Recently, someone remarked to me that the way she shows that she cares for people is by traveling to see them. The time involved in traveling is a clear signal of caring. Spending time to travel is a better signal of caring than spending money on a gift. Money is producible and you can always make more of it, but you can’t ever get time back. This holds true for whether it involves a subway ride down town or a flight across the country. It also holds true for business, friends, or lovers. People just won’t travel to you unless they cared. 

It occurred to me that there might be a corollary to that idea too — giving someone your attention shows you care right now and the rest of the world around you doesn’t matter for the moment. With all the distractions around us (basically, the Internet via your phone), it’s harder than ever to get people to focus on the here and now. Attention is in many ways the last mile and most expensive signal of caring, which makes it possibly the most important signal.

So when I travel to see someone or someone comes to see me, I try to give them my undivided attention. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Storytelling is such an important skill in life. In spite of all the data that now exists that never before did, people really focus on the overall narrative still rather than the complete details — it may be a biological limitation or evolutionary adaption, but whatever it is, we naturally communicate best through stories. I’ve been thinking about some of the greatest storytellers lately and what they do best.

Malcolm Gladwell is one of the most popular ones today. He seems to start with a “big idea” and then find stories/research that would demonstrate it. As a result, his work clearly conveys a central point — almost too well since you can almost just read the book jackets and not need to read the whole book to get it.

In contrast, one of my favorite writers, Michael Lewis, seems to have a reverse process. He finds individuals with compelling stories which can be representative of a broader picture. The difference is subtle but the result is quite different. You feel like there’s more truth to the story but less certain of what it means and what to take away.

I think what they both do well though is make people the center of their stories. People only care about stories about people. Stories about technology, science, or nature without people as the central focus just aren’t as interesting (this probably holds true for photography too). Steve Jobs knew this when he was talking about computers in the 1980s’s. He talked about computers as bicycles for people’s minds rather than simply as miracles of science or tools of business. He also knew this when approving the advertisements for Apple which always had people using technology as the focus rather than the device, network capabilities, or price.

So when giving a speech to an audience, pitching a story to a reporter, making an ad, or doing anything related, you really need to make people the main idea.

Recently someone described to me an idea for a financial payments startup and asked how it may be possible to implement. After thinking about it, I realized that it may not have been the right question; instead, we should have been wondering why it hasn’t been done before — in fact, it turned out WePay had done it. It wasn’t the most perfect implementation but it went a long way in thinking through the ideal versus practical implementation. 

As we sat on the BART rail talking, I realized “why” was sometimes the most important question to ask. BART is one of the few if any public subways that don’t use hard plastic seats and instead use cloth. I’m sure the designer at the time thought he or she was being clever and original to be offering a softer surface for seating, but in fact, there was a good reason why people use hard seats — they don’t get moldy or dirty easily. 

I think in cases of business innovation or design innovation rather than technological innovation, why trumps how as the primary focus. Why hasn’t someone else done it? Why didn’t they do it a certain way?

In contrast, technology innovation is about how something impossible can be made possible. So the next time you come up with an idea, ask yourself what sort of innovation it is so you know what to focus on. 

The odds and stats tell us that most startups won’t work out. Everyone knows that.

But we are believers. We believe that we can make it work.

And that’s what gets me up every morning. 

After PaperG took on investors a number of years ago, I realized we needed to begin communicating with a new group of people who cared about the future of the company. Before, we just had our founders and our customers which made it pretty easy to figure out what to share and what not to share with who or who not. Soon, we would have many more employees, advisers, and other supporters which would all want to know what’s going on with the company.

Wondering what other founders did in this situation, I stumbled upon an interesting solution by Larry Page and Sergin Brin. They wrote Founders’ Letters since the time of their IPO. Going through them gives you a glimpse into the minds at work behind the impressive growth of Google. They don’t go into the blocking and tackling of day to day operations nor all the money they were making for their shareholders. Instead, they focus on the progress and vision for the company. These letters also always end with the name and signature of the founders.

I admired this approach. It was a simple and easy way for the founders to directly communicate with everyone who cared about what they created. So often the voices of the founders get drowned out by the time the company reaches the size of Google, so it’s all the more impressive they have this forum.

Communicating well is hard in a growing company as I’ve come to learn and you need as many ways as possible to share your thoughts on the future to keep everyone on the same page. We have been writing our own “Letters from the Founders” to all our employees, investors, and advisers once a quarter.

Since starting this practice, we’ve been able to better stay in touch with all our stakeholders and get offers for help in specific areas from them. It had begun as a one way street but it’s beginning to become a valuable conversation starter about the future.

I wish more companies would write these founders’ letters regularly — it’d be fascinating to hear what founders have to say to the world. 

Dilbert’s take on “acquihiring” and the problem with at will employment.