September Capital

Late

Skip arrived at his office at 7:40 in the morning. As always, it was just Skip and his receptionist Judy at that time of the morning. Venture Capitalists weren’t morning people (nor were they late afternoon people, for that matter). But Skip commuted down from San Francisco and every minute he left his house past 7:00 would turn into three more minutes on the road. And Skip hated traffic. So much so that he contemplated moving to the burbs by his office. But his wife was born and raised in San Francisco and would have none of it. To Kitty, Palo Alto was where old people went to die.  And just because she was a new mom didn’t mean she was ready to declare defeat just yet. 

Skip’s office, the office of September Capital, was located on the famed Sand Hill Road. Through a fluke of circumstance, the very first venture capital firms in California had all taken up shop on Sand Hill Road, just on the back side of Stanford University. And once it became known as The mecca for venture capital, no self-respecting venture firm could locate anywhere else.  As a result, large, fancy, art-filled office buildings arose in and around Sand Hill Road. Sand Hill itself was a straight sloping shot from the 280 Freeway (running from San Francisco down to San Jose) to the Stanford Shopping Center (the most upscale mall outside of the “gold coast” of Long Island and Beverly Hills). Truth be told, most of the office buildings with Sand Hill Road addresses were not, in fact, on Sand Hill Road.  Those buildings actually sat on tributaries to Sand Hill. In any other circumstance, those tributaries would have been given their own names and the office buildings would have had addresses like 130 Elm Lane or 2200 Spruce Place. But those names carried with them no cache.  As a result, all tributaries of Sand Hill Road were given Sand Hill Road addresses.  The most egregious example was the building complex that sat a full quarter mile off of Sand Hill Road, yet still held a Sand Hill Road Address. Clearly some developer had friends in the local government.

As Skip got his morning coffee, he pulled out his Android phone. Skip had been subject to repeated and merciless harassment over this phone. Venture Capitalists are iPhone people. Not Android people. But Skip had once worked at Google and briefly supported the Android team, so his allegiance lay with Android. Taking a sip of his perfectly-dripped cup of Ritual coffee, Skip launched the ElectricCity app. Skip had been blown away by ElectricCity since the very first time he’d tried it and, at long last, had convinced the team to come pitch him and his partners on the business. By 7:45, the ElectricCity founders had arrived in the office and were setting up the Vail conference room (embarrassingly, each of the office conference rooms was named after an upscale ski community).

Skip paced nervously in the kitchen awaiting the arrival of his partners to get the meeting started. By 7:55am, Skip remained the sole partner in the office. He grew increasingly nervous and agitated. To Skip, first impressions were everything. He had his mother to thank for that. As a small child, each year as he headed off to the first day of school his mother would remind him of just that -- “first impressions are everything – get them to love you in the first week and you can get away with murder for the remaining 35.” His mother was right, but he was never quite convinced that she was following parenting protocol by delivering the advice so bluntly. Nonetheless, her words had been seared into his brain and, as he awaited the late arrival of his partners, he knew his great first impression with the ElectricCity team was quickly fading. 

 At 8:00am Skip’s first partner arrived in the office.  It was no surprise that it was Munjal. The punctuality pecking order was well-established at September Capital and was followed religiously.  It was as if Skip’s partners each had impeccable internal clocks that ran varying degrees of slow.  After Munjal came Noah.  And after Noah came Dan.  Eventually. 

By 8:15, Skip, Munjal and Noah stood in the kitchen awaiting Dan’s arrival.  They were given periodic updates from Dan’s assistant:

“He’s in his car.”

"He’s on his way.”

“He’s on 280.” 

“He’ll be here any second.”

 Dan’s partners had come to realize that these updates from his assistant were more like hold music than they were traffic updates – they carried with them little additional information but that were vaguely reassuring.  By 8:20, Skip and team gave up the vigil and headed into Vail to meet the ElectricCity team.  By now Skip knew full well that he had blown the good first impression. He was hoping for a passable first impression and the opportunity to, with any luck, make a good second impression.

Skip, Munjal and Noah entered the conference room, each apologizing profusely for their incredible lateness.  It always stunned Skip that these apologies sounded so genuine despite the fact that every meeting in which his partners participated started with these same apologies.  How sorry were they really? If they were that sorry, they’d get there promptly the next time around. Skip knew full well that that wasn’t going to happen. Thankfully, his partners got to apologize to new people each meeting, making the pattern of faux regret less detectible.

Skip made one last apology on behalf of his partner Dan and asked the ElectricCity founders to get started.  As the CEO stood to begin the presentation, the door swung open dramatically and Dan walked in. He gave no indication that he realized he was late. Nor did he apologize like the partners before him. He simply sat down, stretched out, and commanded, “let’s get started.”