How do you start a business? How do you fund a new venture? How do you survive? All questions I’m frequently asked on the road.
It’s true that capital is currently hard to come by. But it isn’t as dismal as you may think. To quote Stephan Chambers, the dean of my alma matter, Said Business School at the University of Oxford, http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/, “There is more money in the market than good ideas.”
So if you’ve got a good idea, you can raise the money to fund it.
David Tharp, a buddy from Oxford, invited me to Venture Summit East at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Talk about a hotel. The Mandarin is absolutely gorgeous and could charge admission to its marble-clad lobby.
What’s the purpose of the venture summit? To link entrepreneurs to people with capital. Ambitious, meet rich. Rich, meet ambitious.
First to take the stage was Tim Draper, Managing Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson. The name probably doesn’t mean anything to you unless you happen to work at Hotmail, Skype, or keep up with venture capital circles. I have never met Tim, but he immediately struck me as a likable guy that has made a pile of money having fun. What “serious” businessperson flashes a picture of themselves riding an elephant? A businessman who doesn’t care what you think because they’ve earned enough cash to make Solomon blush. That’s Tim.
The guy is a genius, really. Came up with “viral marketing” in 1997. He’s also hilarious. Listen to his song, “The Riskmaster” at http://www.theriskmaster.com/
So, after an hour listening to Tim and others on the subject of capital, I moved out to the lobby to grab a ginger ale. The first person I met was a friendly woman, Toni Sikes from Gruppo, Levey & Company, a venture capital firm in New York. We struck up a polite conversation and within the span of 30 seconds found out that we both hail from Alabama.
“Really? What town?” I asked.
“Oh, a little town you probably don’t know,” she responded, “Andalusia.”
Now, my family has lived in Andalusia since The Late Unpleasantness. Generations. My first writing gig was for The Andalusia Star News, a fine publication. Both sets of grandparents lived in Andalusia. Andalusia, I have always believed, is the center of the known universe. And here, in Boston, the first person I meet is from Andy. You might call that lucky. A Presbyterian might call it the divine hand of providence.
I’m a believer that if you pitch in 50%, that the Big Guy will handle the other half. This road trip is a leap of faith in and of itself: build a great product, hop in the car to tell people about it, and pray from behind the wheel that I’ll get a little help along the way. And lo, what happens?
Flat tire, dead battery, junk in the fuel tank, snotty reporter who opines people who like old cars think the newfangled “interweb” is a fad. Yes.
But also, on the road a friendly face from Andalusia.
Coincidence or providence? I know which one I believe.
Busted in Beantown
This morning I got up and thwub-thwub-thwubbed down to Sullivan Tire, across the Harvard Bridge. If you walk the bridge, you’ll notice some strange markings called “Smoots.”
Oliver R. Smoot was a pledge in 1962 to the Lambda Chi Alpha chapter at MIT and evidently rather diminutive in size. He was physically used to measure the Harvard Bridge by his fraternity brothers. The final result was 364.4 Smoots, plus or minus an ear.
My Cadillac, incidentally, measured in MIT-speak, is 3.25 Smoots.
Eventually, I got the old girl to Sullivan Tire. Dismounting the suspected guilty tire, we found the cause of the scraping noise: the rim is coming apart and was rubbing up against the ball joint. I was probably a few miles from having an ugly and unplanned blowout.
Fortunately, with the quick use of the spare tire in the trunk, I was back on the road, minus the thwubing. We deflated the spare (so as not to have a blowout onto my luggage) and now all I need is someone to either a.) sell me a new wheel or b.) repair my busted one. Any thoughts, fellow Brougham owners?
But the Brougham was not through with me yet. I had a great lunch at Legal Seafood with a friend in the Financial District. Then I ambled back to the Brougham for a leisurely drive up to Portland. Yet my car had “done come uncrunked,” as a fellow Alabamian once described his broken-down Ford pickup. The battery was dead.
Another dead battery. I chalked dead battery #1 up to the fact that it was defective. A $270 model from Antique Auto Battery, it had quickly developed a nasty crack along the top of the case within a few days of this journey. So I had to buy a hasty replacement in Philadelphia, a modern Delco which was probably too small for the Brougham. It had lasted until Sickerville, New Jersey–where we’d had to recharge it. At the same time, we replaced a defective voltage regulator. Problem solved?
Nope. The battery had died in New York City at the parking garage, but a jump got me to Long Island, where I’d put the little Delco on a trickle charge at my mother-in-law’s. Now, running around Boston with the air conditioning on and lots of traffic, it had ebbed out again. I’d tried to charge up the Antique Auto Battery so that I’d have a spare, but it was really uncooperative. The company had promised to send me a replacement while I was on Long Island, but unfortunately “forgot,” so the classic battery was simply taking up valuable trunk space.
No worries, I thought. I have a super set of fabulous jumper cables in the Brougham. So I hooked ‘em up to the battery and waited. And waited. And waited. Many a visitor to the Boston Aquarium drove by me and my dead Brougham. None stopped. I jigged my cables at them as they passed. I smiled. I waved. I tried to show a little leg.
That didn’t work.
Finally, I asked some poor executive for a jump. I looked at me closely, probably scanning for ticks or other signs of homicidal tendency, then said “Okay.” Thank goodness. Within 20 seconds, I the car was up and running and I began to make my way out of the garage.
Parking: for my 75 minute lunch, parking was $35 (a full day’s charge). The garage is unmanned, so one has to pre-pay all charges, which I did somewhat grudgingly. Then I waited another 30 minutes trying to get the car started. Now, at the gate to the exit, I inserted my pre-paid card. The computer told me I owed another $26. What? I’d paid $35 for up to 24 hours of parking. Outrage! Defiance! I pressed the attendant button. A heavyset woman eventually made her way over and began asking me questions in a language that did not resemble English. After the fourth time, I discovered she was saying, “Ya too kup ta twenny minutes to gitoutta heah and so ya gotta an x-tra chag for paaaaakin.” (You took up to 20 minutes to get out of here and so you got an extra charge for parking).
As I idled at her gate for another five minutes, we eventually came to an agreement and I left with no extra fee. As I motored out onto State Street, the car ran beautifully up to the first light. It turned green, I hit the gas, and she died. Dead. Not a single click. Nothing. Nada. Zip. The patient motorists of Boston began honking and giving me the thumbs up. Or maybe that was another finger. I waved back and smiled. (One should be friendly if one’s company name is on the side of one’s car). once traffic cleared, I pushed my 5,000 pound paper weight to the side of the road and phoned my good buddies at the American Automobile Association.
“Well, hon, with today’s traffic, it may be a couple of hours before we get to you,” the nice lady at Boston’s AAA told me. So I waited. Things could be worse. It was a beautiful day in Boston and I was stalled on State Street, which gave commanding views of the city. Thousands of tourists passed the old Brougham, many of whom stopped to take their picture next to it and talk to me about Motorpool. I passed out teeshirts and fliers. I posed for pictures. I took pictures with other people’s cameras. I turned down three offers to buy the car.
Finally, Mike (no relation to Mike of AAA in Hartford) arrived with a battery tester. “Hey Mike,” I piped, “I am sure glad to see you!”
“Harumph,” Mike said. “Which one of these batteries is your battery?” he asked, pointing to the deceased Antique Auto Battery in the trunk.
“Both,” I answered honestly.
“Well, I gotta test one of them, and if neither work, you’re going out of here on a flatbed, buddy,” Mike said testily.
Mike had probably had a stressful day. It can’t be easy to repair busted cars in Boston. Still, he clearly didn’t want to be messing with a 51-year-old Cadillac during 5 o’clock traffic. “Plus, if your alternator isn’t charging at least 30 amps, I’m going to flatbed you,” he continued.
Mike didn’t have a flatbed. So if he decreed I needed to be flatbedded, that meant another hour or two-hour wait. I tried to explain to Mike that my car had a generator which produced significantly less power than an alternator.
“Thanks for the history lesson, buddy,” Mike sneered, “but if this car isn’t charging, you’re going someplace on the back of a truck.” So we went through Mike’s tests. In neutral, slightly revved up, the Brougham produced 13.8 volts at the battery with no accessories. With the fan and lights on, that dropped to 12.8 volts.
“I’m calling the flatbed, buddy,” Mike said, “I can’t replace your battery for legal reasons.”
I would get a lawyer as a service tech. This meant I might have to overnight in Boston again. “Tell you what, Mr. Mike, can jump the car one more time?”
“Yeah, but why?” he asked.
“I want to run another test,” I said. My test was going to be: see how far I can drive on a dead battery. Mike grudgingly complied and the Brougham fired to life. I drove out of town, up 93 North in heavy traffic (revving the old girl all the way to keep the volts up). Soon I was doing 60 mph on the 95 and didn’t stop until I got to the Eastland Hotel in Portland, Maine. Oh, and it was 90 degrees today in Maine. In Maine!
Pulling up at the Eastland, I was hot, frazzled, tired, and feeling in the mood for a 1941 Buick with no accessories. The valet staff came out and asked to park the car. Utterly to tired to move, I said, “Sure,” and told them to make sure the key was in the vertical position when they left the Brougham.
The nice folk at the Eastland ushered me to a gracious room and even brought me a bucket of ice. I drank about four cups of ice water, looked at the commanding view of beautiful Portland, then collapsed on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
The phone rang. It was the Brougham.
“Mr. Murphy? This is the valet. I . . . uh . . . how do you put up the driver’s side window?”
“Just a minute,” I sighed, “I’ll be right down.”