STEVE JACKOWSKI

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Selling Your #startup - Who, How, How much?

7/29/2014

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Okay, for one of the reasons in my last post Selling Your #startup, you want to move ahead with selling your company.  Be sure that you're clear on why you want to sell and what you want to get out of the sale.  Keep those reasons and goals in mind as the sale progresses and try not to lose sight of them. 

As a first step, you should have discussed this with your board and investors and they should be in agreement that a sale of the company is worth looking at and that your reasoning is sound.  Ideally, you should have a board resolution authorizing you to look for a buyer for a designated period of time.   

In my experience, finding a buyer and closing a deal can be as short as thirty days or take more than a year. On average, once you have an interested buyer, you're probably looking at three months to close.   

Before you look at finding a buyer, you need to ask yourself if you want your search for an acquirer to be public knowledge.  My advice is to keep it confidential at this early stage.  If your competitors get wind of the potential sale of your company, they'll use that against you in sales situations.  Employees may decide to jump ship.  And even in non-competitive situations, your customers and prospects will often take a second look at buying your products or services if a change is possible.   Plus, ultimately, after looking at the landscape, you may decide not to sell at this time, so why tell the world? 

On the other hand, if none of these are a concern, going public with your sale will get you the most exposure and may bring in potential buyers you've never even thought of.  I know of a few people who've even had success finding a buyer by offering their businesses on Craig's List. 

WHO?
So how do you find the perfect buyer? 

You have a Board of Directors, probably have some additional advisors, and may have Angel investors.  These people know you; they know your company; they know your industry; and most likely, they know someone who might be interested in acquiring your startup.  Use them.  Listen to their advice.  They may tell you that this is the wrong time.  They will likely give you suggestions on positioning.  They will make introductions.  These types of acquisitions, initiated by a 'third party' are usually the easiest and cleanest. 

At the same time, except for specific industry segments, I would avoid brokers.  The 'third party' approach works best if the third party is close to your business.   Neither I, nor any of the people I've known in the Valley who've sold their businesses benefited from a broker.  In general, brokers don't understand your business.  They're in it for the commission and rarely look beyond that bottom line.  If you expect to see your company's technologies or products thrive, to find a great landing place for your team, brokers are not going to help you. 

So, where else should you look?

Business Partners.  These are your best candidates.  Again, like your Board and advisors, they know you; they know your business; they know your products and technologies.  They have partnered with you for a reason: you fulfill a need they can't meet themselves.  Whether you've licensed technology to them or they distribute your products as part of a solution sell, they might well be interested in exclusive ownership of your offering.  You should also make a list of Potential Business Partners if you don't already have one.  Whoever handles your business development should be able to open doors to get you in. 

Two of my companies were sold to Business Partners - companies who either licensed our technologies or distributed our products. 

Customers.  It may sound strange, but just like Business Partners, your customers know you and have confidence in your products/technologies.  I sold one of my companies to a customer who found out that their largest competitor was about to sign a major deal with us (I've always wondered how they found out;-)). 

They wanted to preserve the uniqueness and competitive advantages of their offerings which used our products.

Competitors.  As mentioned above, this one can be a bit risky.  Just having your competitor know your business is for sale can hurt you.  However, you can often avoid that by involving a third party (advisor or Board member), or by being politic.  In one situation, a friend was looking to sell his company.  At an industry conference, I just 'happened' to make an observation to his largest competitor that it was too bad they didn't work together.  My friend's product was complementary and had features that theirs didn't.  They could certainly reach a larger market and compete with one of the Big Guys if they combined forces instead of battling each other.  This ended up being one of the quickest sales I've seen.  Another friend made a similar comment directly to his counterpart from a competitor's company.  Again, this resulted in another successful sale.  Note that in both cases, it was never stated that the company was 'For Sale'.

To pitch to your potential buyers, you'll need a basic company presentation that includes your financials and projections, but you need to tailor it for each prospective buyer.  Do your homework.  Know their business and be clear on how you will fit together and how you will contribute to their market, their customer base, and ultimately, their bottom line. 

How?
The logistics of the sale are not terribly complex and are usually similar across industries.  It does happen that a large company might just make a offer, but more often your potential buyer will ask you how much you want.  As in many negotiations, the first one to name a price usually loses.  I could probably do an entire blog on how the acquisition process works and on negotiations, but I'll just summarize here and try to give a few pointers on price in the next section. 

Once you've agreed on price and basic terms, your acquirer will prepare a term sheet.  These can be very complex, but usually are more of an outline of the core terms.  With luck, the term sheet will reflect the agreement from the negotiations with your counterpart. 

One thing I will warn you about in advance is that if you're being acquired by a much larger company, there's a good chance that they will restrict your business until the sale is closed.  In the best case, they will adversely impact your business inadvertently as you and your staff work through due diligence.  You need to plan and account for these impacts in the term  sheet and look at 'walk away' penalties that will make you whole.  Get advice on this!

Once you have a final term sheet, you'll need to present the offer to the Board and Shareholders. Assuming everyone is happy with the terms, you accept.  Then the fun begins. 

You will need a good lawyer.  I'll tell you some horror stories in my next post about mistakes I've made and some friends have made in the course of acquisitions.   Most of these could have been avoided with a GOOD, EXPERIENCED (and often expensive) lawyer.  This is not the time to pinch pennies on legal fees.

As the purchase agreement is drawn up and negotiated, due diligence will begin.  This is a period where the acquirer will go through your entire business - technologies, products, customers, finances, contracts, lawsuits - everything.  If you have skeletons in your closet, bring them out up front.   I've seen too many great deals fall through because of 'minor' problems that weren't acknowledged at the outset.  Most experienced acquirers expect problems, but they get very unhappy if they think you've tried to hide something from them.

If your acquirer is a publically-held corporation they may need to get SEC or other government approval for the acquisition.  This may take some time.  But in general, as I mentioned before, if things go smoothly, you can usually close in about 90 days.  Note that exposure of negotiations with a publically-held company will immediately terminate any deal.  All negotiations and terms have to be kept confidential.  This will mean that even among family and friends (and employees), you disclose only on a 'need to know' basis.

How Much?
Ah yes, price.  How much is your business worth? 

It's worth whatever you can get for it. 

While that may seem facetious, it's true.  If you have a one person company with zero sales, but incorporation of your technology will increase the bottom line of your acquirer by $100M and their price to earnings ration is 20 to 1, you can see that your value is as much as 2 BILLION dollars!  Of course you have to prove that you can add that much to their bottom line... 

But as a rule of thumb, if you have a product business, you will need to justify any price that's more than 3 times sales or 10 times earnings.  For a service business, you will have to justify any price that's more than 1 times sales or 3 times earnings.  And by 'justify' I mean demonstrating why your company is worth more than these numbers.  It could be what you add to the bottom line (as above), it could be offering a strategic advantage against a competitor, it could be that there's someone else out there willing to pay more -  If you can do it, finding multiple bidders puts you in a very strong negotiating position, so until you have a term sheet, get as many people interested in you as possible.  With luck there may be a bidding war.   

Of course, even then, mistakes can be made as you'll read in my next post.

Link to Previous Startup Post

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Selling Your #Startup

7/24/2014

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I thought it might be useful to discuss selling your #startup.  You can do this as an exit strategy, or to use a larger company to leverage and promote your technologies, services, and/or products. 

I'm planning to write this in three parts:
  1. Why you might want to sell your startup instead of doing an IPO.
  2. How to sell your startup - who to target, how to position yourself and how much your company might be worth.
  3. Mistakes I've made and lessons I've learned in selling 3 startups. 
While an IPO could make you rich beyond reason, the chances of achieving this level of success are small.  Of course, if that's what you want, swing for the fences and be prepared to start over if you fail.   As I've described in previous blog posts, cutthroat competition, bad marketing timing, lack of support from VCs/customers, public perception, and unethical people can turn what looks like a sure winner into a certain failure.  If getting a startup to an IPO were easy, there would be a lot more repeats by serial entrepreneurs.  Do the research and you'll find that a surprisingly small number of entrepreneurs who have done a successful IPO do it again. 

On the other hand, I know quite a few entrepreneurs (me included) who have built and sold multiple startups and achieved modest (but certainly not insignificant) success with each.  This kind of repeat success comes from entrepreneurs who build sustainable businesses: businesses that meet a need and generate consistent revenue; businesses where reasonable risks are taken but where you're not betting the company on the next big thing.  

So why sell your startup instead of going for an IPO?

You'll have more control over the process.  With an IPO, it will be the VCs and investment bankers who decide how, when, and how much you'll make in the IPO.  Even the process of getting to the point where your company can go public will be controlled by your investors.  They will make management and organizational decisions to present the best face to the public investment market.  Your company culture will likely suffer.

Selling is easier than an IPO.
 The IPO process is complex and takes a lot of time and planning.  In addition to all the SEC filings and regulations, you'll be dealing with investment bankers, road shows, and  pitches to potential initial purchasers. It's no wonder most companies need a mezzanine round of financing just to fund the IPO.

You will have money in your pocket much sooner.  With an IPO, the investors and investment bankers will have registered shares.  Founders usually don't.  So, you won't be able to touch the monies for a long time.  Beyond the initial section 144 holding period, if you own more than 1% of the company after the IPO, you'll be restricted in how much you can sell and when.   When you sell your startup to a larger company, it's unlikely that you'll own more than 1% of that larger entity so these restrictions don't apply.

Beyond the financial and logistic considerations, there a quite a few strategic advantages which might encourage you to sell your startup:

Leapfrog your competition.
  Got a nasty competitor who badmouths your products, invades your loyal customers, or quite frankly is just getting ahead of you?  Get acquired by a larger company who can run past your competition simply by including your offerings with theirs.

Enter markets that are out of reach.
  If your acquirer has a large marketing and sales force, they can get your products/services out there.  In addition, they may have entries into specific industry segments like government, healthcare, telecom - customers where the sales cycles are long and expensive and often difficult for a startup to penetrate.

Leverage your technologies.
  Have some core technologies with potentially many applications but haven't been able to build and sell all possible products?  A larger company can integrate your technologies into their products and get your innovations into more areas sooner than you could reasonably achieve.

Of course there are challenges with any acquisition.  Your cultures might not match. Your team may not be ready to work with the bureaucracy of a large company.  Processes for development and integration in the larger entity might move too slowly for you.  But then again, the advantages listed above might outweigh these issues. 

We'll discuss how to mitigate the downsides  in my next post: Selling Your #startup - Who, How, How Much?

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Another Section from The Misogynist

7/15/2014

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This is a draft section from The Misogynist.  Keep in mind that these drafts are just that and will likely change or may even be omitted in the final version.
          _____________________________

George Gray printed the two emails then walked past the other cubicles on the 11th floor of 555 Montgomery Street in San Francisco to the corner office occupied by Morris Levinberg, George’s boss at the New York Sentinel.  Morris was heads down, reading glasses hanging precariously from the end of his nose, a red marker in his hand.  
 
“No, No, No!” Morris grumbled, clearly not pleased with what he was reading.

 Morris was in his mid-fifties, with a sweaty balding pate and wiry gray hairs poking out over his ears.  While frumpy wasn’t a term that was generally applied to men, it was the first word that came to mind when George looked at Morris and his middle-aged paunch, five o’clock shadow in the middle of the day, and disheveled clothes.  It was amazing what physical appearances could hide and how easy it was for people to judge others by their bodies.  But one look at Morris’ face with its oversized beak and eagle-like eyes, and you could sense the keen intelligence that had won him a Pulitzer and made him a bestselling author.

 George let Morris finish the page he was reading, then knocked on the open door.  

Morris looked up. “George!  To what do I owe the honor of a visit from one of our most talented young reporters?”

 “God, I sure wish I was talented.  I work my butt off and most of my work still never sees the light of day.  

“But I’m not here to complain.  I have a dilemma and need your advice.  When I got in this morning, I had two somewhat strange emails in my Inbox.  I tried to track down the authors, but the email addresses and the paths the emails took seem to lead nowhere.”

“Learning some tricks from Janey?” Morris asked.

“Yeah.  My high-tech guru wife showed me how to follow email paths through multiple servers.  I’ve been getting pretty good at tracking down ‘anonymous’ emails.  But these two definitely led
nowhere.”

“Are they from the same sender?”

“I can’t tell. The sender names are just a scramble of letters. Here.  Take a look at the  first one.”

Morris took the email and began reading. 
           
______________________________
 From: sqpr93uy4nk  <sqprwo93uy4nk@sqpr93uy4nk.com>
 Date: June 29, 20XX 05:31 AM PDT
To: George Gray <GeorgeGray@nysentinel.com>
Subject: Exposing Unethical Zillionaires
 
George,
 
I read your article on Michael James, someone I greatly admired, and appreciated your even-handed, honest reporting of the situation he found himself in.  It’s tragic that we lose people like Michael while unscrupulous high tech moguls screw people and make millions or billions doing it.  
 
I’ve managed to collect some very interesting information on several of these scumbags, information which would ruin them personally if it were exposed to the public and to law
enforcement.  
 
I’m not some crackpot.  I only want to see justice done.  
 
Of course I expect you to verify any information I give you, but assuming you do determine that I’m providing factual information, I would like you to publish articles which will expose the crimes these people have committed.  Of course if you can’t verify it, I expect you to tell me to take a flying  leap.
 
I’m untraceable by email and replying to this one won’t work, so if you’re interested in the next step, tweet “sqprwo93uy4nk, I’m interested”.  
 
sqprwo93uy4nk           
______________________________

 “What do you think?  Should I pursue it?  Is this something the paper would approve?”

Morris thought carefully.  “George, I don’t see any reason not to.  See what he or she has to say.  As the email says, if it’s bullshit, all we lose is the time you take to verify the claims.  If not, we might have a great story.”

George thought back to his last ‘great story’.  He and Janey were driving up the coast on their way to a brief honeymoon in the City when they saw a gray Audi go soaring off the cliff.  The
driver was killed.  Starting work at the Sentinel the following Monday, George was asked to do a story on a  successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur.  By some weird coincidence, they were the same person.  He and Janey had watched Michael James commit suicide. His months of chasing the story had left him frustrated.  Initially thinking Michael James was a scumbag like sqprw – whatever - described, he found out he was wrong.  He searched for why someone like Michael James would kill himself.  It seemed to be about a divorce, but at the end of the day, he didn’t really understand why this gifted, apparently ethical man, had died.  
 
“Since your fan brought up Michael James, I have to ask, any progress on that novel you’re writing based on the Michael James story?” Morris asked.

 “No Morris. I keep coming back to the facts which didn’t lead to answers.  The story haunts me and though I can write about it, I can’t get past the unknowns.”

“George, take it from a fiction writer.  If you base a novel on facts, you need to give the facts some time and distance. They need to become a bit hazy.  Then, as ludicrous as it may sound, you just need to make shit up.  Remember, it’s  fiction!

“But back to the reason you came in, what about the second email?”

George handed the next email to Morris. 
           
______________________________ 
From: x63qxr8k4mu5 <  x63qxr8k4mu5@ x63qxr8k4mu5.com>
Date: June 29, 20XX 06:41  AM PDT
To: George Gray  <GeorgeGray@nysentinel.com>
Subject: A woman will die
 
George,
 
The former wife of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur will die this week.  I will tell you why after she’s
dead.
 
Don’t bother trying to trace this email.  It’s untraceable.  I will contact you.

 x63qxr8k4mu5           
______________________________

Morris looked up at George.   “This probably is from a crackpot.  But we need to hand it over to legal.  They can decide if they want to give it to the police.  If you get more like this, forward them to legal immediately and cc me.”

“But do you think they’re from the same person?”

Morris laid the two emails side by side and examined them closely.  After about a minute, he circled the From name, the email address, and the signature, then the word ‘untraceable’ in both.  

“Well, we have the word ‘untraceable’ and I see that each of the senders’ names has 13  characters.  The tones are different but I’ve seen some very disturbed people change their tones
dramatically in seconds.  And, we have two emails on the same day, just a bit over an hour apart, both sent to you.  It may be just coincidence, and as we discussed before, unlike many of my police buddies, I do believe in coincidence,  but just to be safe, forward the first one to legal too.”

George thanked Morris and left his office, more than a little worried about what he was about to get himself into.

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Mom and Pop?

7/8/2014

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You love your spouse.  Without a doubt, this is your life-partner.  You share so much.  You have so many common interests and likes that it's almost frightening.  No one understands you better than your spouse.  Your spouse sees your strengths and weaknesses.  Your spouse brings your feet to the ground when you're flying too high and helps pick you up when you fall on your face.  Yes.  Your spouse is the perfect partner.  But should you bring your spouse into your business?

Certainly there are family businesses out there that have been successful.  And for many of the things we buy, it's comforting to think that we're helping out a family, that we're supporting a family with our business. 

If you think you want to build a family business which will last decades or even generations, then by all means create one and bring your spouse and whichever family members want to work with you.  Know that it's a family business and accept the limitations that designation entails. 

But if you're looking at a startup that will at some point need outside funding, especially venture capital funding, or are thinking of going public or selling your business to a larger corporation, you may not want to bring your spouse in.

The first company I joined after leaving IBM was a Mom and Pop shop.  He was a well-respected professor from UC who had done a technology transfer of a system he and his grad-students had developed.  She knew business and finance.  It seemed to be a perfect match.

I joined as VP of Engineering and helped develop new technologies and business for the products.   Our revenues rose and VCs were flocking to us offering a mezzanine round.  Their one condition?  One of the spouses had to leave. 

I've talked about how hard startups are on relationships.  You might think you can mitigate that by having your spouse share your passion and your challenges.  And that might be true, especially in a family business.  But with most marriages ending in divorce, especially with the pressures added in a high-growth, high visibility environment, and with decisions coming from a larger Board of Directors - no longer just the spouses - all the VCs could see was the damage to the company which would result if the spouses had a falling out.  

In another situation, my boss met my then wife at a company function and hired her.  Some of this story is recounted in my new novel, The Shadow of God.   While we worked in different areas of the company, some of the employees felt she was getting special treatment.  Ultimately, when she had to leave the company, she made my life miserable until I left as well.  The company failed soon after as much of my team quit not long after I left. 

More recently, I have a friend who just hired on to a Mom and Pop business.  He was brought in to take over most of the CEO's job.  His thought was that the CEO would retire and he'd end up running the business.  Unfortunately, the CEO and his wife just can't let go.  They keep coming back in and interfering with his plans for expansion.  He doesn't get much support from the other employees because if he takes a hard line, they go back to Mom and Pop to complain.  I think this is probably a dead end for him and a waste of a lot of commitment and effort on his part.

In one last scenario, I have another friend who joined a Mom and Pop business.  She has been responsible for rapid growth in their revenues.  And as in the first startup I joined, the wife handles the business side.  Unfortunately, the wife is struggling  and isn't doing such a great job now that they're growing so fast.  She's making bad decisions which have caused several key people to quit.  And if anyone approaches the CEO, he sends them back to his wife who gets defensive.  While spousal loyalty is great for a relationship, it's not always the best thing for a business. 

I could come up with more examples that I've seen in my career.  I'm trying to think of any company where two spouse founders have seen great success.  I can't come up with any.

So, if you're thinking about bringing your spouse into your startup, do think twice. 

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Draft Preface from The Misogynist

7/7/2014

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Here's a draft Preface from the Misogynist.  It will be up to the reader (and the main characters) to figure out who wrote this...

I hate people. 

People are the reason this world is such a mess.  They’re gullible.  They believe what they’re told.  They’ll follow charismatic leaders into self-destruction and destruction of others. Give them a political or religious cause and they can justify any action no matter how immoral, no matter how many others suffer from their actions.  People lie.  They cheat at almost any opportunity.  They protect themselves at the expense of those around them.  

Tell them a lie and bury it in half-truths or truths taken out of context and you can create true-believers.  With the advent of the Internet and Social Media, people with crazy ideas have the means to convince others of their righteousness.  Say something sensational, get a following, go viral.  More and more will believe you. You can be famous.  You can have influence.  You can be
rich.  

And the rich. Don’t get me started.  I don’t mean people who are well off.  I mean the truly rich, people who have more money than they could spend in ten lifetimes.  They have walled estates around the world, cars whose cost would feed a hundred families for ten years, clothes that cost more than many people’s homes.  And what do they do with this money?  They protect it.  They get richer.  And they get richer at the expense of others.  Their money and the power that comes with it allows them to buy politicians who can convince their constituencies to vote for things that are bad for them but that will benefit their wealthy partners.  

The rich get richer and richer, the poor get poorer and poorer as they’re promised that there’s a way to have the American Dream.  And the middle class, they don’t even see it coming.  They’re
so damned complacent that they work their jobs, come home and watch television, and repeat.  They’re getting poorer too and when they lose their homes to failed economies, they join the poor as the rich get richer.  

I can’t fault the poor.  There is too much stacked against them.  The few that succeed, never look back.  Why would they want to return to desperation when they worked so hard to climb out? Those that don’t get out fall into hopelessness, petty crime, drugs, and violence that gets propagated to their next generations.

 There was a time years ago when the poor had a chance.  Stay in school, get an education, go to college, and succeed.  Those days are long gone, but the rich keep selling them this ideal and
after they give everything they’ve got and fail to succeed multiple times, despair sets in.  

Desperate people do desperate things.  They want to believe in some salvation, be it religion, drugs, revolution.  Crowds become mobs and mobs destroy without thinking. For God’s sake, if people can’t even watch a soccer game without rioting and killing fellow spectators, what hope is there?

 I went into high tech thinking I could make a difference.  I honestly believed that information would set the world free.  If even the most downtrodden had access to knowledge and experience from around the world,  they could educate themselves.  They could recognize that their situation was not normal.  They could rise up and demand change. Information seemed like the great equalizer. 

I invented technologies that made the Web real.  Other technologies made it accessible in the most remote places on earth. Together, we should have made a difference.  We patted ourselves on the back when the Berlin Wall fell.  Many thought Reagan’s arm race with the Soviets brought it down, but those of us in tech knew that without the information about the West that so many received through the Internet, it might never have happened. We enabled
communication like it had never existed before.  Radio Free Europe?  Nice idea, but it didn’t have the reach, allure, or the wealth of information we provided via the Web.  And it certainly didn’t allow anyone to connect to anyone else anywhere, any time. 
 
Yes, we thought the World-Wide-Web meant World-Wide-Change.  But commercialism trumped us.  It’s all about advertising and popularity now.  Like it, retweet, vote, give a thumbs up.  Hire a social media consultant and flood the web. Distract people with sensational products, games, or videos.  Hide the substance.  Or, if you’re one of the big oppressors out there, capitalize on this propaganda machine that Hitler never dreamed could exist.  Think what he did with propaganda.  You ain’t seen nothing yet.  

We have the rich who feel entitled to get richer,  we have the complacent middle class, and we have the poor who are lured into making choices against their own interests. We have mobs, extremists, suicide bombers, amoral leaders.  We thought information would change all that.  
 
We gave a gift to mankind and they perverted it.   If it sounds like the story from the Garden of Eden, maybe it is.  

I’m tired of seeing our technologies perverted to make the rich richer at the expense of others.
Something needs to be done.   No, I need to do something. 
_____________________________________

 I hate women.

 The ‘fairer sex’ isn’t so fair once you get to know them.  They’re jealous of each other and will stab other people in the back faster than any sleazy businessmen I’ve ever met if it helps them look better among their peers.  They use love and sex to lure men in to get what they want and then move on when they have it.  Men are such suckers.  We believe from an early age that we will find a kind, caring, loving, supportive woman, a life partner.  Advertisements promise sex. 
Movies and novels promise true love.  But women are calculating.  The Serpent chose one of his own to destroy Paradise.

Like my wife Janice.  We married young.  She was beautiful and intelligent with a goal of making a real difference in the world. After law school, she worked in legal aid, helping the poor and unprotected.  I believed in her and what she  did.  

But then I got rich.   Not just comfortable, not just well off, RICH.  

Janice changed. She quit her practice and became a socialite.  I never imagined this was possible.  She always seemed so grounded.  Suddenly, life became about being seen.  People needed to know who we were and how wealthy we were.  No, not in dollars, but in what we could afford to do or buy. She needed the biggest house with the best view, expensive clothes, homes
in exotic places.  We had to throw regular parties for the elite of the San Francisco Bay Area.  

I set up charities so that we could ‘pay-back’,  and asked her to manage them, thinking that would bring back some of the ‘make-the-world-a-better-place’ Janice, But these too became vehicles for her social climbing.

When I started giving away our fortune, she filed for divorce.  She wanted to make sure she got her half before it became too small to support her new lifestyle.  Truth be told, I was  glad to see her go.  

But I started looking around.  Other high tech founders were going through the same fate.   Sure, there were many who reveled in their new-found wealth and the social doors their wives opened.  But others, those with a conscience, those true believers, often found themselves in my place – stunned at what their wives had become.  

I think it’s even worse for the entrepreneurs who haven’t made it yet, who risked it all to be successful in bringing their visions to the world.  Their wives hung around for one or two startups, but at some point, they decided that their husbands were losers.  And for them too, it was time to move on to greener pastures, leaving in their wakes visionaries who were already suffering after their exhausting efforts led to failure, now emotionally devastated too.  

I lost two of these friends to suicide.  They could have made a difference but now they’re gone. And the wives moved on, their exes’ deaths just confirming their decisions.

Yes.   I hate women.  I’m tired of seeing women destroy the vulnerable.  Something needs to be done.   No, I need to do something.  
 
_____________________________________

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Excerpt from my Next Novel

7/1/2014

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I'm working on ideas for my next novel, The Misogynist, and have started describing one of the main characters, Samantha Louis, Psychiatrist.     If you read The Shadow of God, you'll recognize her and the case that this section refers to. 

A blog may not be the best place to put these excerpts.  But I'd appreciate any thoughts as blog comments for now.  I'll see if I can create a space on my website for work in progress for future excerpts.  Here's the first:

Samantha Louis looked out her second story office window above Haight Street in San Francisco and watched Liz Leahy drive away.   It was over.  They’d had their last session together. Sam knew it was coming.   Liz had made fantastic progress and now seemed to be ‘normal’.  By any standard, she was cured of her mental illness – a condition that had threatened her relationships and quite frankly the lives of others.  Liz had been dangerous.  
 
Sam should  be proud of her success.  It was rare that you could point to a seriously ill psychiatric patient who was actually cured.  Most were ‘managed’ – either through therapy, behavior modification, drugs, or a combination of the three.  Far too often it was drugs, but after her years of experience in residency and her work in inpatient facilities, Sam knew that for many, drugs were the only way to bring some sense of normalcy into their lives.  
 
This wasn’t the case with Liz Leahy.  Yes, some drugs were involved at the outset, but that was just to help manage behavior. As therapy had its desired effect, the drugs were withdrawn and now Liz had a solid relationship, a good job, and was actually happy.  In Sam’s opinion, there was zero chance that Liz would relapse or that she’d present with other issues.   Liz was actually cured.  
 
As much as she kept repeating it to herself, Sam couldn’t help but feel a sense of loss.  This was the case of a lifetime.  Her mentor, Dr. Ken Karmere hadn’t seen anything like it in his entire thirty-plus year career.  What were the chances Sam would ever see a case like this again?  
 
So here she was, thirty-seven years old, almost two years into her private practice, and not making enough money to quit her part-time job at the inpatient facility of San Francisco Community Hospital.  At least that paid well.

Med School, fellowships, a long residency, and Liz Leahy’s case had consumed her life.  Like many of her counterparts, she had few really close friends.  They were all far too focused on  getting through their training so that they could make a difference in the world as psychiatrists. 

But aside from Liz Leahy, who was now gone, her patients consisted of a few couples that she counseled, and several teens with eating disorders.  Nothing exciting and not enough to pay the bills, certainly not enough to repay her student loans.    

As for her personal life, Sam didn’t even have a pet.  She couldn’t image subjecting an animal to the absences demanded by her psychiatric training.  And while she’d had a few relationships with men in Med School, none lasted.  Maybe it was her intensity.  Maybe, like with a pet, it was her unavailability.  She was too often doing night shifts or on Call.  Or maybe it was the fact that once her psychiatric training began, she couldn’t stop analyzing her dates.  It was like the Med-Student Syndrome. Virtually all med students imagine they have every possible illness as they begin studying medicine. She went through it herself in Med School but she got over it.  And then, after she entered her psych residency,  it seemed like her dates presented with every possible psychiatric disorder.  
 
 Sam stepped into the small shared bathroom outside her office and examined herself in the mirror. She was still attractive.  There were a few strands of gray starting to show if you looked closely, but her blond hair concealed them well.  Small lines were beginning to show on her face. 
Worry lines?  No, nothing too bad.  And since she’d finished her residency two years ago, her more flexible schedule had permitted her to take yoga classes three days a week and Pilates two days a week, with a couple of jogging sessions added in.   She’d dropped most of the weight she’d put on during Med School and Residency.

 Looking at herself objectively, Sam decided that it was time to work on the personal side of her life.  It had been put off far too long.  She needed to find some group activities.  She could make friends.  Maybe she could even meet someone.  

Sam  returned to her desk to review her notes before her next patients arrived.  She couldn’t help seeing the irony that she was providing couples therapy but had never had a long term relationship herself.  That would have to change.

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    Steve Jackowski

    Writer, extreme sports enthusiast, serial entrepreneur, technologist.

     
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