Here’s the 140 character summary (give or take): A VC seed round investment is great for them. They can make 100 $100k bets  for 2% of their portfolio (~$500MM) and then have more information on those companies than the rest of the market when it comes time for the Series A. That same investment feels good to the company because they get a TechCrunch article, what have you, touting how a top tier VC invested in their company. But when they go to raise their true Series A and that top tier VC isn’t re-upping, it sends a very negative signal to the rest of the market.

My advice: resist, resist, resist that VC fan-boy urge! Bootstrap (“Your cap table is only clean once!”), borrow from friends and family, or secure non-dilutive growth/bridge financing like revenue-based finance.

Elad’s post: http://blog.eladgil.com/2012/04/vc-signaling-coming-home-to-roost.html

And Chris Dixon’s post: http://cdixon.org/2010/03/11/the-importance-of-investor-signaling-in-venture-pricing/

1. It doesn’t just feel more expensive than a bank loan, it is. Just because we call it a “RevenueLoan” doesn’t mean you get to borrow at the same rate as the US government. Hell, even Uncle Sam is having his own credit issues.  Our investments aren’t into sovereign super powers backed by the global reserve currency. Our investments are into high-technology, high-growth, early-stage, small team, asset-light businesses. Think of it like lending to an individual: We’re not lending to the 45-year old in his peak wage-earning years, sitting on a pile of cash, looking to use leverage to purchase his second-home instead of paying cash out the door (but could if he wanted to) because it’s cheaper for tax reasons. Hardly. We’re lending to the college senior who is about to go into her second round interview for an engineering job at Apple. She’s going to graduate from a good school, with solid fundamental skills and a couple good internships under her belt, but is essentially unproven in the market. Young, growing with the a lot of future wage-earning opportunity. And a lot of risk. It’s not that she has bad credit. She just doesn’t have any credit at all. The same is true for your start up. No one knows if it is credit-worthy yet. We’re willing to take the risk, but the return has to justify the risk. That doesn’t mean the rate is usurious, but it is certainly higher than the interest rate paid by AA rated Fortune 500 companies with 9-page balance sheets.

We like to think of ourselves as a large credit card for tech companies. And, in line with that capital as a service mission, we target a 15 – 30% APR. We’re more expensive than a bank loan and about the same as an expensive credit card (but with a much higher limit).

2. Time value of money.

The time value of money is seldom mentioned during financing discussions, but it is a critical component to the RBF math. Look at Instagram! A $50M RBF investment with even extremely investor-friendly terms (50% of top-line revenue, uncapped, forever) would have still been cheaper, in a time value of money (internal rate of return) sense, than the $50MM equity round that they closed the week prior to the FB acquisition announcement…. which, I don’t need to remind you, cost the company $50MM….in one week. The IRR on that investment, by my calculation is: 497,237,713,464,852,000%. That’s certainly an expensive cost of capital.

This is obviously a corner-case, certainly (and more than a little bit bizarre — another topic!), but it is a real-world example that a revenue-share does not by default supersede ownership, particularly in times of very high P/E valuations and data-, users- and talent-based acquisitions.

3. More to the point, capped deals are almost always cheaper than equity, with the only exception being if the company fails, in which case equity is of course the cheapest form of financing. I think the market knows this, but for a variety of reasons executives are irrational in their financing decisions, which goes back to the title of this post and how the investment feels expensive. It’s a feeling based on irrational and uneconomical decisions and priorities.

a. First, the math: a 3x cap does not mean a 300% cost of capital. We, here at Lighter Capital target repayment in 2 to 7 years, and we alter our caps accordingly. We target an APR of 15-30%. So while the cap changes, so does the maturity date— but the cost of capital does not. Quite literally, an equity investment can cost you an infinite amount of money, at an infinite rate of return. (I’m going to follow this post up with some specific case studies to compare the outcomes of RBF vs equity, so stay tuned… I know you’re on the edge of your seat!)

b. Now for the psychology:

i. Time horizon: entrepreneurs confronted with a 3x repayment obligation (which includes principal, so really only 2x ‘cost’), feel this obligation immediately… it is forefront in the mind. Meanwhile an equity “repayment obligation” is vague and undefined in magnitude and time horizon. Also, the RBF repayment obligation starts immediately and is on-going, requiring continued commitment. An equity “repayment obligation” comes after the acquisition, the press releases and after everyone is already rich, spraying eachother with champagne, so it “feels” less costly and less onerous, despite being completely the opposite in both respects. This is the challenge of the a priori versus a posteriori cost analysis.

ii. Lastly, there is the VC-fanboy phenomena, where raising money from a VC, particularly one who blogs a lot, is some sort of milestone for an entrepreneur. In these cases, entrepreneurs who raise a VC round feel as though just raising the round is “making it”. These entrepreneurs are willing to suspend their disbelief at the cost of capital for the perceived value / sensation of being let in behind the velvet rope and “in da club”.

We have worked with some amazing entrepreneurs that are growing their businesses to amazing scale, perhaps without ever having to dilute themselves with an equity invesment.

Nowadays it is so much cheaper and easier to start a technology company… you no longer have to purchase extensive (and expensive) hardware… you can just spin up some instances on AWS. And similarly, these companies require a different form of financing from the traditional VC path. They don’t need as much money, they start generating revenues sooner and they therefore don’t require as big an exit (in part because there’s less dilution) to make the founders successful and happy.

Like I said above, stay tuned for further case studies and analysis around the cost of capital and cash flow / capital outlay questions.

Now that’s an expensive cost of capital!

With a minimal amount of data and a couple clicks of the mouse, you can design the financing option that works best for your company and situation.

Check it out at: https://secure.lightercapital.com/designaloan.aspx or just click the pic below!

Here is the article and list of 100 companies. And here is HiveMine CEO Peter Holland’s “View From the Top”.

Congrats to the HiveMine team!

Thanks, WTIA!

Lighter Capital announced today that it has been named a finalist for the Technology Accelerator Award as part of the Washington Technology Association (WTIA)’s 17th annual Industry Achievement Awards (IAA). The awards recognize Washington state companies, organizations and individuals who best demonstrate technology and service innovation and excellence. For more information and to register for the event, visit: www.washingtontechnology.org/IAA

“We’re fortunate to live and work in a state with such a diverse and vibrant technology community, said Susan Sigl, president and CEO of the WTIA. “These finalists represent the most creative and innovative companies and individuals in our industry and deserve the highest congratulations.”

Lighter Capital provides revenue-based financing to small businesses to fund growth in return for a small percentage of future years’ revenues. Lighter Capital and revenue-based financing is intended for early-stage businesses that have established success and are primed for growth, but are cash-constrained and need access to capital with no dilution, no loss of control, and no fixed repayment schedule.

As a pioneer in providing revenue-based loans to startups, Lighter Capital is responsible for bringing the funding application and negotiation process online – enabling applicants to have complete visibility into every aspect of the evaluation process. Additionally, Lighter Capital provides its portfolio companies with access to a unique set of support resources, such as executive counsel and marketing assistance.

“Being recognized by the WTIA is an honor and a tribute to the efforts of the Lighter Capital team,” said Andy Sack, CEO of Lighter Capital. “It’s also a testament to the success of the small businesses we’ve funded not only here in the Pacific Northwest – but around the country. At the end of the day, their success is our success, so we’re happy to share this honor with them.”

Among the more notable topics discussed by Ulrich:”

• Business loans in 2011 fell to a 12 year low
• B/w 1993-2009 65% of jobs were created by businesses w/ less than 500 employees
• Since 2008, lending to small businesses has contracted by 54%

• There are small businesses doing well but need a boost, but the banks aren’t lending, so what are you supposed to do?
• A lot of small businesses are up and running, the owner is watching profits grow but can’t access capital to build bigger and bigger profit

?

Well, I feel like ol’ Cy Sperling.

My wife and I moved to a slightly larger house this week in preparation for our first baby due in April. She’s 6 months pregnant and moving during the holidays meant many of our friends were out of town. For the first time in our lives we were going to need to hire movers.

Luckily, I had just heard of a company that could help us.

We used Hire-A-Helper to search for, read reviews about and eventually book moving help. Total success and I highly recommend! The guys were prompt, efficient and friendly.

Hat Tip to BFeld where I saw this –> http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2011/12/kauffman-sketchbook-where-do-entrepreneurs-get-their-money.html

What happens to the RevenueLoan if my company is acquired?

First, you should celebrate! High-fives are my preferred method, but some people have taken to the fist-pound, or chest-bump. On the RevenueLoan side of things, you as a borrower would have a repayment commitment to uphold, which in the case of an acquisition can be done by “buying us out” of the loan contract. In our standard loan docs, we have an early buy-out clause, which gives you, the borrower, a set amount to repay to fulfill your obligation.

As an example, if your company is acquired within 2 years, you pay us 1.75x our principal amount, less the cumulative payments you’d made to that point.

I would also highlight, that because Lighter Capital does not have a board seat or other control provisions, we leave any acquisition related decisions to you the competent entrepreneur – as long as you continue to repay the RevenueLoan rate or have the capital available to buyout of the commitment.

As a cliffhanger, many of our deals have either warrant coverage or a success fee, which says that if your company is acquired or IPOs somewhere down the road, we get a small (1-5%) portion of the proceeds. This can be a bit confusing to entrepreneurs in the context of the rest of our loan terms, but rather than go into detail here, keep your eyes peeled for a warrant/success fee discussion on the blog sometime soon!

How do existing investors (angels, VCs) respond to the RevenueLoan structure?

Regarding angels, the general feedback we get from angels is positive – it actually gives them a bit of leverage, where your company gets more capital to work with without any additional dilution to investors, and there’s no valuation event, which also keeps things simpler. Just to be fair in advance, the only negative response I’ve seen is that it’s an increased cost (ie 2-5% of revenues/month) which some investors look at as cash that should be pumped back into the company at a time of growth.

What happens if for some unfortunate reason I end up with $0 in revenues at some point?

What’s 3% of $0? The numbers don’t lie, and if your revenues are $0, you pay us $0 – at least for that month. Our incentives are aligned with management, in that we expect companies that have revenues to endeavor to maintain and grow those revenues – which is why we restrict our investments to companies that already generate $200K/year or more. This flexibility in our funding model is especially great for companies with seasonal businesses or with lumpy cashflows.

How can I expect the funding process to go ­­­after you review my loan application?

We try to make it quick and painless for both you and Lighter Capital, but as light-hearted as we aspire to be, this is a real financial transaction that can have serious ramifications for both your company and our fund. So our funding process after we’ve discussed terms generally looks like this: First, we have a short list of diligence items that are primarily focused on better understanding your company’s balance sheet structure, legal structure, and near-term business plans. Assuming everything checks out, we draft loan docs for your review, and get a wire queued up for funding. In the best case scenario, we’ve gotten this whole process down to about 2 weeks. The instances where this takes longer is most often because the CEO is busy dealing with more pressing issues in the business, or there are unusually complicated elements found in the legal or business diligence that require more work on our end. It should still seem a lot less painful than other funding services you’ve run into, and that’s our hope. Give it a try to find out!

The competition offered up to $500,000 to an early-stage company with explosive revenue growth. HireAHelper, the largest marketplace for consumer day labor, was selected out of more than 100 businesses that applied during the 3 month promotion.

“HireAHelper far and away showed the most growth potential to fit with our RevenueLoan structure,” mentioned Andy Sack, CEO of Lighter Capital. “The Capital Countdown proved to us that there are a lot of really unique businesses underserved by existing financing sources.”

HireAHelper will use the funds to expand its product offering and hire more developers.

“As we expand we wanted to find a way to keep growing quickly without losing control of the HireAHelper mission to improve the day labor industry,” added Mike Glanz, CEO of HireAHelper. “A RevenueLoan from Lighter Capital was the perfect solution: we don’t have to slow down or change directions.”

Based on the success of the contest, Lighter Capital plans to run new Capital Countdowns to fund early-stage companies beginning again in early 2012. Companies interested in participating in the next promotion should stay tuned by visiting the Lighter Capital website.

Mike is a high-tech entrepreneur, fitness-buff and chocolate lover who teamed up with distinguished chocolatiers and pastry chefs from Tom Douglas Restaurants to develop the decadent Vibrant Chocolate menu.

You aren’t likely to find these treats on store shelves though, Vibrant Chocolate is using an ecommerce subscription model to sell its chocolates, which was a perfect fit for a RevenueLoan!

Supporting small businesses in a season when shoppers are increasingly spending their money at big box stores and online sounds like a great idea. If you’re going to buy your Aunt Gladys a camouflage Snuggie, you might as well buy it somewhere local so your holiday spending budget goes back into your local economy and helps out “the little guy (or gal).” That’s the idea anyway.

As an entrepreneur and someone who grew up in a small-business household, I have a soft spot for the small business owner. I viewed SBS with a sense of hope. Finally! A campaign during the biggest spending season of the year to encourage shoppers to go back to the local merchants! A reminder to consumers everywhere that there are still great local stores providing the same goods found online in a more personal environment where you connect with a local seller who can support the local economy, hiring local workers and buying other local services.

Despite my optimism, however, I had3  nagging questions:

1. Is it fair to assume that people aren’t shopping at local small business, and how significant is the difference?
2. Does a “holiday” like SBS actually get people to shop then?
3. Even if people are shopping on SBS, does it get people to shop at small businesses beyond that one day?

Is it fair to assume that people aren’t shopping at local small businesses anyways?

The whole premise of Small Bbusiness Saturday is that people aren’t shopping at small businesses, so we tried to find out where people were shopping. Based on our results, only 14% of people usually shop at local small business – with other people either shopping online (34%) or at local big-box superstores (52%).

So the answer is yes. We have a problem, and spending time and energy to bring customers back through the doors of local small businesses is worth trying to fix.

First, does Small Business Saturday get people who usually don’t shop at small businesses into the doors of local small business? If all this hoopla is going on to get people to spend just 1 day a year shopping at local small businesses, does it even accomplish that?

Unfortunately, not really.

A mere 4.7% of people surveyed who usually shop online or in big-box stores planned to do their holiday shopping on Small Business Saturday. This means that despite the support of non-profit business organizations, public officials, and 50+ major corporate backers (including Clear Channel, which claims to reach 238 million monthly listeners in the US), it only gets a sliver of the population to change their shopping habits. And that’s just on Small Business Saturday.

Will people shop at small businesses long after Small Business Saturday is over?

The point of SBS isn’t just to get consumers to shop locally on that one day, it’s to drum up awareness to shop at your local convenience store all year long. So, I expanded my questioning to the broader holiday season. For people who usually shop online or at big-box stores, will Small Business Saturday increase spending at small businesses throughout the holiday season?

No. I’m sorry, I was disappointed too.

As an effort to build long-term awareness for local businesses, the promotion seemed even less effective. Of the people we surveyed who said they usually shopped online or at big chains, an even lower 1.7% plan to do most of their holiday shopping at local small businesses. Put a different way, almost 99% of people shopping at supercenters and online e-tailers plan to keep doing what they’re doing – spending their money outside the local economy.

To add insult to injury – only 15% of people polled who usually shop at local small businesses planned to do their holiday shopping on Small Business Saturday. So the promotion with a goal of getting people to shop at small businesses, still isn’t enough to keep small business shoppers away from the rock-bottom deals offered by big-box stores and online sales.

My conclusion

The big winner in Small Business Saturday is big business! Big-box stores, online superstores, and the big payment processors like American Express organizing the promotion. Now, I’m pleased as punch that they’re at least thinking of the local merchants in all of this, but it looks like what’s really happening is some marketing genius in American Express has figured out that a promotion like this is the best way to gain market share of the small business spenders, while getting some goodwill with consumers – and a bunch of “likes” on Facebook (in this case “bunch” = 2.4 million).

It stinks of the same kind of greenwashing you see when BP talks about cleaning up our oceans. Or the son who only calls on Mother’s Day and thinks that counts as being a “good son”. (Trust me, that doesn’t fly in my family!) If AmEx really wants to support small businesses, they could change their fee structure to reflect the different economic needs of smaller business.

Small Business 2012?

Anyone want to join me for Small Business 2012? Why limit ourselves to just one Saturday a year, when we’d rather be sleeping in anyways? It’s so much more fun to buy from our friendly neighborhood stores all year long! Let’s spend our money at local* businesses, support small business owners and entrepreneurs with our wallets and not just puff pieces and rhetoric, and one-day promotions that don’t even seem to work.

*And no, I won’t cheat by buying from a “local” merchant down the street from my office.

Note: Data reflects a poll of 275 adults throughout the US, ages 18-70. Surveyed by Lighter Capital using SurveyMonkey and Mechanical Turk, over the week of 11/14-11/21.

Over the weekend I decided to check out the site for myself and was surprised to see both some simple refresher courses on the Golden Ratio and some other middle-school era concepts, but as I scrolled down the list of videos, I discovered a whole section on Venture Capital and Capital Markets. If he can figure out how to get millions of 12 year olds to understand the quadratic equation, Khan should be able to give a halfway decent explanation of how to raise funding for a startup. after all – he both used to be a hedge fund analyst  and has raised a solid amount of money as a non-profit.

I think these are all solid backgrounders to understand the basics of raising funding. If you start here, you may want to get a lot more in depth with resources like the Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson’s Term Sheet series or the AngelHacks blog for some more in depth lessons.

Raising money for a startup

Getting a seed round from a VC

Equity vs. Debt

Going back to the till: Series B

Just for fun: Probability of playing cards

Not specifically fund-raising related, but  this is a simple explanation of card probability. Not entrepreneur related, you say? Our own Andy Sack would beg to differ…

Online loan applications can be pretty cut and dry. The applicant provides required information and awaits a message telling them they were approved or rejected. That doesn’t sound too complicated. But the stuff we really want to know when considering investing in a company isn’t that simple to capture from lists of form fields and checkboxes.

Most of our first investments at Lighter Capital started off as coffee meetings between one of our principals and the entrepreneur. These give us a chance to get to know a little about each other, what each of us are looking for, and walk away with a pretty clear idea of whether or not it makes sense to pursue a financing.

That’s what was missing from our application process. We want to get to know a little more about the entrepreneur, their team, their business, and their customers. And we want to give the entrepreneur a chance to learn more about who we are and what we’re looking for. If this is easy to capture in a coffee meeting, why shouldn’t we be able to capture it online? So we redesigned our loan application using the coffee meeting as design inspiration.

Here’s a little walkthrough of what we came up with:

Kick it off with a personal tone

We start the way any first meeting should: with introductions. Andy greets the applicant and sets the stage for a casual and friendly meeting.

In your own words

Tell us the story. Give us the elevator pitch. Tell us why we should be excited about the prospect of investing in your company.

Who’s in your corner?

We offer LinkedIn access as a way to quickly and easily share the professional backgrounds of the team and give us a sense of the key team members’ backgrounds and their networks.

Are you “Internet famous”?

While it may not be applicable to all businesses, we have great respect and confidence in up and coming businesses that understand and harness online marketing, and this can also give us other quick places to go find out more about companies and the people behind them.

A touch of game mechanics

Gauges, sliders, badges… is this a loan application or a game? Maybe a little of both. The new application has a base layer of information we need to have before we can make a decision, but then there are added levels of information that companies can provide to make it faster and easier for us to follow-up with a better sense of what, if any, financing opportunity makes sense. We took inspiration from online social games – badges and progress meters –  to communicate when extra information would help the application stand out and be approved more quickly.

The jury’s still out

We’re really excited to have a more friendly and simpler loan application to interface with entrepreneurs, but it’s too early to tell if the new design will be more effective for applicants or for the folks here at Lighter Capital. We’re pretty sure it’s a step in the right direction. And the fun with software is that it’s always a work in progress. We’d welcome your feedback on it or any ideas you have to make a better virtual coffee meeting!

Crowd funding seems to be the new way to go in raising money and a cool tool for entrepreneurs. You get a platform to share your story, gain support from your community, and receive funding for a project or business. Each of these websites have a great audience and you can gain the support you need for your ideas and dreams.

1. Kickstarter
   This is the largest crowd funding website and holds the number one stop for crowd funding. You might have heard of Kickstarter as a crowd funding website for creative projects, but there all kinds of projects from raising money to fund a band’s album to kickstarting a product or to help a film marker. They have a great website where you can discover or share many projects. Another great thing Kickstarter does great is it keeps it simple. If you reach your goal or more you get the funding, if you don’t then you will have to try again or go to another source.
   
   
2. Quirky
   This is a prime crowd funding website for inventors. They have a fun website for all kinds of inventors to raise funding for their idea. There are so many cool ideas that are able to come to life because of Quirky. As their home page says, “The easiest ways to being your ideas to life.” Not only do you as a community member get to voice your opinion if this product should be made and on the market, but you can help it come to life. You can give feedback and direction to the inventor to help the product be the best that it can be.
   
   
3. Startup Addict
   They named this crowd funding company perfect for what they do and their main audience. This company is all about crowd funding for startup addicts. Startup Addict is one of the newest crowd funding websites on the block and they are on fire! They want to help the startup world grow and get these small businesses out in action.
   
   
4. Profounder
   This is a great crowd funding website for start ups and small businesses to raise money through “swap and meeting”. They have a fast application that can help you get into contact with great partners. It is a great website that caters to entrepreneurs. It is known to be very professional, follow the right guidelines, and with all easy steps. Profounder is all about the social circles and connections.

There are many crowd funding websites out there, but these four seem to be leading the latter. Each one bringing their own atmosphere and specialty to gaining money and support for ideas and companies. Check them out! As for small business lending, Lighter Capital is here for you!

Turns out these specific questions are near and dear to me. We call them the birthday questions. My wife’s family has been asking them for years. And as we’ve ask them at birthday parties, we’ve watched them spread through our community of friends… and apparently our friends’ bosses. It never occurred to me to use them at work, but I think it’s a brilliant idea.

Here’s how they’re asked:

In the past 30 days, we’ve had our first experience with a fraudulent application. Fortunately, we were able to catch the instance before proceeding with making an investment!

How do we establish trust without coffee?

That said, it heightened our awareness to the need for even more fraud prevention in our investment process.  In the next 30 days, we will be developing a fraud process and procedure document and will be taking a number of steps to protect ourselves.  It’s an unfortunate reality — and dealing with this issue proactively and aggressively is super important for us given the nature of our business. What I mean by that, is that because we’re moving to becoming a web-based investor our ability to rely on in-person coffee meetings to establish “trust” is significantly reduced and thus, the need for fraud prevention is even greater.

We’re allergic to fraud.

Having fraud at this stage in our company’s life would be like having cancer — it would scare investors away from all the cool things we’re doing.  Moreover, it would undermine our portfolio and confidence in making investments going forward.

Here are key takeaways from Neil’s article

1. Make Sure Your Product Is Affordable
   In this economy people only want to buy things they can’t live without. They can only buy what they can afford. Money is tight for a lot of people and families. Therefore make sure people can afford your design and labor before you make it. Also make sure that people will feel like they need the product your selling. These concepts will only benefit your company and make your financials and marketing so much easier in the long run.
2. Have A Good Marketing Plan
   Most businesses will go under if you are not marketing the product and company properly. Make sure you have good strategies lined up and planned. Make sure you go into a business knowing how to market your brand and product. You can always hire companies to help you market, but sometimes that doesn’t even work. We are so lucky in this age of time that internet is so easy to use and a lot of the internet marketing is FREE. You just have to learn how to use the smart tactics of internet marketing. Don’t forget about thought leadership in blogs, social media, and press. Get the world to know about your product, so they learn they need it and can go buy it
3. Simple Is Better Than Complex
   Stay away from over complicating your business and product. Some of the best products out there are the simplest creations. The simpler you make it the easier it is to control. Don’t try to add too many details and complicate what you are selling. If you do you are just making your job harder. People don’t want a product that is to hard to use and understand. These days Americans like fast, easy, and instant gratification.
4. Patience Is A Virtue
   The business world can be tough and many  rewards come after being patient. Keep plugging away at your business and don’t give up. If you are doing everything right and your product is simple, affordable, and makes people’s lives easier than it will turn a profit. You can talk and learn from many entrepreneurs that started a company. They worked hard for a couple years and saw no profit. After the third or so year, they saw a light at the end of the tunnel and finally turned a profit. As Neil stated, “The lesson I learned is you must be patient when it comes to software companies because it takes a few years for them to take off.”
5. Do Something That You Love
   If you start a company that your not passionate about, than how will you be motivated when your company hits those low points? You need to do something you love and enjoy working on so that you won’t loose passion and drive to make it successful. Starting a successful business takes a lot of time and more hours than there is in a day and week. You will live and breathe this business day in and day out that is why you should do something you love and have passion for.

Check out Neil Patel’s full article here!

Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics, an analytics provider that helps companies make better business decisions.

Working with many companies throughout the deal process simultaneously, I have been multi-tasking, reading tomes of legal documents, on the phone a lot, drinking tons of coffee and operating generally high on the stress level. Feeling that I was about to crash, I left the office around 4:30pm last Wednesday with the plan of going home and pretty much going right to bed.

Work Hard, Play Hard

Instead, my wife, Kora (the world’s smartest dog) and I ran around Green Lake. While my wife had had a miscarriage earlier this year, she is now 5 months pregnant. As such, she walked and I ran with Kora around the lake. (Side note brain teaser: If two people head around a loop in the same direction with one going twice as fast as the other, exactly how many times will the faster one pass the slower one before the slower one completes one full revolution?)

Wow. I was so refreshed after a quick 5.6mi run in the brisk Seattle fall air. It totally revitalized me. We went home, as a tired and happy family, made dinner together, watched our one hour a week of crappy television and went to bed relatively early. Thursday I came in to work in a great mood (I had been a bit grumpy all week), and finished the week with spirits high.

Bottom line: the old adage of work hard, play hard is as relevant as ever. We work with a lot exciting, growing companies. I know their teams are working very hard, pouring their own life force into the business. Yes, work hard, but I urge you: don’t forget to exercise and spend time with your family.

PS. For those that know me, you know that my main extra-curricular passion is rock climbing. Because of the pregnancy situation(s), I really haven’t climbed much since March, as my partner is no longer eager to take big falls, and rightly so.

The climbing gym here in Seattle, Stone Gardens, just opened a new location “on the East Side” in Bellevue. It’s a great facility and I had a blast “putting in a session” yesterday afternoon for the first time in WAY too long.

Can you tell what Big Box store formally inhabited the location?