Aruni › Comments

"Sorry this is so late. I've been dealing with a lot of personal and other things. I've been reading your posts but haven't had a chance to reply. You now have one more female to add to your results. I went to the Hunch site and the 2 questions it said it could predict my answers, it got wrong...go figure. That logic must be designed for a man. :-)" - Aruni

"Great list! I followed some of them." - Aruni

"Yes, you should do another post on the dozen or so essential reads as put forth by your readers. If things change re: SXSW and you can fly in for a day to sit on a one hour panel, let me know. Alternatively, if you can recommend someone else at twitter who will be here, that would be great as well. I'm thinking of reaching out to Seth Godin, who doesn't know me at all, but I have read (and very much enjoy) his blog for quite some time." - Aruni

"Funny, I've been working on a post re: books I read that I haven't gotten around to finishing and the vast majority of them are not business books. When I taught entrepreneurship at UT, three books that I made required reading (well one I gave them all as a gift) were The Alchemist, The Monk And The Riddle, and Siddhartha. Business is only as good as the humans involved and as we all know humans range from genius to quite fallible at times. On another note, I hope you make it to SXSW this year!" - Aruni

"I didn't 'get' twitter until I was sitting in a Duran Duran concert a year and a half ago and for the first time I wanted to tell the world how cool it was. I've observed that I have become more open myself. I still keep appropriate things private or share them only with my close friends and family but there are things that happen or things you learn that to me just scream to be shared." - Aruni

"Happy Belated Birthday! Hope you had a wonderful day." - Aruni

"I so agree! In my first company we had a particular VC who would show up unprepared making it harder to get through the agenda. I was a pretty young CEO back then and didn't fully appreciate the intricacies of board management, but it's so important to get to know people on your board (and even your employees) outside of work. No matter how often people think they can separate work and their personal lives, it's rarely done perfectly...one always affects the other and as a manager if you don't appreciate that, you won't be able to get the best out of someone and they will think you really don't care about them. In my opinion anyway." - Aruni

"So true! Not only legacy technology but also legacy ways of doing things and legacy 'tried and tested' mentality die a long, slow painful death sometimes. I can't remember the last time I used a payphone. In 3rd world countries though many people use phone cards." - Aruni

"Totally agree! We have lots of great things going on here in Austin. We are sometimes concerned that we don't have as good access to capital as the Bay Area but we help our companies at the Austin Technology Incubator find creative ways to get capital. Where there is a will, there's a way!" - Aruni

"What a great post on the importance of relationships! It's wonderful to see this coming from a VC and your acknowledgement of what it takes to make things work in life and business. It's so true about shared vision/values...how hard it can be to realize when half way through it's apparent you don't communicate on the save wave length or share the same vision/values when it comes to family, kids, finances, careers...probably why so many people end up divorced. I know I certainly have a shtick and the shtick changes over time depending where you are in the child rearing and career process... :-) Happy Father's Day!" - Aruni

"This is great! I'm a part-time mom blogger and entrepreneurship blogger and it's a great strategy for Diane Birch. I heard her sing at Guy Kawasaki's AllTop party at SXSW and as you said 'fell in love' with her music! I even went up to her and told her how great she sounded. I think she is going to do very well. Someone tweeted me on twitter after I mentioned I was listening to her and said they were going to help promote her and would send me a CD when it came out so I hope she still remembers because I'm excited to ehar it. I've recently gotten into song writing and am looking for a musician or two to help me match the lyrics with music. Music and writing exercises the other side of my brain that I've not had the opportunity to exercise as much in the past. So cool!" - Aruni

"Sounds nice! Next time you are in Austin, let me know...would love to meet up for coffee, but it sounds like this time was a short, fully packed day. Tell Gotham Gal Happy Mother's Day!" - Aruni

"I know what you mean. I have 3 email accounts and have people send me links to their 'we will solve all your email problems' businesses. But all seem too time consuming and even less intuitive than what I do now - Outlook and iPhone. It's probably because I haven't really had time to evaluate them. And for some strange reason although I use imap on my phone, the emails don't delete when I delete them on my phone and then they re-download. I haven't had time to figure that one out yet. I guess someone needs to invent another form of communication...it's sometimes just as hard to return voicemails. Texting and twitter are good but not really for the email issue." - Aruni

"I enjoyed this post. These kinds of stories reinforce the relationship aspect of any business. No matter how much people try to automate things and how much we rely on virtual connections, there is no replacement for face to face, human to human connections to make things happen." - Aruni

"I'm not on facebook that much. I have tons of friends requests waiting from people I don't really know. I'd say 90% of the friends I have on facebook are family and friends I've known for quite some time. If I do end up spending more time on there I will most likely cull the list down a bit. As you said, people can follow me via my blog or twitter if they want to know what I'm up to. There's something about how we communicate with our really close friends and family that's different than we do with the public...even for the most social people (e.g., Scoble). There will always be things appropriate for some spheres of relationships in your life and not in others." - Aruni

"We'll miss you. SXSW got off to a great start yesterday. Saw one presentation, interviewed twice, and made it to 2 parties -- overdid it a bit I think. :-) My panel is Monday at 3:30 pm - called Building a Web Business After Hours. http://sxsw.com/interac....... There's always next year!" - Aruni

"When I read this post, it made me think of this post written by one of or social media gurus here in Austin http://everydotconnects.com/2009...... about how big companies are relating to the current world in the same was as they have in the past...and they are failing. I enjoyed the picture of the empty phone booths!" - Aruni

"So true. I was born in Sri Lanka and immigrated to the US with my parents when I was very young. We need international education which is part of the reason the school will be International Baccalaureate certified eventually. I know that my K-12 education here in the States was not as strong and well rounded as my parents or my husband's was but it wasn't that bad either because I stumbled into the Honor track. But it seems that public education is not near what it used to be and one theory I've heard is that when we were younger women had fewer career options and one was being a teacher. So you had some really smart women teaching, but now many smart women choose other careers because they are more lucrative." - Aruni

"Thanks for the great re-cap. I agree with much of what you said. Interestingly, my husband is starting a new school (in reference to your #10) here in Austin called The Magellan School (www.magellanschool.org). It's a non-profit, dual language, immersion private school. The two main languages will be Spanish and English with proficiency in Mandarin. He went to the American School in Mexico city and is completely bi-lingual. You can't tell he speaks two languages when you look at him. He also has a master's degree in aerospace from Stanford and is big in the Wireless community here so starting a school is a bit out of his career path...but he's passionate about our kids knowing more than one language and when the calling hits... It's a tough environment to start a private school right now, but despite that there have been many people applying even though we are still finalizing the location! And it's set to open this Fall. He and I are both entrepreneurs and we are probably raising 2..." - Aruni

"That's great. It's always good to have people who have built businesses investing in other businesses. I've found that a successful entrepreneur turned investor tends to add a lot more value to the companies they invest in...at least within the first 5 to 7 years they start doing it full time." - Aruni

"Congratulations! Benchmark has a great reputation. It is true that the best time to raise money is when you don't need it. I can't wait to see what you all do with the money! Must be pretty exciting opportunities ahead to raise $35 million!" - Aruni

"Great idea! Like you, I no longer really look at my feed reader. It was overwhelming and I felt guilty that I couldn't ready them all so I pretty much quit using a feed reader. The posts from blogs I read regularly come to me in my email. It's amazing to me that there are blogs out there where you can't easily subscribe in email! There are a few I would like to follow, but if I have to go somewhere other than my inbox, it won't get read. If it's in my email, I scan the headline and first few sentences...if my interest is piqued I'll read the whole thing...if not, I hit delete. Seth Godin's blog is one of my favorites too! I like his short and easy to read/digest posts. Often it seems like he is speaking to me directly." - Aruni

"I've been finding myself more on facebook than I used to be. Mostly because I have connected with people I usually know well off line. Old friends and family. I still more time on twitter but I notice that more of the people I interact with offline interact with me on facebook than on twitter. It's interesting. The status updates and Wall comments on facebook do seem to pull me in a bit more." - Aruni

Make sure you understand the point of each marketing step you take. - Aruni

"Yay! That's awesome. I'm crossing my fingers that Obama can lead all of this talent he's assembling and do it well. Managing mediocre performers is different than managing a team of all stars. They still need management and to be held accountable or as we've seen even the very smart guys/gals can go wayward." - Aruni

Wow, it's so amazing that Nicole is going head to head on a debate with Elizabeth Pantley!! - Aruni

"It's really great to work with people you've worked with before. But you do also have to be careful of group think. As they say past performance doesn't always predict future performance so it's sometimes good to have someone with a different perspective on the team because, afterall, it's a different company, often a different market, and different times. So many variables. The trick is to have the team that has worked together be open minded enough to listen to others with different perspectives...be open to change. Good luck in 2009 with your companies and your vetted teams!" - Aruni

"Great goals! I, too, believe in God or a higher power as some may say. And I think God resides in each one of us. I haven't been paying attention to the spiritual aspect of my being as much either. I'm hoping that focusing on singing that touches my soul will help. We are all in it together and if we all keep working together, I know the world will be a better place. :-)" - Aruni

"Merry Christmas Fred. Yours is one of the very few blogs I read religiously (yes, I used the term religiously on purpose)! This is the first time we have celebrated Christmas at home. We've always traveled to other places to visit family. It's been a fun time with family and friends who stayed here as well. I was raised Christian but have similar beliefs as you. I enjoy Christmas more now than ever before because our kids' eyes light up and they get so excited about it. They are stll young and I'm in such awe of them and their enthusiasm and excitement about life! Here's to continued luck in 2009 and beyond..." - Aruni

"Have a great trip Fred. I, too, am trying to take some time off. I have two weeks off from my day job but kids and another job...along with an existential crisis, will soak up most of my free time. :-) Rest well and come back with your optimism....us readers and the world will need it! You might be interested in checking out links to two articles I recently read on leadership and management. I linked to them on my post late last night http://www.entrepremusings.com/index....... They are very well written and so appropriate for what's going on right now. Aruni" - Aruni