In the Game - Julie Meyer

in the lottery of life...

Friday night found me at Prestonfield House Hotel with Shaf to raise money for the Prince's Trust - http://www.prestonfield.com/welcome.htm, and staying at the Tiger Lily hotel on George Street in Edinburgh.

What I love about the Prince's Trust is that they believe that everyone of us has a unique contribution to make to the world, and they organise and mobilise the people and resources to enable each of us to find that unique contribution and deliver it.   No one gets off as a freeloader in society; each one of us is meant to contribute something.

But secondly the Prince's Trust correctly observes something else about human nature in that we all have been helped along the way by people to whom we owe a measure of our success.   It is our responsibility to send the lift down to the next group of entrepreneurs, aspiring business people, who are trying to find a way up.

I always love coming up to Edinburgh; each time it's more lovely.    And the Scottish men are *men* - not boys - they have this wonderful old fashioned air about them; reminds me of my father.

And never one to let an opportunity go by for a day of pampering - I checked myself into Zen - www.zen-lifestyle.com - where I had the best massage of my life.    At the point that the muscles are crunching, you realise that you've a wee bit of stress during the week...

I was a Top Gear virgin, and rolled out of bed on Saturday to watch that for the first time this past Saturday - what a hoot!

And speaking of *real men*, I heard General Petraeus, he the architect of the Surge in Iraq, speak this past week at the Policy Exchange keynote.    He spoke eloquently of the connectedness of the world, and how we can't allow terrorism in one part of the globe, and expect that it won't find its way to other parts fast.

He described Central Command - http://www.centcom.mil/ - 20 countries, 530 million people, 22 ethnic groups, 4 religions, with some of the highest per capita and lowest per capita regions of the world where 40% of the population is between 18 and 29, and economic opportunities are insufficient.    Those angry young men move from shouting to shooting as he said...

I came away feeling quite reassured by Petraeus as he outlined both the challenges and the concepts for action:

·         The approach must be comprehensive

·         sustained and enduring; complex problems require persistent efforts

·         awareness that we must pursue collaborative multilateral efforts leveraging the comparative advantages of all the partners

Overall, he is optimistic that we can get those angry men to reject the resistance and engage in political participation.

I definitely felt in the presence of greatness.

The Iraqi elections are happening in mid-January; yet another reason for the Entrepreneur Country Forum in January 2010 to have the theme - "Politics Not as Usual".

In Afghanistan, he said that things are hard, and they are hard all the time.

And he closed by quoting Cecil Rhodes who said, "in the lottery of life, the greatest prize is to be born an Englishman".    And graciously he added, "if that is true, then in the lottery of life, the second greatest prize is to have an Englishman as a friend."

Amen

Les Crudele/PowerPC, Medikidz, Spectator Conference, Dragon's Den Online

Tonight I had dinner with Les Crudele and his wife at Amaya.     Les was the General Manager of the Power PC Division at Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector when I worked for Andy Cunningham, and we had the contract to help build PowerPC as the new industry standard in desktop computing.

You learn a lot when you are out-marketed, and we were up against the Intel marketing machine.     We focused on the RISC advantage over CISC, and they muddied the waters around establishing 5 metrics for systems rather than chip performance.

Les was a great person to learn from, and having access to him [and others at Motorola SPS] so early in my career - gosh going back to 1993 now was tremendous.    I first learned about channel strategy from him, and saw how important marketing is to creating industry standards.    It was around this time that I first read the Bible of technology marketing - Crossing the Chasm.

Les went on to run a number of other chip companies, and I'll be introducing him to various friends of mine here in the UK who run chip companies or VC's who have invested in chip firms.

Earlier tonight, I went to the launch of MediKidz.     Rob Hersov, who I have known since he spoke at the June 1999 First Tuesday event at Bloomberg when he was pre-launch with Sportal, is the Chairman, and has brought in a star line up of investors such as Dermot Desmond and Luca Pepere.    Kate James and co-CEO Kim founded MediKidz to help children who are ill learn about disease.    It's a publishing business meets social networking site with strong partner support.     I should have gotten more involved a couple of years ago when Rob first brought it to me.

Tonight, the Dragon's Den Online show aired on the BBC2.    Shaf the magic dragon and I are having too much fun, and Alexi Deak's Family Fridge business is now public as one of my investments.    David Alberto, CEO of Avanta, in whose lovely offices Ariadne Capital sits and I will scope out a partnership for all of our portfolio companies in Avanta offices.   Boy did they get the cuts of me tonight looking serious ...

Monday found me out in Swindon at the Technology Strategy Board meeting more of the folks out there who make it happen.    They are one of the smartest early stage investors in innovation in the UK - the "venture capital arm of the UK"

Then Monday night I found myself at the Haymarket Hotel for the Financial News' Top 100 Women in Finance... Patience Wheatcroft spoke about working in a man's world... I've never thought that I worked in a man's world... I work in Julie's world.

Yesterday, the Spectator invited me to speak at their inaugural conference alongside Jonathan Kestenbaum of NESTA.     Paths to Prosperity, and I was able to beat the drum once more for the entrepreneur as engine of society.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'm off the charts tonight...

Bring on the Autumn

What a week - first week back from the summer ...

Started off at breakfast at the Wolseley on Monday with Daniel Heaf and Melanie Hayes from Channel 4 IP Ventures who have made 40 investments out of their fund.    They are investing small amounts, biggest investment to date is £350 K but not at all in TV oriented projects - ones with a public service angle and other media.   

Fraser Harding, Ariadne's CTO in Residence, updated the Ariadne team on his new start-up Passiv Systems in the area of energy monitoring which has secured funding.  http://www.passivsystems.com/PassivSystems.html    

I met with Julie Drummond, who runs a creative agency in Newcastle.   They have done the creative for Bet 365 since their inception - a company which is now £3.4 billion.    

Ariadne's portfolio company, Bview - www.bview.co.uk - announced its deal with Ask Jeeves on Monday, was a Guardian Tech Media 100 company, enjoyed a write up in the FT by Maija Palmer and released its iphone ap.   We toasted all their success with a presentation and cocktail at our lovely courtyard at 9 Devonshire Square.

I caught up with Russ Shaw who has taken over at Skype for EMEA and Mobile.   Skype is a company that Ariadne has had a long history with.    Howard Hartenbaum asked me to meet Niklas Zennstrom the founder in August 2003, and we signed up as an advisor in December 2003 to help with their business development.   Niklas ended up hiring 4 Ariadne people before they were acquired in September 2005.   Fast forward 4 years, and Skype has been bought out from Ebay, and has $550 million in revenue.   They are a great European success story, and we're looking to continue to work with them and Ariadne's portfolio companies.

Other news this week was the announcement of our founding investors in the ACE Fund, our new website - www.ariadnecapital.com, and my collaboration with AVON on the Make Me A BusinessWoman campaign.   And I tipped my hat to the 10 Year Anniversary of the international roll-out of First Tuesday on the 7th of September.

Had lunch with David Verey at Bellamy, 18 Bruton Place, a wonderful French bistro-esque restaurant.   I first reached out to David when I first set up Ariadne Capital, and saw that he had left Lazards.    I have said many times that I am building a Lazard Freres for the 21st Century, and he was very polite, and had read my business plan, and has been a source of connections, insight, humour, perspective and knowledge over the past 8 years.    He *may* be the perfect man as well.

The week continued meeting Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers Alliance who published a report on how to save £50 billion.     Fascinating reading an Observer columnist today saying that the UK has always had very high Debt to GDP ratios throughout its history, and he seemed to be tying them somewhere to the UK's great history.     wow - let's all live beyond our means, and hope that it helps us achieve greatness... I sort of couldn't believe it.

Great to see my friend Glenda Stone, who is one of the leading champions of women in business for lunch too.   She's a driver in the government with a women's taskforce for targetting funding for female entrepreneurs, and has built a great business with Aurora and their WhereToWork product.

What will this week bring?    It was coming out of the summer last year about this time that I was gearing up, and then boom came Lehman's collapse, and the most surreal autumn...  Although it has been gruelling at times, the hard times have created a great discipline, and in many ways, I feel bomb-proof, so bring on the autumn!    I am ready for anything!

A First Tuesday Aubade

 

I called First Tuesday my revenge on socialism.     Maybe that's why Tony Blair, Prime Minister in 1999, always threatened to show up at a First Tuesday event, but never did.   

From the first First Tuesday at the Alphabet Bar in Soho, to the second one where Brent and Martha hugged the microphone, to the third where John Taysom talked about investing in Yahoo, to the fourth where the Microsoft Web TV guy spoke... my life was organised around which deals I could get done for whom between those Tuesdays.... at one point, I scratched out £150 million of known deals that had been agreed at a London First Tuesday event - both the networking events and the more structured Matchmaking Evenings we started doing in the early months of 2000 where entrepreneurs would sign up to give First Tuesday 2% of the funding of the deal.

But the summer of 1999 was one of my favourite times of my life.     Christopher Spray of Atlas Ventures had said, "why don't you expand into a couple of European cities?" and we had been receiving requests from across Europe to "take First Tuesday international", so with my bonus check from NewMediaInvestors [now Spark Ventures] on the lastminute.com and WGSN deals, First Tuesday had its seed funding of £35,000, and I quit my job, and started planning an international launch in what became 17 cities on the 7th of September 1999.    The Wall Street Journal put us on the front cover with tennis partner, Stephanie Gruner, writing the story.....

There were times when I would come out of a meeting, and log into my voicemail, and feel like passing out when I would hear, "44 voice mails".     How could I get through it?    Would we launch on time?

There was a licensing agreement in the works, but not signed before the international launch.   The City Leaders who launched with me on the 7th of September 1999 an international network decided to trust each other that if anyone made money, we would all make money together.     "Trust is efficient" I would say - again and again.     I will make it work for all of us to build this network together.    It is one of the great regrets of my life that I didn't control the variables well enough to live up to my promise to my friends and colleagues in order to do so.    It is a life-changing thing to be outvoted in the Board room, and have your company sold without your desire for it to be - particularly when you are so associated with it.

On a personal level, the spirit of First Tuesday was about empowerment.    It's not where you're from, it's where you're going to.      And I was frequently asked in the early years of this century whether anything good came out of the dot com period.     Actually, there is a generation of more well-rounded managers, individuals who tried and learned, and others, fewer, who tried and won.     Everyone who takes a risk in life gains.    We must figure out what we are capable of as individuals as we each have a unique contribution to make to this world.

I still believe that.    In a world where most people operate on a "win/lose" basis - only one of us can win, I'll continue to strive in everything I do for the win/win.     I think there's enough out there for us all to be successful, and I'd rather invest in other's success and live from a point of view of abundance.    The only way to get there is to operate on trust - it is really efficient.

Yes, Entrepreneur Country - www.entrepreneurcountry.net - picks up where First Tuesday left off.    If the newly minted  Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund [ACE Fund] - http://www.ariadnecapital.com/html/fund/introduction.html , will pick the leading 12 entrepreneurs every 3 years to back, Entrepreneur Country will build a nation more attuned to creating global leading entrepreneurs.    Entrepreneur Country will be built around the principles of its Manifesto - http://www.entrepreneurcountry.net/blogs/Entrepreneur-Country-Manifesto.html .     I believe we are a small number of people who believe the Manifesto today, but I do believe that the principles outlined will determine the success of the UK and Europe.

I went to Israel for the Millenium.    It was the only country where I thought I could continue working throughout the holiday as they didn't celebrate Christmas.     I stayed at the King David Hotel in Tel Aviv, and everywhere I went meeting the local VC's and entrepreneurs, I would explain First Tuesday, and they would say - "sounds like Yazam".     Yazam, the Hebrew word for entrepreneur, was set up by Jerusalem Global and Shlomo Kalisch, http://www.jgv.com/team/skalish.htm, and the business model was similar to what I was trying to implement with First Tuesday - similar to Garage Ventures set up by Guy Kawasaki.    When I met the Yazam guys in Jerusalem on the 3rd of January 2000, I sat across the table in my little pink sweater with 20 Israeli investment bankers with orthodox hats on, and listened to them talking, and thought - catch me if you can, gentlemen - I will be running like the wind, and you will not be able to.

Red rag to the bull, and they did of course catch me, but not of course before one of them died trying.    Unfortunately, the man in charge of buying First Tuesday in February 2000 had a heart attack at age 39.   But he learned where the fault lines were, and so First Tuesday was sold to Yazam on the 20th of July 2000.

The morning after, I had breakfast scheduled with Guy Kawasaki the great Apple Macintosh evangelist who set up Garage.com.      We sat down at the Grosvenor House Hotel for breakfast, and he asked me what I had been up to, and I said, "well, I sold First Tuesday yesterday."     I thought he would fall off his chair.     We talked for a long time, and then he said, "All of that work that I did for Apple, Julie, the first half of my career, I didn't make but X.    And then something happens, and it flips, and you get tremendous leverage from what you do, say, think etc.    Keep going."

I have often said that I felt we were a digital island back then at the Alphabet Bar and the Great Titchfield offices of Syzygy, but we are becoming an Entrepreneur Country.     It's a good place to be.

lady liberty

Feeling like that woman who stands on a tall plinth-thingy in Manhattan harbour holding up a torch and looking victorious... 

Caught up with David Potter - bio here - http://www.sparkventures.com/Home/About_SPARK/Board_of_Directors/David_Potter/default.aspx  -  again on Friday who always says about Ariadne - when I talk to him about we're doing - "you're a merchant bank, Julie".  

He recounted this tale to me over coffee in our lovely courtyard at Devonshire Square on Friday.   Warburgs was founded by Sir Sigmund Warburg (RIP) I think in the late 40’s . It was Sir David Scholey who told David  about the amount of capital they had in circa 1970 [roughly £5 million] , by when they had established themselves as the premier Merchant bank in London, much to the chagrin of people like Hambros, Rothschild, Baring etc who regarded Warburgs as jumped up new boys.    Warburgs horrified the city by having two sittings for lunch with clients and only serving beer or cider!!

Reminds me of my favourite quote ....

"Take any stodgy old industry that is defying the internet to change it, like the telecoms industry, set the Kazaa founders on it and rip it to shreds. Doesn't matter if nobody thought it possible; all the better if everyone totally underestimates you." CNBC European Business

Not a problem to be underestimated.

now we are 43

Now we are 43 - with excuses to A. A. Milne - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Now_We_Are_Six

Tomorrow I turn 43, and I can scarcely believe it.    I remember as a child thinking that I would be 34 at the turn of the millenium, and thinking that the world might end before that happened.

My father always said that life began at 40, and that's certainly been true to me.   After the horrible summer of 2005, it did seem like a huge ray of sunshine erupted in 2006 - my fortieth year, and I've never looked back.

Now that I'm 43, I probably shouldn't sing Michael Jackson lyrics out loud in public :)  - http://www.jango.com/music/Michael+Jackson?l=0 

and it's probably inappropriate for me to spa quite so much ...

and I should probably slow down on the dancing, the red wine, the reading of zillions of magazines in my quest to understand the British mind...

and maybe I should try to be less happy or something - isn't the recession supposed to get one down?

Such incredible beauty and joy in the world, nah - I think I'll stick to my usual ways.

more German than I realise

The older I get, the more of a control freak I become!

Argh.... I get so pissed off with people who don't know how to project manage, operate slowly, allow things to happen by chance, miss deadlines - none of my Ariadne people I might add!

I may be more German than I realise

Life should be a precise, choreographed dance where you add the flair and flourish, but you rehearse and perform....

and I need to avoid people who don't think like me as I hate to be pissed off

7%

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends & parents will. Stay in touch.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye.

16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. The 2nd one is up to you & no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
24. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
25. Frame every so-called disaster with these words ''In 5 years, will this matter?"
26. Always choose life.
27. Forgive everyone everything.
28. What other people think of you is none of your business.
29. Time heals almost everything. Give time, time.
30. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
31. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
32. Believe in miracles.
33. People love you because of who you are.
34. Don't audit life. Show up & make the most of it now.
35. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.
36. Your children get only one childhood.
37. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
38. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
39. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd
grab ours back.
40. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
41. The best is yet to come.
42. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up & show up.
43. Yield.
44. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift.

the women's movement should take note of Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame

Andy Warhol said that everyone would have their 15 minutes of fame.   The rise of celebrity has been astounding as a phenomenon.    The women’s movement, where moderate success has been won through policy and protest, has much to learn from it.

 

The craze with which anybody can become famous has been fueled by crowd-sourced talent shows like Britain’s Got Talent, social media and the Internet which enable mass broadcast, and globalisation of the media industry which enables real-time media broadcast.

 

This past weekend, the Sunday Observer ran a full feature on how women are still disproportionately represented in the Board room.  While I appreciate the effort on behalf of women, it bothers me when the same old methods of showcasing lack of representation are tried.    I hate ineffectiveness.

 

In a world where everyone can become a celebrity, how does one reinsert status into life?  This is where virtual worlds and online communties come in.    Outsiders and those who would take on the status quo have always been in favour of the “new”.

 

They have always created new structures in order to build the frameworks and new rules of engagement – whether that was Jamestown, Virginia in the 1600’s or Malcolm X’s Black Panthers or Martin Luther who was branded a heretic by the Catholic Church.     Today, one can demonstrate their popularity with numbers of friends or followers online on Twitter or Facebook.    With Playspan currency, you can trade goods and hoard stuff to show how clever you are.

 

It used to be said that Power is not given; it is taken.   But that can be messy, and it’s not certain you’ll emerge victorious.   I have always preferred – Power is created.    I’d rather build my own cathedral than sit in someone else's any day of the week.   So either we demonstrate to men that it is their interests that they share power, and they don’t seem to be responding to logic and rational arguments, or we create new structures – new businesses, new political parties, new organisations which compete and through their success or not, a new more diverse power structure emerges in society.   These new structures should not be mirror reflections of the old boy’s clubs, but should be radically open to talent – male or female.    May the best person “win”.

 

Here media is our friend.    Oprah, Madonna, Martha Stewart demonstrate that if you want to become a billionaire, figure out your media strategy.  If you want to be a successful business woman, set up your own businesses like Natalie Manasset’s Net-a-Porter or Anita Roddick’s The Body Shop, but don’t toil in antique structures run by old boy’s clubs and wonder why your brilliance is not being recognised.

 

Wherever there is a movement, something profoundly true about human behaviour is escaping to the surface.    Celebrity used to be about status, but has become neutered.    Use its tools, women.    Let’s make having women the ultimate status symbol of Boards here and abroad.   I guarantee you that when the numbers shift to equal representation, it’ll be female entrepreneurs who will make up the difference.

 

 

 

watch out for those greek princesses too...

One of my favourite blog posts from Fred Destin …

 

True, honest and fair

“Success is a great thing, and it does not happen often.  When it does, be sure to share it.”

Watch out for those Greek Princesses too… :)

HYPERLINK "http://www.freddestin.com/blog/"Fred Destin


HYPERLINK "http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/typepad/FredDestin/~3/233988572/the-vc-as-pygma.html"The VC as Pygmalion - or the limits to personal value-add

Posted: 12 Feb 2008 04:14 PM CST

It is a well known fact that perceived value add is very different according to whether you are the CEO of a startup, the VC who funded it, the angel who put the first $ in, or the employee who did that large biz dev deal.

VCs always feel that they played a defining role in the successes that they were part of building.  The language reflects this: "I funded company X and I recruited its CEO"; "I had to get this management team back on the straight and narrow"; I "repositioned the business".  It is also driven by an industry that is always worried about attribution: who was the "go-to investor" on the board ?;  who had the vision to push this company to reinvent this market rather than conquer it ?;  when everyone around the board table was focused on this year's revenue, who had the guts to take the 5-year, game-changing view ?  You get the picture.

Of course most great feats in life are achieved by men who are unaware of their own limitations.  Think HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonidas"Leonidas and his 300 at

Thermopylae

.  Most entrepreneurs succeed because of the real life equivalent of theatrical "suspension of disbelief".  Likewise most VCs do what they do because of an enhanced perception of their own ability to influence the outcome and hence a probably misguided view of the real risk-return tradeoffs they decide to take on.

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Pic: Leonidas is coming for his B round of funding; he looks determined

So far so good.  As Leonidas has demonstrated, determined humans acting as a team and with a sole intent and purpose can achieve great things.  Hence ignorance coupled with skill, passion and flair is in fact a great combination to create extraordinary outcomes (both good and bad of course).  Arguably it would be even better if venture capitalists recognised when suspension of disbelief comes into play and harnessed it to make even better investment decisions, but hey, next thing you know we will be discussing the latest advances in neuroscience and debating the existence of free will.  Some other time, I don't want my reader count to go down to 3  :-)

The problem arises when a venture capitalist (or group thereof) starts to believe that he can "shape" the companies that he invests in way more than he really can.  "Great opportunity, with my help this team will be fine in getting it off the ground and then I will go and hire the right folks".  It's subtly different, but now the investor is starting to confuse his role slightly: from investor acting through the board to steer a management team to uber-executive investor masterminding the best way to engineer a success.  I call this the VC as Pygmalion, because the artist-financier has now fallen in love with his own (now inanimate) creation and believes he can create a mechanical contraption to bring to life (such as feed it a new strategy and bring in outside management to execute on it).  The startup as the VC's automata.

HYPERLINK "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/NAMA_Machine_d%27Anticyth%C3%A8re_1.jpg"Image:NAMA Machine d'Anticythère 1.jpg

Pic: Since we are on a Greek theme today, did you know that the Greeks invented everything, including the first HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism"mechanical computer (100BC) ?

Here are what I believe to be facts about our business that one should not ignore:

§ nothing can replace founder passion

§ hired management will always be looking at the current monetary value of the opportunity they are pursuing versus other market offerings; you can scare them with reputational issues, but it just is not the same

§ when the going gets tough, founders are usually the ones who will pull miracles out of thin air, who will galvanise a team to do the impossible, who will land the big customer when everyone stopped believing.

§ most great successes in venture and probably in the business world were started, scaled and exited by founders who grew with their organisations.  think Amazon, Dell, Qualcomm etc. 

§ when do you get in outside management, treat them as founders and make sure they get along more than well with your founders.

This is certainly generally true for Atlas Venture: Business Objects, iLog, Spotfire to name some examples from entreprise software over the years ... which all happened to be funded by a person called Philippe Claude, a gentleman who appeared to have an outstanding nose for human talent.

This does not mean that founders who cannot scale or whose egos run out of control should be protected at all costs.  What it does mean, in my book, is that you should not compromise on the quality, ethics, engagement and maturity of an original founder when making an investment decision.  I am sure there are many counter-examples, but I would also bet that these are not statistically significant.  Just the same way as some fund manager who takes uncontrolled risks always ends up as the top performer that particular year, so VCs who take gambles on backing weak founders will make money sometimes.  I have not looked at any numbers, but I would be willing to bet that VCs who sustainably make decent returns back outstanding founders and know to let them run their business or help them run their business.

As VCs we feel very passionately about our companies (just see my last post on Seatwave, and that's not even one of mine :-)).  At least most of us do.  At least most of us do until they fail or some unwritten "moral contract" gets breached by the ungrateful, failing CEO.  Our perception of our own value creation is often out of synch with our real contribution to the business.  This is for a simple reason: making a startup a success is really hard work.  It takes a lot of talent.  The reality of value creation is that

§ It is shared amongst a large group of people that includes founders, outside management, employees, investors, non-executives, customers who believe, PR agencies who get it and so on

§ It rains down on all of us when it happens. 

Success is a great thing, and it does not happen often.  When it does, be sure to share it.