Drwn News

This blog is over. Long live a.sarva.co

My new blog: http://a.sarva.co

This Movable Type install from 2001 is getting hard to keep alive.

China is already on our tomorrow

Some Shanghai business leaders were being polite the other night at dinner. They were saying stuff like "Shanghai tomorrow is New York today". Flattery. The reality, as Thomas Friedman is fond of pointing out, is more like this:

I left my Shanghai hotel in a taxi with a tv cycling ads, on a big new highway over a big new landmark bridge, then onto the 430 k/hr Mag-Lev train that got me from midtown to the terminal in 10 minutes. I could have taken the subway directly there too - for $0.30.

The Shanghai airport looks like a space port - insanely huge, very spacious to the point of emptiness, light and airy and shiny and glass all over. And seriously really big. Probably twice the size of JFK. Pictured above is Beijing where I connected. look at the vaulting 100 ft tall ceiling there. And returning home, I met Newark Airport, that bus terminal of an airport covered in tiles and plastic signage telling you to use the back door to find the Air Train. Then a monorail! Then New Jersey Transit's rickety system, a double decker train - which means they must be busy. And finally to this hell on Earth called Penn Station. And an out of service escalator.

Heading home!

Left hotel in Shanghai at 730pm Thursday NYC time.

Expecting to be home 9pm Friday!

Left hotel in Shanghai at 730pm Thursday NYC time.

Expecting to be home 9pm Friday!

China, land of entrepreneurs

I was in China this week partly on an NYC Mission to China and at the table last night a dean from Columbia was reflecting on the entrepreneurial spirit here.

In poor countries like China and India there is just too much to gain and little to lose. You meet more people with hustle than you do these days in NYC.

The domestic market growth rate is crazy, covering up for your mistakes.

There is less calcified aristocratic wealth (think Mayfair or UES), and are many current tales of rags to riches.

All the industries are transforming, so opportunity is not just for web nerds.

And the regulatory policy helps - an idea like "twitter of china" is actually possible. No Twitter in China. No foreign ownership of anything really.

India is like this in many ways too.

None of these are true in the USA today. They once were.

CCTV Impossible Building

Harold Ford Jr. is dumb for getting involved in the anti-Netflix cable/telco lobby

Disappointing to see Harold Ford Jr. part of the cable industry/Verizon critiques of Netflix

The thinking here isn't really explained, but it seems to be that Netflix streaming uses tons of bandwidth; grandma just uses the Internet for e-mail; ergo, grandma should pay less for her Internet connection than those Internet-hogging hippies next door. To which the only real answer is: ISPs can certainly try this pricing model if they want! (It has not proven popular in the past.)

The User-Agent Problem

Chris Dixon has it right as usual that enterprises deploy stuff slowly because the users are not the purchasing agent.

A classic scenario that causes many problems. Agency is power and carries different interests than being a user. Mismatch, problems.

But a great Dixon post is never complete without dropping science like that. Weird he excluded it.

http://cdixon.org/2011/12/03/the-enterprise-buyers-versus-users/

Chris Dixon has it right as usual that enterprises deploy stuff slowly because the users are not the purchasing agent.


A classic scenario that causes many problems. Agency is power and carries different interests than being a user. Mismatch, problems.


But a great Dixon post is never complete without dropping science like that. Weird he excluded it.



http://cdixon.org/2011/12/03/the-enterprise-buyers-versus-users/

Being startup talent (and managing startup talent)

Managing people in a startup is hard. My company has about 40 people in three different countries, mostly engineers but also sales and other types. I never had direct responsibility for big numbers of people before Peek -- just a handful in previous startups like Virgin Mobile or when I worked at McKinsey. But at this point I have hired and fired over 100 people and been part of maybe 250 decisions like that -- a big chunk of that as my various companies have zigged and zagged through various market situations. At Peek right now we are just absolutely kicking ass and it was only possible because we removed lots of people (and brought on lots of other people). So I can testify to what 'management' is about.

And the ultimate management decision with people is: firing. You need to fire people to protect your good people, undo your hiring mistakes, and move the direction of your business.

So I found this advice about being a manager/evaluating people really useful. If you are a manager of other people at any level, you should be following this action plan:

Fs - Fire people who are not contributing anything at all instantly --> this is an easy one for most
Cs - Make a move on your "requires lots of oversight to deliver" people --> this is the hardest one
Bs - Coach your good but not great folks to be more innovative as they continue to deliver what is asked of them with little oversight --> also pretty easy, often you pair one of these with an A
As - Admire your A players who make plays and write new playbooks --> also easy

This is summarized well by Nivi of Venture Hacks from the more detailed and excellent post by Eric Paley. Read them to understand the "write the playbook" thing better.

In general, it's hard to fire people at all but if you are going to be a CEO or manager of any type, you are probably aware it has to happen sometimes and the Fs are a slam dunk case. And As help you get through the day. You do need to give though to harnessing Bs (rather than naively thinking your company is going to be all As), and most important is to deal with Cs.

Cs are sometimes full of pathos ("I really am trying!") and I have trouble making a move on them -- and by make a move I mean firing them. That is what you need to do with Cs.

But let's say you are not actually CEO. The more useful question is who am I? Where do I fit?

So, if you are anything other than the CEO, try this four-stage self-diagnostic to see who you are.

1. Feel the company is confusing? Your managers are crazy? Priorities always changing and unrealistic to follow? Managers keep giving too little direction?

You are an F for this situation and you should quit or be fired. You may be a good person but you just don't fit here. Leave. Help your bungling bosses make that call. The truth is that all startups are full of confusing, shifting strategies and tactics. But if you can't handle it or gain traction on the work, that is very bad.

2. Grinding things out? Have people spending late nights with you? Or getting ignored for a week at a time completely? Occasionally getting a pat on the head like a "that was good" email and mostly getting hassled about stuff you forgot, should have done, "I would have expected XYZ"?

You are a C. Either the company's management is focused way over there on some radically different stuff for urgent and important reasons...or you are just not contributing usefully to the core of the company's mission right now. If you are getting super-duper-supervised...you are a problem, sucking management time as they try to shape you into their vision of the world. Leave. They will fire you eventually or fail as a company entirely as they pick up more baggage like you. This is not the place for you.

3. Grinding things out, but nobody really up in your grill except to hand you new work? Perhaps you don't quite get what "the strategy" is in this place but the stuff that comes your way is getting done and deployed and moving forward. You send mails out with "done" or "x" or "now next week I will" and people seem to kind of ignore your mails and ideas? You expect more engagement given you are making such good stuff happen. What about your idea for that new feature or partner. That thread didn't take off did it?

You are producing and minding your own business --> great. But you are either hanging back and not pathbreaking new ideas, or you are *are* doing this but out of step with your company. That latter situation can be frustrating but you haven't yet become pissed off and misbehaved (you might someday). Anyway, for now you are a B and you have a bright future ahead, if you can find a way to be like the next level below.

4. If you dream stuff up, say "Hey should we do this?" and people are like "yeah, go ahead" then congratulations you innovative playbook-writer you. And if intelligent people are giving you go-aheads, they are doing it because they know you get stuff done. When people are like "um, well, we should put that on the list" they have doubts about your get-er-doneness. But here they keep saying yes to stuff and you will risk overcommitting. In fact, you have latitude where people don't even require consultation before you make decisions. You are in charge.

This is how it feels to be an A player. Things to watch out for: thinking you should be CEO, properly focusing your powers of get-it-done, getting pissed at the B crowd rather than 'leveraging' them. Rest easy though: one day you will be the founder/CEO yourself.

Well, maybe -- an interesting point from someone who read this post for me -- was A player != CEO. A players work lots and do tons, but CEOs literally kill themselves. So you can be a top contributor without being the CEO. So keep in mind that difference and enjoy it before you sign up for the next level job in startupland.

So, that's my advice if you are a startup person: find out who you are, then either quit, innovate, or hold your horses.

Our generation

I really think he's got it right.

So what's the affect of today's youth culture? Not just the hipsters, but the Millennial Generation as a whole, people born between the late '70s and the mid-'90s, more or less -- of whom the hipsters are a lot more representative than most of them care to admit. The thing that strikes me most about them is how nice they are: polite, pleasant, moderate, earnest, friendly. Rock 'n' rollers once were snarling rebels or chest-beating egomaniacs. Now the presentation is low-key, self-deprecating, post-ironic, eco-friendly. When Vampire Weekend appeared on "The Colbert Report" last year to plug their album "Contra," the host asked them, in view of the title, what they were against. "Closed-mindedness," they said.

Bill D in NYT

Dropped out of workforce = got older than 65?

NYTimes: U.S. Adds 120,000 Jobs; Unemployment Drops to 8.6%
http://nyti.ms/v5AQvA

Pet peeve #43: "did you see my/that email?"

This is a foolish and annoying thing to say.

Instead, ask about the point of your email.

Like most "tag" questions it isnt a real question though it takes the form of one. Which is what makes it annoying when you could have just made your point instead.

Alternatives to touch

In Defense Of The Stylus | TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/11/in-defense-of-the-stylus/

And published on the normally vapid Techcrunch!

In Defense Of The Stylus | TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/11/in-defense-of-the-stylus/

And published on the normally vapid Techcrunch!