Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Over the last couple of days I’ve had a number of conversations with investors about the whole concept of "smart money".  Smart money is the idea that an investor brings more to the table than just a chequebook.  They might bring business acumen, mentoring, customer contacts, or strategic expertise as well.  The smart money argument is one that is frequently used to justify giving a premium to an investor — additional preferences, board seats, and so on.

My view on the whole smart money argument is pretty simple.  I try to assess whether I could buy that expertise by hiring well vs buy it by selling a piece of the company.  After all, an investor may or may not provide the promised value after the transaction is executed, but I can always fire an underperforming an employee.

One investor candidly told me "The difference between smart money and dumb money, most often, is that smart money isn’t stupid.".  What he meant by that is that every VC into the company is going to want a board seat.  Bad board members can be a huge distraction when running a company.  The best board members are "not stupid".  They add value, but don’t take the company don’t blind alleys.

Another investor talked about structuring his investment so that a portion of the equity owned was based on the cash put it on, and a portion was earned based on his performance on behalf of the company.  That sounds great, but it also implies a level of involvement that a traditional investor might not have.  I think you’d have to be sure that you’re very comfortable with the investor in that scenario.

Either way, the concept of smart money is very common.  The challenge is to make sure you’re getting what you pay for.

Last week, at 3GSM, Microsoft President Steve Ballmer showed a VoWiFi enabled cell phone, running a version of Microsoft Communicator, and raising the spectre of free calling via WiFi hotspots.  Think of what would happen if Skype came to the mobile world.

Naturally, this has operators quaking in their boots.  More interesting, however, was Ballmer’s comment:

“Most people have a personal life and they have a professional life. And they want the device that goes in their pocket to give them one glimpse of their information, whether it happens to be part of their private life or part of their professional life.”

Indeed.

One could add also that the notion of "work-life balance" preached by so many HR departments is a sham today.  The reality is that we all take business related calls, if important, during our personal time, and vice versa.  There is no black and white, personal and business, but rather shades of grey.  The challenge is to successfully manage those shades.  Ballmer’s vision makes it technically easier, but personally more challenging.

Guy Kawasaki has a lengthy post about how to suck up to bloggers.  As usual, Guy has a few great points.  Like the fact that blogging is turning journalism on its head.  The best journalists, like Om Malik, are also bloggers.  Blogging defines the story today, not the previous generation of PR pro’s pitching the media. 

Don’t follow all of Guy’s advice, though.  Especially when it comes to befriending bloggers.

• Om Malik: if you do any thing Guy suggests, then you be dead to me.
• Michael Arrington: Friends should be to make your life richer, not assets to be leveraged.
• Alec Saunders: I’m running a startup.  I don’t have time for superificial behaviour.

Isn’t that what it’s all about?  Aren’t most bloggers dilettante’s with something else they do to pay the bills?  Isn’t the promise of blogging that citizen journalists - narrow experts with real world experience - have a forum to be heard?

Figure out what we have in common.  Then let’s have a glass of wine and discuss it.  That’s how friendships are made.

I am sitting looking at $72 of "overage" on my Rogers Unlimited Data plan.  That’s correct.  Overage on an unlimited plan.  I am a little confused.  I thought unlimited mean un-limited.  Just to make sure that I understood the term correctly, I went and checked my dictionary.  According to Houghton Mifflin:

un·lim·it·ed    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (n-lm-td)
adj.

1. Having no restrictions or controls: an unlimited travel ticket.
2. Having or seeming to have no boundaries; infinite: an unlimited horizon.
3. Without qualification or exception; absolute: unlimited self-confidence.

Ah… it’s an American dictionary.  Perhaps there is a uniquely Canadian meaning to unlimited. Perhaps it’s one of those quirks of idiom — like the fact that in the US "tabling" a document means putting it aside for future consideration, whereas in Canada it means to offer a document for consideration right now.  Quickly turning away from the modern convenience of the internet, I dust off my venerable Gage Canadian Dictionary, and look up the term.

un·lim·it·ed adj. 1 without limits; boundless 2 not restricted.

Nope.  It seems that the Canadian definition of unlimited is, in fact, the same as the US definition. Ah! Perhaps this is the source of my confusion. Rogers is using the special word unlimited***, which is apparently a new word that looks just like unlimited but means something different from the actual word unlimited.  

Yup, checking the weasel type at the bottom of the page reveals the following caveat.

***Rogers Wireless reserves the right to limit usage and charge $7 per additional MB for excessive usage over 25 MB of data per month.

So Rogers lawyers have redefined the word unlimited to mean 100% completely the opposite of unlimited.  It’s a bit like a Monty Python, sketch, isn’t it?

The more I think about this, the more steamed I get. 

Oh yes, I know, we’re all supposed to read the fine print on every contract we agree to, but who really reads all those terms on the click through EULAs anymore?  And in the rush of the moment to sign up for a cell phone plan, who reads the back side of the canary copy of the contract with its endless chicken tracks of lawyer type?  Rogers promised me an unlimited plan, and then changed the definition of the common english word unlimited to mean the exact opposite.   It’s positively python-esque in its hubris. 

Second, it’s entirely arbitrary who they will and will not charge.  Their weaselly redefinition of unlimited doesn’t say "Limited to $25 MB.  Usage in excess will charged at $7 per additional MB."  It says "Rogers reserves the right to charge who we feel like if we decide your usage is excessive."

I am sure this is just the beginning too.  I have a brand new Rogers Blackberry 8700r.  With its high speed wireless access, you can surf websites to your heart’s content.  And with its new browser, it’s a fabulous way to view those websites. Graphics et al all display much better than they did on my 7290.  Plus, the CD that comes with the 8700r has modem drivers on it so you can plug your Blackberry into your PC and use it for data communications — which is, in fact, what I did last week transferring some 20 odd megabytes of data while on a train trip between Ottawa and Toronto. I am sure I will be seeing a bill for hundreds of dollars for that trip.

Rogers used to be an innovator in the Canadian market.  This kind of behaviour smacks of clueless, and deliberately deceitful, lawyers and marketing people trying to pull a fast one on customers.  Rogers needs to fix my bill, and then offer a proper unlimited data plan — one that recognizes the reality of the advanced data devices they’re pushing in the marketplace.

The Hot Cheese Gun, originally uploaded by Alec Saunders.

I couldn’t figure out why the hot glue gun shorted out yesterday. Today, while downloading photos from my camera, I came across this…

So what are you looking at? My two oldest sons carved a piece of cheese into the shape of a hot glue stick, put it in the gun, and used it to make cheesie crackers.