Watching the NBA finals on Father’s Day reminded me of a childhood memory that has stuck with me. My dad was more into football than basketball, but he was a sports fan and would generally watch the big games. When I was 11, we watched some of the ‘87 Lakers-Celtics finals together. My only memory of the whole series was the most boring play in all of basketball: an early-game foul shot.

Magic Johnson was at the line. His free throw bounced on both ends of the rim, and went in. It went in. Count it. Score. But when Magic took the ball, he was clearly disgusted with himself. He was acting like he’d missed.

I remember thinking “what’s he so mad about? It went in.” It had gone in, but it hadn’t gone in the way he wanted it to.

I realized quickly what separates great players in the NBA from all-time great players like Magic: personal standards. The lesson I took away was that your personal standards matter more than everyone else’s expectations of you and even more than the rules that you play by.

At Viget, we talk about having higher standards than our clients, to push ourselves to do great work. I love working with people that are motivated by, above all else, their own personal standards for what they’ll be proud of.

It’s not always about working longer hours or making more money or generally “exceeding expectations.” To continue with the sports analogy, I remember missing lots of shots in lacrosse that I was pleased with, because the mechanics of my shot felt right and I knew it was making me a better player.

The rules of business are even less clear. If you spend your career focused on keeping score the way everyone else does rather than deciding for yourself what qualifies as success (both in daily challenges and as a whole) I predict you’ll ultimately be disappointed. Set your own standards — then always try to exceed them. You’ll be happier and most likely more successful by any standards anyway.

It’s possible that Magic missed the next free throw and smiled because his shot felt right. But I doubt it.

Today’s the five year anniversary of my dad’s death, which always gets me thinking a bit too much.  It also gets me digging around what I have that was his, trying to learn some things about him or from him.  This time I dug up his old 1972 cruise book from his Navy days when he was stationed off Sicily.

It’s basically — almost exactly, actually – like a high school year book.

It chronicles the life and times of this group of guys as they spent their days going through the ups and downs of Navy life. 

I’ve looked at it before and always suffer the same disappointment: in a book full of photos, there are almost none of my dad.  That’s because he was part of the cruise book staff, so he took most of the photos (he’s the one on the left).

Today, though, I had another thought.  The book itself was something I could cherish and learn from, because it wasn’t a few photos of Pop, it was his work.  He put his time, creativity, skill, and determination into creating this book and making it engaging, funny, and rewarding.  He was motivated to make sure it turned out well because his name was going to be on it, his peers would be experiencing it, and it would be — in some small way — part of his legacy. 

Pop worked on this book before I was born, at about the same age I was when I helped start Viget.  It’s funny to think of us at the same age, working hard on something to make sure we could be proud of the result.   His project at that time in his life happened to be a cruise book as part of his military service, my project happened to be a company (and the many businesses we’ve worked with).

Pop used to say something like “if you’re going to take the time to do something, you might as well make sure you do it right.”

I don’t know that Pop enjoyed being on that cruise, so far from his young family, but the task at hand was to make a good cruise book, so that’s what he helped do.  Had Pop had the opportunity to start his own company then, I would think that mindset — and his creative approach — would have led him to success.

The lesson I’m taking from my dad this year is to do what you do, and do it well.  No matter what you’re doing — whether it’s decorating a cake, playing with your kids, or starting a business– do it your way, the best way you know how.  It might not lead to anything more than a little dusty book full of memories, but at least it will be a book you can be proud of.

It’s wild to think that it was almost exactly eight years ago that we got together in Boulder, Colorado and planned out what kind of company we wanted Viget to be.  Last Friday, everyone from both offices got together for an incredible afternoon out of the Lab at the Marriott Ranch.  We broke from tradition a bit and combined our Third Third Thursday event with our annual “Viget’s birthday” dinner.

The afternoon was spent horseback riding, skeet shooting, jeep driving, and generally having fun together outside of work.  We played our annual game of Vigetry (sorry, you’ll have to join us to learn more) and enjoyed a round of toasts that varied from hilarious to sentimental — all great.

As we reflected, I was reminded of all the hard work we’ve put in over the years to get to where we are today.  As I mentioned during the Refresh panel discussion last week, I’ll never be completely satisfied with what we accomplish at Viget — I’ll never say “we’ve made it” – but I will celebrate along the way. 

There were times years ago where you could have easily made the argument that we should have quit.  In fact, looking back, if I were advising me 5 five years ago, I’d probably tell myself to pack it in.  But we just kept working hard then like we still do now, and I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish as a team.  We still have a lot of great work to do ahead of us, but I’m glad we have traditions like last Friday to remind us that hard work pays off and sticking is a good thing.

We work with start-ups that are in various stages of fundraising.  I often talk with entrepreneurs about raising money and do what I can to make introductions.  In some cases, we’ll convert a small percentage of our services fees into an investment, so we know what it’s like to have some skin in the game.  We work with clients we believe in, regardless of our “participation,” and love the excitement of early-stage companies.

Having started Viget in 1999, we went through a bit of the tech bubble and all of the bust, and we learned a lot of lessons.  One was: no matter how good it gets, don’t bet the farm on start-ups.  So, we continue to balance our client list with traditional offline companies as well as start-ups, and that balance benefits both kinds of clients in addition our staff and our company.

There continues to be mainstream talk of a recession, and some VC’s are talking about what a downturn could mean to the investment community and start-ups seeking funding.  Even as we grow and expand, we talk about it internally — should we be concerned?

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Gil is the Chief Engineer at Squidoo.  He put up a lens telling the story of how Squidoo went from an idea in Seth’s head to a profitable business and the 14th fastest web site in 2007.  They’ve always had a lean strategy, and early-on that meant hiring Viget.

“To keep our staff as lean as possible, we considered several options, ultimately leading to a partnership with Viget Labs, who helped us build version 1.0 of Squidoo.  Hiring in-house employees vs an outside consulting form can be a difficult choice for any startup. On one hand, hiring employees can be a great (and sometimes inexpensive) way to ensure dedication to your project, but the security of fixed cost development and no long-term employee commitments proved to be the right choice for us.”

It’s great to get an inside perspective on both the good decisions and the mistakes that an online start-up is making.  He touches on the benefits of short iterations and frequent releases:

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Yesterday, Brad blogged about how hard (and painful) it is to get products out of their “plastic jails.”  Today, Seth wondered if “smaller and lighter” will become “sexier” when it comes to product containers.  In addition to being a healthcare issue (Brad’s hands are apparently a bloody mess) and marketing issue (heavier Gatorade bottles apparently sell better) it’s a huge environmental issue. 

I think it’s up to us.  If, as consumers, we decide that heavy, excessive, wasteful packaging is bad, and we show our position by buying products that embrace less waste (and by telling companies why we aren’t buying their over-packaged products) we can change this.  I think it’s a worthwhile issue.

I ordered - or thought I ordered - a few things for Adena from Sundance.com last week.  Their site has always been frustrating from a usability perspective, and I found the checkout process particularly confusing this time (it’s been a year or so since my last order.)  I thought I checked out correctly, and when I didn’t get a confirmation email, I assumed it was caught in my spam filter or just delayed.

For once I was ahead of the game.  My order was placed (or so I thought) well in advance of Christmas and Adena’s birthday a few days before.  Regular shipping had it slated for delivery last Thursday or Friday, and even if it was a bit late, no big deal.  Until, of course, Adena decided she wanted to celebrate her birthday this past Saturday rather than the following one as I’d planned.

Friday morning, I logged into Sundance.com.  I saw the order in my history, but no delivery date was displayed.  Everything looked normal, just no indication that it had shipped.  I called, and they explained that the order had been “placed” but not “completed” meaning they never got the credit card information.  I had to provide that via phone to complete the order — there was no such option online.  When I complained about that, the rep gave my favorite archaic line (not a direct quote):

“We don’t work with the online group — you’d have to talk with them about the web site ordering process.  I don’t know anything about it.”

When will they get it?  I don’t care about their groups and misguided legacy divisions.  I just want to give them money — why do they make it so difficult?

The rep went on to say that if I wanted to get my gift in time, I’d have to pay express shipping.  Not acceptable, I explained, and to her credit she came through with approval from her supervisor to send it next day without any extra charge. 

I appreciate their independence and wisdom for the gesture, and I remain a Sundance fan, just not of their outdated web site.  Hopefully they’re tracking “customer service” costs like this in a way that will help their web group justify reworking their user experience.

Mike has a good post that offers a bit of a history lesson on the late 90’s venture funding frenzy and how that drove absurd decisions.  In my brief stint at CMGI, I also experience first-hand some of the nonsense that Mike refers to.  He notes that some entrepreneurs who went through that period have battle scars that make them too timid to now, at a point when funding sources are back and start-ups can again take changes in the hopes that they can change the world.

The analysis is interesting and no doubt accurate, but I’m a big fan of experience and perspective.  I think that really smart entrepreneurs can see what worked and what didn’t last time — what made sense and what, in retrospect, didn’t make any sense at all.  Making smart, hard, risky decisions is what entrepreneurs do all the time, whether they’re trying to establish trust funds for their great grandkids or just trying to make payroll.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but being confident enough to make them at all is what counts.

One nugget from Mike:

“Taking risks doesn’t mean raising more money than you realistically need. It doesn’t mean hiring 20 people to do what 4 can do just fine. And it certainly doesn’t mean taking massive losses in exchange for a small amount of revenue.”

Too true.  Run lean.

Jim did a great job presenting about Twitter at the DC Social Media Club meeting last night (hosted at Viget.)  He told some engaging stories about his Twitter habit, and how he’s used the service during everything from the Virginia Tech tragedy to his travels to Iraq with President Bush. 

The discussion got me thinking more about how Twitter is being used practically, right now, to address real business issues.  I experienced an example this week.

I’m a fan of Mixx, in part because I love to see local start-ups do well.  They’ve been getting Crunched lately, which is cool.  I signed up a while ago, but I’m not very active yet.  I do have the “Allow other users to share Mixx items with me” option checked, which I believe is the default.  I’d never received an item from other users, though, until this week when I pulled up my email to see about a half-dozen emails from Mixx, all saying “Someone has shared a link with you from mixx.com.”  I was surprised, and happened to tweet:

“wondering why i have so much email from mixx this morning”

1 minute later I got this reply from Justin, so I figured something was up system-wide:

“@barn: i have a lot of mixx e-mail this morning too”

3 minutes later I got a direct message from Will, who works at Mixx:

“we are fixing the issue as we speak. Someone did a little spamming last night.”

Had I been concerned (which I wasn’t) my concerns would have been allayed.  Communication problem solved. 

Now, I know Will — we follow each other — so that was easy for him.  Following all of your users might be difficult (but why not try?).  He could also track the keyword “mixx” and contact complete strangers the same way, when needed.

Is this a good way to use Twitter?  Is this an efficient way to communicate with your users?  Regardless, it’s effective and it’s working right now, so why not use it?

We are growing quickly at Viget, working to hire the best in the industry into a bootstrapped consulting business.  Part of the motivation to grow is our work with web start-ups.  We see tons of opportunity to do great work with funded, fast-moving ventures.  We went through the Internet boom and bust in our first year, though, and we’ve always maintained a balance in our clients because we know how quickly funding sources — and our start-up clients who depend on them — can disappear.

As we analyze our growth plans, we keep an eye on the overall economy.  Fred wrote a good post yesterday called How Will Tougher Economic Times Impact The Web? that touches on this topic.

“We (me and my colleagues at Union Square Ventures) believe that the web is accelerating its transformative power and that businesses built around a web foundation will continue to take share of the worldwide economic pie.  So I suspect that there will continue to be a healthy supply of capital targeted at web applications and services for as far as I can see.”

It has nothing to do with Thanksgiving. 

When we started Viget in 1999/2000, we expected that we (the whole staff) would be working crazy hours all the time.  The dot-coms were going nuts and there was more work to do than hours in the day.  I remember thinking that we’d need to force ourselves to take a break at least once a month … and Third Thursday was born.

If you check your web start-ups timeline, though, you’ll recognize that pretty quickly in to Viget’s existence the “unlimited work” with dot-coms went away.  With it went the late nights for everyone, replaced by a couple years of struggling to find billable work.  One of the many good things that came out of that tough period was balance.  We’ve always worked hard (9-5’s are for the uninspired, if you ask me) but we do a pretty good job of balancing work-time and non-work-time — even now, when we’re back to a seemingly endless amount of great work to do.

Over the years, we have scaled back Third Thursday to be quarterly rather than monthly (hence it’s new name, Third Third Thursday), making them easier to plan for and more fun to participate in.  We have a lot of traditions at Viget, but TTT is easily one of my favorites.  Like everything else in the company, it evolves over time — I’m excited to see where it goes.

One of the guys I got to know during Startup Weekend is Micah (say “me hah”) Baldwin.  We talked about Colorado, lacrosse, and excessive partying, among other things.  He’s a classic connector, and he’s just getting into angel investing.  Like a lot of web guys these days, he’s sharing his experiences along the way on his blog and on twitter, much to the benefit of those who pay attention.

Micah wrote a post called Relationships Can Be Based On Money last week that is worth reading if you’re looking for angel money and wondering what the other guys might be thinking.  Don’t take my word for it — BusinessWeek wrote it up in Confessions of an Angel Investor.

I was able to attend the Potomac Officers Club event last week which, contrary to what a lot of people assume based on the name, has nothing to do with the military.  It’s a CXO-only networking group that brings in notable speakers every month for a meeting at the Ritz in Tysons.  Most speakers are business-focused, as the POC has hosted Jack Welch, Charles Schwab, and Bob Johnson.

The November event did have a military slant, however, and featured Lieutenant General John F. Sattler, Director for Strategic Plans and Policy, J-5, The Joint Staff.  General Sattler is very close to the activities going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.  He gave the room of about 80 executives an overview of what is happening right now in those places, and how it relates to the U.S. strategy to fight terrorism.  It was an engaging discussion, and refreshing to hear information and personal opinion directly from military personnel with direct knowledge of and experience with the situation.

My dad and both grandfathers were in the Navy, and I have a ton of respect for our military and those who serve.  I also find the military culture to be fascinating, and often relevant to how businesses operate — but not always in clear ways.  I wrote down a few quotes from General Sattler that I found particularly interesting (may not be word-for-word).

On the importance of finding strong leaders:

“We’re always asking, ‘where’s Spartacus?’  If you put a lion in front of a flock of lambs, you’ll fear those lambs.  But put a lamb in front of a pride of lions, and you’ll beat those lions everyday.”

When asked if a change in the administration will be disruptive to the current military strategy, General Sattler said this about following a leader:

“In my 36 year career, I’ve been through multiple administrations.  The Commander in Chief is the Commander in Chief.  As long as the order is moral and legal, I’m going to follow it.  I’m not supposed to have a personal bias.  If I have a personal, I’m going to resign.”

My favorite quote of the day, which I find relevant to any organization structure, was:

“Responsibility minus authority and resources equals failure.”

I attended the Mindshare 2007 class graduation in Tysons tonight.  Phil Merrick, who graduated in the first class way back in 1997 when his company webMethods was just getting started, spoke to the group.  He ended his talk with one of my favorite quotes — one that every entrepreneur should know.

“It is not the critic that counts not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or the doer of deeds could have them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the Arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood who strives valiantly who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming but he who does actually strive to do the deed who knows the great devotion who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails while daring greatly, knows that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls, who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

 There’s another, more succinct version as well:

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

A central theme to Phil’s talk was advising the room of entrepreneurs to make decisions.  He pointed out that most decisions are binary (yes/no) giving you 50/50 odds of making the right one, and even beyond that many decisions don’t matter either way, giving you even better odds.  Ultimately, though, it’s the ability to make decisions at all that’s important.  Perhaps he should have referenced another Teddy Roosevelt quote:

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

Last Thursday, thanks to ExecutiveBiz, I was able to attend Fight Night, the black-tie charity gala dubbed by Washingtonian Magazine as one of the biggest social events of the year.   It was, by all accounts, an impressive event. 

Fight Night brings together the heavyweights of business and government, entertainment and community service, as well as legends from the boxing world, for an evening of fun, auctions, and even professional boxing.

Indeed, boxing legends like Héctor Camacho and Joe Frazier were there, as were celebs like Quincy Jones and Chris Tucker as well as business icons like Bob Johnson.  Three mayors made appearances (Barry, Williams, and Fenty).  Ted Nugent did an incredible rendition of The Star Spangled Banner.  My favorite entertainer of the night was Hammer, especially since he was so cool about grabbing a photo (alas, he didn’t perform).

The whole event supports Fight for Children, and non-profit founded by Joe Robert, CEO of J.E. Robert Companies, in 1990.  They raise millions of dollars each year to support DC’s underprivileged kids. 

Fight For Children focuses on educational and healthcare initiatives to ensure that all children in the nation’s capital have opportunities to learn, grow, and succeed.

I’m a big fan of supporting charities that help kids, and Fight Night raises more money in one evening than most do all year.  Kudos to Fight for Children for putting on such an impressive event.

We went to Future of Web Design this week.  It was my first FOWx experience, and it won’t be my last.  It was good, but not great — sentiments Jackson shared on the Four Labs blog.

Ryan Carson / Carsonified runs the FOWx events.  He also runs Drop Send.  And Amigo.  And Vitamin.  He blogs openly about his experiences, and has a nice following of people paying attention.  He’s also a super nice guy who I’ve enjoyed hanging out with and getting to know recently.

Ryan strives for good things: authenticity, credibility, and quality come to mind.  He does the FOWx conferences because he’s a web guy.  He loves the content and digs the speakers.  As an entrepreneur who runs web companies, he feels qualified to put on FOWx in ways non-web guys can’t.

That may have been right when he started, but now, I think he’s wrong.

On my way out of the MediaTemple party on Wednesday night, I told Ryan I thought he should dump his web companies and do nothing but conferences.  Vitamin should stick around as a platform for knowledge sharing and a central place for the community to connect and collaborate (with only an occasional essay from Ryan — not any management oversight), but his full-time (4 days, anyway) should be putting on the best events in the world.

My guess is Ryan won’t do this because he likes to run web companies, and that’s fine.  Greatness requires focus, though, and speaking strictly as a conference attendee, I wish he’d just do conferences.  He “gets” the space and now has the contacts and attention of the community needed to put together great speaker line-ups and draw quality audiences, and that’s all I care about — not whether he runs a web company himself or not.

Speaking as his financial advisor (which I am not) I’d suggest focus as well.  If he can put on the best web conferences in the world, he could make a killing doing so.

Speaking as his friend, I’d say screw it, do whatever you feel like.  As long as you’re having fun and you’re proud of the output, let the focus come naturally, whatever it may be.

On a recent trip to my neighborhood Home Depot, I bought about 40 strips of white trim in both 12′ and 16′ lengths.  That’s a lot of trim.  Even with their handy large-item transport carriage that hasn’t been redesigned since 1850, I almost killed myself and several others dragging them up to the register.  It was a busy day, with long lines typical of this area, and I was particularly focused on getting through quickly.

At the register, I informed the check-out person that I had 15 strips of 16′ trim and 26 strips of the 12′ trim, and that at $0.32 per linear foot, I should owe them $176.64.  She still needed to scan one piece of trim to verify the price/lf — makes sense to me.  Scan … scan … scan …

Check.  It was indeed $0.32.

Then she needed to count to be sure I had 41 total. Okay, I guess.  That shouldn’t take too long.  1 … 2 … 3 …

Verified. 41 it was exactly.

Then she wanted to segment the trim to confirm my 15/26 ratio, thereby ensuring that I had exactly 552 linear feet of trim.  Segmenting it like this would have taken 10 clumsy minutes of manual labor at the front of a long and frustrated line of customers.  It was easy to eyeball that the ratio was close, so what was the point?  Would I really go into a store I frequent and lie about how much trim I’d picked out to save $3-4?  Even if it were an honest mistake, would it be worth it to Home Depot to hold up that line for that extra $3.50?

What held up that line was a bad policy of mistrust.  Not of me, the customer, but of the Home Depot staff.  My check-out person was just following protocol.  She wasn’t authorized to eyeball anything or make any logical judgment based on the situation.  She wasn’t entrusted with any decision making, or any freedom to solve small problems as they come up in a way that benefits both customer and company.  She was just doing her job, and it was pissing everyone off.

When a manager finally helped solve the problem, he did it in an equally inane way: ignorance.  He didn’t want to know anything about the situation, he just keyed in what I told him the cost should be without looking to see whether I was buying trim or a tractor.  He was such an escalation bottleneck that the best he could do was resolve every issue as quickly as possible and move on to the next one.  The result is that some decisions are likely bad, and the staff he should be mentoring is learning nothing but bad habits.

Trust your staff — especially those on the front lines with the customers — to make lots of smart little decisions, then put metrics is place to make sure it’s working.  If you have the right culture and hire good people, everyone will be happier.

Mike Chasen was the speaker at the Potomac Officers Club event last week.  He talked about his experiences as the founding CEO of Blackboard, which he’s built from a 2 person partnership crammed into a tiny office in DC in 1997 to an 850 person publicly traded company with offices around the world.  Blackboard provides software that helps universities put their courses online.  Some points he stressed that stuck out at me in terms of lessons for growing start-ups:

• Focus.  He recognizes that a lot of entrepreneurs try to get started part-time, but he believes in 100% focus for start-ups.  Their original idea was to put college applications online (not courses), but he and his partner tried to do it while keeping their day jobs at KPMG, and it never got over the hump of initial resistance.  They faced the same resistance with putting courses online, but, because they were focused, they pushed through and made it work.
• Charge.  They’ve always stuck with a model of charging for software rather than giving it away for free in the hopes that their audience would grow and ad revenue would follow.  They faced pressure to “go free” in the dot com bubble, and while their decision not to makes them look smart now, he notes that the only reason they didn’t consider it was that they didn’t understand the model.
• Know your model.  One early day of fundraising involved two VC meetings.  In the first, after Mike explained that their model of long-term software licenses would create predictable revenue, the VC told him he was nuts — that everyone in DC makes money on consulting, and that they should give away the software but charge big for integration services.  A quick study, on his 2nd VC meeting that afternoon, Mike explained their model would be to give away software and charge for services, to which the VC countered that the margins on software sales were way more attractive and that services would be a bust. 
• Embrace turnover. He’s been through six heads of sales, and clarified that doing so was a natural reflection of their evolution as a company.  At each stage of their growth, Blackboard needed a different skill set to handle the specific challenges of that stage.  He also noted that they’re “right” about a hire about 50% of the time.
• Network. He credits local networking events for leading him to their first angel investor, who put up $200,000 as part of a $500k round.  They went on to raise more than $100 million. 
• Take it. He recommends raising as much money as you can in each round, even though he admits that their final round of funding (~$50 M) was hampered by their excess in the previous round.
• Pie. His ownership stake in Blackboard is down to 4%, but he points out that if he’d tried to hold on to more equity he wouldn’t have been able to grow Blackboard the way he did.  He’d rather have 4% of a big pie than 50% of nothing.

I was impressed by the story of Blackboard.  Mike started the company with only a couple of years of professional experience and grew it through some turbulent times.  For him to remain at the helm through all that change and maintain his passion and effectiveness is remarkable.

There’s a blogonerd fight going on between Nick, Jason, and Mike that Andy ranted about today. Smart, arrogant, opinionated guys with a pulpit, a point, and a cult following tend to be pretty entertaining.

If you can sift through the endless comments (please install Intense Debate already!) there’s actually an interesting discussion going on there about the state of the software industry and what revenue models are most viable (subscriptions vs. ad-supported). 

It’s all changing because ad models are working more and more as web usage soars and the ad industry is waking up to (1) where their customers are, (2) how they can connect with them, and (3) how they can measure (and quickly tune) that connection.  So ad dollars are available that weren’t there even a year ago are shifting online, and it will keep going in that direction.

What’s also changing is that web apps are getting better and more useful.  Underlying technologies and the products being built on them are maturing.  Expectations (from consumers) are increasing, creating a positive pressure.  Product developers are responding by creating better products.

What isn’t stressed enough in the debate is this: people will will pay for good software that fills a need.  People will pay more for great software.  Most of the web apps out there are crap and their failure has little to do with their pricing model.  Yes, you should think about how you’ll make money when you start any business, but that should be a distant second to figuring out how you’ll make a remarkable product.

Think about your users, create a great product for them, and then obsess about how to generate revenue.

TechCrunch and VentureBeat both posted today about Glam Media trying to raise $200 million in private financing.  Matt from VentureBeat politely mentions their pending Google deal and a rumored valuation of $600 million.

Arrington, though, outright asks “Is Glam A Sham?” and suggests the entire basis of their fundraising efforts is inaccurate and “complete nonsense,” disputing figures from their private placement document and criticising their SEO strategy.  He even makes them pay for distributing that private placement doc “a little too liberally” by embedding it in his post and referencing it as he breaks it down.

Way to go, Mike.

“This is a perfect example of that information being used to mislead the public and potential investors.”

Regardless of whether he’s right or not, this is just the kind of blogging that’s needed to keep things in check these days.  Arrington is shining light on what would be a major deal, and doing some logical (and very public) analysis.  Any potential investor worth their salt should be asking the same questions. 

Now, Glam has an opportunity to very publicly respond and clarify their position.  If they can do that successfully, no harm done.  They’ll proceed with a lot of questions already answered, and their fundraising should go that much more smoothly.  If they can’t, well, then it’s their fault for putting it out in the first place.

This kind of highly-visible discussion and debate wasn’t around 7-8 years ago.  Knowing you might get called out encourages honesty and discourages deception.  Transparency is a good thing. 

If the claims you make about your business were suddenly very publicly called into question, could you defend them?