it isn't a business that an angel or a VC would support.  It is a business that might do $10m annually.  Where does that funding come from?

Years ago the banks funded the smaller entrepreneurs.  Not sure who banks are giving loans to but they are certainly not giving them out to small businesses like the ones I have seen.  I have met with more than a few women over the past month who are in this camp.  Driven, smart and focused women who are making money but are struggling to get to the next level.  It will happen but it takes time.  Would an infusion of cash help, sure but from who? 

My advice to all of them is just keep doing what you are doing.  If you can find one single investor who wants to roll up their sleeves and get involved of course if that make sense then perhaps that is the way to go.  Otherwise, just keep doing what you do.  It takes a long time to build a business.  We read about all the businesses that come out of nowhere who have been financed.  Many of those businesses have been around a lot longer than anyone realizes.  Those ideas have been rambling around the entrepreneurs head for a lot longer than you think. 

Great businesses take time to grow.  Being an entrepreneur is never easy but it can be really rewarding. You can spend a lot of time in the echo chamber of your head.  We all want to see the big success stories that we read about but there is a lot of people building new companies that will have loyal users that will never be huge but those companies are making an impact in their own powerful way.