Blake Modersitzki is a General Partner at Pelion Venture Partners. He joined Pelion in 2002 and has led the firm through four successful funds. He is focused on backing entrepreneurs building unique and disruptive technology. Over the years, he has led investments in Redhat, Riverbed, Fusion.io, Integral Ad Science, DOMO, enCommerce, Soasta, and Metacloud.
Prior to joining Pelion, Blake was Managing Director for Novell Ventures and VP of Strategic Business Development. He directed Novell’s venture strategy, including both its direct investments in companies and indirect investments in venture-capital funds. During this time, he served on the boards of several public and private companies, as well as the advisory boards of several venture-capital firms.
As a venture capitalist, he spends a lot of time with entrepreneurs and business founders, learning about their challenges.
What It Means to Start a Company
As a founder, are you innovating? Because it’s really easy to get disrupted in business. The world is moving faster and faster every day.
- There are 54,000 Google searches every second.
- There are more than 7,000 tweets per second. That comes out to 2.8 billion tweets per year. Forty-six percent of the world is online.
- The amount of information we consume doubles every 18 months.
Modersitzki grew up in a world where there were just three major networks: ABC, NBC, and CBS. Today, content from YouTube dwarfs mainstream media. Where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going are fascinating topics to explore. Technology continues to evolve and grow, and it will affect your:
- Business
- Personal life
- Customers’ lives
How do you stay above the fray, and how do you remain relevant? Talking with CEOs, he’s discovered that that is the loneliest job on the planet.
Find a distraction or hobby. Find the innocent filter. That’s someone who can help you see your work through a fresh pair of eyes. When his daughter worked for him, she told him he was putting too much stress on his employees. It’s important to create a healthy corporate culture.
When you have a handful of employees, it’s possible for the CEO to interview every new hire. But when your employee count gets into the hundreds, something’s got to give.
Empower Your Employees
Empower great employees to do their jobs more effectively. They’ll worry less about the details of their jobs, and they’ll start having more fun. They’re excited to come to work, and they’re happy for their coworkers’ success.
He has a Director of First Impressions who greets everyone who enters his office. That helps him gauge the type of people they’re attracting and how well their firm is doing at helping people. How are you interacting with your customers and partners? Who’s in charge of first impressions at your company?
Invest in the Very Best People
What kind of person do you want to add to your team? Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, and Steve Nash played different positions and looked different, but they were all NBA MVPs.
He knew Eric Schmidt before he became the CEO of Google when he was the CEO of Novell. In 1997, Schmidt asked him to manage his venture-capital fund, even though Modersitzki had no experience with venture capital at that point. But he was willing to learn, and Schmidt had confidence in him was willing to give him mentors and tools to succeed.
Look at your own team. Are you investing in people? How are they being successful? And what can you do to make them successful? His daughter offered constructive criticism while Schmidt offered a confidence boost. They’re opposite sides of the spectrum, but both are helpful.
Be a Go-Giver
His mom used to say, “You can catch more bears with honey than you can with vinegar.” The world is full of both harmless and scary bears, and you need to learn how to interact with people and handle difficult situations.
When an employee admits a flaw in the product or some other potentially disastrous problem, you have the choice to hand him or her vinegar or honey. Try being supportive and helping him or her work the problem instead of giving into the temptation to be purely negative.
If someone is hurting, consider putting your arms around them and helping them come up with a solution. Going along with that, do you have an abundance mentality? Go-getters are willing to step over people to achieve their goals. Go-givers are willing to give more than they take from the business ecosystem they’re in.
Innocent filters help him recognize when he’s veering off his course of being a go-giver. For 60 days, try giving to others in your business ecosystem with no expectation of a return. See how that affects what you’re going through, as well as your business and employees.
Important Lessons to Learn
Don’t believe your own press. The world is filled with social media, including things we say about ourselves and what others say about us. The most successful people are ones who you’d never suspect because they never talk about it.
What’s the difference between success and failure? In his estimation, 20 percent of success is what you do, and 80 percent is your purpose. Purpose comes from helping others and making a contribution.
Commit yourself to your business. When the ancient Greeks would land on an island they intended to conquer, they would burn their ships. They completely committed themselves to achieving their goal or perishing. Retreat is impossible.
Be patient and trust the journey. To improve his health, he started running and eventually ran many marathons. But the journey was more enjoyable than the destination. You can’t do it on your own, so find good people to help you along.