Category: Uncategorized

In no particular order:

• You can’t get toilet paper as income, but you can get private company stock as income and get taxed by the IRS at 34%.
• You can pay less than a 35% premium for extra soft toilet paper, but calculating the preferred stock premium over common requires a PhD and ten venture capitalists to weigh in.
• You can wash off toilet paper, but if you hold common stock you can get washed out.
• You can get scented toilet paper, but the sniff test on common stock is harder.
• Toilet paper is liquid and you can sell it on eBay, but you can’t find accredited investors to purchase your private company stock there, and you’d probably be the laughing stock of the world if you tried.

More on the predictability of toilet paper, from the Seinfeld episode where George Castanza is relating the discussion he had on a date:

George: We discussed toilet paper.

Jerry: Toilet paper?

George: Yeah, I told her how toilet paper hasn’t changed in my lifetime, and probably wouldn’t change in the next fifty thousand years and she was fascinated, fascinated!

Jerry: What are you talking about?

Elaine: Yeah.

Jerry: Toilet paper’s changed.

Elaine: Yeah.

Jerry: It’s softer.

Elaine: Softer.

Jerry: More sheets per roll

Elaine: Sheets.

Jerry: Comes in a wide variety of colors.

Elaine: Colors.

George: Ok, ok, fine! It’s changed, it’s not really the point. Anyway, I’m thinking of making a big move.

J. Rextor has an interesting annecdotal comment at his b-school blog at BusinessWeek, where he is using his blog to recount the experience of searching for a new executive position within a firm. The comment is:

… I did receive an email back from one of [executive recruiters] that stated it takes
approximately 3.2 years for most executives to find an upwardly mobile
executive position in another company.

I have not really had much appreciation for the personal value and legitimacy of executive severance clauses until the past few years where I have seen a number of friends have to find new jobs at senior levels. If one is faced with the situation of having to leave a situation of a good fit with a prior firm, it can be hard to get the balance right again when looking for a new job. At higher-levels, awesome positions can be scarce to come by, and severance compensation can be viewed as consideration for longer job search times for like-level positions. That said, and while I’m no compensation expert, 3.2 years does seem pretty high to me. I’d have to sample some other executive recruiters for feedback, but I’m pretty certain that their cycle time must be shorter than this for placement of executives (guessing 12 months?).

See the post over at Susan Mernit’s blog. No direct connections to blogging as far as I can tell (upon cursory analysis), but there is a strong connection to internet and online businesses in the referenced articles.

The title of the blog post is Art Hutchinson’s. He has a very touching post about the recent loss of his brother to cancer at the young age of 39. Posts like his really put life into perspective. It also sheds light on the importance of early diagnosis and the rapid attention to changing health conditions of loved ones. Finally, for those who have not had to go through such an ordeal, it sheds light on the hopes at stake (in fact, on the line every day) for better, faster research. My condolences to Art and his family. I’m sure that many others, like myself, would only hope to have a supportive extended family like his in times of need.

Good post by Paul Kedrosky at Infectious Greed. Some good comments in there too. Nothing really comes to mind for me as to what to add to the conversation. If you are generally interested in compensation as related to startups, some other posts I had were here and here.

Via Steve Rubel. Weblogs, Inc. is being sold to AOL.

All of August 6 to October 2 gone? Not good. What is going on? I had two private weblogs as well that were lost?

Update (10/5/05): OK. Colleen (at Six Apart) was very responsive and pointed out to me an outage where part of the data disk was lost. Was concerned as I visited a number of other TypePad blogs and saw no issues while mine was down. Looks like most of my stuff has been recovered, but I may still have to chase some residual errors down (even after republishing all files in a site rebuild).

Update (10/6/05): Steve begins with "S". Now I understand a little bit more about what went on from this post.

New look here. Playing around with some TypePad stuff that I haven’t played with before, just so that I can stay on top of one of the market leaders in the blogging space. The other guiding principle is that I am looking to simplify my life by migrating my blog back to something that I originally intended it to be – more of my version of an electronic newsletter and a way for people to get info about me and for me to share info in niche areas. This is in contrast to something where I am trying to both grow the reader base (which has stalled out somewhat) and follow cultural norms on blog format. Going to a stock template so there less technical stuff to mess with, and this may be at the expense of readability. If it hurts readability too much, I may move to 2-column format instead of 3-column. This may mean ditching some of the sidebar stuff that is traditional to blogs – my visible blogroll links have already disappeared.

With the new look, I am also trying to make some adjustments in my professional life (no plans to leave 21Publish). Not comfortable with disclosing specifics here, but all of my clients now know that I am transitioning out of certain projects in hopes of concentrating on new things which have not yet been determined. Could be non-profit, commercial, consulting, or venture-related. The future isn’t written yet, but I need to consolidate my efforts. Feel free to contact me if you have thoughts.