Fear, Motivation & Going Too Far

I played football in high school. I wasn't all that great, but I was good enough to play a fair amount. I think my most redeeming qualities were knowing what to do and being willing to give and take a big hit. Anyway, we played in a tough league. Three of the schools were from the Richmond school district in the SF Bay Area. Things may have changed, but at the time, Richmond was a bad place. I think it may have been the murder capital of the world while we were in school. (The murder capital of the world is the city with the highest number of murders per capita.)

The three schools were De Anza, Richmond and Kennedy. We dreaded going to those schools to play.

Kennedy -- When we played there my junior year, the game was played in the afternoon either because they couldn't afford lights or because it wasn't safe to be there at night. Probably both. The game was also played early enough in the afternoon that the Kennedy students were still in school. I suppose the idea was that the students would be too rowdy if they were allowed to attend the game. The field was surrounded by a fence topped with barbed wire and you had to pass through a gate to get in. There were a handful of parents from our high school there, and no more than ten students on the Kennedy side of the stands. Despite the low turnout, we still had a couple D batteries rain down on us during warmups.

Richmond -- My freshman year, we beat them by a score of 42-6. As we walked from the football field back through their school to where the bus was parked, one of their players came running out of their locker room with a baseball bat, intent on bashing our heads in. The only thing that saved us was a coach who grabbed him and held him back, shouting, "You don't want to violate your parole!" After that, every time we traveled to Richmond, the police would escort our bus from the freeway to the school and literally onto the field. We'd get off the bus at the 50 yard line.

De Anza -- De Anza was the scariest. They had metal detectors on all the doors of the school to make sure students didn't bring in weapons. The halls were covered in tags from notorious East Bay gangs. On one trip to De Anza, we were holed up in the guest (i.e. women's) locker room, and there appeared to be a bullet hole in the clock on the wall. Seriously, a bullet hole. In the women's locker room. This was not a safe place.

And could De Anza play ball? When we played them my junior year, they were ranked in the top ten in the Bay Area. (Just for context, the #1 team was De La Salle, in the middle of winning 100+ straight games in a row, earning them the title of the best team in the country.) As if that weren't enough, the reigning California state champion 4x100 meter relay team also played for the De Anza football team: Running Back, Running Back, Wide Receiver, Wide Receiver.

We were VERY intimidated when we were getting ready to play them. Our coaches knew it too. We had a good team that year, but they knew we needed a little something extra to motivate us.

In an unusual move, Coach had us fully dressed with pads on before we got on the bus to go to De Anza. We gathered around him in the locker room. His pep talk started slowly and quietly. He talked about how good they were and how they thought they were even better. How nobody thought we could win this game, the rich white kids from the hills going out to De Anza. But he believed.

He told us all we had to do was believe in ourselves. We had to knock them down and don't let them up. And when we've got them down, rip their hearts out...

As he said "rip their hearts out", Coach reached into a helmet and pulled out a bloody heart, presumably a cow heart from a butcher. His eyes widened and spit bubbles formed in the corners of his mouth as he talked faster and faster about what we needed to do. Then, he attacked the heart like a crazed, starved badger. He ripped at it with his teeth as the blood dribbled down his chin, that crazed look in his eyes urging us to do the same to De Anza in the game.

The reaction from the team was a mixture of "Raaaaah. Let's go get 'em!" and "What was that?!? What a joke!" as we filed out of the locker room and onto the bus... for a 30 minute ride to the game, followed by warmups and eventually the game. In retrospect, the timing was maybe a little off, but it maybe worked. We won.

NYC: Take a Yellow Taxi instead of a Green Taxi

In early 2014, NYC introduced green taxis to provide service above 96th street and in the non-Manhattan boroughs.  In practice, green cabs pick people up all over the place, and if you're anywhere near 96th street, you'll see plenty of green cabs.

I've now taken green taxis a number of times, and I want to share a couple quick thoughts on the difference, based solely on the experiences I've had in the last couple months:

Green Taxis...

• Think Sixth Avenue extends above central park South. (It does not.  Also, I know it's called Avenue of the Americas, but I refuse to use that name.)
• Have never heard of Citi Field and don't know how to get there.
• Don't know how to operate the meter.
• Ask whether Tribeca is in Manhattan or Brooklyn.  (!!!)
• Thinks it's OK to interject in a backseat conversation when they have something to add.

Yellow Taxis...

• Know the city like the back of their hand
• Know the outer boroughs well enough to get damn near anywhere efficiently
• Never EVER make a mistake with the meter
• Mind their own business - until you engage them.  And then they're more than happy to chat.
• Will return a lost wallet found in the back of their cab and will REFUSE any cash offered as reward.  This happened last week, and I was blown away.

I don't always take taxis, but when I do, I prefer yellow cabs.  You should too.

Minimum Viable Introductions

If you search on Google for the term "Minimum Viable Introduction" in quotes, there are only four results (UPDATE: Mere minutes after posting this, there are now six results.  Two of them are me).  And only one of them (a tweet) is really about introducing people to one another.  I could have sworn that someone in the techochamber had written about this a while ago, but I obviously can't find it now.  So, I suppose it's my duty to write something semi-permanent on the topic.

I've written before about the art of the introduction, but I glossed over the introductory email.  Let's review what generally happens before I introduce two people to one another:

1. Person A asks me to intro them to Person B.  (Or I suggest to A that they should meet B)
2. I ask Person B if they'd like to meet Person A.
3. Person B agrees to the intro.

Now it's time for me to properly introduce Persons A and B.  What should go in that email?  There are many way to handle this, so let's review a few.

A: FUN, OVER-THE-TOP INTRO

Great example from my sister here, introducing me to her friend's younger brother [names have been changed to protect the innocent]:

Bob and Andrew,
As promised to each of you separately, I'm writing to e-introduce you. I'm also copying Diane because sisters rule.

Bob - As I've mentioned to you at least in part, here's some background on Andrew. He went to Brown, from which graduated in [ancient times] with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He minored in frat parties and baseball heckling. I kid, of course, though I assume such degrees are not only possible at Brown, but also attainable with minimal effort. (ivy league humor. hilarious!) After graduating from Brown, he moved to New York, where he... [editor's note: I've removed 150 words of flowery praise from my sister to spare you the gory details]. He's excited about meeting you and talking about your career and generally offering insight and the like, which I assume will involve meeting for a drink and talking about "synergy." I've now exhausted my understanding of his job and of business in general.

Andrew - I've forwarded you Bob's resume, so you already know he's a genius (and of course you know Diane, so you also know he comes by it naturally). You should note that not only is Bob winning college, he is also in a leadership position at a major fraternal organization. My general recollection of his fraternity was [redacted for the sake of all involved], but I'm sure that in the interim it's become a scholarly crowd of gentlemen who respect and honor women. Anyway. I think you two have a lot in common, and I know you're looking forward to being a help now and going forward, so thanks for that, from all of us.

And with that...I'll leave it to the two of you to be in touch. 

B: BRIEF INTRO, REITERATING THE CONTEXT

Here's an example introduction I sent yesterday [names and specific details changed again]:

Gertrude - Thanks for agreeing to an introduction. Mortimer (cc'd) just joined HotCompanyX a couple weeks ago to run their data science and analytics efforts. We were talking last week, and your old company popped into my head. I thought it would be great if you could share some lessons from your days in the space. Thanks again for being open to that.

Morty - Gertrude was the data science wizard at her old company a few years back, thinking a lot about the space you're in now. She's since moved on to become the Chief Scientist at HotCompanyZ, which sounds like a ton of fun.

Anyway, I'll let you guys take it from here.

And now for my new favorite: 

C: MINIMUM VIABLE INTRODUCTION

Again, an example from yesterday:

Thelma/Louise - Consider this your minimum viable introduction.

Or you could shorten that to:

Thelma/Louise - Please meet.

So, when should you use the various versions?  Version A is really only appropriate when you've got some time on your hands and you're introducing two friends you know well.  It's a ton of fun to read and write intros like that, but you have to know that your audience is going to be in on the joke.  They have to know you're being more than a little over the top on purpose.  If you sent this type of intro to the wrong person, they'd think you were an arrogant jerk.  But used appropriately, a ton of fun.

Version B is the one I use most often.  It reminds both people why I'm introducing them, which is always a help when one or the other forgets why they're talking to each other or why they should bother responding to the email.  It's also great to use this when it's taken a while to get the introduction arranged.  It helps re-set the context for all involved.  This is also a fairly professional, but friendly introduction.  There's probably something rigid and formal that should sit between my options A and B above, but I've never bothered.  If you dig deep enough into the MS Word template archive, you can surely find something to fill the gap I've left you.

Version C is also best used with people you're comfortable with.  If they're startup people or familiar with the concept of the Minimum Viable Product, all the better.  I used this type of intro yesterday when I'd already given each person an overview of the other in the previous 30 minutes, and I knew they'd follow up quickly.  There was a low chance that either person would be confused about the purpose of the introduction, and I also knew that they'd appreciate my brevity.  Busy people are generally happy when you get to the point quickly, and the person who asked for the intro won't feel like they've created an obligation to write a 2000-word introduction.  For three busy people, the Minimum Viable Introduction makes things move quickly.

So aspiring networkers, get out there and make it happen.

Amber Alert at 3:50am - What Took So Long?

Like many New Yorkers, I was awoken at 3:50am this morning by my phone blaring loudly.  I rolled over and checked it:

AMBER Alert
Manhattan, NY AMBER Alert UPDATE: LIC/GEX1377 (NY) (1995) Tan Lexis [sic] ES300

There wasn't much I could do about it, so I rolled back over and went right back to sleep.  When I woke up this morning, there were a couple tweets from friends about it:  "Not cool to scare the bejesus out of ppl with an amber alert at 4am" and reference to "a bunch of people as pissed off as I am that they're awake at 3:50am."

My first thought (and first tweet) was sympathetic to Verizon's situation.  "Imagine being the parent of the missing child when Verizon says 'we won't send the alert for another 5 hours'" when people are awake.  If you're a parent or someone in a position to help find an abducted child, of course you'll do everything you can to get that child back to safety.

Right?  Right?

Well, it turns out that the kid was abducted at 3:05 in the afternoon.  It took Verizon (and the police) 12 hours to send that alert.  What the hell took so long?  Do we really need to give the suspect a twelve hour head start?  How about when we know that the "Suspect is bi−polar and has had recent outbreaks of violence"?  Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg have done an excellent job of making the city safer over the last two decades, but it CANNOT take twelve hours to get an Amber Alert out.  That MUST be faster.

Mayor, Police Commissioner, Verizon Execs -- What took so long?!?

Startup Passover

From my mother: 

"I've read that the sea didn't part for the Israelites until they took the first steps into the water with no assurance of safe passage.  My wish for you is that the metaphorical waters open after each step and show you a way forward as you build your business.  Whatever the outcome, Dad and I are very proud of you."

Doesn't get any better than that.

Time Tracking

My first month at Harvard Business School was a turning point for me.  There was simply too much to do.  There were of course classes to attend and schoolwork to do.  There was my wife and young daughter to spend time with.  There were 900 new classmates I wanted to meet - and 900 second year students too.  There were amazing speakers coming to campus.  There were clubs to join and club events to attend and organize.  There were informational events about careers and entrepreneurship.  There was flag football.  There were professors I wanted to get to know.  Of course, I also needed the occasional moment of solitude, and I needed to sleep.

The advice people give you when you're going to HBS is to pick 2-3 things and do them well.  You can't possibly do everything, so don't even try.  You have to prioritize.  I'd heard that advice. I had listened carefully to friends, mentors, admissions people.

But man, that first month at HBS was overwhelming.  I got buried in all the things I could be doing.  I tried to do too much and I crashed.  These two things got me out of the muck:

• AGGRESSIVE CALENDARING. I sat down on Sunday night and mapped out my week on my calendar.  What time would I get up each day?  What events did I want to go to?  What classes did I have to attend?  How much work was I going to do to prepare for each class and when?  When was I going to spend time with my family?  When did I have time to socialize.  I color-coded my calendar to make sure I had enough time in each of the various buckets.  And I pretty much scheduled my whole week, from when I would wake up to when I would go to bed.  I didn't always follow the schedule minute for minute, but I knew that each decision I made had implications.  If I met someone for lunch instead of having lunch with my scheduled family lunch, that was a clear decision.  If I was socializing with other parents at the playground instead of doing my work, that was a clear decision and the implication was likely that I wasn't going to get as much sleep.  There were always tradeoffs and having things laid out on my calendar made the tradeoffs crystal clear.

• DILIGENT TIME TRACKING.  The other big thing I did was that I started tracking my time.  I had tracked my time before business school in order to see how much time I was working - and what I was working on.  But when I re-started tracking my time, I took it to a new level.  I tracked everything.  I had a spreadsheet with a column for every day and a row for every 15-minute increment (although I've since simplified to 30-minute blocks) from midnight to midnight.  I kept track of when I was asleep and when I was watching TV.  When I was comforting a baby at 3am and when I was reading for school.  Everything went into the spreadsheet at the end of the day and got categorized into a few big buckets: School, Work, Career, Family, Friends, Sleep, Other.  At the end of every month, I'd look at those big buckets and ask myself, "How do I feel about this?  Am I spending my time on the right things?  How do I want to change this in the coming month?"  Seeing my time laid out in front of me made me feel like I was in control.  I was deciding what was important to me and aligning my actions (my time) with those priorities in an explicit way -- and holding myself accountable.

After I graduated, I stopped tracking my time as diligently for a while, but I started to feel like something was missing.  That I wasn't in control of my time and my life.  I've now been back at it since August of 2011.  I'm approaching 30,000 consecutive half-hour blocks that have been accounted for.  That is a LOT of data about me.

The thing people always ask me after "Are you crazy?" (Yes, I am a little crazy) is "How much time do you spend tracking your time?"  Well, I've gotten pretty fast.  It's only a few minutes at the end of the day, and I'll usually update my spreadsheet once or twice during the day as well.  It's not more than 5-10 minutes per day, and I'll usually spend 60-90 minutes at the end of the month reviewing the last month's results.

And now people ask me, "So what?  What do you do with all that data?"  Like I said, I look at it once a month and set my priorities.  Where do I want to spend my time?  Am I spending my time the way I want to?  Are there any interesting trends in the data that I didn't see when I was living it day-to-day?

My time is more valuable than anything.  How I spend my time defines who I am.  I want to make sure that I'm spending my time in a way that matches up with my priorities.

What about you?  Do you know where your time is going?  Does your time match your priorities?

I Didn't Have Time

I really try to avoid this phrase.  It's total bullshit.  You didn't have time?  Everyone has time. You should instead say "I didn't make time for [whatever]."

No matter what it was, you could have chosen to spend your time on it and you didn't.  Don't cop out and say, "I didn't have time" when what you really mean is, "After I did everything that I wanted to do and that was either important to me or urgent, there was no time left over for the unimportant thing you asked me to do" or more succinctly, "I chose not to."

You could have slept a little bit less.  You could have watched a little less TV.  You could have left work a little earlier or stayed a little later.  You could have cancelled that dinner with your friends.

But you chose not to.  Own it.  Time is the one resource you have that cannot be replaced.  It is precious, and how you spend your time defines who you are.  You are right to be stingy with your time.  Deciding how to spend your time involves making tradeoffs.  It's impossible to do everything.  People understand this intuitively.

So think again the next time you're about to say "I didn't have time."

Sleeping Enough?

The Wall Street Journal published an article today: Go Ahead, Hit the Snooze Button  The article is all about the link between sleep and productivity.  One stat in particular jumped out at me: "30% of the civilian workforce [doesn't] get enough rest," defined as people getting less than six hours of sleep.  How much sleep are you getting?  I bet you think you know, but you don't *really* know.

But I do.

Turns out, I've been tracking my time for the last eight years, on and off.  And I've been doing it without interruption since August of 2011, so I have pretty good data about trends in my sleep patterns.    I'll share two things with you today:

1. I slept an average of about 6.6 hours per night across all of 2012.  Check out how that breaks down month by month below.  Man, September was brutal.
2. I've slept six or fewer hours 30% of the nights so far in 2013.  I should really be getting more sleep.

Introductions, the Right Way, Opt-In and BCC

I've gotten much better over the years at handling introductions, although I was certainly no good at this early on in my career.  With a little advice from smart folks all over the internet (see the links below), this is how I handle introductions.  Note that you may be anyone of these three people at different points in a given day, let alone over the course of your career.

Let's assume I want Brian to introduce me to Joe.

1. I send an email to Brian saying something like this: "Brian, looks like you and Joe are connected.  I want to talk to him about X and Y.  Would you be up for making an intro?  Thx/Andrew" [Note: If you have other things to talk to Brian about, send a separate email for those topics.]
2. If Brian DOES NOT want to intro or isn't comfortable doing it, he can politely decline or simply ignore my email.  Obviously the polite decline is preferable.
3. If Brian DOES want to make the intro, he'll probably forward my email to Joe and say something like "Joe, You up for talking to this guy?  Here's his LinkedIn profile: [link].  He's a smart dude who did X, Y, Z.  I know him from [context]."
4. Joe replies to Brian with a yes or a no.  
5. If Joe says NO, Brian should send me a polite decline, but may opt to just skip it.
6. If Joe says YES, Brian then sends an email to both me and Joe saying "Please meet." And may provide some detail about each of our backgrounds.
7. (If I don't hear back from Brian for a while, I may follow up: "Hey, did you get a chance to reach out to Joe yet?")
8. As the person who requested the introduction, I should reply to Brian's introduction email. This next piece is IMPORTANT -- I should reply-all, but I should move Brian to the BCC field.  In the body of the message, I should thank Brian and note that he's been BCC'd.  Then I should dive into my message to Joe.

This series of steps may seem like a lot of work, too slow and full of opportunities for drop off.  But it does all kinds of great stuff for each of the people involved.  Do it this way, please, for the good of the community.

Links:

Fred Wilson: The Double Opt-In Introduction

David Crow: reply, Reply-All and bcc [nice graphic at the bottom of the page]

Elad Gil: Ask Before You Intro

David Cohen: Asking for Introductions

I'm sure I'm forgetting someone here who was influential on my thinking.  In particular, Chris Dixon pops to mind, but a quick search didn't turn up the relevant post.

Business School Applications & Recommendations

Five years ago, I was applying to business school and I find myself today working on recommendations for someone else applying to business school.  Couple thoughts:

1. I am deeply honored to be writing a recommendation for this person.  I hired him a while back and he turned out to be a star.  Having an opportunity to help him advance his career is a great honor and I am delighted to be writing nice things about him.
2. All of the top schools ask essentially the same questions for their application essays, but each school words their questions slightly differently.  Prospective students can reuse themes and stories from school to school, but they can't reuse the essays word for word.  Adjusting and tinkering with essays each time was a surprisingly large amount of work for me.  I was originally planning on applying to five schools, but I was so exhausted after four applications that I stopped.  (I suppose the fact that I'd already been accepted to one of the schools made it easier to cross that fifth school off the list...)
3. The recommendations follow that same pattern.  The schools all want to know basically the same things about the applicant, but they've phrased their questions slightly differently with slightly different word limits.  It's annoying.  I can understand making prospective students do something just for you, fancy business school.  You want applications from people who really want to attend your school, so it shouldn't be too easy to apply.  But when I'm writing recommendations, make it easy.  Have a standard form across all b-schools.  Ask the same questions with the same word limits.  People writing recommendations are busy people.  Give us a break.
4. I am TREMENDOUSLY grateful to the three people who wrote my recommendations back in the fall of '07.  I was always thankful that they took time to do the work, but I didn't realize how much went into it.  I applied to four schools.  Writing those recommendations was a non-trivial amount of work for three extremely busy people.  Thanks, recommenders!

UPDATE: All b-schools ask recommenders to rate applicants on things like "Works collaboratively with others".  The scale is always something like Top 1%, Top 10%, Top Third, etc.  But almost no schools ask who you're comparing the person to.  Are you comparing them to the ~7 billion people in the world?  The small pool of outliers who pursue MBAs?  Kudos to Chicago's Booth School of Business for being the only school I've seen that asks: "Please indicate the reference group for this comparison."

Vindication

Way back in February '05, I posted twice about the baseball Hall of Fame.

1. Genetic Algorithms and the Baseball Hall of Fame lays out the research by my good friend David Cohen around the criteria for being elected to the HOF. (The link to his full research got broken in the move from MovableType to Blogger, and I'm too lazy to fix it. Sorry.)
2. Barry Larkin - Hall of Famer (to be) points out that Larkin meets the criteria and would be elected someday.

Yesterday, as is often the case, Cohen's conclusions were right. Barry Larkin has been elected to the Hall of Fame. Congratulations are due to Larkin... and Cohen.

The 6 Things I've Learned in My First 5 Days

Lot18 really is a startup:

1. People are crammed into the office. I can reach out and touch five people without moving my desk chair.
2. Everyone is bleary-eyed and bushy-tailed, especially the Dev team, which just closed out a major relaunch of the site.
3. The people who have been with the company for four months are considered the veterans.
4. What was very recently a record-setting month for the company is now a good week.

But it's very different from any startup I've ever seen:

1. Every day at 5pm, people start drinking wine. Every day. (It took me until Friday to join in.)
2. There are NO water glasses in the office. Nearly everyone drinks their chilled, filtered water out of an enormous wine glass.

Announcing My New Gig

I’m especially grateful this Thanksgiving. After five whirlwind years at TheLadders.com and an exhilarating year at Gilt City, I’ve just joined Lot18 as VP of Product. In case you’re not familiar with the company, Lot18 -- based here in NYC -- gives its members exclusive, limited-time opportunities to purchase directly from wineries, gourmet-food producers and other makers of artisanal goods. If you like good wine and delicious food, sign yourself up right now: http://www.lot18.com/i/aok

I’m tremendously excited to join the whip-smart team here. Lot18 is just a year old, but is already 90 people strong and has grown each month of its existence. The site experience is smooth, the customers are loyal and passionate, and the wineries are sharing their Lot18 success stories throughout the industry. Just before I started here, Lot18 announced a $30 million round of financing from top-tier VC firms Accel, NEA and FirstMark. All the signs point to a huge success in the making, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.

One last note before I let you go: Lot18 launched a corporate-gifting program last week. There are some incredible wine (and gourmet food) packages available for your clients and employees. Check it out here: http://www.lot18.com/corporateaccess

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mediocre Pumpkin

Since I started looking for my caffeine fix, I haven't tried the same thing twice. Today, I took the seasonal route.

Today's Effort: Pumpkin Spiced Latte

Verdict: Meh. Didn't taste like coffee, which is good. But it just wasn't that great. If I want pumpkin (pie) flavor in the future, I'll stick to the Chai Latte.

Old People: My neighborhood Starbucks was rocking out to the Beatles today, and everyone with gray hair was signing along. I'm holding out for AC/DC before I join in.

Yum

It's a beautiful, crisp fall Sunday in NYC. After going caffeine free yesterday, I'm back at it today.

Today's Effort: White Chocolate Mocha from Starbucks

Verdict: Delicious. I'm definitely getting this one again.

Continuous Improvement: Started fall swimming lessons for my daughters today. So fun to swim with them. They love it.

Hot Coffee & Preschool

Chilly morning today. After walking my daughter to her new preschool for the first time (her fourth day, our first walk together), I stopped off at Starbucks for a croissant and some warm caffeine.

Today's Effort: Cinnamon Dolce Latte.

Verdict: Good. Last couple sips were a little bitter, but I'd call it a success.

Morning Highlight: The walk to school was a joy. She skipped and ran the whole way before exploding into the classroom with her new friends, new teachers and Freddie the class turtle. I feel blessed.

Hustle & Grind

If you're starting a new company, you've got a lot of hard work in front of you. But not all hard work is the same. You need to hustle and you need to grind.

Hustle

Hustling is meeting people, getting in front of potential partners, customers, users, journalists, co-founders, teammates, investors, advisors, industry experts, etc. You've got to be persistent, and you have to be selling, always. Hustle is Tristan Walker badgering Foursquare until they hired him... and then quickly closing a bunch of BD deals. Hustle is Alexa von Tobel dropping out of HBS to raise money for Learnvest and hitting the PR circuit. Hustle is Alexandra Wilkis Wilson signing brand after brand after brand for Gilt back in the early days, when it was a new idea no one had ever heard of.

Grind

Grinding is putting your head down and powering through work: coding, building excel models, putting together presentations, answering customer emails, wireframing, thinking through edge cases, writing copy, trafficking ads, assembling data, writing job descriptions, reviewing resumes from (and replying to) job applicants, hammering through all kinds of repetitive tasks that have to be done. Grinding is Michael Shafrir and my kickass community team at TheLadders finding and approving jobs for what felt like 100 hours a week back in '04. Grinding is Marc Cenedella reading all 160,000 customer service emails in our first three years at TheLadders. Grinding is much harder to see, and it's much less sexy. You don't hear about it as much, but that doesn't make it any less important.

You can only succeed when you have both. Hustle without grind means empty promises, and grind without hustle means a ghost town with a fresh coat of paint. The difficult thing is that I've only met a few people who are truly great at both aspects of hard work.

As you're starting your company and building a founding team, this is something you should think about. Who's going to hustle? And who's going to grind? Do you have enough of both?

Me? I'm a decent hustler, but I find it exhausting. On the other hand, getting into a good groove at the keyboard with my headphones on is energizing. When I get rolling, I'll forget to feed myself, and I'll find myself feverishly tapping away at 3am. I'm a grinder.

What are you?

Plain ol' Coffee

Back to coffee after yesterday's tea.

Today's Effort: Regular hot coffee today with cream (or was it milk?) and sugar at L'Express this afternoon.

Verdict: Not bad. I finished my cup, and I didn't even resort to a second (or third) packet of sugar.

Neighborhood Note: Grabbed lunch at Terakawa Ramen before my coffee stop. It's a hole in the wall with shockingly bad service for a Japanese joint, but the ramen hits the spot.

Caffeine Search Continues

Took a day off from coffee and tried tea this morning.

Today's Effort: Iced Chai from The Bean near Union Square.

Verdict: Tastes like pumpkin pie with whipped cream. I thought it was delicious at first, but I didn't end up finishing it.

Extra Crunch: The baby cockroach creeping up the wall as I sipped my tea concoction certainly didn't help anything.

Finding Coffee

I've never been a coffee drinker. I used to only drink coffee in Europe and Asia, but I thought I could use a little more caffeine in my life. Coke wasn't doing it, and everyone seems to enjoy coffee. I thought I'd give it a shot.

Turns out I don't like the taste of coffee. I've been trying various coffee-ish drinks from Starbucks for the last couple weeks, trying to find something I enjoy.

Today's effort: Grande Iced Caffe Mocha

Verdict: Blech. I haven't been able to drink more than a third of it.

Silver Lining: Starbucks' glazed old fashioned donut isn't half bad, and it brings back memories of Colonial Donuts on Lakeshore Ave back home.

If you have a suggestion for a delicious high-caffeine drink I might enjoy, please leave me a comment.