Thoughts in Time

While we’ve been away, we had some renovations done on the exterior of the Key West house. We can’t wait to see it when we get back. We think it’s looking much better .. Here are some pics.

1962

Before

Now

While many of my friends traveled during college or did a semester abroad, I was busy building Higher One with Miles, Mark, Casey,and Dean. So this year I decided that rather than going back to work right away, Kellee and I would take six months to travel around the world. We’ve got an ambitious itinerary and are asking our friends, contacts, and connections for help so that we really see the most interesting things, meet interesting people, and have six months that we’ll remember for a lifetime. In order to “crowd source” our trip, I’ve put up a trip website. You can visit it at www.seanandkellee.com. You can offer suggestions through the trip wiki, follow our progress, see photo’s and keep up with my tweets. It should be a whole lot of fun. I’m going to continue blogging on this site about technology entrepreneurship, investing, and positive psychology, and will blog about the trip on www.seanandkellee.com.

Today is a big day for Kellee and me as we’re closing on a house in Key West, Florida. It is a great time to look to buy, and we believe we got a great deal on a house in the heart of Old Town. Gary Thomas, who is the only key west realtor who consistently blogs (at keywestproperties.blogspot.com) was amazingly helpful in helping us find a perfect property for us and then helping us navigate through the sales process from thousands of miles away. Here’s a pic of us outside the house in early March.

We’re going to be leaving London on April 22nd. We originally were going to stay through May, but decided that we’d rather get to Key West sooner and come back to Europe earlier in the summer to start our around the world trip. We’re having a going away party on April 18th and hope to see many of our friends from London there.

Over the next few months, I’m primarily focusing on finishing my work for my Master in Applied Positive Psychology degree which I should receive in August from the University of Pennsylvania. For my Master’s Capstone Project (like a thesis), I will be focusing on studying the relationship between job performance and job satisfaction with fit between a job and certain dimensions other than skill and experience. If that’s something that interests you, let me know. I’m also working on launching two new organizations.

1) The Positive Policy Institute - I’m working with two fellow UPENN students to create a non-profit think tank that will focus on policy advising and advocacy based on positive psychology research and application. There are many economics based think tanks, we think a psychology based think tank that focuses on helping governments and NGO’s implement policies that are not just based on fixing problems, but also on creating flourishing for their citizens will make a big difference in the world.

2) The Positive Performance Institute (P2 Institute) - I’m working with a friend and former employee of IMG to create a corporate training program that uses the metaphor of sport to teach a curriculum focused on resilience, leadership, and performance. The curriculum is built off of positive psychology research, and we’re going to start by integrating it with a golf program. It will launch in 2010. It will be a 3 day course held at 5 star resorts in the US and UK. Class size will be limited, and I will personally teach the inaugural courses. By integrating sport with the classroom instruction, we will help executives and leaders be able to immediately put what they’re learning to work - making learning more fun and ensuring that what we teach sticks! This company is part of a holding company that I have created to build businesses based on positive psychology and through the application of positive psychology techniques to investing and management. Of course, I’ll still be investing with the guys from Higher One through Top Floor Capital. I hope to write about some of our various portfolio companies soon.

Starting at the end of June, Kellee and I have a massive around the world trip planned. Our itinerary is still coming together, but will roughly be Europe for July and August (including Morocco and Egypt), India, Southeast Asia, China, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Belize, Panama… Home to Key West for Christmas with our families.

It’s going to be a great year, and today is really the start.

Mike Butcher of TechCrunch UK asked if I’d be willing to answer some questions about our angel investing. He published our email interview in full. If you’re a seed stage startup with a promising business, get in touch (we’ll be putting up the TopFloorCapital.com web site sometime soon!). The nicest thing about the article was getting this note from one of the CEO’s of an angel investment I’m involved with (I’m in 6 so far):

Hi Sean,

Congratulations on getting profiled on techcrunch. You’ve been one of our most supportive and helpful angels thus far.

Here’s a link to the full article.

Image via Wikipedia One of the great things about the start of the UPENN MAPP program has been having conversations with my classmates and with the founder of the positive psychology movement, Martin Seligman. One of the core things I’ve gotten from speaking to Marty and appreciating how he thinks is that he has uncovered a basic opportunity across many different domans. That opportunity I’ve stared to think of as “looking at the plus side”.

I’ll give you the example that relates to his launching the positive psychology movement. Marty realized that traditional psychology, or “psychology as usual” examined what is wrong with us. It was interested in pathology, disease, mental illness, and basically how to fix those of us who have something wrong. What Marty realized was that there were very few people studying the other side. If people with mental illness were say -5, and people who were depressed were -3, the goal of traditional psychology was to understand this so that we could get you back to 0. What about helping normal people go from 0 to +5? That’s what is now termed positive psychology. It’s the scientific (and let me underscore SCIENTIFIC) study of 0+ in the psychology domain.

The neat thing is that one can apply this thinking to other domains. Think about Physical health. Medicine primarly is concerned with fixing people with illnesses. There is work done on the plus side, but not nearly as much.

Think about business management. We tend towards thinking about cutting costs, fixing processes, etc. The study of the plus side isn’t done nearly as often. After all, we tend to think - if it’s aint broke, don’t fix it! This lack of research and attention (outside of books like good to great) presents an interesting opportunity.

I’m sure that there are other areas where Plus Side Thinking(tm )… may open up many new research and applied avenues. I look forward to discovering them!

Image via Wikipedia
I haven’t seen the new clone wars animated feature yet, but the ads reminded me of how much I enjoyed the original star wars features. Star Wars provides several great lessons for startup founders.

Do or Do Not - There is no Try
Action is the lifeblood of a startup. There are many ideas, it’s the doing and execution that counts. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how hard you try - did you do? If so, your chances of being succesful will be much greater.

Use Jedi Mind Tricks
Often with a startup, it’s important to remember that perception is reality. This doesn’t mean be untruthful (a jedi would never do that), rather it means that it’s important to understand perception, and work to change it. When you’re selling first customers, talking to the press, etc if you can convince them that “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for” even when they’re staring at them, you’ll have a good chance of being able to shape perception and help your startup get the advantage it needs to get ahead.

A few dedicated individuals can bring down the empire
The death star was the most powerful weapon ever built - able to destroy a planet with a single shot. A couple rebels with spaceships they hacked together were able to destroy it. They found the weak point. No matter what industry your company is in, the dominant “empire” has a weak point. Find it, and you can win. Just look at the history of tech and you’ll see this time and time again (DEC -> Microsoft -> Google).

Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you?
Like Yoda, you aren’t big (YET), but you’re nimble as all hell. Strike fast, hard, and often and remember that like Yoda, people will underestimate your ability due to your size.

I’m sure there are other great lessons for startups that can be gleaned from Star Wars. Look forward to hearing your ideas in the comments.

Lightyear Capital Makes Significant Investment in Higher One Holdings, Inc. - MarketWatch

Exciting…. When this deal funds, it’ll be my 1st liquidity event (partial - but hey, it’s still a liquidity event) . Really excited that we were able to build Higher One to the point where an investor such as Lightyear wanted to become involved. Early investors were able to realize more than 20X on their investment and better yet, this deal provided everyone involved with the opportunity for some diversification, while also being able to choose to maintain ownership and participate in the upside as the company continues to grow and increase operating leverage. Congrats to everyone at Higher One. I look forward to seeing the continued growth in the coming years!

15 Additional Colleges and Universities Implement Higher Ones OneDisburse Refund Management

Been really busy and travelling a lot, so haven’t blogged in a while (Kellee’s been giving me a hard time about that)… so here’s a link to an update on Higher one.  They keep rolling along.  Some updates on Pikum and life in London coming soon (excluding rants about IKEA).

Entrepreneur magazines Hot 100 Company Rankings - Higher One

Great to see that Higher One has gotten onto another hot company ranking list… this time - the #12 fastest growing private company in the U.S. according to Entrepreneur magazine. Recently, the company signed it’s 100th university client. Glad to see that things continue to go so well. The great thing about Higher One is that because it’s business serves colleges and students, it’s actually counter cyclical, meaning that if the U.S. does head into a recession, the business should do better, rather than worse.

The business is also growing inorganically, having just purchased EduCard and setup a major partnership with Evisions (http://www.higherone.com/media/2008/acquire_educard.shtml). This will make it easier for 900 Evisions clients to get up and running with Higher One. It’s pretty amazing that something that Miles, Mark, and I founded in 2000 now serves 5% of US college students and has managed over $4 Billion in payments.

JOIN THIS FACEBOOK GROUP: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=12256012493 

IKEA told me that the only way I can complain or possibly get compensation for getting mistreated is by writing to some address in the UK.  That’s no fun, I’d rather find everyone else who IKEA has treated this way and get us together through Facebook.  If you’ve been treated poorly by IKEA, join this group - or if you just want to show a big stuffy corporation that doesn’t value service that customers do matter and that it might be worthwhile to listen to customers rather telling them they “need to write to blah blah UK to register a complaint”, JOIN THIS GROUP- http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=12256012493
The rest of the story….

IKEA had told us they would deliver our cabinets on Tuesday(for the first parts of the story see here, here, and here).  Remember, I ordered this stuff in the middle JANUARY.  On Tuesday, we never got the delivery, and finally were told that “they were at your place at 7:30AM, but didn’t know which flat the raised ground floor one was and were afraid to ring the wrong bell so they left” -

Are you serious?  How incompetent can one company (or it’s outsourced delivery reps) be?  So, Kellee called them and  they promised that they would then deliver our order before Saturday, or at the worst, first thing on Saturday (before 9AM).  It’s now Saturday at 5:20… Do we have the order? Of course not.

At about 3, I get a call from DHL saying IKEA has moved the order to some other courier (no reason known).  Sorry, they can’t tell me who or what’s going on - I have to call IKEA.

I call IKEA.  The girl says “I don’t know why your order is being switched from courier to another - there aren’t any problems on your route” - I run out of pay as you go minutes on my Orange phone, and thus get cut off.

top up phone minutes (remembering that IKEA has cost me something like 10-15 pounds between the times I’ve now spoken to them through this drama)

I call back.  A new girl asks me to hold on while she finds out what’s going on. Remembering the pence ticking away as I’m on hold, I respectfully decline, asking her to call me back.  A couple minutes later, I get a call back. “Don’t worry, all the orders will be delivered tonight, including yours. They’re just running late.”

Me…” So, you expect me to sit around all evening as well?  I’ve got family visiting from the US and wanted to take them out.”

“her - I really do apologize”

At this point, I started asking for compensation.  She said they can’t do anything beyond giving me the delivery cost back (which they already had done when they messed it up last time.  I said that wasn’t good enough. I asked to speak to a supervisor.  She put me on hold and came back saying the supervisor said that’s all they can do.

At this point, I was getting very agitated.  I ask again to speak to the supervisor. I’m told I can’t do that.  I ask for a supervisor’s name -I’m told I can’t have it.  I’m told that what I’ll need to do is write to their customer response team (they mistreat customers so often they have staff dedicated to this!)… I try to explain my position to the rep in a way that personalizes it…”what if IKEA told you to come in to work today at 9, had you sit until 5, then said - oops, we don’t need you, we’re not paying you, and your only recourse is to write to some office in Ipswich”… She says - “sorry, I can’t do anything else”.

This is where I explain that I can. I can write about it online, I can start a facebook group, I can become a pain that is going to cost them well north of whatever compensation they could have provided (I would have been happy with even a 50 pound voucher). She has nothing to say, so I hang up.

So here I am - IKEA, you are the first company to make me a determined detractor. I will share this story with anyone who cares to listen, and it has gotten me so annoyed that not only have setup a facebook group, but I’ve budgetd $25 towards buying ads on facebook to spread the word about that group.  That’s right, your service has been so bad that I’m choosing to spend money to tell people how bad it is.  And all this could have been avoided with some reasonable service and someone at IKEA taking responsibility when things did go badly.