Shannon Varney

Window into the parallels between Ironman training and building a startup. 

I’m gearing up for IM Lake Placid in July - comforting to find others experiencing how daunting both can be. 

Great insight from @peterwbell in this Forbes article on how he sizes up startups in the first three minutes.

We were fortunate to have Peter Bell serve as our advisor at Highland Capital Partner’s “Summer@Highland Program” this past summer. I remember when he shared these points during one of the program’s first events on recruiting. In particular, he emphasized the importance of “test” number three: poor team builder. 

Peter is constantly meeting with startups, so he is able to quickly size up a founding team. Assembling a weak team raises several red flags. If a founder has trouble building a best in class team, investors will have a hard time believing in the vision and the founder’s ability to win customers.

Peter goes to extraordinary lengths to due diligence the founders. Even in our application process, Peter reached out to a co-worker of mine that I hadn’t worked with in three years. He had letters of recommendation from two individuals who knew me well, but he still wanted to learn more. That really impressed me. I can only imagine how much further he goes when considering a Highland investment. 

If you’re going to meet with Peter, be a good team builder. What’s more you better be prepared for him to dig deep to find out if you’ve got what it takes to build a successful business. 

Classic post from Joel Spolsky on the importance of simply getting started and moving forward, albeit incrementally at times, every day. I’m certainly guilty at times of procrastinating the true start to my work day, and it’s good to hear that people of Joel’s caliber have experienced the same. 

His comment on pair programming makes a lot of sense. In scheduling pair programming sessions with someone else, you are forcing one another to “just get started.” What other collaborative activities can help push you along simply by making you accountable to someone else?