Out of the blue, I got an email last week from Eisenhower alum Pedro Ramos asking if I wanted to attend a dinner for Vicente Fox at the Four Seasons that evening. Did I?!? He said that President Fox had expressed an interest in meeting entrepreneurs, so I was invited.

President Fox was in town to speak to the Wharton Hispanic American MBA Association (WHAMBAA). They had a reception with him, then he joined a group of about 30 business leaders for dinner. The group was interesting for me because it was so different from those I usually interact with, mainly they were from traditional industries. Everyone had name tags with just their name and organization, e.g. “Lucinda Holt ClickEquations. We all hung around, chatted, drank and enjoyed beautiful little hors d’oeuvres while we waited. My first faux pas of the evening was asking Brother McGiniss of La Salle University what his role there was. He’s the President – Doh! Everyone here is the President.

My second awkward moment was meeting President and Mrs. Fox. I was about 2/3rds of the way in line, so I thought that I knew what to expect, but I wasn’t ready when he took by hand and leaned in to kiss me. Both cheeks, European style. Then I wasn’t ready again when Mrs. Fox, who is about 5′ tall, did the same thing. Oh well, at least I used the correct salutation with each of them and knew which (of the very very many) utensils to use.

There were about 30 people in attendance, at three tables of 10. I lucked out and was seated at the main table with President and Mrs. Fox. I have no idea why. There were men who ran huge water treatment and engineering firms on either side of me, the founder of a huge money management firm in Chicago, Managing Partners from two major law firms, and two others (who didn’t make much of an impact on me, I guess!) filled out the table. I enjoyed talking before and after dinner with the engineer. Amazingly, we grew up just a few blocks from each other in a crummy neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Living in a world of technology and venture capital I’m used to being a small minority as a woman and that wasn’t any different despite the industry diversity. The only other women were Mrs. Fox and Anne Gordon from Dubilier & Co., past Managing Director of The Philadelphia Inquirer (and Eisenhower alum).

Gordon talking with Sen. Arlen Specter after her testimony before Congress in 2005

Dinner was, candidly, much less interesting than I expected. While the other two tables talked raucously, we listened to the President’s story about his flight delay (the universal topic, travel stories), which was very funny and he told it very well. Then he asked each of us in turn what we do and used whatever we said or asked to riff for a while. I’m not deeply familiar with the politics of Latin America, but the conversation didn’t get very deep. I was longing for someone to really engage him, but that clearly wasn’t what we were to do, so we didn’t. I would have loved to have had a real discussion about the paradigm of large government and NGO projects – I think it’s totally broken and he clearly believes in it. The perspectives from that group would have been fascinating – but we were there to bask in the presence, suck up, and be hit up (quietly and tastefully) for donations to Fox Centro.

The whole experience was tremendously educational for me. And now I’m just a single small degree of separation from Fidel Castro and the Pope! I wonder if they’re on LinkedIn.

My intent is to chronicle the experience of being a Fellow, primarily for future Fellows. Having accepted my Fellowship, the next step was to talk with the Program Director about where to go and when. I have to split my trip into two to accommodate my work – I couldn’t have gone if I had to do it all in one go. We talked about countries and quickly decided on a 3-week trip to China, starting in Beijing and ending in Shanghai with a yet-to-be-determined stop between the two. The goal for the third spot is to see some of rural China. The second leg will be to South Korea for 2 weeks. South Korea is new to the program, so I will have to be even more active in the development of my itinerary there than in China. We talked about dates, I refined them to minimize the impact on work, and we’re now working on the assumption that I’ll go to China in August and Korea over Thanksgiving. The Program Director is working with a travel agent and the folks in-country to ensure that those dates work.I am, meanwhile, doing research to figure out what I want to do. I was hoping that there would be a relevant conference to attend while in country, but I can’t find any. I’m going back to my application, which had an extensive list of types of people and specific individuals I wanted to meet to start to put together a list.I also received the program guide yesterday, which lays out details about how the travel and money work. It all looks both very straightforward and very scary. It seems like this might actually happen!To spur me along in my excitement about the whole thing, I’m already starting to be exposed to the power of the network. Next week the local alumni are having a meet-and-greet for this year’s three local Fellows. And we got invitations to some amazing events already: a meeting with the International Fellows at the Grand Canyon, an opportunity to have lunch with Governor Christine Todd Whitman at her farm, and a two-day trip to Microsoft for a set of high-level meetings. Wow.

I got a call just before Christmas that I was accepted as a 2010 USA Eisenhower Fellow. I was nominated by Steve Welch (thanks Steve!), applied, was interviewed and accepted. I had never heard of the Fellowship before I was nominated, but it’s an impressive group.Essentially, I get to go abroad (expenses paid) to study topics that I defined myself. Mine are:

1. What’s the implication of the flattening of the world on U.S.-based tech start-ups? What are the opportunities and threats? How will we change?
2. How will Internet advertising models develop in different geographies?

Fellows study by traveling to one or more countries and doing 3-4 meetings a day with people who can help. The organization has extensive resources and an amazing network of alumni and they help Fellows design and set up these meetings. They are typically with businesspeople, academics, and government officials.  My next step is to sign an acceptance letter and request travel dates and a country, or multiples. I’m leaning towards requesting China and Taiwan or maybe Korea, and breaking the trip into two parts to make it manageable for both my family and ClickEquations.  I’m extremely excited (Fellows describe the experience as life-changing), honored, and apprehensive about the logistics back home.I’ll blog here as things develop, and try hard to write daily once I’m there.

I’ve been actively using and thinking about social media and how to use it effectively as a tech start-up CEO for over a decade. Finally, in just the last month, I think that I have achieved a balance of channels that works. I use each for a specific type of communication with a specific audience.

I started this blog a year and a half ago, and hardly ever post. I find it difficult to prioritize the time and, more importantly, I usually can’t write about the things that consume me and that I think would be really valuable for those in my community. I’d like to write about how we think about strategy and our competition, corporate development and major deals, the capital raising process, the dynamics on our board and with our investors, and our culture and people issues. Mostly, what would be interesting and informative are the big opportunities and big problems. These are, however, exactly what I can’t share here. My conclusion is to keep the blog as a place for writing like this but not to worry about posting regularly.

In contrast, 347 updates ago I started using Twitter (@LucindaDH), which works a lot better for me than blogging – not that they’re the same thing at all. I started during the SXSW conference when everyone else did (as @LucindaH) but I couldn’t get going; I just didn’t get it. Then, afraid I was aging, I made a month-long commitment to Tweet. And I was hooked. It’s a terrific way to keep in touch with friends, get to know acquaintances and colleagues better, and connect with people beyond my network. I found that the most constructive effect was that it connected me better to other C360 people. And it gives me something to do when I’m sitting at red lights.

I do love that I can update Facebook with my Tweets. Facebook is purely secondary for me, but there are a lot of very active users, and I can keep my page fresh through Twitter. It’s a place that you have to be if you work on the Internet, it’s a great way to connect with old friends, but it’s not a main platform for me. There are many other networks that I use but don’t contribute to (Yelp), some I find intriguing but don’t use regularly (Tripit), and those I choose to ignore (MySpace).

Again in contrast, LinkedIn has become critical to my business life. I use it to find new employees, to get background on people I’m going to meet with, and to find paths to get to people I’m trying to meet. It’s great, but it’s more as a database than a social space.

So if I blog as an occasional way to publish long-ish thoughts, Twitter to connect a level deeper, maintain Facebook as a seat at the table, and leverage LinkedIn as a business tool, is that the right mix?

No. This all brings us to Yammer. I love Yammer. Yammer fills a key void in the social media mix to date. I introduced Yammer to Commerce360 a month ago and find it invaluable already. People post really interesting things (to me anyway) like what they’re working on, competitor announcements, industry news, client feedback, that there are cookies in the kitchen, or that they’re going to lunch. Our dev team updates Yammer automatically through our source control system so we can all see hour by hour what’s happening. It all adds up to giving me a finger on the pulse of the organization in a way that’s hard to get otherwise, particularly because I spend so much time out of the office. I also think that it helps people to have more visibility into what I’m doing. I post things like meetings that I’m in, what we’re talking about, what I’m reviewing, client and sales call outcomes, how the board meeting is going,… My hope is that this helps everyone stay excited about what we’re doing, and that how I spend my time is a signal about what is important to the organization.

Which, back full circle to the beginning of this post, is really the promise of social media for the CEO: it can help us connect to our constituencies in a more direct, genuine way.

So, with the addition of Yammer, I’ve finally developed a mix that works:
1.    Yammer for inside the company
2.    Twitter for quick exchanges with the tech community (and their spouses)
3.    Facebook for a broader community
4.    LinkedIn the business world workhorse
5.    This blog for occasional longer posts

Ben Franklin Technology Partners created a series of videos with NFTE, which provides entrepreneurial education to young people in low-income communities. One of them was about me. And if you have a while and need a laugh, you can catch Josh and I dancing about half way through the First Round Capital holiday video. 

I’m slow finding it, but Bill Burnham’s Why Your VC is Acting Crazy is a must-read for entrepreneurs with or wanting to have VCs in their lives. I’ve unfortunately experienced crazy vcs twice, once with one of my own investors and once with a potential acquiree’s investor. Bill outlines some of the things to watch for, but in practice much of his advice is hard to implement. For example, only one of the many funds I’ve dealt with has been open about the fund’s own performance issues – it just isn’t that easy to know what’s going on. I think that the sad part of this dynamic is that investors typically position themselves as “partners” in your business. But true partnerships are two-way, and vcs don’t welcome entrepreneurs as partners in their businesses. There is a fundamental imbalance of power in the dynamic between most VCs and most entrepreneurs that the entrepreneur has to accept because of the golden rule: he who has the gold rules. Deal terms formalize the hierarchical structure and interpersonal dynamics – vcs tend to be older, richer, and more arrogant than entrepreneurs – cement it. The only glimmer of hope is that things do even out a bit with performance. When a company is kicking butt, it has options, which means that a crazy vc may drive you crazy, but he (they are almost always hes) can’t really force you to do anything. And over time, as entrepreneurs are successful deal-to-deal, vcs start to view us as long-term investments and treat us more like peers. At the end of the day, though, it is critical that we are aware of where our vcs are sitting. Sometimes they’re on our side of the table and sometimes they’re on the other side. And it’s never in their best interest to point out when they switched sides. 

Yes, I have an iPhone. Russell stood in line at the Apple Store. Mostly with Indea – I had to drag her away she was having such a good time.

I wanted one since before they were announced. Russell has been waiting with a $20 eBay phone for a year and a half.

And, despite all of the activation hassles, it’s pure bliss. It’s like having a concept car of your very own, that works. I’ve never interacted with a more beautiful piece of technology.

My Brooklyn posse in about 1973. I just love this photo.

Cuts is sold. Very bittersweet – I’d love to be building it into the huge business I know it can be. But also happy that it found a good home.

Russell is helping me move this blog to WordPress, which is a relief. iWeb is terrific for putting together a simple web site, but it’s the worst for blogging. OK, TypePad is the worst for blogging. At any rate, please bear with me through the adjustment…