The Sure Thing How entrepreneurs really succeed. In 1969, Ted Turner wanted to buy a television station. He was thirty years old. He had inherited a billboard business from his father, which was doing well. But he was bored, and television seemed exciting. “He knew absolutely nothing about it,” one of Turner’s many biographers, Christian Williams, writes in “Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way” (1981). The station in question was WJRJ, Channel 17, in Atlanta. Turner didn’t listen. What is sometimes forgotten amid the mythology, however, is that Turner wasn’t the proprietor of any old billboard company. Williams writes that Turner was “attracted to the risk” of the deal, but it seems just as plausible to say that he was attracted by the deal’s lack of risk. In a recent study, “From Predators to Icons,” the French scholars Michel Villette and Catherine Vuillermot set out to discover what successful entrepreneurs have in common. Paulson grew up in middle-class Queens, the child of an immigrant father.
Steve Jobs’s Real Genius Not long after Steve Jobs got married, in 1991, he moved with his wife to a nineteen-thirties, Cotswolds-style house in old Palo Alto. Jobs always found it difficult to furnish the places where he lived. His previous house had only a mattress, a table, and chairs. He needed things to be perfect, and it took time to figure out what perfect was. This time, he had a wife and family in tow, but it made little difference. It was the choice of a washing machine, however, that proved most vexing. Steve Jobs, Isaacson’s biography makes clear, was a complicated and exhausting man. Isaacson begins with Jobs’s humble origins in Silicon Valley, the early triumph at Apple, and the humiliating ouster from the firm he created. Jobs ripped it off and mumbled that he hated the design and refused to wear it. One of the great puzzles of the industrial revolution is why it began in England. Was Steve Jobs a Samuel Crompton or was he a Richard Roberts? Jobs’s sensibility was editorial, not inventive.
Rate-of-learning: the most valuable startup compensation The frothiness of today’s environment in Silicon Valley makes it easy to get sucked into a warped sense of reality. Valuations are high, capital is cheap, housing prices are skyrocketing, and RSUs are flowing like wine. Talk of another “bubble” is rebuffed, even by those who were scarred by the Dot-com collapse of 2000. Undoubtedly, changes in technology over the last 15 years have been breathtaking. One risk of living in this Gilded Age of Tech is the temptation to view your own career and compensation through a disproportionately financial lens—much as a growing company would. Companies are built on 5 to 10 year time horizons, so navigating the feast-or-famine fundraising environment and tracking jaw-dropping economic headlines across the globe are functions of survival. Since the time horizon for your career is long, the most valuable startup compensation you can acquire isn’t a competitive salary, a chunk of stock or a Yoga-laiden benefits package. Compounding interest on learning.
Nobody Cares This post is dedicated to the late Al Davis. Rest in peace. “Just win baby.” Back in the bad old days when I was running Loudcloud, I thought to myself: how could I have possibly prepared for this? As I was feely sorry for myself, I randomly watched an interview with famous football coach Bill Parcells. That might be the best CEO advice ever. And they are right not to care. All the mental energy that you use to elaborate your misery would be far better used trying to find the one, seemingly impossible way out of your current mess.
Ruthlessness and Grit in Startups Startups are in a state of perpetual change. During a startup's first few years of establishing product market and winning the first set of customers, this state of change is obvious. But as a startup scales, the company must adapt by learning and reinventing. Whether it's building the processes to grow the team, creating new sales and marketing initiatives to pursue adjacent customers, developing customer success teams or handling an unforseen crisis, this process of reacting to the market and evolving the company happens at every level in each function. How does a startup team steel itself to persevere through the ups and downs? Through combination of ruthlessness and grit. You have to face yourself. As a startup grows, each role within the company will change dramatically through the arc of the business. Grit is the disposition to pursue very long-term goals with passion and perseverance. And the key to grit is mindset.
Six failed businesses on, Dropmyemail’s John Fearon says, “I’m amazing” “I’m a good boss, I really am,” John Fearon, founder and CEO of DropMySite, tells me, in full earshot of his employee at their office in Block 71, Ayer Rajar Crescent, considered the nexus of Singapore’s technology startup scene. He was making a point about how he’d be a bad subordinate but a good leader who is comfortable with starting things. “I’m one of those that can go into the room and self-combust.” With all his self-confidence (whenever he speaks at conferences, he start with,”Hi, I’m amazing”), it’s easy to assume that John, who comes from South Africa, has a string of successful businesses to stand on. Not at all. I prod him about the number of failed businesses he had. (Photo: John being featured in an Amazon Web Services video) John struggles to find his words, which is a rarity. His first business collapsed after six months, burning through the $3,000 that his parents gave him as initial capital. John worked on an online nursing startup next. “It could go broke or go crazy.
Willful Delusion - Startups and the Stockdale Paradox – Correlated Causation Early when I was starting PrimaTable, a friend and mentor told me about the Stockdale Paradox. Described in Jim Collin’s Good to Great, the paradox is named after Vice Admiral Jim Stockdale, an American naval officer held captive for eight years in the Vietnam War. Stockdale’s Paradox When asked about about how he coped with captivity and regular torture, Admiral Stockdale responded: “I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.” When asked who didn’t make it home from Vietnam, Stockdale replied: “Oh, that’s easy, the optimists. Collin’s coined the Stockdale paradox as Stockdale’s summary: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” Startups
The Struggle Editor’s note: Ben Horowitz is co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz. He was a co-founder and CEO of Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), which was acquired by HP, and ran several product divisions at Netscape. He serves on the board of companies such as Capriza, Foursquare, Jawbone, Lytro, Magnet, NationBuilder, Nicira, Okta, SnapLogic and Tidemark, and blogs at “Don’t admit that your faith is weak Don’t say that you feel like dying Life’s hard then it feels like diamonds Your home’s just far too gone Much too late to even feel like trying Can’t understand what I’m saying Can’t figure out what I’m implying If you feel you don’t wanna be alive You feel just how I am” —Lupe Fiasco, Beautiful Lasers Every entrepreneur starts her company with a clear vision for success. Then, after working night and day to make your vision reality, you wake up to find that things did not go as planned. About The Struggle “Life is struggle.” Most people are not strong enough.
On a Mission One of the interesting things I have seen, especially in the last 10 years, is that many of the big winners in technology have been what I call “mission-driven” versus “mercenary-driven” companies. There are a lot of companies that cut corners. There are a lot of companies that have a mercenary outlook, and will dump their idealistic goal to make a business work in the short-term. We steer clear of those. We are looking for the companies who are going to be the big winners because they are going to cause a fundamental change in the world, as opposed to making a short-term grab for revenue or a short-term grab for an acquisition. These are the founders who come in to the firm and say, “Look, I don’t care whether I make money or not, that’s not my goal. How they will make money is typically not part of the conversation. But the pattern at the moment is the stronger the ideology or mission of the company, the more successful the company.
My Life as a CEO (and VC): Chief Psychologist I’ve had a post in my head for months – maybe longer – about the role of a CEO. It originally appeared on TechCrunch as a guest post but just in case you missed it there. My primary role was “chief psychologist” and as I’ve learned over the past few years the same has been true as a VC. Both are basically people businesses. I finally got around to writing it having read Fred Wilson’s post about what a CEO does. Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholdersRecruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Matt Blumberg, who runs one of Fred’s portfolio companies, Return Path, follows up with an additional three: Don’t be a bottleneck (make sure you aren’t holding up people’s work)Run great meetings (don’t be a productivity drain on the company)Stay fresh (be mentally and physically fit & attuned to what is going on in the world) Howard Lindzon weighed in with his comments: Raising moneySelling the companyHiring & Firing the CEO
On Becoming | Justin Mares You’ve decided you want to do something in this world. You’ve internalized the fact that you can do anything you want. How do you succeed? Let’s say your goal is to be a millionaire by age 30. What do you do? Focus on becoming the type of person that can become a millionaire at 30. Why? Most people would say to explore your options. Now, compare this with someone who focused on becoming the type of person that can be a millionaire at 30. Smart. This is someone who – regardless of whether she achieves her goal or not – is set up to succeed. Let’s say you want to win this archery trophy. In other words, don’t focus on the outcome. This works because there are opportunities for feedback and improvement when you approach success like this. For example, most successful people I know read a lot. Compare this to focusing entirely on your goal of $1mm by 30. One of my mentors is the perfect example of this. He made his first million at 31. Focusing on process pays off.