It’s really amazing how far green screen technology has come.
Monthly Archive for March, 2010
I found this to be an interesting take on the office work environment.
- Offices are built for distraction.
- Distraction leads to nothing getting done during the work day.
- Nothing getting done during the work day leads to working weekends and late nights.
I think this is true. I’ve worked inside of large corporations as a consultant and had such little space to get things done, I had to convince them to let me work from home.
A distributed work environment done right removes these distractions. Everyone is available by IM or email depending on the urgency. And each of those can be ignored dependent on the hierarchy:
I go out of my way to give my guys the space they need, but push them to contact me if they are blocked or I can help accelerate something. I can, and often do, need to ignore their request if I’m on a call or in the middle of something more urgent, but I expect them to respond to my requests quickly. And I think that makes everything work better and everyone happier.
Quality, default legal documentation; I wish there was more of it. That sums up the entirety of this post.
A startup has a massive hurdle to surmount when it comes to legal documents. Whether they are for founders, investors, employees, clients, or just the terms of service and privacy policies. Once these are in place, it’s not so expensive / time consuming to start with your standard form.
Fred pointed out a few template contracts for term sheets floating around from
TechStars Model Seed Funding Documents (by Cooley)
Y Combinator Series AA Equity Financing Documents (by WSGR)
Founders Institute Plain Preferred Term Sheet (by WSGR)
Series Seed Financing Documents (by Fenwick & West)
…but then went right on to point there limited value – all are missing something he wants to see in the terms.
And there are tons of sample contracts floating around the internet for other things… but they have similar or worse flaws. Start with a free template and chances are your going to need to start over or completely re-write it anyway.
I almost used an NDA once, that thankfully, I found was a big pile of unenforceable garbage before using. From the multi-page crap doc, we ended up with an easy to read, one-page document that worked.