Ryminate

What was John Mackey Thinking?!

This week Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey, confirmed that he anonymously posted more than 1,000 comments to a Yahoo Finance chat board, most of which discussed his company. Let's just stop there for a moment and reflect--a Fortune 500 CEO that has time to post 1,000 comments to a Yahoo chat board?

Most of the comments were discussed Whole Foods or its competitors, but Mackey also made some very entertaining comments with regard to his "real" identity":

"I've stated my identity on this board before, but no one apparently believed me. I am George W. Bush and a long-time customer of Whole Foods Market. I own quite a bit of stock in the company and have owned it since the IPO back in 1992."

For a greatest hits compilation of Mackey quotes, check out this article in the the WSJ (subscription).

I'm quite certain the SEC is all over this one. I'm guessing right now someone is putting together a timeline showing 1) Mackey's comments to the chat board, 2) the Whole Foods stock price, and 3) a history of Mackey's trades in WFMI. There is also the pending antitrust issue with the FTC on Whole Foods' bid for Wild Oats. This deal was already in trouble--this may kill it.

I'm guessing that in the end Mackey will be found to be foolish, but not a criminal. This episode will likely damage the Wild Oats takeover, perhaps beyond repair. Nevertheless, Whole Foods should not in the words of Al Lewis of the Denver Post, "...bag the organic fruitcake running Whole Foods."

Yesterday and today the headlines are screaming, "Whole Foods CEO Mackey Is Out Of His Organic Mind." To that article and others I say...   

Yes, he is crazy, but he has always been that way.

From the very beginning when Mackey was operating his first health food store, he was crazy. Of the experience he said, "We didn't even have a shower …I would take showers in the Hobart dishwasher in the [store’s] restaurant, you know, using the spray hose." (Now that's quite an image, isn't it).

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Every great institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man. His character determines the character of the organization.” This is certainly true of Mackey and Whole Foods. His unconventional leadership has yielded some of the most innovative management techniques of the past few decades. These management techniques have yielded a profitable company, and among other recognitions, nine years running on Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For" list. For a great overview of "Mackey Management", check out Charles Fishman's article on Mackey, "The Anarchist's Cookbook", available here.

Certainly Mackey's participation in Yahoo chat boards discussing his company is both idiotic and out of line, but assuming he has not broken any laws, (which at this point could be a BIG assumption), be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

Free Business Start-Up Guide!

The Business Resource Guide distributed by the Colorado Office of Economic Development is one of the most comprehensive, state-provided business start-up guides in the nation. Not only that, but it's FREE!

If you are starting a business, the Guide provides a great framework for thinking through the many of the important issues that should be considered. Check it out by section, or in its entirety (warning - pdf):

• Introduction
• Starting a Business Checklist
• Business Entry Options
• Legal Structure and Registration*
• Income and Property Tax
• Colorado Sales Tax
• Employer Responsibilities
• Bookkeeping
• Sources of Assistance
• Choosing Your Advisors
• Business Plan
• Marketing
• Financing Options
• Liabilities and Insurance
• Trademarks, Copyrights and Patents
• Important Contact Information

• Download Entire Guide (44 mb pdf)

* Trade Name Update. Effective May 30, 2006, all registration of trade names formerly with the Department of Revenue moved to the Secretary of State. Please see their website, http://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/business/main.htm, for more information.

**This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice**

Startup Weekend is Cranking!

I'm live blogging from Startup Weekend in Boulder, CO. Startup Weekend is 70 people in a room trying to build a startup in one weekend. We are 4.5 hours into the weekend and things are quickly taking shape. The startup will be known as VoSnap. More details to come.

I am acting as a legal advisor and we are blazing through formation documents, trademark searches, terms of use language, and some novel legal issues. What a way to spend a Friday night!

5 Ways to Conduct a Free Trademark Search BEFORE You Name Your Business

Does this scene sound familiar? Your sitting around a table, perhaps you are using a whiteboard, and you are brainstorming on a name for your business. (Hopefully by now you actually have a business, or at least a business idea). Someone calls out a potential name and the group reacts. Maybe there is also someone at a laptop checking the availability of domain names on the fly. “Nope, sorry it’s not available,” is answered with a chorus of groans. Finally, you find a name that fits your business and “Yep, it’s available!”  You quickly register the name, and there you go—business named. Again, sound familiar?

Flash forward a year and let’s say you’ve built a profitable business. One spring morning you get a letter in the mail from some big law firm you’ve never heard of in New York City. The letter states your business name is infringing on their client’s trademark and they demand that you cease using the name immediately. All of the sudden you get a sick feeling in your stomach as you think of the time and money you’ve spent building your brand.

This is bad, but it could get worse. In a worst case scenario where you are found guilty of trademark infringement you could find yourself paying the other side (1) profits you earned while using the infringing business name, (2) any damages you may have made to the other side’s name, and (3) attorneys fees. Worse still, if a court determines your infringement was “willful”, these dollar amounts may be tripled.

One step that is too often overlooked in the business naming process is the trademark search (and then of course the subsequent filing of trademarks). A trademark search is a search of all existing trademarks to determine whether or not your business name is available.

The internet is a great tool for conducting free trademark searches. Here are five great places to conduct a basic trademark search before naming your business: 

1. USPTO – The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office allows you to search for all trademarks filed at the federal level. You can search for your exact business name as well as any derivatives.
2. State Level – You can also conduct a search at the state level. This can be done through the Secretary of State’s office in most states, (including Colorado).
3. Internet – Don’t underestimate the value of doing simple internet searches. You can check for your name, any derivatives, and any similar names. Check out GahooYoogle for doing side by side Google and Yahoo searches.
4. Online Phonebooks – Online yellow pages are also a great place to look for similar business names. SuperPages or Switchboard are great because they allow you to search for businesses with or without designating a particular city or state.
5. INURL Search – Finally, you can use Google’s advanced search operators to conduct searches like the “inurl:” search. If you type “inurl:[type business name here and remove brackets]” in your Google search bar, Google will return all indexed domains that contain your business name.

Certainly there are some limitations to the above approaches to a trademark search, however, as the old adage goes an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  Also, just because a similar business name comes up in your search does not automatically mean your business name is unavailable. If you have questions regarding your results of your search or would like to conduct a more comprehensive search consult an attorney. Finally, for a general overview of trademark law, Harvard publishes a great overview available here.

**This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice**

Fixing Social Content Sites

I agree wholeheartedly with Dharmesh Shah’s assessment of social content sites like Digg. The problem is the content–-it's completely random, and while often interesting, it is NOT particularly relevant to me.

To illustrate, check out the current headlines on Digg:

Google says Vista Search Changes not Enough

One of THE COOLEST Guitars (PIC)

Why Wal-Mart Won't Sell You More Than Two Prepaid Cell Phones

The Weird Things People Eat Around the World

Stolen Homer Simpson Statue Found

Like I said, these stories are random, interesting, but not particularly relevant to me. The social content sites have responded by creating story categories (e.g., entertainment, technology, sports), BUT they really can’t slice the content narrow enough to solve the relevance problem.

How do you fix this?

One idea is to create a PLATFORM, where users can create social news site pages containing content relevant to any type of vertical market. The content on these pages could be anything from all things labradoodle for labradoodle lovers, Notre Dame Football for Notre Dame fans, a local political candidate for supporters, GTD, even a nucleotide of interest to particular group of researchers. Content within these user created, vertical market sites would be voted upon just like Digg, Reddit, Truemors, thereby incorporating the value of the wisdom of crowds.

There are those out there trying to create this PLATFORM, (e.g., coRank), but I think a MUCH less complex model would be much more viral. I envision a basic site where...

1. users can create their own pages using the platform;
2. news stories are listed in two basic categories: the latest (the latest submissions), and the greatest (the voted upon results); and
3. the site would allow for interaction among users (e.g., comments, chat, forum clouds, meetups)

The content on these sites would be VERY relevant to its users, because unlike the other social content sites out there, you’ve gone one step further and empowered the users to create the categories. This is taking user generated content to another level.

There is a bit of a dilemma here: as you increase focus and thereby increase relevancy, such focus may cause a site to fall below the critical mass of users required to keep it going. This dilemma might be able to be bridged. For example, it may help in such situations for the "latest" stories to auto-propogate with content based upon user defined Google News Alert keywords, and then the voters could take over.

Austin based startup Thoof may be building something that principally meets some of what I've described above. We'll have to wait and see.

If you're a startup trying to build something along these lines I'd love to talk.

Focus and Opportunism--Two Competing Values?

I heard a good piece of advice the other day that flies in the face of the credos of many young, opportunistic "knowledge workers" out there:

Keep your head down and work rather than constantly popping up and asking, "Why am I doing this?", "What other opportunities are there out there?" You can certainly "pop up" so to speak on a periodic basis, once you've covered some ground and reached certain milestones, but on a day-to-day, month-to-month basis keep focused on your tasks and roles at hand.

Such focus will actually expand the opportunities to "do other things," and these opportunties will in fact be there when you do actually "pop up" at the junctures, milestones, and vistas.

I would agree that the younger generation seems to be overly focused on the grass on the other side of the fence.  Loyalty to self trumps loyalty to organizations.  In some ways this makes markets more efficient, however, when taken to extremes this can frustrate potentials. 

I have to imagine that to the older generations this "opportunistic mentality" seems akin to family car trips with the drone of kids asking, "Are we there yet?"  

The Cult of Overwork

I discovered a great blog today written by Alexander Kjerulf.  One of his posts entitled The Cult of Overwork had me laughing out loud.  It's basically his reaction to a CNN article that consisted of interviews of 12 well-known leaders on how they manage their time.  There was a similar article, perhaps the same article, in Fortune a few months back. 

Many of these "leaders" have daily schedules that consist of waking up at 5:30am, working until 7pm, answering 100 emails at night, etc.  Kjerulf comments:

I fully expected one of them to go “I get up at 4 in the morning, half an hour before I go to bed, and work a 27-hour day, only stopping for a 3-minute lunch break in which two assistants stuff food down my throat like a foie-gras goose.

Perhaps this is particularly funny to me as an corporate attorney; there are in fact several large firms out there that arrange for lunch at your desk to allow you to keep billing those hours.  Not quite the foie-gras goose, but close.

While I found Kjerulf's piece both funny and true to my world, the "Cult of Work" moniker might be a bit strong. Certainly there are more troublesome things happening in the workplace than working too much.

Check out Alexander's blog.

Thinking about an MBA???

I read a great piece on making the decision to go back to school for and MBA. You can check it out here: NoMBA.pdf.  The author, Rajesh Setty, writes on how to get by without going back to school by focusing on attitude, making alternative plans, knowledge gathering, creating powerful networks, etc. 

In discussing networking, Setty points out 5 key "network hubs" as I call them, that are useful to consider in taking stock of your own personal network.  Here they are:

1. Professional organizations in your field
2. Non-profits that are highly respected
3. Golf
4. Alumni networks
5. Political affiliations
6. Religious affiliations

Empty your Inbox with the "Trusted Trio"

Gina Trapani at LifeHacker suggests another way to keep from suffering from InboxAsaToDoListitis.  She suggests dragging all messages into one of the three following categories (works best with Outlook):

The Trusted Trio

• Action
  

  These messages represent tasks you must complete; whether that's a response that will take more than two minutes (anything less than that, just respond on the spot!) or some sort of an action. All these messages represent an item on your to do list.

• Archive
  

  The Archive folder is your long-term email reference library. Place all the messages that contain information you may want to retrieve at some point in the long term future in Archive. Any completed threads, completed requests, memo's you've read, questions you had answered, and completed project email goes into Archive. Basically, whenever an email is "closed" but you may find it useful at some point in the future place it in Archive.

• Hold
  

  The Hold folder is a temporary holding pen for important messages you'll need quick access to within the next few days. If you're waiting on someone else to get back to you with crucial information, or you're maintaining a thread about a time-sensitive topic, keep it in the Hold folder. For you GTDers, items in the Hold folder might correspond with items in the next few weeks in your tickler file.

Australian Subsidization of Startups

Today I received an email from a good friend in Australia.  He just quit his job to start his own company.   I was shocked at the support he is receiving from the Australian government to take the entrepreneurial "leap."  Through a program called the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme (NEIS), my friend attended a free 6 week small business management course, will receive a government grant of $200 per week for up to 12 months while he gets his business of the ground, and will be assigned a business mentor.  What a deal!

NEIS claims that while around 75 per cent of all small businesses fail in their first year, "only 25 per cent of NEIS projects meet a similar fate, thanks to their intensive grounding in business management issues."

Just imagine if their were similar programs put into place here in the U.S..  Talk about stimulating an economy!  Perhaps there are such programs out there, but I've never come across one.