Autumn Marathon
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Following:
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win … ” —President John F. Kennedy, address at Rice University, September 12, 1962 (via Moon Shot - JFK and Space Exploration - John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum)
Failing Quickly
I recently lucked into a fabulous consulting engagement with an entrepreneurial start-up company which is launching a transformative IT product. It’s just the sort of company that I despaired of finding in New York City (such companies are much easier to find in California or in other pockets of the US). Though it’s a product I believe in and with people I can trust, I am avoiding treating this as just a job, and not only because I have not been offered an official position. I’m trying to heed advice that I pass on to aspiring entrepreneurs of all ages, given by Tina Seeling, Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures program and author of the book What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20. Two of her ten lessons are:
- You don’t have to wait to be annointed (i.e., don’t wait until someone tells you are responsible for something to start taking action); and
- If your not failing some of the time, you are not taking enough risks.
There are a hundred reasons why a company like this can fail even if the basic idea is correct - bad timing, insufficient funding, poor implementation of the concept, stronger competitors, Just to name a few. And there are dozens of reasons why I might not be the right person to help the company: not technical enough, not salesman enough, personality conflict with the founder, with colleagues, etc. But in less than two weeks, I have developed some strong ideas about what the company can do to increase it’s chances of success. I’m not going to wait for someone to make these part of my job description to start making them happen. And if I do fail, I need to fail quickly, learn some lessons, and move onto the next venture.
Spring Half Marathon
On Saturday, I ran the Brooklyn Half Marathon - my athletic goal for the past six months. It was a warm, humid day and the race was huge - nearly 12,000 participants announced by the NY Road Runners club. Perhaps because of the size of the race, the weather and a head cold (the lingering souvenir of a recent business trip), I ran quite a bit slower than expected, finishing the race in an official time of 2:02:55. The first 3-4 miles felt ok - I was running 8 minute to 8:30 minute/mile pace which was around my target for the entire event. But as we ascended the final hill in Prospect Park, my energy and pace dropped off significantly. The final six miles of the race were flat and boring heading out to the beach and each one felt as if it could be my last. By mile 10-11, my pace must have been 10 minutes/mile or slower. Final time represented a pace no faster than some of my longer training runs. Nevertheless, getting to the finish line meant accomplishing an important goal which is to be acknowledged and celebrated. It was fun to hang out by the beach for a few minutes with my PPTC teammates. Running with a team is soooo much more fun that working out by myself: the “Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” is definitely overrated.
It’s summertime now, even if the calendar doesn’t admit it yet, so now is the season to enjoy the beach, some tennis as well as faster and better runs!
Photo from Flickr (via mason13a)
Best Baseball Songs →
Inspired by a post on Nationals Journal, one of my favorite baseball blogs, I have started putting together a list of favorite baseball-related songs. The list is work in progress, so if anyone suggests others in the comments, I will modify the list.
Trendspotting: Writing on Subways
I have been doing much of my writing lately on my smartphone while riding the NYC subway and other public conveyances. And I am not alone; my neighbor on this transatlantic flight, a scientist, just whipped out several long emails to colleagues. A few months ago, The New Yorker magazine described a whole sub-genre of Japanese literature written by young women on mobile phones. And, my final exhibit, the best and most memorable book I have read so far this year, Lowboy, was not only written in the NYC subway, it is set mainly in the subway.
NYC Entrepreneur Week
A couple weeks ago NYC Entrepreneur Week took place, inspired by Mayor Bloomberg and run by the NYC Economic Development Council. The Mayor is encouraging entrepreneurship in all its forms as a way for the city to replace some of the jobs lost in last autumn’s economic meltdown. The week consisted of what you would expect: a business plan competition and panels on topics relevant to start-ups generally and those in NYC specifically. NYC, while a leader in many things, is known as 3rd or 4th in the US as far as start-up activity behind northern California, Boston and possibly, Seattle. There wasn’t anything extraordinary about the sessions I was able to attend and it would have been nice to see Entrepreneur Week get broader public exposure. Nevertheless, it was a beginning of sorts and we can only hope that it will be seen as a milestone for the NYC tech start-up community.
Sun-Oracle
Sun Microsystems, my former employer, announced yesterday that it would be acquired by the Oracle Corporation. Like many of other one-time giants of high-tech, Sun and the Sun brand will soon begin to disappear. The list of once-prominent, now defunct IT companies really is long: Digital Equipment, Apollo, Compaq, Silicon Graphics, Cray, Siebel, BEA, PeopleSoft, NeXT, just to mention a few . And while many of these companies are remembered for their technology prowess within specialized circles, the truth is that the public memory of them fades very quickly. Sun is an iconic company in Silicon Valley, both as a trailblazer in the 1980s of the path from venture-backed start-up to profitable public company; and more recently as the nurturer of many brilliant technical innovations. This is not the place for an assessment of how or why Sun stumbled and fell, but I can testify personally throughout its long decline Sun maintained a very likable engineering-driven, underdog-on-top culture. And I share the sadness that many have expressed about its passing. The union with Oracle makes sense for shareholders and for much of the technology portfolio too. Given what is known about Oracle and the predicted job cuts associated with the merger, it seems extremely unlikely that Sun or its culture will survive in any significant way. I do not look forward to the blank stares people will give me in 4-5 years when I describe my decade at a company called “Sun.”
Fathers & Sons
Working with a family-run business is different. All organizations have their own cultures and personalities: family businesses have an additional overlay of kinship and shared history complicating matters.
I was recently advising the founder’s son in a small light manufacturing enterprise in Brooklyn. This firm was under tremendous financial pressure due to misjudgments made over several years by the father. The son and I were discussing tactics: how to make it through the next few weeks; and in particular, how to manage cash flow to get jobs done. “You know what my biggest problem is?” the son asked me. “The second we get any money in the door, my father tells me to give it to whomever is annoying him most.”
He was right: the father was, in fact, using the firm’s cash revenue to pay personal debts and obligations. Leaving aside the question of legality (to me it looked like tax evasion), the practice was starving the company of working capital. Everyone was suffering: employees and suppliers were routinely getting paid late or not at all. The founder’s son was a virtual slave to the business, taking very little in the way of owner’s draw and did not even have health insurance (the group policy had lapsed because the company was not paying its bills).
The son paused the conversation, put his head in his hands and said, “I can’t believe I’m throwing my Dad under the bus.” I tried to convince him that rebuilding a sound business was in his father’s best interest: it would eventually be able to pay down all of those personal debts whereas now he was barely able to make minimum payments to keep debt collectors away. I even tried to joke with him that all sons sooner or later throw their fathers “under the bus.” But he was unable to summon the willpower to say “no” to his Dad and the business’s problems have multiplied and increased.
Shangri-La
One of the great things about meeting with a lot of different businesses is the insight you get into management styles and business culture. A few weeks ago I met with a fantastic company. Extremely well-funded, its mission is as much humanitarian as it is profit-making. Highly technological, the people who work there all graduated with sciences degrees from top universities and are extremely polished and polite. They also have beautiful offices and seem to really enjoy what they do. This was one of the rare instances where researching the company and interviewing for a position was enjoyable in and of itself. At the time of the interview, I felt as though I found a common language with the folks there i.e., that we hit it off. I was wrong - not only did I not get the job, but I did not even make it to the next interview round.
Had I been looking for them, there definitely were warning signs that the fit was not there. For instance, when I asked questions about the function of the role I was pursuing; or why the organization had pursued strategy “x” rather than strategy “y” with its flagship product; or why it had been decided to organize as a “for-profit” rather than a non-profit - the answers were polite, but rapidly became more guarded. “David,” the head of the organization and its sole investor, had made the decision and the interviewer “couldn’t really say why.” And the while the educational credentials and level of the folks who were interviewing me were unquestionably extremely high, it was also clear that their backgrounds were pretty homogeneous (and different from my own). My own philosophy is that a heterogeneous workforce and a tolerance for internal disagreement are important ingredients for successful businesses. While I certainly wish this group well and hope to read about their successes in the future, I wonder whether the absence of these qualities will prevent it from reaching full potential.
