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.
Posted by amol -->Management vs. Hiring/Firing
You start a company because you love the thing you are making (a Peek, a search engine, a greeting card, whatever) and then you find suddenly that your time is spent managing.
People, feelings, performance, work products, drafts, results, strategies, proposals.
You sit in meetings or have conversations with people about what they did or should do or why and how they felt about it and why they didn't do it better.
It's really annoying.
At one point at Peek I would pretty much sit quietly and do emails for a bit of the day, and for most of the day I would be in meetings or on calls where somebody would show me some stuff they had written down/thought about/powerpointed/calculated and I would poke holes at it -- or I would be having one on one type conversations where I was not talking content but people/politics/feelings etc.
It truly felt like a huge waste of time.
For others too - they would prepare, dress rehearse the meeting, and afterwards revise. They would pad their materials with extra junk to make it take up the 30 or 60 minutes the calendared meeting seemed to require.
A completely different way to spend your time is to review nothing, talk to nobody, see an email reporting progress on something from time to time, tell someone "no do it this way" occasionally...and do an actual job the rest of the time. That is what I have been doing the last year (I am the sales, product management and finance departments. I calculated recently that of our 32 staff, 25 are engineers and 4 are operations, leaving only 3 people that might possibly write a powerpoint. Awesome!)
This latter way of rolling is much more fun but *it is impossible* if you don't love and trust your people to be amazing. And you can only trust them if they are in fact amazing.
So you must hire/fire your way into this situation. In a fast growing company, this means you won't spend so much time managing if you spend lots of time hiring/firing.
Corollary: try to fire at least as much as you fire (maybe a bit less, actually). It is really easy to spend tons of time meeting people you don't hire. Why not just hire them and then fire them? (There are reasons, yes, but consider the benefits - topic for a future post. Need to fire some people right now...)
Posted by amol -->Where nobody is competing with Apple
With everyone scrambling to imitate and beat Apple, why are they only competing with the carrier-integrated part?
Everyone has an iPhone competitor and so far it's been all iPad-clones-bundled-with-a-carrier.
Nobody makes an iPod touch competitor -- Zune is being iced, Sony's isn't close.
And only now is there a first wifi only tablet (I couldn't find one for the Galaxy Tab despite rumors last year).
Here is one reason: almost nobody in mobile (Motorola, HTC) has much of a channel to customers outside the wireless carriers. So they make what Verizon asks for, for its response to AT&T. And we get phone stuff.
Samsung has a channel through mass retail, so why not them? They pretty much gave up on music/media players though, so perhaps the idea of an iPod competitor is anathema.
They should be there though.
The wifi side of this thing is way bigger than the 3G. 93% of iPads are NOT 3G (under a million after Apple sold 10mm+ iPads per last Q4 #s).
Is the competition insane? Adding 3G makes the gadget cost more and prices the stuff way above iPad. Apple disclosed their average selling price on iPad last year was $666 -- just a bit above $500 entry level.
And requiring "only" 3G saves no money; the exact same product could ship with no 3G chip.
More devices (wifi or otherwise connected) means more apps, means more ecosystem, and everything else.
My guess is the problem comes entirely from channel conflict -- the wireless carriers insisting.
So where are Dell and HP? They are over 1 year late now. And they will show up captive to another adjacent industry - the laptop.
So while Apple conquered the portable computer (iPod) and is riding it into phone-land (iPhone) and toward PC-land (iPad), the iPod itself is poised complete its transformation from mere music/media player (the iPod flash, nano, etc) to "portable computer with wifi but no 3G" (already over 50% of 2010 Q4 iPod sales).
Posted by amol -->Nokia's other problem: losing the high end of the emerging markets
Nokia was 70% of India market 2 years ago.
Data released by global market research firm GfK Nielsen shows that Finland-based Nokia retained the top slot in Indian mobile phone buyers' minds in the January-November, 2010, period, with a market share of 49.2 per cent in terms of revenue. Korean electronics giant Samsung had a 20.5 per cent share, as per the GfK Nielsen data.
Where did the share go? MicroMax has 5% and LG has 5%. MicroMax was at zero 5 years ago. And, then there is Samsung -- which went from 6% in 2007 to 20% in 2010.
Posted by amol -->How to do research for your startup. My talk at #nyfi last night at Founders Institute @gzicherm
The cliff notes.
What you need
- A hypothesis
- Testing
- So you can be credible
- And right
- Or know when you are wrong
First about testing - which can be cheaper and more credible
- Use ads and make a checkout cart/signup page
- Make a prototype - of anything
- Or Vaporware -- $400 iPhone app
lets you test behavior
Desk research "real"
-- This is my background
-- Swivel and Scribd
-- Your friends at banks or subscribers to market research
-- But you will need some charts somewhere that look like this page that say
MARKET SIZE and possibly re: competitiveness
Desk research "made up"
-- You can guess how many fire hydrants there are, so you can
probably guess anything
Anthropology
-- Study yourself or your friends CAREFULLY
-- Time it
-- Write down steps/crazy detail
-- Photograph or video and have others watch
-- Hire others
-- Use the internet
-- Find "real life" on Facebook or Flickr
-- Read user reviews and comments
"True market research"
-- Pro
-- Hire a firm to write questions, run the data gathering, analyze the numbers (stats methods), make you a powerpoint
-- Because the nuances really matter or if the target group is hard to find
-- DIY
-- Pay to have some questions fielded online or by phone ($100/question/1000) and wait for the spreadsheet
-- Regular people are OK, need to quantity some non-binary distributions
-- Super DIY
-- Ask your friends to fill out out a Surveymonkey or Google Docs form
-- Need binary direction, want more people like you
Some startup ideas: XYZ "for business"
Twitter "for business" = Yammer
Foursquare "for business" = a way for field/mobile/sales teams to coordinate on accounts/territory
Google Voice "for business" = enterprisey features in a VoIP/voicemail website
iPad "for business" = $400 tablet PC that's good for data entry/forms/surveys etc not media
Match.com "for biz" = some kind of open-ended recruiting thing?
And so on.
A lovely flash clock
What time it is in New York
Posted by amol -->Why venture capital returns have sucked for "the last decade"
When people say the returns have sucked, they usually mean "the returns for a dollar invested 10 years ago cumulative through now". As you can see, there has been a fallow period for exits.
Investments are down too
But the firms themselves are managing less money or at least they should be, so of course they are investing less.
I think the causality goes in the direction I just laid it out -- fewer exits, so fewer investments, so less money being raised. Not the other way around.
Here are my guesses on the root causes of all this:
1. Marcroeconomy has been basically flat in the US since 2001. Stock market shows this. It's flat for the decade. Few IPOs. And also overall weak corporate earnings over the period. So VC hasn't had anywhere to exit to.
2. Technical regulatory stuff that has made it expensive to go public
3. Many non-expert VCs entered the VC business after 1999, the banner year for being a VC investor. This was driven by limited partners seeking VC vehicles and by private equity firms/hedge funds that entered the category
4. Most people have still been focusing a ton on the Internet. The Internet's returns are probably just lower this last decade vs. the 1990s. Everyone from Yahoo to Google to Amazon to Ebay to all the big Internet players were funded in the 90s, not in the 2000s. Were any big public Internet companies founded in the 2000s? Skype, Vente Privee, Zappos...all acquired, not public. And none are 10B or 100B companies.
Posted by amol -->Those mouseover ads are really annoying
Those "stray mouseover = popup" ads are super annoying. And they are turning up everywhere. Kontera is the brand I see most on these damn things, but there are a couple of others like Vibrant.
They are annoying because
- mousing over something doesn't signal intent to click. As Yahoo! learned about their homepage, some people (like me) just use the moving cursor to direct their attention on the page. Popups are very annoying disruptions of reading
- the context matching is bad. Relevance is usually poor.
- they are slow to react/pop/close
Though judging from how quickly they are appearing on content sites, somebody is liking them for now.
But they are going to have to change a lot if they'll survive. The main way? Get WAY better at relevance and way WORSE as distraction/disruption. Turn into Adsense.
Our "Sorry, Blackberry" promotion.
Dear Blackberry users, We hear you had a widespread, global outage for much of the business day on Thursday. We nearly missed our dinner date because of it -- next time we'll only dine with Peeksters! It makes us wonder why people are paying all that extra money -- 3x more than Peek in most cases -- for that service. "Enterprise-scale, world-class blah blah blah", huh? Peek is the easiest and most affordable way to stay responsive and on top of your inbox on the go. At least, that's what the Wall Street Journal, Time, Wired, BusinessWeek, The New York Times, and others keep telling us. And for disgruntled businesses that are overpaying to keep their people connected -- try this code at checkout to save 50% on any Peeks you order in the next 24 hours. Only good on a Peek Pronto. BBOUTAGE5 at www.getpeek.com Or the best deal out there: Peek for Life at Amazon.com Happy Peeking, Amol Sarva, the Peekster-in-Chief P.S. if you are a Peekster and you are getting this mail, now is your chance to forward this along to all those friends and coworkers who have been admiring your award-winning Peek. You'll both get a free month of service when you tell us who you referred! :) |
Is your startup an indie or a studio?
The Nobels in Economics today recognize some of the social science contributions outside the normal "markets work!" analysis that hold the core doctrines of the dismal science.
There is a fascinating branch led by the hero William Baumol and more recent contributors like Tyler Cowen that studies another surprising realm: arts and culture.
The basic insight is that economics applies here too. Technology and market structure can totally change the products we see. Think Model T or Toyota Corolla or the Prius or Hummer. Tastes alone don't dictate industrial production thought it's an ingredient.
The most striking upshot of analyzing opera and poetry and movies and pop songs this way: when the product is 'cheap to make' the winners in the category rarely get rich and instead call themselves artists (poetry, novels, paintings); when it is expensive to make OR TO DISTRIBUTE then it's a business where people get rich, raise tons of capital, crush hapless new entrants. Think Hollywood (CGI, special effects, locations, huge crews, stars, marketing budgets, national theatrical release). Some of these are fading (digital is cheaper than film) but they are enough for Hollywood to stay rich for now.
Pop songs on the other hand, I would say it's nearly over -- no more stores, no more reliable stars, easy to record/produce, cheap to distribute via mp3/iTunes, etc.
Startups fall into these categories. In some cases they need some meaningful dosh to build up a few of these business assets even while they disrupt others -- Peek is one such startup.
In other cases they are very cheap to make and really fun -- like Foursquare and even Twitter (initially). And they are therefore very hard to get rich from.
Though Tivo and Flip are 'one in a hundred' VC-funded gadget startups to succeed and be worth a billion dollars, Twitter and Myspace are one in a million.
Sent from my Peek. See where at http://me.drwn.com
Posted by amol -->Sidekick: all your database are belong to us
The cloud is looking pretty flakey lately, between Gmail outages and today's striking Sidekick data loss.
The genius of Danger's pre-iPhone superphone was partly the cloud: everything on the device was *always* synced to some stuff in the cloud -- the call list, the emails, text, pictures, apps you downloaded, everything. You can even log into a web page and see all the stuff on your phone anytime. Way before anyone else even thought of this, they had the "iTunes for your phone" thing down.
An early casualty was the Paris Hilton incident when someone used her dog's name to guess her password and start browsing her call list.
Worse, apparently, somebody hit "drop table" in the SQL terminal, because they blew away all the data in the whole cloud in the last day or two.
The consequence is that the "master" -- which is the cloud copy -- is gone, and if your device resets or battery drains, it will sync back to the blank server. Ouchie momma.
Peek doesn't work this way, partly because all that 2-way data synching is insanely network intensive and partly because your device is "where" your stuff should be. It's a client and has its data on it.
Of course, one aspect that Sidekick, Blackberry and Peek all share is the reliance on a master application up in the cloud for making the whole thing work well. Blackberry and Peek both use that app to gather and deliver mails quickly and in a mobile-ready way. Since Windows and iPhone and other smartphone apps don't work that way, they use WAY more data and pound the heck out of networks. And the relatively wimpy storage/processors on the devices get chewed up doing the transactions. By avoiding this, we are able to make the Peek device itself much lighter-weight and cheap. Hurray for us.
Posted by amol -->My experiment with Postbox is over. Back to Thunderbird
My dalliance with Postbox is over. Why? It's not much better than Thunderbird, worse in a few key ways, and it costs money.
Worse: search isn't real time, doesn't plug into Google Desktop, has an annoyingly worse filtering UI that requires more clicks.
Not better: search isn't actually better than using Google Desktop, and the social stuff isn't really worth anything.
Posted by amol -->Peeks for schools - get your schools to write us
In the year since we launched Peek we've seen lots of different ways that people use Peek.
For the most part, when people really depend on email, it's for work -- the stuff they need to get done, on time, and in collaboration with others.
But there is this really cool vein of people using Peeks at schools -- teachers in K-12, students, professors, college kids. Peek is affordable enough for anyone to stay on top of their emails, and we see people actively seeking it out for their schools.
So if you are in a school or work in one or have kids in one, get your principal to write to us with a proposal for how or why your school should be part of our Peek for Schools program. I'm going to personally hand out tons of Peeks for school teachers and administrators, on a school by school basis.
My only ask is -- tell us about your school, how you see the Peeks helping the school, kids, and parents achieve their objectives better. And tell us how many you need. I'll review what we hear and then send out batches of free Peeks to schools each month.
So start your engines on the October entries. Email amol at getpeek dot com.
Amol
Posted by amol -->Peek is #1 on Amazon for day 3
Three days!
Posted by amol -->Peek is #1 on Amazon for day 2
Still #1 on Amazon's PDA hot sellers for the second day now. And that makes two Peeks in the top ten.
Now to crack one of those big time top-sellers lists.
We have a Peek at #109 in Overall Electronics - which is not too shabby! But let's crack that #100.
Posted by amol -->The Twitter Showdown and Wintel
Chris Dixon made an argument that I'm sure folks have been thinking about lately, that Twitter will inevitably reach confrontation with its API-driven ecosystem.
In a weak sense it's obviously true -- folks will have toes stepped on as everybody figures out what they want to do.
But he isn't alone in wondering whether some services that have been growing by supplying Twitter with enhancements or features -- complementary services, like bit.ly -- will suddenly get stomped when Twitter changes direction. Maybe Twitter wants to do its own URL-shortener, or maybe they don't want you to use third-party apps where Twitter's ads don't show.
Take the opposite view though -- not all complements turn into competitors, the way Microsoft ate the applications on its OS or Google seems to be aiming for the browsers that its search runs on.
For example, down the stack from Windows there is Intel -- there hasn't been a more productive partnership in tech, ever. Add HP to that club, making the gear itself.
Or for a different category look at Nokia and wireless operators globally like Vodafone or Orange.
Battelle points out that Google's AdSense is a great partner for the wider Internet.
Some other natural cases where they simply combined rather than battling: Yahoo-Overture, Ebay-Paypal. (I'm sure the TweetMemes of the world wouldn't mind that outcome. Summize didn't.)
These are cases where the category growth (personal computing, mobile) is huge and there are diverse roles to play as it gets captured. Vodafone and Nokia were partners in replacing fixed-line voice, and growing the overall pie.
Given how important the API partners have been to Twitter's growth, my guess is they'll do their best to keep fueling the growth of Twitter as a platform and look for ways that monetize it in a way that's consistent with that strategy. It's not that hard.
After all, if you didn't already know the answer, you might have asked the same "how will they show ads" questions about Google search results and partners. How on earth will Google monetize its approach of partner sites showing its search results??? Well, they have the partner present the ads and share in the revenue. Copy-and-paste to TweetDeck.
Though it seems awfully important to make sure they are building a distinctive and powerful service -- a communication and media platform that's well integrated into the legions of apps, sites, devices, and services who decided this year that "Twitter was a big deal". It will be a while before Twitter decides to hose these guys. Dixon may only be saying eventually someone will get trampled by the Mothership; eventually is probably a fair while off. In the case of Wintel, it hasn't happened yet.
Kudos to Sawhorse Medias "twitterstream" sites
Funny people on Twitter - Comedians, Humor Writers, Stand-ups, and more - EasyLOL
These streams of humor, VC, sports, etc. sites are great.
Posted by amol -->"Personal CRM" - managing and understanding all those contacts with Gist
I've been checking out Gist, which appears to take your social network/contacts, combine it with all kinds of data from the web and your own emails/calendar, and then slice and dice it into insights.
It's kind of a personal CRM.
I've been wanting one of these for a while!
Posted by amol -->What I learned in Silicon Valley this week
- In the future, there will be zillions of things with processors in them, and connected together wirelessly. Cars, coffee pots, rugs, front doors, clocks, etc.
- Facebook is really worried about Twitter and dissing them
- There are some amazing medical devices in the works. Neural Stimulus Device coming soon to stop seizures. Later...to manage mood? Obesity? All kinds of stuff.
- Venture people are investing again and in a slight rush as earlier in the year was very slow
- Lots of IPOs on deck for early 2010. Bankers are running around pitching.
Save money by ditching smartphones...
Ditch the Smart Phone - Get a Peek and Save a Ton of Cash | LifeStyler
Some Peek love
Posted by amol -->All the places where Peek is sold
A super cool map
Andreessen's venture focus
From the NYT Dealbook:
Instead, they will focus on start-ups that do networking and storage, consumer Internet services and cloud computing. They are also excited about consumer electronics. “Silicon Valley companies are becoming a major force in consumer electronics again. It’s sort of back to the future,” Mr. Andreessen said, pointing to the success of the Flip video camera, whose maker, Pure Digital, was sold to Cisco in May.
Mr. Andreessen and Mr. Horowitz have already been making angel investments together for four years. They have put $4 million into 45 companies, including Twitter; Qik, a service that publishes live video from mobile phones; and Aliph, which makes the Jawbone Bluetooth headset.
Through that investing, they have a method to figure out whether to bet on a new idea. Mr. Andreessen focuses on a new technology and the potential market, while Mr. Horowitz analyzes whether an entrepreneur is capable of executing, they said.
“In the venture capital business, 15 companies a year still deliver 97 percent of returns,” Mr. Horowitz said. “The key to success is still finding those 15.”
Posted by amol -->Sell Peek Prontos as an Amazon Affiliate
The biggest Peek award ever
The July/August cover of ID Magazine's Annual Design Review (from their website)
Posted by amol -->I Hate People!....the book
I'm in this book, actually. Deep inside... find me.
The authors writing about the "new work" in HuffPo today.
I like you though. Click here if you don't see a pic.
Posted by amol -->Raymond juggles some Peeks
Dance! Dance!
Posted by amol -->Peek in the Wall Street Journal
JUNE 2, 2009
What’s New
The Latest on Technology Deals From Dow Jones VentureWire
Just Text and Email
With the growing popularity of smart phones, more people are becoming accustomed to what amounts to an electronic Swiss Army knife—a wide range of tools in one convenient package.
But at the same time, start-up companies making easy-to-use, inexpensive devices that aim to do just one or two things very well are finding favor with venture-capital investors.
One such company is New York-based Peek Inc., which recently raised $5 million in second-round funding from previous backers RRE Ventures LLC and L Capital Partners and from individual investors.
Peek makes a portable text-and-email device with no browser, apps, games or other bells and whistles. The 4-inch-by-7-inch gadget allows unlimited emailing and texting for $19.95 a month, with no service contract.
The Peek sells on the company’s Web site for $79.95, or $49.95 for a model that allows only email , no texting. It also is sold at Target and Costco stores.
Posted by amol -->Peek on Ellen this week!
We're going to be on Ellen this week for her Mother's Day special. Why? Because Peek's a great way to finally get your mom connected to mobile email and to get her texting.
No more hunkering over the Windows 95 box in the basement after doing the dishes....
Posted by amol -->Peek's hiring a software engineer. Know one?
We've got a great role open for a killer mobile software engineer. Make the next Peek apps. I would go in for this job if I didn't already have one...
More details below but if you know someone, please let us me know!
Mobile Wireless Device Software Director
Job Description
Summary:
Manages the planning, development, and testing of software for wireless mobile devices and applications through internal team and offshore development partners. Acts as primary technical and project point of contact on all product SW development matters between Peek, our device ODM partner, and any other third party SW developers. Key contributor to the development of all mobile device SW aspects of the Peek product/service roadmap. Responsible to assure product software of high quality, performance, and reliability is developed and ready for deployment in a timely and cost effective manner.
Reports to: VP – Subscriber Devices
Job Location: Oakland, CA
Key Responsibilities:
• Mobile device and e-mail SW technical lead: Develops product SW requirements and coordinates trade-off analyses to assure optimal balance of functional and performance requirements vs. cost and schedule. Interfaces with Network Systems Engineers to define device-to-system interface requirements. Interfaces with Marketing Product Managers in the development and optimization of the product SW roadmap and detailed requirements.
• Mobile device and email SW project lead: Develops software development plans with inputs from device ODM and other third party SW developers. Assures coordination of activities between these parties to achieve optimal architecture, work split between the parties, and flawless execution of software development plans. Identifies and resolves technical and schedule issues in a timely manner.
• Works closely with Device HW Project Engineer to plan/track HW/SW integration and testing and drive resolution of development and test issues.
• Works closely with Manufacturing Quality Engineer to support release of software builds to production operations and assure ongoing HW/SW compatibility.
• Creates and manages software testing and certification plans including liaison between test labs and development teams. Liaisons with Marketing to support all consumer testing and trials and Operations/Customer Care for resolution of fielded product issues.
• Coordinates with wireless carriers and third party test labs to assure device meets all network compatibility requirements and resolve any device-related software problems.
• Performs other additional technical and management roles as may emerge during growth and evolution of Peek as a business.
Important Skills/Knowledge/Aptitudes:
• Knowledge of outsourced product and software development for consumer electronics products (wireless mobile products strongly desired).
• Knowledge of wireless communications technologies and standards, mobile device applications and runtime environments, e-mail protocols and applications, and embedded software.
• Effective organizational, verbal and written communications, and team coordination skills, particularly in situations of dispersed teams and diverse cultures/languages. Mandarin Chinese language skills highly desirable.
• Working knowledge of business, development, and deployment processes/methods for consumer electronics and/or mobile wireless products including SW licensing.
• Strong problem solving skills. Able to anticipate problems and plan contingencies where possible. Works well under schedule pressure.
• Works well independently and in small teams with minimum of support infrastructure. Results oriented.
• International and domestic travel required.
Education and Experience:
• Minimum BS degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or other relevant technical discipline. MS preferred.
• 5-10 years of software development and/or testing experience with minimum of 3 years in wireless telecom products. Project management or other team leadership experience is helpful.
• Working knowledge of the wireless communications industry.
Other requirements:
• Current Passport and ability to obtain a Chinese and Indian Visa.
• Relocation available to the qualified candidates
Nifty jobs at Kikin
Some great opportunities at Kikin
Director IT Operations
Manages all data center and office IT operations. Runs a small team of sysadmins, DBAs and desktop helpdesk agents.
Chief Scientist
Strength in Taxonomy/Classification, Relevancy, User Intent Analysis, Machine Learning, NLP. Search background a plus. Runs a small team of reseachers.
VP Business Development
Responsible for strategic distribution deals. Strong network into Internet content provider (for example Disney, ESPN, Time Warner etc.).
Take my special Peek quiz...
It's made for the Radio Shack store staff :) Kind of dull.
Posted by amol -->Device-to-rule-them-all. False hope.
Is the All-in-One Device Dream Doomed?
Moisture, cold irritate some smart phone users - CNN.com
Posted by amol -->8% of the world international calling minutes!!!!
Holy cow. How can Ebay not figure out how to make billions off Skype? "Be the network".
Skype Founders Seek to Buy Service Back From eBay - NYTimes.com
Skype has more than 405 million registered users, up from 53 million when eBay bought it, and the service had $145 million in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2008. Calls are free between Skype users, and rates are a few pennies a minute for international calls to non-Skype users; the low cost has helped the company gain 8 percent of the world’s international calling minutes, according to TeleGeography, a market research firm.
Posted by amol -->Peek on Press: Here TV
In case you missed the Sunday talk shows.
Posted by amol -->Speaking at NYU ITP next week
I was on a great panel put together by a Columbia engineering undergraduate group last week.
Posted by amol -->Peek wins "best of" April Fool's Day
Kind of
Posted by amol -->Student? Want to do startups one day?
From personalized advice given recently...
Yes we do take interns. If you are willing to take a few interview steps, I can tell you if we can offer you an internship for the summer.
The short advice I would have however is
- IF you are certain of or ready to make a big bet on your path forward
- THEN you should design the next 4 years to emphasize CONCRETE EXPERIENCE doing startup or VC stuff
Which means: take an easy major, minimize courseload, get good grades for low effort, and work 2.5 days per week through the school year and 7 days during vacations on startups or VCs (for free or paid, doesn't matter) where you can mix with accomplished and quality people. Pursue ever rising responsibility year on year. Don't idle as a copy maker.
Posted by amol -->New York Times on the Peek again this week
They say: save hundreds a month over smartphones...
Posted by amol -->Peek's hiring. Help us out!
Subject: Looking for super talented PR/Marketing Director
New wireless device company requires a highly talented professional to direct its PR and Marketing Strategy.
Peek (getpeek.com) is an exciting new venture-backed wireless device company. Its mission is to take mobile messaging to a mass market. Peek's first product - a handheld email and texting device called the Peek - received rave reviews when it launched last year and won numerous accolades including Wired's Gadget of the Year.
After a very successful launch, Peek is now looking to market its product around the country. As part of this, Peek is looking for a smart, dynamic, and creative professional to help lead its PR and marketing strategy. The successful candidate will be a key part of the Marketing Communications team and will have a major role to play in driving awareness and adoption of Peek.
A central part of the job will be leading Peek's PR efforts. Experience with PR (on the client, agency or media side) would be valuable, but is not essential. More important is a sophisticated understanding of the media, the ability to spot PR opportunities, and the confidence and persuasiveness to pitch stories to journalists.
The PR & Marketing Director will also have an important role to play in Peek's broader marketing strategy. We are looking for someone who is full of ideas, and has the energy and resourcefulness to be rapidly execute them. Consumer experience is not required, but you must be able to demonstrate an intuitive understanding of how to reach a mass consumer audience.
if you're someone who has great communication skills, a keen strategic mind, and thrives in a fast moving entrepreneurial environment then this position could be perfect for you. It's a great opportunity to have a big impact in a small, but rapidly growing company.
If you're interested please send an email briefly outlining your experience and why you think you're right for job to to davidm@getpeek.com. You should also attach a resume (no longer than one page).
Location: Peek has offices in NYC and the Bay area. This position could be based in either office.
Compensation: Based on experience, but highly competitive.
The minimum viable product idea
What is the minimum viable product? - Venture Hacks
Nivi: So there is some set of customers out there, we believe, that just with these features alone, this product is useful to them.
Eric: Exactly right. And sometimes it’s useful to them because early adopters have the same kind of visioning power that entrepreneurs do, but because they can see what the end product is going to be.
Posted by amol -->Fake VCs abound
TheFunded.com Blacklists 44 VC Firms
Posted by amol -->We're hiring for marketing. Please help!
Here's the job description.
Looking for super talented PR/Marketing Director
New wireless device company requires a highly talented professional to direct its PR and Marketing Strategy.
Peek ( getpeek.com ) is an exciting new venture-backed wireless device company. Its mission is to take mobile messaging to a mass market. Peek's first product - a handheld email and texting device called the Peek - received rave reviews when it launched last year and won numerous accolades including Wired's Gadget of the Year.
After a very successful launch, Peek is now looking to market its product around the country. As part of this, Peek is looking for a smart, dynamic, and creative professional to help lead its PR and marketing strategy. The successful candidate will be a key part of the Marketing Communications team and will have a major role to play in driving awareness and adoption of Peek.
A central part of the job will be leading Peek's PR efforts. Experience with PR (on the client, agency or media side) would be valuable, but is not essential. More important is a sophisticated understanding of the media, the ability to spot PR opportunities, and the confidence and persuasiveness to pitch stories to journalists.
The PR & Marketing Director will also have an important role to play in Peek's broader marketing strategy. We are looking for someone who is full of ideas, and has the energy and resourcefulness to be rapidly execute them. Consumer experience is not required, but you must be able to demonstrate an intuitive understanding of how to reach a mass consumer audience.
if you're someone who has great communication skills, a keen strategic mind, and thrives in a fast moving entrepreneurial environment then this position could be perfect for you. It's a great opportunity to have a big impact in a small, but rapidly growing company.
If you're interested please send an email briefly outlining your experience and why you think you're right for job to to davidm@ getpeek.com . You should also attach a resume (no longer than one page).
Location: Peek has offices in NYC and the Bay area. This position could be based in either office.
Compensation: Based on experience, but highly competitive.
You've got to be cool to forecast this
Nintendo's Wii Music Waits for Fans - WSJ.com
In an interview, the famously private Mr. Miyamoto said he isn't bothered by how Wii Music is performing so far. "I don't expect Wii Music to be an immediate hit," said the boyish-looking 56-year-old, who joined Nintendo in 1977 and now runs its game development. "It will be a steady long-running seller that will spread gradually by word-of-mouth."
Posted by amol -->Peek logo
Here's the Peek logo
Peek is so easy
Posted by amol -->Blackberry alternative
Look no further than here for a Blackberry alternative
Posted by amol -->When it's time to zig
Read this headline. What does it say?
Jason Calacanis Turns Mahalo Into A News Operation, Invites You To Watch
To me it says Mahalo didn't shoot out the lights in their v1 incarnation.
And it says they are zagging shrewdly and quickly to an adjacent and interesting idea.
Stick and move!
Posted by amol -->Devitt, friend and sometime ally, on a tough economy
Credit Crisis Spreads a Pall Over Silicon Valley - NYTimes.com
Many Valley start-ups have still been reporting successful fund-raising. But an increasing number of those that have raised money say they feel as if they slipped through a rapidly closing door. In early September, Skydeck, a 10-employee start-up that allows people to use the Web to organize their mobile phone calls and text messages, raised $3 million in venture capital. The very next weekend, the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection.
“When I woke up on Monday morning I was pretty happy to have our fund-raising behind us,” said Jason Devitt, the company’s founder. “This week, I received a slew of e-mail congratulating us on raising money in this economy. Clearly there’s a real awareness of the impact.”
Like other entrepreneurs, Mr. Devitt says the recent turmoil has changed his plans. Skydeck is now focusing on building features that it can charge for, instead of free services that attract users but not revenue. He also said he would not hire new people until the company hit “certain revenue milestones.”
Posted by amol -->WSJ: Peek is simple and stylish
What more could we ask for? Peek in WSJ
Posted by amol -->When Peek Speaks, what does it speak of?
Peek on GeekSugar
Posted by amol -->Digg Peek
http://digg.com/gadgets/Will_Peek_s_100_Lo_Fi_BlackBerry_Take_Off
Posted by amol -->Peek in Silicon Alley Insider
Alley Insider asks who wants Peek
Huffington Post runs this too, saying we may catch the market by surprise
Peak Speaks about the answer Peek isn't for geeks or businessy types; it's for people who want an easy, attractive way to stay connected
Posted by amol -->Help me out by blogging about Peek
Write a blog post and link to Peek at getpeek.com
And say something nice while you're at it!!
Posted by amol -->Peek speaks!
The story of how Peek came to be
Posted by amol -->Jupiter blogs about Peek
The very insightful Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter on Peek
Posted by amol -->NPD writes about Peek
Ross Rubin of NPD writes about Peek's personal mobile email service.
Posted by amol -->Good startup ideas.
Y Combinator: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund
Now go do one of these.
Networking
There is a modest startup scene in New York, a place dominated more by glitzy media and big dollar finance types.
I was lucky to be invited to a very nice event yesterday, intended for "founders" but really just a media/new media company and venture capital party. Totally media. There were startup founders there....but far more less interesting types.
Posted by amol -->Peek
Peek website is now up
Posted by amol -->Peek
Peek has a website
Posted by amol -->Dan Schulman's track record
Down 90%
Posted by amol -->Dan Schulman's Unpaid Patch Bet
Success has many fathers, so Virgin Mobile often gets folks claiming to the be that father. The only person who can really claim to be the person is John Tantum. For example, here is an interview from July 2001 in a telecom mag about the founding of Virgin Mobile and its early strategy.
Amusing then to see Dan Schulman claiming to be that person in a ghostwritten shell piece in the NYT Jobs supplement over the weekend. Irritating! Founded in his house indeed! The company had 70 people by the time he was hired, and was based in San Francisco on 4th Street and Market. How close is that to his house in Warren NJ? (The NYT piece.)
In fact, he only made his foolhardy patch bet in November 2001 nearly 2 years after I had joined the company!
PS he hasn't paid me yet. (It's $500 if you are reading this, Dan.)
Posted by amol -->First reads
Our application just received its first messages tonight -- 1132pm EST in Toronto! Big milestone!
Posted by amol -->Social blogs
I have been fooling with some social media/blog type services lately.
Tumblr and Drop.io which seem to me to be excellent, really nicely designed blogging tools. Tumblr more than Drop.io, which seems a bit more tuned to sharing media. But both are mainly upgrades over a mere blog in that they are a) fast to set up, b) host your pictures and other media for you, and c) seem to have some social elements.
Unless you choose to use them as sideblogs or media sharing tools, why would you "switch" from your existing blog or social network to begin using them? I don't know that I would, given how entrenched I am in my horrible blogging software, Movable Type.
But I do like that I can post and blog pictures/mp3s super-easily. There is something to that!
(Same goes for all those other sites I have seen....)
Posted by amol -->Mailster gossip
Mailster on Alley Insider, which is posting like crazy about NY, startups, and mediacos.
Success rate of real ventures
Marca quotes the following today:
The survival rate of Dot Com ventures founded during the height of the bubble in late 1998, 1999, and 2000 was a surprisingly high 48%, in line with if not higher than that observed in prior instances of industry emergence...
Which matches well with the "1/3, 1/3, 1/3 myth" item I posted a while back.
Posted by amol -->Mailster in the WSJ
Mailster in the WSJ (permalink)
Posted by amol -->Marca's blog - how to hire
blog.pmarca.com: How to hire the best people you've ever worked with
This is totally valuable thinking. I very much agree with the MSFT/GOOG are non-dispositive stuff.
Ampd goes down
Ampd finally down. Rumors...confirmed.
Posted by amol -->The venture myth of 1/3, 1/3, 1/3
VCs like to say their deals go about 1/3 bust, 1/3 sideways, 1/3 successful. So the winners have to pay for the rest. Let's say you want to return a net 20% annually to your limited partners. You need to earn about 25% (since you are going to take about 20% cut) plus you have to cover your management fees of about 1% of the fund value per year. So call it a gross return target of 30%.
You need to make your initial $1 worth $3.71 at the end of 5 years if you want that 30% gross. And if 1/3 of your deals are GOOB, and 1/3 are merely sideways (worth their original $0.33 of your fund), then you need to turn the last $0.33 invested into about $3.38. So you need to get 10x on that initial money on about 1/3.
The chart above, though, is the actual outcome distribution of venture deals from a deal database that a guy from Chicago GSB considered. Only 9% go out of business. 45% stay private -- "sideways". And 46% are IPO, acquired or filed to IPO. That's 50% more exits than the old 1/3 mythology suggests. Some caveats though, since not all exits are positive returns etc etc.
Another thing to conclude is that if your company gets venture financing, there's a 91% chance it will be around in 5 years either alive, acquired, or public.
Posted by amol -->A shared file
Here is the kind of thing you can share...http://www.flyupload.com/?fid=5319989
Posted by amol -->Upload and share a monster file
Flyupload
Posted by amol -->I told you so department: T-shirts over Ads
One of my goofiest ideas from a few years ago was using the Adsense 5c per click arbitrage against the average revenue potential of t-shirts created on Cafe Press.
Well, I am right -- T-shirts are intrinsically more valuable as clicks than the rates charged by adsense for junk inventory.
Of course, I never did build that automated news-driven t-shirt-generator-and-ad-buyer robot that would take the day's headlines and spew out clever shirt slogans like "who would Jesus bomb?" and "Free Anna Nicole".
Posted by amol -->Whatever happened to Firefly?
I am trying to figure out what happened to these guys. Still on sale at Target, but perhaps not a "success story" in the MVNO world. Still operating clearly. Only clue is they did a recap and they claim they had "expensive" customer care issues. Huh? For kids?
http://www.cardinalvc.com/pg_news-2-69-.html (how tough the space is)
http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/archives/2005/11/the_firefly_pho.html (hilarious fake trash can anecdote)
http://venturebeat.com/2006/10/19/firefly-raises-3m-to-restart-revealing-mvno-problems/ (3mm to wipe out previous holders)
Why would 3mm save the company? How did they blow 25-50ish million?
Nanification
I am working on a project right now to create a new product and I recently came up with a great metaphor for it. It is like the Nano to our evil competitor's iPod.
They make a great product. But they are the only option. And because of this they make it really big, powerful, and expensive. We think people want a smaller, lighter, faster, cheaper one. So we are making one.
If you think of the Nano, it is actually a flank defense more than an innovation on pure terms. When it was introduced, it was Apple's first flash-based player (well, the shuffle was first). It was a pre-emptive response to...the onslaught of far lower price and far more mobile players like those from Sandisk and Rio.
Well it worked.
Maybe we will be a Sandisk to our big goliath's Nano. Or maybe we'll be the Civic to their Cadillac.
Posted by amol -->TheFunded
Man this site is really taking off. It's good too!
Posted by amol -->FlyUpload
Upload big files!
Posted by amol -->Founders at Work
Founders at Work
Great book. First person accounts of how founders made Paypal, Hotmail, Apple, Yahoo!, and lesser but more recent startups like 37Signals, Bloglines, etc.
Nuggets:
Levchin of Paypal: they were a Palm Pilot to Palm Pilot payment platform at first. Remember that?
Bhatia of Hotmail: Tim Draper is a liar. He didn't invent "viral marketing" by telling them to put "from Hotmail" at the footer to every email. Plus he dragged them over the coals on financing the bridge round pre-acquisition. Clearly, Sabeer didn't leave the deal feeling warm towards DFJ!
Woz: the guys is a real friggin' genius and Jobs is the classic salesman-CEO to his classic engineer-nerd founder. By the way, before founding Apple, he created the Atari game Breakout...as a part-time job. Man!
All I've got is the Rescue Ring....
Protecting documents
There is this amusing dance in legal discussions about document formats. Lawyers have tools that turn pretty much anything into a Word doc (even PDFs), and that lets them use this thing called DeltaView to see any and all changes.
Well, to avoid that happening, other lawyers like to fax documents (or fax-to-PDF) to avoid the conversion to text. So then the responding guys have to make hand edits (and therefore fewer edits).
And of course there are the many many usability pitfalls of Microsoft Word itself -- it tracks changes without you noticing, it has crappy compare tools (are the redlines comparing THIS doc to that one or THAT doc to this one?), and it's generally a mess.
So the most super-secret way to operate is fax-to-PDF and sometimes just send a rich-text doc (not MSFT formatting/memory crap in there). But the friendliest way to operate is to send DeltaViewed-blackline and redline docs. Friendlier behavior usually correlates to better balance of power.
Now you know who you are dealing with!
Posted by amol -->Paul Graham on starting startups
This is the best article about starting companies I have read in ages, and full of very true insights about what motivates startup founders. It's also a guide to looking at the world around you and finding the resources you need to start something.
Virgin Mobile files for IPO
Virgin Mobile USA files for IPO :: RCR Wireless News
In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Virgin Mobile released detailed information on its business. The firm, founded as a joint venture between Sprint Nextel and the Virgin Group, launched service in July 2002. By November 2003, the MVNO had racked up 1 million customers. As of Dec. 31, Virgin Mobile counted 4.57 million customers, a 19% increase from the 3.84 million customers it served as of Dec. 31, 2005.
As of March 31, Virgin Mobile counted 4.88 million customers.
As for the firm’s customer metrics, Virgin Mobile said its ARPU clocked in at $21.48 in 2006, down from the $22.54 it recorded in 2005. Virgin Mobile’s cash cost per user, or CCPU, was $13.15 in 2006, down from the $14.94 it posted in 2005. Virgin Mobile said CCPU is used to measure and track its costs to provide support for its services to its existing customers.
Finally, the MVNO’s cost per gross addition, or CPGA, was $120.55 in 2006, up from the $118.62 in 2005. Virgin Mobile said CPGA is used to measure the cost of acquiring a new customer.
The MVNO also boasted of its data sales. Virgin Mobile said that 17% of its service revenues for 2006 were from non-voice services, which the firm said was 5% higher than the wireless industry average of 12%, according to the Yankee Group.
As for the firm’s financials, Virgin Mobile said it recorded operating revenues in 2006 of $1.1 billion, up from around $990 million in 2005. The MVNO posted a $36.7 million loss in 2006, down from the $102.9 million loss in 2005.
Virgin Mobile USA’s IPO filing comes on the heels of a number of high-profile IPO efforts in the wireless market, including those from Clearwire Corp. and MetroPCS Communications Inc.
Posted by amol -->Convergence
Man, I have spent a lot of the last 6 months talking about/contra convergence.
This is one link that just ends the conversation: what's in your bag? at Flickr
Posted by amol -->Criteria for opportunities
My friend Fabrice has this obsessively structured approach to life (read his blog, you'll see what I mean), and I was reminded of this as I ran across this post and an interview with him on Venture Voice. Pretty random really -- the interview is pretty old (18 months old) and it just turned up on popurls.com due to Odeo (here is the link). What a long chain of cultural re-packaging.
He has these "9 rules" for picking an opportunity (in my order):
Market potential
1 - a big potential market
2 - with a rapidly growing actual market
Attractive execution model
3 - with a clear business model at the outset (not speculative)
4 - high scalability of growth model (no friction)
5 - potential to "win" or lead the market (not intrinsically fragmented)
6 - low supplier/distributor pressure (i.e., risk of disintermediation or supplier leverage)
7 - I know how to do it or can learn how
Financing
8 - needs less than 15mm in funding
Personal
9 - will be fun (the key driver through adversity)
his take
How his first major venture went:
A European Auction site.
350K cash invested to start Aucland and Terremate
--
sold 50-60% share for 120mm capital
Locked up value of 400mm+
QXL/Ricardo all stock - couple of hundred mm.
Terremate - 170mm
Stocks all crashed 90%+
--
Left with 700K cash by October 2000.
Big mistakes
1 - Gave 50% to cofounder giving him too much shared control. Better to act fast
2 - Overbuilt scalability b/c Ebay was crashing a lot. Took us 9 months to build. With Zingy we were fine crashing a lot
3 - All competitors were free but VCs forced us to make business model from the start. Slowed growth
4 - Wrong investor -- high net worth guy -- Arnault. Didn't like him, very arrogant but offered 2x money at 2x valuation. Long story - reminds me of my O'Brien story. He refused to sell when Ebay came to offer. Very interesting - listen to minute 22 and following on this - the interview. Didn't have a right to force the sale.
Started looking for "the next idea".
Second big venture:
Zingy, starting in 2001. Essentially a copy of Jambo and Kiwi from Europe -- b2c telecom service company.
Tried to raise venture and couldn't. Looked for friends and got several increments of 100K. Ended up reaching 1.4mm from friends and family in increments, supporting a run rate of 100K per month. Couldn't raise anything else from them as they were not seeing any traction. Started investing his own money -- all the 700K + 100K of credit card debt. And then just ran out of money and missed payroll for months in early 2002!
Fixed the errors. Started in June 2001 and was live by September 2001. Free. Had 1mm users a year later. When they started charging, they had a big base and 50K staid on.
With volume growing, were getting meetings at lots of carriers. But no deals. Got the first deal -- with MSN and lots of PR. The terms of the deal -- paid them a minimum commitment.
Motorola called, as they were running the ringtones site for Nextel. Had a strong result with them in first month trial.
Sprint calls -- they want help licensing all the hip hop sites. Get a deal.
Earning 100K revenues but spending 200K per month. End of summer 2002 -- cut the staff down. Several of the senior guys leave. August 15, Sprint's first check arrives and its 500K. Saves the company; they are instantly positive. They know the business works and now they are growing.
August 23 they launch on AT&T. They see the daily revenues (real time billing system).
October 1 - MTV and Virgin Mobile launch. 10K per day. 20K per day.
October 15 - Nextel. October 19 - AOL. Launch 14 US, 4 Canadian, 4 Latin American carrier launches over the next year up to 4mm per month in revenues.
VCs start calling. Company is generating 3-4mm per month. Acquisition offers come in for 8-9mm valuation. Fabrice has 53% of the company. Offers are rising -- 10mm, 20mm.
They decide to simply focus on growth with their profits -- add polyphonic tones, color wallpapers, ringback tones, bigger offices.
By April 2004, a Japanese company approaches them. They offer 40mm cash. Serious offer.
Hires a bank -- you should do this! Have them be the bad guys on the deal. They get a higher valuation -- 80mm in cash to the original bidder, of which half up front the rest in earn out. 20x the expected earnings for 2004.
Decided to sell. Was worried about supplier and distributor leverage. Wanted to take money off the table.
Stayed on as CEO with them and blew out the earn out targets. Acquired Vindigo, added games, prepared for S-1, etc.
In retrospect, maybe the risks at the time were not real.
Lessons learned on how to build a multi-billion dollar company
- invest more in consumer marketing
- invest more in exclusive licenses
- more in product development
- LESS in profitability
- the public company owner was not aligned on that target
Founders against the world
Guys who start companies are really very different people. They aren't all alike but they aren't like the folks who tag along etc. A good friend and fellow entrepreneur makes a big distinction between the As, Bs, Cs:
- As join a company when it's firstname@thecompany.com and nobody's sure about funding. They do everything, fast, with intuition and with errors.
- Bs join when they can say "it's a backed by so-and-so and I'm getting 10,000 options!". They are opportunists with valuable relevant skill matches but a need for stability in their risk taking. When they are the right guys they build terrific organizations, manage people effectively to create high quality stuff.
- Cs join to do very specifically defined things and play roles in a well-defined hierarchy. They come looking for "well, this thing could go public..."-type excitement but they aren't building anything radical (even if they are following a visionary founder or A that waves that flag). The company is 100+ people by then and increasingly resembles the big corporate where the C used to work (processes, big meetings, emails with many people CCd, version control, program management, politics, fragmentation of objective, etc.)
And then there are the founders who actually attract the As in the first place. Founders are willing to put up with great burdens of risk and responsibility in exchange for both reward but also freedom and autonomy.
I say all this about founders because there is no institution of founders out there. The institutions of entrepreneurship are more often dominated by VCs and professional managers, both of which can be terrific founders but aren't necessarily. They are different roles. And the classic great VC or professional manager/CEO/leader types don't need to have the qualities that founder types do. In fact, a lot of what they do when they are "doing their jobs" is tame founders. Great VCs find these wild founders and commercialize them. Professional managers take over their companies and help the ideas turn into franchises. And so on. But when you read about entrepreneurship, you don't often hear about the special qualities of founders. Since founders don't seem to be writing the textbooks...
Posted by amol -->Personality
What kind of personality is well suited to starting companies? What is an entrepreneur like? Well, here is the start of a partial list:
- Vision is important. Visionary or ready to operate in a visionary space. Not a skeptical, "yes maybe, but..." personality.
- Resoluteness through setbacks. Need to be able to fail elegantly, not fall apart. There will be lots of setbacks.
- Selling. When you start a new project, you are the only one who believes it. You will spend a long time selling it to people until they start telling you it was obvious all along.
- "Number of zeroes" as Nesheim says in his book. It's important how big the numbers are -- millions, billions, whatever -- not whether it's 1 million or 2 million. People who don't get this are useless.
Ruefully funny software
Meet Socializr, From Friendster's Founder - WSJ.com
The Socializr site is sprinkled with rueful jokes about Silicon Valley culture. The company's motto is "Don't be boring" -- "because Google already took 'Don't be evil,'" the Web site notes. The title on Mr. Abrams's business card is "junior computer programmer."
"With these things, you have to have a sense of humor," Mr. Abrams says.
Posted by amol -->Private markets
For the last year, contrary to the silly stretch piece in the WSJ that "IPOs are back!", the way to exit has been private (StubHub to Ebay, Myspace to News, Skype to Ebay, Tellme to Microsoft, Webex by Cisco, Youtube by Google, Good to Motorola).
And the IPOs have been ouch-worthy (Vonage down 80%, Clearwire not looking so hot).
The worrying thing is that my old screwup-magnet friends at Virgin Mobile are now angling for public markets paradise with their own 7 year vintage S-1 filing. I hope they don't screw this up like so many other things lately. It makes those of us who were responsible for the thing look silly :(
The method behind Method
Method is a consumer goods "startup" that makes home cleaning products. I first saw them at Target in 2004 or so, and perhaps they were founded as a company only a year before. They do a bunch of things really well, in their attack on a very large and very commodity category full of big spending competitors. Some of the themes in how they compete:
- green, organic, natural, environmental -- in a very chemistry-heavy category; these imply somehow that it's "safer"
- sustainable, responsible, balanced, "people", community-- e.g., "no testing on animals", a position of dialog with customers. More Whole Foods and Starbucks than Wal-Mart and McDonald's
- design -- the packaging and colors look cool
- they talk about their core themes as including "efficacy" and "safety". Safety seems to follow from the green core, rather than a Mercedes-Benz style "we engineer it for safety". Efficacy is a table stakes element and not really part of the differentiation
- they talk about fragrance too, and that's probably a potent differentiator though I don't often think of it when choosing Method (women probably are more likely too...)
Some of their tactics:
- blog that reports on environmental and other issues -- not just method related, but related to their corporate "spirit"
- "advocates" social networky thing on their site
- philosophy/mission at the core of the value proposition -- it's 1/3 of the site
- conventional "non-conventional" marketing -- like starting distribution at Target, using pop-up shops, slowly expanding the reach
Important things to note that are "weaknesses":
- they charge a price premium. That is their luxury for doing the above stuff well
- they are fast-followers not leaders on the actual cleaning technology. E.g., they just introduced a swiffer-like product this quarter, 3-4 years since it's original P&G conception.
How PR used to work, and how it works now
How PR used to work
- Publicist calls journalists
- Journalists come to company
- Company announces, "We are doing X"
- Journalists publish articles that you are announcing you will do X!
These days only the most powerful companies can do this. Like Apple and the iPhone. Just announce and the news is news.
How it works now
- You swear secrecy
- You "screw up" something related to a product launch X (publish a user guide somewhere)
- You leak it
- Someone blogs about X excitedly (while making fun of how dumb you were to accidentally leak it)
This is because nobody cares what your stupid company has to say. All companies are evil and all PR is bullshit. So why report what Microsoft is touting about their lame new SQL Server?
Much better, stick it to the Man by rubbing his nose in his own mistakes!
Well, now you must gives the kids of today something to revel in. It's becoming formulaic.
Posted by amol -->People's qualities
When hiring people at new companies, an all too easy and too common mistake is to simply hire "smart" people. It's a poorly defined notion and ends up with lots of "like" bias (get people like you). Some patterns I have seen over time:
- Good schools. Hire people that went to some good schools, regardless of what they did there or its relevance to the business. Also ignore other experience or level of tenure.
- Good people. Hire people you like or who share your values. They know people you know and laugh at the same jokes and so on.
- Good experience. Hire people from a company that dominates/plays field X, where X is where you aspire to have your startup compete. E.g., you hire an Oracle guy to be part of your database search company or a Virgin Mobile guy to help you with your MVNO.
All are very dangerous patterns to fall into. One common danger is that someone who matches your guiding principle may cause you to miss one of their many flaws. Good schools are full of lazy or privileged losers; culture fit is just a tiny part of high performance; and matching experience is often skin deep optics more than substance. By the time you decipher what his title meant at Oracle, you will probably already know that "program lead" won't be helping you optimize your fundamental algorithms.
In particular, these heuristics for hiring your people fail on another important measure: they don't track the fundamental capabilities you want to see. They are, if anything, meant to correlate with people having these capabilities. But if you don't know what you're looking for you will end up with any old Columbia graduate or friend of a friend.
The most obvious one to check is problem solving and experience. Can this person figure out the stuff they need to figure out? People usually do interview for this -- Are they smart? Are the credentials good? Do they have relevant content knowledge?
To me the most likely failure points are: a) how well they work in a team and manage a team (very hard to assess objectively via credentials or by interpersonal/qualitative interviews), and b) is this person a leader who will drive decisions and change and action or a chump?
In every venture I have been involved, we had much more interest in the problem solving capability, and much more success in finding people with it. But we had much less luck on the team and leadership qualities -- ending up too often with a mix of chumps, bureaucrats, political operators, brittle authoritarians, narrow minded conservatives, etc.
I will not repeat some of those hiring errors. If only I knew how to be sure I won't...
Buying and selling
One of the big lessons of the last couple of years experience is that it is very much worthwhile to own things. The asset value is what it's all about. Back in my McKinsey days, the trajectory was so well defined in part because you didn't own anything -- success means you make XYZ compensation and unlucky results mean you just have to leave and look for new things.
Well, starting a company means you own something and see if the wind will catch it. We're just now learning the lesson of how powerful that is, and I'm hoping to build on that further in the next venture or two.
Hopefully, the fate of the mobile service we have been building over the last year or so will become a concrete and public bit of news shortly. The indications so far are good!
Posted by amol -->Journalism X
I wonder what is next for journalism, since it seems to keep changing all the time. One of the present fadlets is professional blogging -- not by amateurs-turned-pros (like Gothamist or any litany of others) but by pros-turned-professional bloggers (like Huffington or Politico).
A friend I met recently, Laurent, is leaving the fancy gig as American correspondent for Liberation (the champion of leftist Parisian journalism) to...start a group blog. Behind the scenes: RUE89 le Making Of
Posted by amol -->3GSM
Big shows are a terrific setting to do meetings. 3GSM is one of the best I've been to. It's kind of elite -- I didn't see 300 people from Microsoft crawling the scene, though I did see a large number. There is sort of a feeling that a carrier or equipment maker or whoever should send 5-6 of their top guys. Lots of investors floating around, too. And very few mom and pop type gawkers that you typically find a things like CTIA (wireless dealers) or CES (computer store guys or technicians).
An interesting thing is that the big US players weren't around -- no Cingular. Of course, colossal self-justifying presences from Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and Telefonica. Essentially, the show is a forum for them to hold court with their suppliers and prove to their shareholders that it's worth owning multi-country footprints.
Posted by amol -->Unfair advantage
I've been reading a terrific book by John Nesheim that was spurred partly by some comments of a particular VC (who must have been reading this book...) and partly by my colleague in my new venture who had just read Nesheim's older book about startups and financing (also a good one -- High Tech Startup).
The great thing about this one, though, is that Virgin Mobile (and my favorite contribution, the Rescue Ring) is in it!
People who want to work at startups
I am always surprised by how unsophisticated potential employees at new companies are. At established companies, the dynamics are easier to understand: salary, bonus, advancement path.
In a company where most of your potential value is in the stock, the potential value of options is very complicated. Worse, the potential value of the company itself is complicated too!
It is, of course, a difficult conversation to have with your new potential team. And it is even likely that the team isn't all that well informed -- future dilution, down rounds, vesting schedules. What does anyone know about these things if they haven't done it a few times?
Still, one must try. Read a book -- there are a bunch of good ones.
Posted by amol -->Objections
In the early stage of a company it's all sales mode: team, funding, partners, yourself. Everyone needs to be sold.
And when you are selling there are certain patterns you run into -- of which one is the "objection".
A classic objection pattern is the "first thought bias". You say some stuff, an idea occurs to the listener, they either listen till you are done or tune out, then they say..."My first thought on this is XYZ."
XYZ is typically something deeply revealing about their personal background. If they came from hardware, it's a comment about hardware. If they just came back from India, "can this work in the developing world?". And so on. Which in itself is only mildly bad (that perspective so much drives people's topline reactions rather than "objective" truths driving their observation).
What is seriously bad is that the first thought always comes back. At the end of the call in the recap, in the next call's recap, and in the ultimate "here's what we think about your business" bottom-line you will hear that first thought 80% of the time.
One way to handle people's first thoughts is to be understanding -- "I hear you but there are some things I would add...", the collaborative discussion approach that I have been coached toward over time (in Philosophy and in business) in part because of my personally confrontational debating style.
Another approach though is to utterly destroy one of these first thoughts. If you believe in first thought bias, letting a person make an invalid observation initially will saddle you with it for life. So you must crush it. I haven't tried this one very much yet, but I'm going to. Tell me how it goes for you.
Posted by amol -->Funding new projects
Building something from nothing (to paraphrase Heidegger's "maximum" question of metaphysics), is tough work.
Finding the right match with money is harder than you think. That is, the list goes past item #1.
1. Appetite. The all-important variable of course is interest. Does your investor want to back you? Do they have the appetite to do the deal? Of course you need to find someone who wants to do the deal, but the list is longer than this! On my last project, we had the pleasure of several interested appetites, but that wasn't enough to do the deal.
2. Valuation. Investors in the first formal round often want half. You need to make sure this works for you -- sufficient reward left for you, sufficient funds to get to the next round. If they have to take half, then see if you can postpone bringing them in until the value for half is high.
3. Milestones. What will you do with the money? What do they expect you to achieve? The investors will soon be your board, and they'll be riding you to do these things. And if they are the flakey sort, they may be driving you in a different direction than the one you thought was agreed initially. You have to get a clear shared view of what you ("the management") are going to be doing. If you don't like what they are saying, watch out.
4. People fit. There will be lots of stuff you can't discuss or foresee. So you need to like the people -- their experience, their approach, their reputation, their personal fit with you in style and culture. Wow does it suck to have annoying or incompetent board members.
5. Firm and fund fit. Do these guys have enough money to follow you? They probably can't invest more than 1/10th of their fund in any one project (you). So do you think these guys can take your "whole" deal? And what about exits -- what are they going to look for? Can they help you pull off a sale?
Posted by amol -->MFR: My Friend Raza
Who knew? Raza and Vishal's company is publicly listed and the thing is worth 100MM!
UNCL: Summary for MRU HOLDINGS INC - Yahoo! Finance
Posted by amol -->Anti-portfolio
Bessemer has a really funny take on the deals they have declined. I love that they do this so openly, since there is nothing more annoying than the smug VC naysaying that is their stock and trade. At least this admits of the pain of false negatives.
Bessemer Venture Partners - Our Portfolio
Our reasons for passing on these investments varied. In some cases, we were making a conscious act of generosity to another, younger venture firm, down on their luck, whom we felt could really use a billion dollars in gains. In other cases, our partners had already run out of spaces on the year's Schedule D and feared that another entry would require them to attach a separate sheet. Whatever the reason, we would like to honor these companies -- our "anti-portfolio" -- whose phenomenal success inspires us in our ongoing endeavors to build growing businesses. Or, to put it another way: if we had invested in any of these companies, we might not still be working.
Posted by amol -->
