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Great post and great comments at Seth Levine’s blog, and here are some quotes:

Aim high. In the fast paced world of start-ups there’s a natural tendency to need to get everything done yesterday – including that latest hire.  As a result, it’s pretty easy to convince yourself that someone is “good enough” or “better than not having anyone”.  Not true. Don’t settle in your hiring. It’s better to delay a product/release/market launch to find the right person for the job than to hire low and suffer the consequences. A bad team member brings the productivity of the entire team down.

and from the comments:

you bring up a good point around sales, shane. i think a lot of companies assume that if they are selling enterprise software the best sales people they can hire are ex-Oracle or SAP or something similar. that sort of strategy almost never works out. selling at a start-up is just different than selling from a mid tier or large company. often i’ve found that the better strategy is to hire a solid and scrappy vp and then fill in with less experienced, but bright and hungry sales people who are more likely to both work harder as well as to stick to the program (sell the way you want them to sell).  i’ve had some companies (not just in enterprise software but will all varieties of products) that they best sales people they hire are the ones with the least experience but with the highest energy and drive.  i think the idea isn’t to upgrade later – but to build up a strong force yourself.  thoughts?

“The moment you believe in the capacity of human beings, you can not match welfare with that concept.”

Click on the picture to watch the video.

I am about half way through the “The Principled Politician: The Ralph Carr Story” and wanted to share what a great book this is.

I’ve heard of Governor Carr before and have seen his statue on Sakura Square, and reading his biography is such a pleasure. He was an amazing person and certainly an amazing governor. Not only did he stand up for civil rights when it was extremely unpopular to do so, but he was also a fiscal hawk, who was elected to clean up the Colorado from a huge debt and wasteful spending of his predecessor, Governor Ammons.

The man was amazing!

When I was little, my mom would take my brother and I to the main library in Yerevan weekly, if not more. Then when I was in high school, I often did my homework in the beautiful UK library in Lexington. And in college I was in libraries heaven, often spending hours in Norlin Library, CU’s engineering library and physics libraries (yes, I’m a total geek), as well the futuristic Boulder Public Library (with it’s charming cafe, located literally over the creek).

And in Denver, the crown jewel of all libraries has got to be the Denver Public Library. First the building itself. The building, or rather the seemingly many conjoined buildings remind me of toy building blocks, playfully piled on top of each other. And having the structure right next to the Denver Art Museum, with it’s expanded modern wing makes it look even quirkier.

Today I finally spent a few hours inside, and invariably ended up checking out 4 books. I got “The Principled Politician: The Ralph Carr Story”, “Colorado’s Japanese Americans: From 1886 To The Present”, a biography of mayor Wellington Webb, and a manual of Japanese writing.

One of the most intriguing collections I discovered there was the Western History photo archive. Apparently the library has over 600,000 photographs relating to the history of Colorado and the American West. And about 10,000 of them have already been scanned and made available for printing and searching/previewing online.

So here is another interesting visualization of the growth of Walmart across the US:

It’s surprising how slowly the stores expanded from the mid-west. You can actually see the stores forming a dense cluster around the first few stores and gradually take over the country.

I wonder how Walmart’s growth pattern is different from other national retailers. I would imagine that unlike Walmart, some retailers first set up stores in major cities like New York or Los Angeles and then slowly increase density by moving into smaller and smaller markets.

And I wonder if there is a theory or a model around what’s is the more effective way to conquer the US market: to saturate a local region first, and then to expand (as Walmart seems to have done) or to establish sparse presence in major cities first and then add density?

It’s worth watcing if you care for an animal.

I’d like to check out his dog training book too.

When I saw the new amendment (Amendment 56) that will be on this November’s ballot, requiring employers with 20 or more employees to have health insurance, I immediately thought of two things: the Massachusetts health insurance mandate and ERISA (the federal law that regulates employee health plans, and which preempts state laws).

Wouldn’t ERISA preempt Amendment 56? It would seem that it should.

Are there any other states that have state mandated employee health insurance? The answer is Yes, Hawaii and Massachusetts.

How is it that Hawaii and Massachusetts get to play by the rules the rest of us can’t?

I did some digging around and it turns out there very specific reasons why both of those states have not been over-ruled by the federal government.

Hawaii

Hawaii’s plan had the fortune of being implemented the same year as ERISA itself.  Since Jan. 1, 1975, Hawaii’s law has required nearly all employers to provide health insurance to their employees who worked 20 hours or more a week for four consecutive weeks. Employees must maintain the minimum of at least 20 hours a week to remain eligible.

Apparently, Standard Oil sued Hawaii in the same year, and won (ERISA did preempt!) but Hawaii

Congressional delegation stepped in and got an exemption from ERISA. And so Hawaii has remained as the only state with such a law.

Massachusetts

So, how did Massachusetts get away with it?

In 2006, Massachusetts (Mitt Romney) passed the law that requires nearly every resident of Massachusetts to obtain health insurance coverage. Through the law, Massachusetts provides subsidized health care for residents earning up to 100% of the Federal Poverty Level, and partially subsidized health care those earning up to 300% of the FPL, depending on an income-based sliding scale.

So why didn’t anybody in the business community sue? Where is the Standard Oil of today?

According to people who know a lot more than I do, the reason is because the burden of the law has been so minimal on the business community ($300 or so per employee per year, if the business decided to pay instead of playing), that no one bothered to sue.

If you look at the graphic on the right, you will see that of the almost half a million newly insured people in Massachusetts, more than a half are getting insured under the state subsidized plan. The rest are getting into their employer plans or buying an individual plan.

The cost to businesses has been about $5 million, which in in of itself  is probably close to what Wal-Mart fighting the state of Maryland’s own state mandated coverage law (Wal-Mart won), hardly worth fighting for.

Massachusetts is in violation of ERISA, but no one is bothering to sue.

However, now that the state finds itself $400 million short subsidizing healthcare, it has asked the business community to pony up $100 million of it by making the law more strict. The law requires most employers to offer health coverage or to pay an annual penalty of $295 per worker. But a crucial compromise was struck to win the business community’s support when the law was being contemplated: companies would be in compliance even if a minority of their workers were covered. Employers with more than 10 workers had the option of paying at least 33 percent of workers’ premiums within their first 90 days of employment or having at least 25 percent of their workers covered by an employer plan.

Now Massachusetts wants to raise additional money in penalties by requiring employers to meet both requirements.

Of course, the business community is outraged, and is fighting back. And it wouldn’t take much to get them to fight back with ERISA.

Colorado

So, what will happen in Colorado if Amendment 56 passes? It’s hard to tell because it will be up to the legislature to spell out all the details of how it will be implemented. If, like in Massachusetts, the state decides to assume most of the financial liability for all the newly insured people, then perhaps also like in Massachusetts, the employers won’t sue. Though, I can’t see Colorado picking up the tab on this one – we have TABOR among other issues.

Amendment 56 in Colorado will die in the hands of ERISA as soon as it passes.