Choose Your Own Adventure 3: The Final Countdown/Return of the Rainbows

Adam Jacob
Chief Customer Ofﬁcer
Twitter: @adamhjk, Email: adam@opscode.com

Friday, June 29, 12

• Chief Customer Ofﬁcer @
Opscode

• Systems Administrator
• Lots of Mergers and
Acquisitions

• Consultant

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/anotherphotograph/2100904507/sizes/o/
Friday, June 29, 12

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/timyates/2854357446/sizes/l/

Friday, June 29, 12

• Developers?


Friday, June 29, 12

• Developers?
• Systems Administrators?


Friday, June 29, 12

• Developers?
• DevOps?


Friday, June 29, 12

• Developers?
• DevOps?
• “Business” People?


Friday, June 29, 12

• Developers?
• DevOps?
• “Business” People?
• Executives?

Friday, June 29, 12

What do
you want to
talk about?
Friday, June 29, 12

Make your choice...
Managing Operations No Asshole Rule

Systems Administrators are
Sales and Marketing
Polyglots
Making Money with Open
Dangers of Automation
Source
Convergence, Idempotence,
You Must Love Your Editor
Promise Theory

How Websites Fail DevOps

Fund Raising Random Advice

Friday, June 29, 12

Managing
Operations

Friday, June 29, 12

Professional Road
Blockers

Friday, June 29, 12

Reason:
Responsibilities
are all out of
whack.

Friday, June 29, 12

Operations is
responsible for two
things

Friday, June 29, 12

System Availability

Friday, June 29, 12

Efﬁciency

Friday, June 29, 12

Operations should

• Set standards
• Troubleshoot
• Enable everyone
• Be the ﬁre department

Friday, June 29, 12

Push responsibility to
the edges
Developers must be on call

Systems Administrators should be escalated to

Friday, June 29, 12

Metrics tie to $$

Friday, June 29, 12

When you say no...

Friday, June 29, 12

When you say no...

You should be saying
“I’ll say yes if you take responsibility”

Friday, June 29, 12

When you say no...

You should be saying
“I’ll say yes if you take responsibility”

Managers, Executives - you have to live this

Friday, June 29, 12

No Asshole Rule

Friday, June 29, 12

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/91018475@N00/14998279/sizes/l/

Friday, June 29, 12

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/91018475@N00/14998279/sizes/l/

You’re an asshole if:

• After encountering you, people feel
oppressed, humiliated, or otherwise worse
about themselves
• You target people less powerful than you

Friday, June 29, 12

Chronic Assholes

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/swanksalot/4802111386/sizes/l/

Friday, June 29, 12

Chronic Assholes

• You can’t stop


Friday, June 29, 12

Chronic Assholes


• It means you are
incompetent at your job


Friday, June 29, 12

Chronic Assholes


• It means you are
incompetent at your job

• Doesn’t matter how smart
you are


Friday, June 29, 12

Bad is stronger than
good

http://liberalorder.typepad.com/the_liberal_order/ﬁles/bad_apples_rob.pdf
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/furryscalyman/523123579/sizes/l/

Friday, June 29, 12

good
• Positive interactions
must outnumber
negative ones 5:1


Friday, June 29, 12

good
must outnumber
negative ones 5:1

• Bad interactions have
stronger, more
pervasive, and longer
lasting effects


Friday, June 29, 12

good
Over 1/2 of those who
experienced incivility at
must outnumber
negative ones 5:1
work reported they lost
• Bad interactions have
time worrying about the
stronger, more
pervasive, and longer
incident andlasting effects
its
consequences

Friday, June 29, 12

Bad Apples Spoil the
Barrel


http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/merixon/3823883988/sizes/l/

Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel
Withholders of effort



Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel
Affectively negative



Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel
Interpersonal deviants



Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel


Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel
• Intentionally dodge their responsibilities to the
group and free ride off others


Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel

• Shirking (economists)


Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel


• Free Riding (sociologists)


Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel



• Social Loaﬁng (psychologists)


Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel



• Social Loaﬁng (psychologists)

• Being Lazy (everyone else)

Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel


Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel
• Continually expresses a negative mood or
attitude.


Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel
attitude.

• Pessimism


Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel
attitude.

• Pessimism

• Anxiety


Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel
attitude.

• Pessimism

• Anxiety

• Insecurity


Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel
attitude.

• Pessimism

• Anxiety

• Insecurity

• Irritation

Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel


Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel
• People who violate interpersonal norms of
respect


Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel
respect

• Making fun of someone


Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel
respect


• Inappropriate ethnic, religious or sexist
remarks


Friday, June 29, 12

Barrel
respect


• Inappropriate ethnic, religious or sexist
remarks

• Public embarrasment

Friday, June 29, 12

We celebrate smart
bastards

Friday, June 29, 12

We celebrate smart
bastards
• BOFH

Friday, June 29, 12

We celebrate smart
bastards
• BOFH

• ASCII Dongs

Friday, June 29, 12

We celebrate smart
bastards
• BOFH

• ASCII Dongs

• X is a piece of crap
because of Y

Friday, June 29, 12

We celebrate smart
bastards
• BOFH

• ASCII Dongs

because of Y

• Z is an idiot because
they built X in Y way

Friday, June 29, 12

We celebrate smart
bastards
• BOFH

• ASCII Dongs

because of Y

• Z is an idiot because
they built X in Y way

• Twitter #fail

Friday, June 29, 12

We undermine the
entire industry

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/rodimuspower/3994291430/sizes/z/

Friday, June 29, 12

We undermine the
entire industry
• Industry wide this
creates an enormous
inefﬁciency


Friday, June 29, 12

We undermine the
entire industry
creates an enormous
inefﬁciency

• Hampers our
competitiveness


Friday, June 29, 12

We undermine the
entire industry
creates an enormous
inefﬁciency

• Hampers our
competitiveness

• Damages our open
source communities


Friday, June 29, 12

• Lead with questions, not with statements
• Understand the effort and time others have
invested
• Avoid the passive-aggressive snark

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/aloha75/4753674243/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Friday, June 29, 12

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/bebouchard/482510614/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Don’t be an asshole
Assholes are incompetent - let’s shun them

Friday, June 29, 12

Sales and Marketing

Friday, June 29, 12

Marketing
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/aroberts/1669997859/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Brings
Leads

• Runs “Campaigns” to bring “Leads”

• Does “Lead Nurturing” to help convert to qualiﬁed
“Prospects”
Friday, June 29, 12

The Funnel (Pipeline)
Your Sales Guy Lives Here
• Leads get
converted to
Prospects through
Qualiﬁcation

• Some percentage
of Prospects
(usually 1/3 to
1/4) convert

Friday, June 29, 12

In one slide

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/chiaralily/3912278390/

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/kupkup/499566518/

Friday, June 29, 12

In one slide

Friday, June 29, 12
$ http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/chiaralily/3912278390/

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/kupkup/499566518/

Sysadmins are Polyglots

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/psd/4122468063/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Friday, June 29, 12

Not so fast, punk!

Friday, June 29, 12

Everyone here is a
software developer

Friday, June 29, 12

• Strings, Arrays,
Hashes
• Whipitupitude
• Manipulexity
• Regular Expressions
• Objects
• Code Re-Use
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/reidrac/2952137714/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Friday, June 29, 12

• REPLs are awesome
• I dislike contraints
• Mostly everything-is-an-object is good
Friday, June 29, 12

• First class functions / Closures are
awesome
• Everything is an object
• Metaprogramming
• Monkey-patching leads to trouble

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/pswansen/41832591/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Friday, June 29, 12

• Tracking state doesn’t require objects

• List comprehensions are amazing

• Multi-methods

• Built-in process supervision

• It’s *fun* to think functionally

• Actor concurrency makes you feel like a magic yogi

• Syntax doesn’t matter if it ﬁts the need
Friday, June 29, 12

( )
Clojure
• Less syntax is better
• Data is Code
• Single process concurrency
• Shell scripting to lisp is easy
• Systems Administrators should
learn Lisp ﬁrst

Friday, June 29, 12

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/freelancersunion/3501435073/sizes/l/in/photostream/

• You can speak cogently with more of your
peers
• You can debug the applications you run
• Learning gets easier
• You start caring exclusively about ﬁt
Friday, June 29, 12

Dangers of
automation

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/jonathangill/5338645910/

Friday, June 29, 12

Almost always caused
by focusing in the
wrong place

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/liberato/133570414/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Friday, June 29, 12

5 common dangers
• Moving faster than the
business can handle

• Failing to build in
operability

• Tautologies

• Failure to articulate the
business need

• Loving the Unicorn

Friday, June 29, 12

Moving faster
than the
business can
handle

Friday, June 29, 12

Technology moves
faster than business
culture
Friday, June 29, 12

Automation
is no
shortcut to
cultural
change
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/fotogezi/4642668435/sizes/z/in/photostream/

Friday, June 29, 12

Failing to build in operability

Friday, June 29, 12


A

Friday, June 29, 12

I’m Sleepy!

A

Friday, June 29, 12

I’m Sleepy!

A You do it!

Friday, June 29, 12

I’m Sleepy!

A You do it!

Do what?

Friday, June 29, 12

I’m Sleepy!

It!
A You do it!

Do what?

Friday, June 29, 12

I’m Sleepy!

It!
A You do it!

Do what?
Um,Ok.
Friday, June 29, 12

I’m Sleepy!

It!
A You do it!

How do I use this thing?
Do what?
Um,Ok.
Friday, June 29, 12

I’m Sleepy!

It!
A You do it!
WTF?!
Do what?
Um,Ok.
Friday, June 29, 12

I’m Sleepy!
Halp!

It!
A You do it!
WTF?!
Do what?
Um,Ok.
Friday, June 29, 12

Fine, I’ll ﬁx it
I’m Sleepy!
Halp!

It!
A You do it!
WTF?!
Do what?
Um,Ok.
Friday, June 29, 12

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/quinnanya/5893333070/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Tautologies
are bad!

Usually.

Friday, June 29, 12

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/dreamagicjp/2226097076/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Failure to
articulate the
business need

What is the $ value of
your automation?
Friday, June 29, 12

Loving the
Unicorn

Friday, June 29, 12

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/55919472@N00/1478647249/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Making money with
Open Source
Friday, June 29, 12

The value of Open
Source to a Business
• Accelerate
development

• Empower Users

• Encourage
Proliferation

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/dburka/2967863568/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Friday, June 29, 12

Accelerated product
development
• Core Features

• Bug Fixes

• Evangelism

• To gain maximum value,
you must open source
early

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/pulpolux/215165567/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Friday, June 29, 12

Empowered Users

• Willing to sweat to
make it work

• Means you can ship
earlier

• Become stronger
advocates, because they
feel a sense of
ownership

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/thomashawk/5327432805/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Friday, June 29, 12

Encourage Proliferation

• Strong Communities

• Your brand and IP
become tied to the
individuals who join

• You must be peers, or
they smell a rat

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/emilyrides/5858397465/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Friday, June 29, 12

Classes of individuals
1. Builders
• Participate because it is early
• Unﬁnished is sexy
• Add new features, ﬁx bugs
• Eventually move on to new projects,
become Evangelists
• Rarely pay you money, they pay sweat
Friday, June 29, 12


2. Early Adopters
• Primarily users
• Must be complete enough to solve one of
their use cases (but not all!)
• Will ﬁx bugs and improve things
• May be willing to pay you eventually
Friday, June 29, 12

3. Evangelists
• Passionate advocates
• Product must be complete enough
to solve a complicated vertical
• May ﬁx things, more likely to just
point them out
• Willing to advocate consumers
paying for your product

Friday, June 29, 12
• Have many motivations

4. Consumers
• Users of the software
• Bugs are bugs, not new opportunities
• Expect thought out solutions
• Need support and training
• Couldn’t really use it without paying you,
Friday, June 29, 12

• Support

Friday, June 29, 12

• Support
• Open Core
Friday, June 29, 12

• Support
• Open Core
• Open Platform
Friday, June 29, 12

Support

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/thurm/2316152263/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Friday, June 29, 12

Support
• Can be high value if the
coverage is broad

• Requires discipline to
scale

• Has a very
straightforward social
contract

Friday, June 29, 12

Open Core

Friday, June 29, 12

Open Core

• Has a very complex
social contract

• People tend to smell rats

• Not much difference
from saying there is a
“free” as in beer version

Friday, June 29, 12

Open
Platforms

Friday, June 29, 12

Open Platforms
• Complex social contract

• Must allow multiple
businesses to ﬂourish on
the platform

• Peerage must be deep

• Might accidentally create
a colonial economy

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/johntolson/4608455941/sizes/z/in/photostream/

Friday, June 29, 12

Systems Administrators
make spot edits

Friday, June 29, 12

;(
We don’t love our
editors - we use them
(barely)
Friday, June 29, 12

Professional
programmers tend to
love their editors

<3
Friday, June 29, 12

Infrastructure as Code

Friday, June 29, 12

Do you want to love
your editor?

Friday, June 29, 12

Learn to type
• 50 WPM minimum

Top Speed: 98 mph Top Speed: 211 mph

At least as good as a
Friday, June 29, 12
Yugo

Line Numbers
INFO: *** Chef 0.10.10 ***
INFO: Run List is [recipe[apache], recipe[motd]]
INFO: Run List expands to [apache, motd]
INFO: Starting Chef Run for adam-training.novalocal
INFO: Running start handlers
INFO: Start handlers complete.
INFO: Loading cookbooks [apache, motd]
INFO: Storing updated cookbooks/motd/recipes/default.rb in the cache.
INFO: Storing updated cookbooks/motd/metadata.rb in the cache.
INFO: Storing updated cookbooks/motd/README.md in the cache.
INFO: Processing package[apache2] action install (apache::default line 10)
INFO: Processing service[apache2] action start (apache::default line 14)
INFO: Processing service[apache2] action enable (apache::default line 14)
INFO: Processing cookbook_file[/var/www/index.html] action create (apache::default
line 18)
INFO: Processing template[/etc/motd.tail] action create (motd::default line 10)
ERROR: template[/etc/motd.tail] (motd::default line 10) has had an error
ERROR: template[/etc/motd.tail] (/var/chef/cache/cookbooks/motd/recipes/default.rb:
10:in `from_file') had an error:

Chef::Mixin::Template::TemplateError (undefined method `[]' for nil:NilClass) on line
#2:

1: This server is property of <%= node['company'] %>
2: <% if node['pci']['in_scope'] -%>
3: This server is in-scope for PCI compliance
4: <% end -%>

(erubis):2:in `block in evaluate'

Friday, June 29, 12

Line Numbers

Friday, June 29, 12

Stop Quitting
“Every time you remove your hands from the
keyboard, it is a cache miss.”
- Steve Yegge via Christopher Brown
Friday, June 29, 12

Use a professional
font
Inconsolata (http://levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html)
12pts or greater

Friday, June 29, 12

0O
0O
0O
Friday, June 29, 12

Syntax Highlighting

Friday, June 29, 12

Learn to Open a
Directory

Friday, June 29, 12

Open a ﬁle

Friday, June 29, 12

Open a buffer

Friday, June 29, 12

Use Tabs

Friday, June 29, 12

Split the Window

Friday, June 29, 12

Bounce between brackets

Friday, June 29, 12

Bounce between brackets

%

Friday, June 29, 12

Execute an arbitrary
command

Friday, June 29, 12

Integrate with source control
Friday, June 29, 12

Convergence,
Idempotence, and
Promise Theory

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/doubleray/2865532960/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Friday, June 29, 12

Mark Burgess

• Convergence
• Idempotency
• Promise Theory

Friday, June 29, 12

Let’s install Trac

Friday, June 29, 12


Theory 1:You cannot
manage what
you do not understand

Friday, June 29, 12


Practice 1: Write it
down

Friday, June 29, 12

So I followed the
instructions...
• I had to install python, build tools, pip and
virtualenv, along with PostgreSQL
• And a whole mess of other Python deps
• Also, Subversion
• And I went ahead and opted out of
conﬁguring Apache and mod_wsgi

Friday, June 29, 12

Tell me, Adam, how did
it go?
• Um, it took me 45 minutes.
• Typos, ﬁguring out to not use the OS
packages for the python bits
• You could do it more or less fast
• But it isn’t an outlier - it’s representative
of lots of software in the world.

Friday, June 29, 12

Well, cool, I
could do it
by hand.
• But I want to be
able to do it
again

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/scenesfromamemory/7036828007/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Friday, June 29, 12

So I wrote a script

Whats good
Totally works
High degree of whipupitude
Exactly what I typed on the CLI, basically
Friday, June 29, 12

So I wrote a script

Whats bad
I’m not checking error codes
Can I get a ‘bash -e’ up in this bad boy?

Friday, June 29, 12

Requires working
upstream network

Whats bad
What happens if the upstream is down?
No big deal with apt, minor deal with pip
The PG stuff will fail, obviously, unless we
have Pg installed
Friday, June 29, 12

Trac initenv fails if the
environment is

Whats bad
Yeah, so, it’s the last thing, but it will fail if
it’s already happened

Friday, June 29, 12

How do we ﬁx it, Adam?

Friday, June 29, 12

Idempotency

Friday, June 29, 12

Idempotency
Idempotence ( /ˌaɪdɨmˈpoʊtəns/
eye-dəm-poh-təns) is the property
of certain operations in
mathematics and computer
science, that they can be applied
multiple times without changing the
result beyond the initial application.

Friday, June 29, 12

Idempotency
Theory 2:
Each step in your
Idempotence ( /ˌaɪdɨmˈpoʊtəns/
process should ensure
eye-dəm-poh-təns) is the property
of certain operations in of the
that the part
mathematics and computer
science, thatit conﬁgures is
system they can be applied
in the right initial application.
state - and
multiple times without changing the
result beyond the
do nothing if we’re
already there.
Friday, June 29, 12

In Bash...

Friday, June 29, 12

In Chef

Friday, June 29, 12

Convergence
In mathematics, computer
science and logic, convergence
refers to the idea that a series of
transformations come to a
conclusion in a ﬁnite amount of
time (the transformations are
terminating), and that the
conclusion reached is
independent of the path taken to
get to it (they are conﬂuent).
Friday, June 29, 12

Convergence
In mathematics, computer
science and logic, convergence
Theory 3: series of
refers to the idea that a
If you have idempotent
transformations come to a
conclusion in a ﬁnite amount of
steps, transformations are
time (the you can just run
the script and thatand over
terminating), over the
conclusion reached is
untilofit works to
independent the path taken
get to it (they are conﬂuent).
Friday, June 29, 12

Lets say

• We grow our Trac install - it’s the most
busy Trac install in history.
• We’ve got load balancers, databases, and
web servers
• We need one more theory...

Friday, June 29, 12

Promise Theory
Promise theory is a model of voluntary
cooperation between individual,
autonomous actors or agents who
publish their intentions to one another in
the form of promises. A promise is a
declaration of intent whose purpose is to
increase the recipient's certainty about a
claim of past, present or future behaviour
(see [1]). For a promise to increase
certainty, the recipient needs to trust the
promiser, but trust can also be built on
the veriﬁcation that previous promises
have been kept, thus trust plays a
symbiotic relationship with promises.
Friday, June 29, 12

Promise Theory
Promise theory is a model of voluntary
cooperation between individual,
Theory 4:
autonomous actors or agents who
publish their intentions to one another in
Only the actor that
the form of promises. A promise is a
declaration of intent whose purpose is to
makes a promise can
increase the recipient's certainty about a
claim of past, present or future behaviour
keep a promise, and
(see [1]). For a promise to increase
certainty, the recipient needs to trust the
even then, they might
promiser, but trust can also be built on
the veriﬁcation that previous promises
lie
have been kept, thus trust plays a
symbiotic relationship with promises.
Friday, June 29, 12

An analogy
• Lets say I promise to NOT to give Theo a hug

• Because Theo hates hugs

• But I love hugs

• And Theo knows this

• So he tells Jason

• “Make sure Adam doesn’t hug me”

• But I am fast

Friday, June 29, 12

An analogy

• And Jason is Slow
• And Theo and Jason aren’t always together
• So I’m totally going to hug him

Friday, June 29, 12

An analogy

• Only the actor who makes the promise can
keep the promise
• Only through observing my behavior ﬁrst
hand can you be sure that I’ll keep my
promises

Friday, June 29, 12

It’s why...

• In almost all large environments
• They have moved away from complex
orchestration
• Because the problem with orchestration is
the orchestrator

Friday, June 29, 12

How Websites Fail

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/wingler/3429634150/sizes/l/

Friday, June 29, 12

CAP Theorem

• Consistency Pick
Two
• Availability
• Partition Tolerance

Friday, June 29, 12

Most SQL Databases

• Choose Consistency over all
• Availability comes distant second

Friday, June 29, 12

Web Applications need...

• Availability
• Partition Tolerance

Friday, June 29, 12

“Global temporal
consistency is a ﬁction”
Christopher Brown

Friday, June 29, 12

Choosing Consistency
for your Web App...
Means failure is global

Friday, June 29, 12

When you choose
Partition Tolerance and
Availability...

You fail or succeed for a subset of
users
Friday, June 29, 12

Apologies

• Apologize after the fact for failures
• Better than nothing at all
Friday, June 29, 12

NoSQL
• Many different tools
• They tweak CAP differently
• CouchDB
• Cassandra
• Redis
• Dynomite
• MongoDB
Friday, June 29, 12

Change in Mindset

Yields simplicity in return
Friday, June 29, 12

Cultural and
Professional Movement

Friday, June 29, 12

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/helenduffett/4061604644/sizes/o/

It is (still) not a Job
Description
Friday, June 29, 12

Traditional Systems Operations

Friday, June 29, 12

W
eb Operations
Op
Traditional Systems

s
Friday, June 29, 12

Some VP

Dir. Dir. Dir. Dir.

Software Developers

Network Engineers

Security Engineers
Friday, June 29, 12

Dir. Friends Dir.

Software Developers

Network Engineers
Peers Fun

Security Engineers
Dir. Dir.
Mentors
Friday, June 29, 12

The movement is inclusive
Awesome
Happy
Cool
Built neat stuff!

Friday, June 29, 12

There are exclusive people
Grumpy
Tool-centric
Us vs Them
I’m a DevOp, you’re a Sysadmin!

Friday, June 29, 12

Join the inclusive people
We’re neater.

Friday, June 29, 12

Fund Raising

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/aresauburnphotos/2678453389/sizes/l/

Friday, June 29, 12

Step 0: The Team

• Get your house in order

Friday, June 29, 12

Step 1 - The Plan

• I’m thankful every day we wrote one
• 20-30 pages is plenty
• 150 pages total of documentation
generated by deal closing time (Q & A,
mostly)

Friday, June 29, 12

Not really for fund
raising...
“A business plan, wow, I haven’t seen one of those in a long
time.”

“That’s nice. Give me a slide deck of that.” - Bill Bryant

Friday, June 29, 12

Estimates
• Just have a
reasonable
explanation

• You must believe

• If you can’t believe
in it, ﬁx it or give
up

Friday, June 29, 12

Step 2:
Lawyer

• Highly connected

• Defer fees

• Two ﬁrm per venture
deal == they know what
gets funded

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/benny_lin/245110460/sizes/l/

Friday, June 29, 12

Step 3: Pitching
• Don’t take it personally

• Analysts are like people
you knew in high school
debate

• Pitch what you believe in
- not what you are told
you can get funded
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/36749444@N06/3722896165/sizes/o/

• Research the VC

Friday, June 29, 12

It takes longer than you
think

Friday, June 29, 12

Choose Your Own Adventure 3: The Final Countdown/Return of the Rainbows

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