It's that time of year when I set off on the annual Hazon NY Jewish Environmental Bike Ride, and if you have not already considered making a donation to me or any other rider, please consider doing so now. This will be my fifth year participating (and the 10th such ride), and I continue to be proud to be associated with Hazon’s work.
Hazon is the leading environmental group in the US Jewish community, working in areas of education, action and advocacy to make environmental concerns important in our community, and to make the Jewish voice important to the environmental movement. Hazon’s programming is multi-generational, and open to people of all faiths and every stream of Judaism.
To give you some examples of Hazon’s work, we sponsor the leading conferences for the new Jewish Food movement and we have developed educational tools around the intersection of modern food issues and Jewish tradition. A portion of the money raised will help small-scale environmental projects in the Jewish communities, such as green roofs at synagogues, gardens at day schools, and other local initiatives. A key part of Hazon’s mission is to support the growing environmental movement in Israel. Money raised from the New York Ride will also help support Hazon's partners in Israel including the premier environmental leadership program, the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. Since its inception the Hazon NY Ride has supported a wide range of other environmental projects in Israel including Table to Table for Project Leket, Kibbutz Lotan for the Green Apprentice program in practical ecology, Society for the Protection of Nature for a community garden in Jerusalem, the Israel Bike Association to promote safe cycling in Israel and many others. Read about all this and more on the Hazon website www.hazon.org.
Like many other small non-profits, Hazon continues to face fundraising challenges this year, and I am hoping to meet or beat my own fundraising from last year. In previous years I have ridden with my daughter Hannah who has also raised money. This year she is joining as a non-fundraising crew member, and so I am hoping to make up for her fundraising as well!
Please click here to make a donation. http://hazon.kintera.org/2010nyride/rdale
Many, many thanks in advance.
Last word on Venn Diagrams
Venn Diagrams of the World, Union!
After my posting What about Dweebs, which neatly shows a Venn Diagram taxonomy of Dweebs, Geeks, Dorks and Nerds, I let my obsessive side loose looking for other Venn Diagrams relevant to the various parts of my VC:VC world. In case you want to refer to it as I make wry comments later, I reproduce the picture here. It turns out there are a bunch of us obsessing about Venn Diagrams right now (some googling will confirm that).
As a Brit, I liked this one, explaining the whole “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” thing. And now, to prove I am a nerd, and a British one at that, a Venn Diagram Pun:
The VC:VC construct itself is a Venn Diagram of some of my life interests … where my venture capital world, my cycling, and my community interests coincide (or overlap). 
Here’s another Venn Diagram I first saw on the walls of Techstars Boston, originally posted by Bud Cadell on his blog under the title How to be Happy in Business. This is a non-trivial commentary on building and running a business (geeks and nerds in particular need no further prompting to study this closely). I found another variation (see right) on this theme on Flowing Data (which also links back to Bud’s graphic as well). Both make important points… but, if only business was so easy.
Stan Nowak, Founder and CEO of Silverlink Communications, a Sigma portfolio company on whose board I sit, talks about the importance of seeking out markets with scale, urgency and willingness to pay. With a tip of the hat to Stan, here is it is as a Venn Diagram.
How about a diagram describing something technical… well, I previously shared my sketch of Dennis Devlin
suggestion about information systems security, noting that a system is secure when it does exactly what it is supposed to do, and nothing more! (It strikes me this is a good definition of quality as well as security.) 
For fun, check out this interactive TwitterVenn website that uses a Venn Diagram to show overlap between terms you can find in the tweets over a the last day. You can use your own search terms … these are “chocolate, milk, hot”.Over in the non-profit world, check out the questions Sasha Dichter asks with “The Simplest non-profit Venn Diagram ever”.
How much overlap do think there is between the circles?
And finally, my own comment on how too few charities and too many startups are in the wrong place…
Techstars Boston Pitch Night 2010: Beware HIPPOs
Last night, Techstars Boston had its second annual pitch night, where the graduates of the 2010 session each got eight minutes to wow the crowd of angels, VCs and other local tech luminaries.
I was a mentor to some of the teams again this year, and was thrilled to see how far they had each progressed during the program. Kudos most of all to Shawn Broderick, who runs the Boston program, but also to Bill Warner, Brad Feld, David Cohen and all the other mentors, as well as the teams themselves.
Xconomy has a great writeup of the event and the companies – so check that out here.
My favorite quote of the night was about the danger of HIPPOs, and the use of data to overcome that danger. Daniel Sullivan, CEO of Appswell, noted the problem of the HIPPO, the “Highest Paid Person with an Opinion”. Absent strong data (about whatever it is), the HIPPO will always get to make the decision (right or wrong). This is similar in some ways to the Peter Principle, that “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence”.
Even if the Peter Principle is in operation, HIPPOs do not want to look stupid, and will be swayed by compelling data. If your organization suffers from HIPPOs making decisions purely on whim, then make sure you have good data to present, so that you get to shape those opinions.
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