Stuff making it feel like spring in February
Seriously, it is 50+ degrees here and the ice is almost gone
Links, apps, books, music and weather reports:
A single calendar page that prints every day of the year. Weirdly useful.
I had all my boys home last week and I can tell you that Koala, a sound sampling app for your phone, is more fun than it should be.
We have such an accumulated history of beautiful art now in the public domain. A lot of it is available at Artvee, which is amazing and will capture an afternoon, easy…but has also made me notice its absence in my daily life. There have to be more ways to keep these in circulation. Who’s working on this?
Speaking of artists, check out Thomas Deininger on Instagram, and buy me one of his pieces if you’re feeling generous. Maybe this one
Deep into Kolymsky Heights, a spy thriller set in Siberia…so not really on brand for this section, but very, very good reading
I’ve recently been using Felt to make a map of travel recommendations for friends. You can annotate, draw routes, highlight neighborhoods, pin photos, and so much more. If this keeps getting better I might make travel guides in my retirement :)
Eternity is the last album Alice Coltrane released before she became monastic. It is achingly good. Beautiful instrumentation around her, out front on electric piano. I’m now all but lost digging into her unusual life story and discography.
The first tornado ever recorded in Wisconsin in February. It was a wild storm.
Tornado over St. Paul (1893), Julius Holm
Otherwise, myself, two things sprang up this month that I would really love your help with:
1. Competitive Intelligence + Investigative Research
The media apocalypse is here. More than 20,000 people have been laid off in the last year. From Washington Post, to Conde Nast, to amazing journalists or entire teams at some publications.
To help, I'm assembling a bench of world-class freelancers and journalists who’ve been affected by these layoffs, and connecting them to digital health and healthtech startups and investors.
If your company/firm would benefit from competitive intelligence/research, or private, investigative reports [Note: if you don’t have someone on the team doing this, you definitely would] please message me or add your name to the list here.
The other thing is this:
2. An acquisition workbook
As you know, I've recently been helping a handful of founders who are exploring potential acquisitions of their companies. I really love this work, but boy, for the most part these projects are cold start.
I’ve decided to collect the most common + valuable lessons—from my own experience and others'—and make a workbook to help founders warm up, do some stretching, and prepare to navigate the process.
Still noodling on format but think it’s going to be an annotated set of 10-15 exercises/activities people can do on their own to spark, encourage and close a successful acquisition.
If you’re interested in getting a copy, or want to recommend topics I should cover, please add your name here.
Speaking of which, last weekend I received this message in an investor update from a company: “Acquisition offer went into exclusive LOI and acquirer dramatically changed the offer at the last minute.” Bummer. Unexpected? Nope.
Let this be your reminder that this happens all the time. No one tells you, but in most cases you should delay exclusivity as long as possible. It constrains your startup while doing nothing to bind your potential acquirer to the deal, or its provisional terms. That kind of stuff.
Have a good weekend!