Autumn Marathon
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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.
Postcard from the Edge (3)
Our friend has left the small company where he started working just over a month ago. He explains -
“Certainly, the adjustment from large IT products corporation to a small light manufacturing group was a big one. There were lots of positives in the lack of red tape, the ability to work across functional lines and learn new skills. However, in small business even more than in a corporation, you realize that your success depends on the owners’ and on your colleagues’ work. It is a “partnership” in the true sense if not the legal meaning of that word. And I quickly came to realize that the owners of this firm were not managing to ethical/legal standards that are very important to me and as a result they had not been able to attract class-A employees to the organization. This was very disappointing since the industry is very promising and is an area for public/private investment under the Federal stimulus package. We reached a point where I realized it would be either “fish or cut bait” and I decided to continue fishing in other waters.”
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U.S. government cybersecurity is an insecure mess, and fixing it is going to take considerable attention and resources…
Cybersecurity isn’t a military problem, or even a government problem — it’s a universal problem. All networks, military, government, civilian and commercial, use the same computers, the same networking hardware, the same Internet protocols and the same software packages. We all are the targets of the same attack tools and tactics. It’s not even that government targets are somehow more important; these days, most of our nation’s critical IT infrastructure is in commercial hands.
”Bruce Schneier, respected cybersecurity expert, Chief Security Technology Officer at BT writing in the WSJ - Who Should Be in Charge of Cybersecurity? - WSJ.com
Cybersecurity could be the fulcrum of our next great national crisis. A number of people are making noise about it, but the experts have not done a good job of articulating the threat in a a way that politicians or the public can understand and take action. There is great vulnerability to all kinds of business and public infrastructure - financial, transport/logistical, financial just to name a few. There is also an important national security component which has the unfortunate result that a lot of the experts and apparently much important work are done behind closed doors. Schneier is one of the few figures who understands the technical issues, the political minefields and does a good job explaining them to the public.
End of Unintended Blogging Hiatus
Last few weeks have been quite busy with one interim work assignment, a couple of interesting interviews, and a few great discussions about possible start-ups. All of this activity has yielded insights into what is working in this business cycle, NYC-based business and what I like doing. The next few original entries here will discuss this in greater detail.
Startups in 13 Sentences →
Most people don’t think of themselves as startups, but aside from people who work in actual start-up companies, those of us who lost our corporate jobs, those whose industries are precarious, recent grads, and those looking to change careers: actually we’re all startups. This blog, written by one of the partners of the Y-Combinator venture incubator, is quite insightful. Lots of food for thought.
