I seem to be running into more and more people who have fallen in love with their idea for a new or improved product or service. That is, they appear to be so infatuated with it that they think it stands alone and deserves merit because of its strength and uniqueness. That’s nice . . . and virtually meaningless in a business sense. Truly great and unique ideas are wonderful things. Contrary to what many people think, though, they’re just not a prerequisite to starting or running a great or successful company. Most often, more money and success in the long haul have come from great implementations of ideas (sometimes groups of ideas) than from the ideas themselves.
In fact, many of the most successful products and companies have become successful because of their masterful implementation of the ideas of others. Did Toyota invent the car? Microsoft, the operating system? GE, the jet engine? Dell, the computer? Merck, gene therapy (or even erectile dysfunction drugs)? Apple, the cell phone? You get the idea (no pun intended).
Your business will, of course, be based on an idea. My point is that 1. it’s likely not the most important part of the business (unless you’ve found the cure for cancer and even then, it’s questionable as a guarantee of business success) and, 2. the idea doesn’t even have to be yours. In the end, the idea your building your business on and all of the ideas you come up along the way associated with the actual execution of that business are subordinate to the quality of the execution of those ideas.
I’ll take it one step further. I might be biased having only had about three unique ideas in my entire life, but I’ll go out on a limb and say that business success is singularly about execution. I always ran my own companies driven by this belief. I used to constantly frustrate sales people who worked for me. They would do everything they could to hide our secret sauce from the competition at trade shows and at user sites. My view was always to let ‘em see what we were doing. If we couldn’t execute our own ideas better and faster than someone else, then we wouldn’t survive in the first place. Let’s face it, they’re gonna find out what your product does and they’re probably gonna figure out how it does it. The important thing is that you can put it all together and deliver it better and faster than anyone else can.
Don’t get me wrong, good, independent ideas are part-and-parcel to great execution. It’s not that unique ideas are bad things in any way. It’s just that they’re not worthy as a standalone basis for a business. They should be building blocks, not the entire foundation.
So, if you’re wondering why venture capitalists are fascinated in hearing you out, but then pass on the deal; why customers aren’t begging you for an audience based on your Powerpoint presentation; why your friends want to know who’s going to actually build this thing; why your mentors are asking you how all the time and not what anymore; it’s probably because you’ve spent too much time making mad, passionate love to your business idea and haven’t considered that in the end, execution is all that really matters.
If my podium was a fortune cookie instead of a blog post, I might say: Luck and fortune favor those who can execute.
Is service continuing to go downhill or am I just getting more picky? You’d think in a problematic economy, service – just about the easiest thing to quickly improve and adapt – would be great almost everywhere one turns. After all, it’s an easy differentiator. I just don’t see it. In fact, even considering that I’m feeling like a kinder, gentler and more understanding kinda’ guy these days (don’t laugh, compared to 10 years ago, I’m downright mellow), I’m routinely astonished with how bad service has gotten from sectors ranging from corporate professional services to the guy who plows my driveway.
There are many, of course, who after getting poor service immediately punt on the provider. I can’t fault this tactic since there often are few excuses for poor service and there are other providers to reward with one’s hard-earned cash. In the past, I was usually in this camp. More people, however, roll their eyes, keep quiet and continue to use the service provider regardless of the quality of their performance. Many of us have just come to expect bad service and assume that it’s bad everywhere. I’m afraid that there are times when I have been in this camp as well. Just too lazy to make a change or educate the provider to help improve the service for me or others.
A couple of months ago, I decided to take a new and more consistent tack. Everyone makes mistakes, so if a service provider I’m using makes one, I give him/her a break – exactly once. I simply inform them of the mistake they made and leave it up to them to do the right thing. What’s the right thing? Well, it varies, but at a minimum, it includes a sincere apology and some additional ass-kissing like having the service rendered for free or at a time/place/price that benefits me in some way. That’s it, you get one shot. If you choose not to deliver or you’re just too ignorant to, I’ll go elsewhere. I think it’s a comfortable and fair model that I can implement without hesitation in all circumstances.
This got me thinking about entrepreneurs with service components in their offerings. Is service seen as a necessary evil or is it part of the differentiating strategy? When you think of yourself as a product company alone, for example, the services you provide – yes, including basic training and support – can be treated as ugly stepchildren. Even great products can be completely derailed in the market with something as small as crappy support forum response times. Services are often the most visible part of the company. Getting them right can mean the difference between corporate success and failure. Are you delivering them well? If you screw them up, are you doing the right thing?
I have a hate/love relationship with my iPhone. It does so many things right in a way that only Apple has been able to perfect. Easy to use and manage, consistent UI across all apps, and everything about it looks and feels good. And the apps . . . the term “app” has becoming synonymous with “iPhone app” already. Some six trillion available for download, or something like that (if this number is a bit high, check back in a while and it will eventually be correct). It’s a very nice package.
Of course, it’s nice if you want things exactly the way Apple says you want them. A substantial part of Apple’s magic comes from the fact that its products are closed with Apple being the wizard behind the curtain conducting their operation. The iPhone is single-sourced hardware (from Apple) running a single-sourced, single-tasking OS (also only from Apple), layered with applications that have to be approved by Apple and which can’t compete with Apple-supplied applications. The hardware has a non-interchangeable battery, non-upgradeable memory and no keyboard – because Apple doesn’t think you need any of those features. It even has a proprietary connector to recharge and communicate with it. All of this fixed to the so-bad-I’m-surprised-each-day-I-continue-to-use-it AT&T network. Oh and did I mention that the phone can only run one of the zillion apps it can carry at a time (yeah, I think I did)?
For sure, all of this obsessive control over their products helps and, in fact is required for, Apple to be exactly who they want to be. It’s very difficult to create the level of consistency and ease-of-use that is part and parcel of an Apple product without dominion over the entire platform. This product oversight has, in fact, made the iPhone the phenomenon and market leader that it is.
Having a fundamental problem with being Steve Jobs’ stooge (I’ll show him), though, I jumped all over the Droid the day it was released and have been an active user – my iPhone remains dormant on my desk – for the last 10 days. Does it blow away the iPhone . . . not yet. But it’s a pretty damned good smartphone and it has tremendous potential. Here’s the summary.
The first thing you notice when you hold the phone is its weight. It’s heavier than the iPhone. It’s also thicker, although not by a lot. In my experience, these are not noticed when in my pocket, although I thought they would be. Not that the perception of built quality is at issue with the iPhone, but the Droid feels like it’s built like a tank. Width and height are about the same as the iPhone. The Droid wows even non-technical users when they slide out the keyboard. Motorola did a great job fitting a sliding keyboard into such a small device. Nice engineering.
Pros:
Speed – I don’t spend much time waiting for responses, even when I’ve got a load of apps running
Multitasking – Ahhhh, I had blocked out how much I missed having it. You may not think you want it, but the next time you cut and paste between apps and the iPhone makes you completely restart the target app, losing your original state, you’ll know you want it.
Google Voice – Banned on the iPhone, it’s become the cornerstone for my SMS and phone messaging. If I could just port another number to it, it would take over for all my phones. Except my iPhone, of course, because it’s banned.
Integration with Gmail/Contacts/Calendar – Seamless. I put in my Google account information before I left the store and I was completely synced up by the time I had walked a couple of blocks.
ActiveSync – Don’t use Gmail? That’s cool. The mail app covers any POP or IMAP server. It also has an easy to use ActiveSync client for Exchange Server integration built in.
Virtual On-Screen Keyboard AND Physical Keyboard – While I’m still trying to get used to the physical keyboard (it’s far from perfect), it’s there as an option (with much easier navigation within text). The virtual keyboard works like the iPhone’s (see this in cons as well), although I like the word selection options and spell check much better than the iPhone’s.
Fixed Buttons – Instead of chewing up screen space with functions common to all apps, the phone has four fixed touch-sensitive buttons to do things you often need to do – back, home, search and options. I’m strangely finding it difficult to convert from the way the iPhone does it, but it makes loads of sense. I’m sure that once I get used to it, it’ll be second nature and more practical. The back button really takes you back, even to previous applications (which are still running, of course). Nice.
Interchangeable Battery/Memory and Standard (Micro USB) Connector – As God intended them to be.
Verizon – AT&T isn’t all bad. It’s just mostly bad. While I’ve had problems with their customer service, I’ve never had any disaster stories like others have had. The thing that makes me like Verizon better is that it’s simply available in more places. And, I don’t mean only 3G (“we have a map for that”), I mean voice, 2G, etc. I can get a signal of some kind in way more places with Verizon than with AT&T.
Cons:
Weight and Thickness – See above. Minor issue IMO, but it might be a bigger deal for you.
Physical Keyboard – Not quite enough tactile feedback to distinguish between keys and to tell if you’ve pressed a key. Some of this is just getting used to it, I’m sure, but I’m relying more on the on-screen keyboard to enter most text.
Battery Life – This one could be big. Several nights I’ve had the phone run short of power fairly early. Some of this is because I’m tinkering with it often and some is because I have a load of background apps running trying things out. There is a nice app that tells the user how much power each piece of hardware and each application is consuming. It tells me that the display and phone app are usually the biggest culprits. I’ve turned down the brightness of the display. We’ll see how it works out.
Rendering of HTML Email is Screwy – Several messages in the Gmail app don’t render correctly with some text extending beyond the right side of the display. This seems to only happen in portrait mode and is not a problem in landscape mode. Feels like a bug.
No MultiTouch – I don’t use it much on the iPhone, so I don’t really miss it. You can still zoom in the browser by double-tapping a column or using the zoom buttons.
It’s Not Very Pretty – Both hardware and apps are less pretty than their iPhone comparables. The messaging app is utilitarian and works fine, but I miss the little voice bubbles. Hardly a deal breaker.
Must Tap on a Field Use the Keyboard – This one’s taking me a while to get used to. To enter text, even if the text entry box is highlighted on the screen and should be the default, you have to tap on the entry box to display the on-screen keyboard or to use the physical keyboard. If it’s the default, just let me go right to the keyboard without making me take another action. The iPhone does this well.
On-Screen Keyboard Could be Better – For some reason, the Android folks decided to leave a gap between each of the characters in the virtual keyboard. This makes the keys smaller than they need to be. If they filled in the gaps by making each key larger, it would be easier to type on.
Email Address Suggestions are in too Large a Font – Sounds like a nit, but it’s a real problem. Looks like the font that’s chosen to display email address suggestions (from your contacts) is sized to be appropriate for the display when in landscape mode. It’s too big when in portrait mode and you can’t see all the address – a real problem when the person you’re looking for has several similar addresses.
Android’s App Market Doesn’t Hold a Candle to the iPhone App Store – For me, almost everything I care about on my phone is already available. A decent newsreader (NewsRob), a good Twitter client (Twidroid), Evernote (beta), OpenTable, Shazam, FaceBook, SportsTap, WeatherBug, etc. That said, there are many missing “apps-for-that (are you listening, Yelp?).” It seems like there are a lot of people working on porting their apps to Android, though, and I’m hopeful the decent ones will be available soon.
I’m concerned about the power consumption and I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to the physical keyboard. Since the virtual keyboard works pretty well, this second issue really amounts to not wanting to carry around the extra size and weight of a physical keyboard that I don’t use. Most of the rest of the issues are just software and I suspect that they’ll be addressed to some extent relatively soon.
Bottom line is that there is a lot to like about this phone, but it’s not a slam-dunk upgrade from an iPhone yet. I’m pretty sure I’m going to keep the phone, but I fully believe that there will be a boatload of new Android 2 based phones flowing from manufacturers in the coming months. Unlike Apple, with only a single hardware platform, there will be many manufactures creating new phones and actively competing in the space – all enabled by Android (and Google, of course). This ecosystem is going to move fast and issues will be addressed quickly as companies close holes to create differentiation.
Apple’s Berlin Wall-like, communistic approach to the product line isn’t likely to fall any time soon or ever, in fact, but for those looking for more features, flexibility and options, Android’s capitalism is here to stay. I’m looking forward to it.
When beginners attend auto racing or high performance driving school, they are taught that drivers tend to go where they’re looking and, where they look is usually only 10-15 feet in front of their vehicle. I see this all the time as I’m riding my bike. While cycling on the right side of a shoulder, a passing car will wonder into the shoulder right where I’m riding even when there’s no oncoming traffic. I know that the driver is looking at me, even thinking that he/she should avoid me. Nonetheless, because they’re looking at me, they tend to steer that way (just because you’re paranoid . . . ). High performance drivers are taught to look much further out and to strategically optimize their driving around a point further ahead and to let their natural tendency to steer where they’re looking take them to where they want to end up, instead of just reacting to what they see directly in front of them.
Things are similar with startups. It’s often easy to get caught with your head down, focused on near-term problems and opportunities while ignoring the big picture and where the new enterprise should be headed. As with focusing on what’s happening on the road directly in front of you, when you solely focus on the myriad of short-term problems you have to deal with, they will consume your thoughts, energy and time. You will be constantly drawn towards them. Soon, the startup’s strategy will become less strategic and more tactical.
Here are a few short-term issues that I see grabbing the attention of startups all the time:
features, features and more features – yeah, you have to add features to your product, you simply can’t (and don’t want to) add every requested feature all at once. There are two problems that come to mind here, one is that if you don’t step back and ask yourself if the feature moves you toward your strategic goal before implementing it, you run the risk of wasting very precious time and, two, if you focus all your attention on features at the expense of architecture, you can build a house of cards that will fail miserably later. Each feature should be weighed in the context of the product’s goals before time is spent on it.
reaction versus response – when a startup has only a handful of customers, it’s easy for it to get distracted by the feedback it gets from any one of them. It’s easy to react to every call, email and tweet regarding the product and to try to address the needs or wants of the few people who seem to be paying attention. It’s important that the startup keep in mind, as with features, spending time with early users is valuable inasmuch as the feedback is taken in perspective. Is the customer the target customer, for example? If not, you may spend your time reacting to feedback that doesn’t help you land the kind of customers you’re trying to get.
the technology itself – loads of startups end up getting caught in the vortex of the underlying technology at the expense of marketing or gathering customer input. Often, because that’s what the founders really know well. The product is required, of course, but is just not sufficient. Simply put, it is highly unlikely you can engineer a perfect product that will dazzle your customers and meet their needs on its first pass. Product development is much more than technology development and needs to include data from the market and from potential customers. Only when you have a complete package of technology, target customer input and market information do you have a real shot at delivering a successful product.
There are many more factors that cause startups to eschew strategy for tactics. A founding team needs to set a course based on a point reasonably far ahead and not optimize around what is happening now. That, of course, doesn’t mean that it can ignore what is taking place near-term. A good driver uses his/her peripheral vision to observe what’s happening close to the vehicle. Similarly, a startup needs to treat short-term tactics seriously, but only within the scope of the longer-term strategy. Longer term isn’t 10 years. That’s just not reasonable or even possible. But a year or two is reasonable with even a few brain cells reserved for thinking out even further.
Keep in mind, you steer where you’re looking. Steer the company toward a point in the reasonable future while keeping an eye on what’s happening today and you’ll find that you will encounter fewer mistakes, less rework and a smoother path to success.
I was completely blind-sided. I thought I was prepared, but I was so very wrong. It was just going to be another step like any of the infinite others that define parenting and the relationship between a parent and a child. A father and a son. I’m so naive. A few weeks ago and like a million other parents, we dropped our son off for his first year of college. Moving in was stressful. Loads to do and everything so new to all of us. When the cars were unloaded and the new roommates met, we all gathered for the usual orientation stuff. Parents and their sons and daughters listening to the college president talk about their choices and the next four years. Then he said it . . . “it’s time to say good bye.” What? But . . . but . . . but, the schedule says that’s not for a couple of hours. Then it all came down on me like a ton of bricks. Nineteen years of hand-holding, watching his every step, waiting up for him at night, worrying if he was happy, was he going to make the team, was he working hard enough, how was he getting along with his girlfriend . . . it all flooded in. Tears welled up and, when I hugged him, I completely lost it. I told him I loved him, would miss him and how proud I am of him. I bawled. And then he walked away.
As it turns out, he is completely ready. It’s me who isn’t. I was worried about how he would take it and how my wife would deal with it all, but it’s me who came apart at the seams. I’m already missing him desperately. I feel lonely and incredibly sad without him. Stuff around the house reminds me of him or of something we did together. I know this seems silly. After all, I saw him just a few weeks ago and I’ve certainly been away from him many times in his life, even for prolonged periods of time. But this is different. My son has been my friend, my cohort, my sharer of common interests for so many years I can’t remember it any other way. I’m just not ready for this change. A permanent change.
Of course, he’s still my son and he and I will spend loads of time together in the future. I’m even looking forward to our relationship maturing and being taken to a new level. Man-to-man, adult-to-adult, responsible individual to, well, you get the idea. But I’m already missing what we have had. The spontaneous discussions of why one football player is better than another, how a single crease in the bodywork of a car defines the entire design or what the impact of the latest technology release will be. I’ll miss our Sundays sitting in the stands at Gillette Stadium watching the Patriots and in a funny way, I’ll even miss only sleeping lightly until I hear his car pull up the driveway late on Saturday nights (well, early Sunday mornings, anyway). And who am I going to watch Bond movies with?
Some of my angst surely comes from the fact that I want to make the diving catch to rescue him when he’s in a stressful or difficult situation. I know that I’ve been an overly protective parent at times, but it was really obvious as I left him at school. How is my 19 year old son going to do it all himself? Stupid question of course. He really hasn’t needed to be bailed out in ages.
I jokingly told my daughter (the younger of my two children) that I’m not going to let her go to college. I don’t think I can take this level of emotional upheaval twice in my life. But that’s still two years away. I’m going to go and start preparing myself now.
Taylor, if you’re reading this, which I’m sure you’re not, I love you. You are a terrific person and you will do great in college. Always know that your mom and I are here for you. But, while we’re not around, be safe and make smart decisions. Have fun and work hard. That’s the sum of everything I’ve ever wanted to teach you.
Yesterday, I raced in the Univest Cyclosportif 100K in Souderton, PA. While I ride in many events each year, most of them with some competitive component, this is the first true timed, competitive event that I’ve participated in. It rained – no, actually poured, during the entire race. Additionally, there had been a storm the night before and the course was littered with tree braches, pine cones and wet leaves. While many better riders were able to deal with the slick roads and assorted obstacles, I was cautious and liberally applied my brakes on much of the course.
The results? I came in 122nd out of the 219 riders who did the 100K (there was also a 60K ride that had about the same number of riders). I finished in 3:23. Slower than I think I can do the course, but faster than I expected I would. I’m pretty pleased with my performance.
I was really worried about the rain before the race and it certainly affected the way I rode. The thought that there are only two little one-inch square contact patches keeping your body from skidding across the surface of the earth in a corner never really fades too far from one’s thoughts. I also saw three major crashes during the ride and twice passed ambulances going in the opposite direction – ouch. All that said, the weather stopped really bothering me after about five miles. Once you’re soaked, you just can’t get much wetter.
A Cyclosportive is sort of the cycling equivalent of a marathon – a timed event that is very competitive for the top participants and is a race against the clock for most of the others. In cycling, it is sometimes linked with a professional race on the same course, as this one is. The pro event – the Univest Grand Prix – starts three hours after the amateurs start, making sure even the slowest of the non-professionals are off the course before the real racers come through. Watching the pros finish after having raced the course puts ones effort into perspective. Man they’re fast.
It was a great event. I’m really glad I did it and I’m happy how well it turned out for me. Special thanks to my support team – my wonderful wife – for making the long trek to Souderton with me and for helping me navigate the ins-and-outs of a big event and the incredibly bad weather.
Update (9/22/2009): Not that I’m counting or anything, but it turns out that there were 229 riders.
Early this summer, I promised Jason Jacobs, the founder of FitnessKeeper (the creators of RunKeeper), that I would try RunKeeper for cycling. Well, it’s been a crazy summer and I just got around to it (sorry, Jason). When we spoke, Jason told me that the company’s focus today is on running, although they plan to add more cycling features in the future. For now, you can setup RunKeeper for cycling, but it lacks several features available in other cycling computers, namely, cadence, heart rate and power (the first two are widely available, power is more rare). The lack of these features make RunKeeper less than ideal for cycling right now.
That said, the display is big and clear with useful speed, timing and map information. I rode with my iPhone mounted next to my Garmin Edge 705, which I’ve tested against other cycle-computers and have found it to be very accurate. The speeds shown by RunKeeper were generally close to the Garmin, but were sometimes a bit higher and sometimes a bit lower. I would assume that’s an iPhone 3G issue. The average speed for my 30mi ride was slightly below the Garmin’s reported speed, but pretty close. Total distances were virtually identical.
I liked how RunKeeper presented the data. Very easy to read in sunlight. In fact, I found I was looking at the RunKeeper display more often than the Garmin’s display. That might have something to do with the screen’s size, but it seems like the gang at FitnessKeeper has put a lot of thought into how one reads data quickly while exercising. There was no comparison when it came to reading a map. RunKeeper was waaaay better. Of course, RunKeeper is online and uses Google maps, the Garmin is not connected and has all its map info on board. The Garmin map data is also displayed on a much smaller screen.
Even better than the application itself, the RunKeeper website (which gets its data via automatic upload from the phone – cool) is really nice. Much nicer than Garmin Connect, Garmin’s attempt at cataloguing similar data.
Mounting an expensive phone on the handlebars of a bike that vibrates on crappy roads scares people, including me. I used the RAM Mounts RAP-274-1-AP6U to hold the phone. The mount is very stable, holds the iPhone like superglue and is cheap (I think I paid about $15 on eBay). On the downside, it comes with no instructions and it’s pretty bulky. See pictures. It wasn’t exactly rocket science to install.
I know that runners have been downloading the app like hotcakes. It really is very nicely done. For cycling, it still needs some work and some help from extra hardware for cadence, heart rate and even power data inclusion. I don’t know if Apple has opened up the phone enough for this type of hardware to be added (a little ANT+ Sport dongle anyone?). I’m looking forward to a real cycling version. It sure would be nice to have ride data, phone and music all in one device.
Even though I’m a boater, I generally ignore weather forecasts. Not they they aren’t important, but in my experience they’re frequently inaccurate or, at least imprecise. I find myself often waiting around for the forecasted inclement weather to happen, blowing off whatever I had planned for the time. Unfortunately, it often doesn’t show up or shows up in a much less severe fashion than predicted. What are you gonna do? Take the boat out into what becomes the teeth of a storm, or sit around with the boat at dock all buttoned down and everyone safe?
Of course, like any self-respecting tech guy, I have a myriad of gadgets, web sites and applications to help me determine when the sky is going open up and the water’s going churn. None of them seem to do too much good.
I still gotta know, though, so I’ve decided to go old school. This month’s Boating Magazine (September edition, page 15, can’t find it online) has a list of tips to help forecast what the skies are going to do the old fashioned way. A few ones that I hadn’t heard before are going to be very helpful and no, they don’t include “red sky at night, sailor’s delight.”
Smoke on the water – If you’re within site of of anything billowing smoke; a factory, big boat, etc, check out if the smoke dips below the height of the stack. If so, it means that air pressure is low (lowering air pressure can’t support the soot in the smoke) and a storm is likely coming.
Moon rings – Is there a halo around the moon the night before you’re planning an outing? The rings are caused by ice crystals in high clouds that precede a low-pressure system and rain is probably on the way.
Wind on land versus wind over water – Wind over water has less resistance than wind over land. So, if the wind is blowing 10mph on the land, it’s gonna be blowing significantly harder on the water.
Very cool. I’ll add these to the ones I know already and the telltale local signs I’ve picked up through experience. Let’s see if the guidelines of the old sea salts are a better guide than Accuweather, Davis VantagePro, and Al Roker.
[Danger: football analogies used with abandon in this post.]
As the 2009 NFL season opened, Michael Vick, ex-Atlanta Falcons star quarterback and infamous dog torturer/killer, was hired by the Philadelphia Eagles after spending a short time (too short) in prison. In my opinion, this situation is proof, once again, that truth is far stranger than fiction. That the NFL would allow this guy to play again is one thing. That any team would pick him up is another, incredibly absurd, one. Of course, NFL teams conveniently ignore wife beating, late-night stabbings in bars and the carrying of unlicensed weapons so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Alas, this is all fodder for a post on another subject. For now, I want to discuss the related challenges of the hiring and management of top-notch employees who often know they’re the best, make it perfectly clear to everyone else that they are the best and expect to be subject to a different set of rules just because they’re the best.
Once in a while, you run across people who are not only among the smartest, most capable, and hardest working people you’ve ever met, but they’re also quiet, humble, selfless and unpretentious. Totally phenomenal. Think Tom Brady, quarterback of the New England Patriots or Payton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts. In a business context, you hire those people in a minute – whether or not you can afford them. They add incredible value not only through the specific work they do, but through their actions, reactions, leadership and participation as well. They have a positive impact on the performance of everyone around them.
Sometimes, though, when you find a person with such talents, they can be arrogant, egotistical and, let’s face it, an asshole. Do you hire those people as quickly? Do you sacrifice what your gut is screaming at you to get that level of ability and talent into your company? My short answer is no, it’s just not worth it (see my previous post, When To Get Rid Of The “Best” People Who Work For You).
But what if you’re in dire straights. You absolutely, positively need some serious ammunition in the fight against failure. Do you hire a famous bad boy like Terrell Owens (T.O.) or Randy Moss? Do you convince yourself that you’re the best manager around and you can handle the wildcat or maybe even tame them? Can you do what others have not? Survey says . . . probably not, try to find someone else.
If, however, you are a strong leader and manager and you understand the positives and negatives of what strong individuals can bring to a team, you may have a shot. Further, if you’ve already built a team that follows your lead and sticks together under the culture you’ve built, it may even be a slam-dunk.
Let’s take a look at the aforementioned cases of Terrell Owens, previously an out of control trouble-maker with the Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers and Randy Moss, now with the New England Patriots, but previously a problem child with the Oakland Raiders and Minnesota Vikings. Both T.O. and Moss are among the best receivers in the NFL. They both know it and believe they deserve recognition for it. They both have a history of playing for themselves before playing for their team and being trouble-makers on and off the field.
T.O. was treated like the team savior at both S.F. and Philadelphia. He was kowtowed to, given visibility and his demands were met. Moss had similar experiences at Minnesota and Oakland. Big babies who were given a free run because of their incredible talent. What happened next is enlightening. T.O. went on to play with the Dallas Cowboys where the owner continued the tradition of putting T.O. on a public pedestal and giving the crying baby what he wanted and Moss went to New England, where the owner and coach told him that he was just another cog in the wheel and treated him like everyone else.
Further, and maybe even more importantly, the Cowboys as a team accepted T.O.’s antics where the Patriots, as a team, wouldn’t put up with Moss’s bullshit. The result is that Moss became a part of the Patriot team and organization, winning a Super Bowl and breaking the NFL receptions record. T.O., well, T.O. remained T.O. and was unconditionally released (that means kicked out), once again, and was picked up by another NFL team – the Buffalo Bills. We’ll see how that goes.
The leaders of the Patriots recognized the cost of bringing an egotistical, loudmouth, crybaby onto the team and made it clear to him through words and actions that it wouldn’t be tolerated. You step out of line and you will be docked pay and put on the bench. The team comes before you . . . always. But the Patriots had an even stronger tool, the team itself. Apparently, the already tight and focused team wouldn’t put up with any crap. When there is no support for bad behavior and no ears to listen to out of line complaints or demands, even prima donnas get lonely pretty fast. The team’s leaders (primarily head coach Bill Belichick) had instilled a culture in the team that was a strong bonding element. Outsiders have to adopt the culture or the team, itself, will force them out.
So, the questions you need to ask yourself before hiring a notorious super-contributor/bad-boy(girl) are whether you’re a strong enough leader and have you built a strong enough (culturally aligned) team. If you are and you have, you can probably bring anyone you choose in as a contributor. If you aren’t (yet) or you haven’t, bringing such a person in will lead to big problems. If you decide to anyway, you may want to line up that trade ahead of time.
I’ve been an active angel investor for about 15 years now. Like most non-professional investors, I go into each investment fully and unrealistically expecting it to return some huge multiple of my original money. While I’ve certainly made enough investments to know better, having high expectations for every investment I make is only one of the relatively frequent mistakes I make when investing. I’m a slow learner. Very slow.
Don’t get me wrong, in the end, my investments have delivered relatively nicely. Way more failures than successes (way more), but with enough successes to more than cover losses and provide a reasonable return. Some might even say a good return. That said, I’m pretty sure that no one who knows what they’re doing in terms of investing is gonna ask me for advice any time soon.
Back to the mistakes part . . . this week, we closed down the company I most recently invested in (names will be withheld to protect the innocent, not that anyone involved is innocent). Looking back, there were loads of signs that the company was going to fail or, at least struggle, from the beginning. I ignored them all. In the end, I can only blame myself. Not for the company’s failure, of course, but for being involved in the first place. If you have stumbled on this post via a search or have read this far and actually think you can learn something from me or my experiences, here is a list of obvious red flags that I ignored in making this investment that resulted in my losing a bunch of money relatively quickly.
I fell in love with the technology – this one is a classic. I saw the technology (image processing), did a minor amount of due diligence and thought it would change the world. My passion for photography drove me here. That, by itself, isn’t a bad thing, but as soon as you feel love, you better find someone who knows what they’re doing to look at it and give you an objective perspective. I didn’t. At lest not enough.
I didn’t have a solid grasp on the market – while this was a software play (broadly, something I actually know a little about), the target market was cell phones. Cool, right? Made sense. A zillion devices sold every year, cell phones replacing compact cameras, more processing power moving to phones, etc. Life looked good. I didn’t understand what a dog-eat-dog world the mobile device ecosystem is. Handset producers, carriers, sensor manufacturers, it’s a mess out there. I shoulda found all this out before I wrote the check.
The valuation was too high – duh! Well, I suppose that is a red flag, but there’s nothing subtle about it – it’s more like a fact. In investing, one runs across valuations that are out of whack all the time. Depending on the situation, you pay the price or not. The real red flag was something more subtle. The other investors in the deal (all with more money in it than me), who had already set the price, were all relatively unsophisticated investors. That’s not to say that they weren’t good business people, but they were newbie investors. Note to self, avoid deals crowded with investors who have not invested much before, especially when they’re taking the lead on terms. Stupid, just stupid.
When I invested and took a board seat, the other two outside investors were from the same company as the two lead engineers, making 90% of the employees coming all from the same place – let me be clear, each one of these people was excellent and the company never experienced the problem that I initially feared of the group steering the company’s direction. The issue here is simply a judgment call by the CEO which I disagree with. If you’re trying to do something new, why load up with something old? Maybe involving one person from the other company would make sense, but four? I questioned this when I came on board and chose to let it slide.
While being “recruited” as an investor and board member, the team made some claims that they couldn’t fully substantiate when questioned about them – now you’re saying, “well you’re an idiot for investing if that was happening,” and you’re right. See the first bullet. Shame on me.
The founder/CTO was unproven – A bright guy with an unremarkable credentials. Not that every startup CTO should have cured cancer before their new endeavor, but for a guy his age (not a kid any more) he should have had a track record of successes, even if they weren’t entrepreneurial. This one’s not a slam dunk, but it was another flag that occurred to me and I chose to ignore.
Company management didn’t see startup activity the same way I do – work hard, juggle lots of plates without dropping any, take pay cuts when required and sacrifice most of the rest of your life while getting the enterprise going. From the outside, the management team seemed to treat their work in the company like a job, not a commitment. To be fair, I really didn’t see this, and other problems like it, until after I had made the investment.
I had previously invested in a company founded by the CEO where I had lost a load of cash – again, itself, not a reason to avoid the opportunity, but it should have created more dissonance in my thoughts than it did. I didn’t even spend time to consider the causes of the previous failure and how they related to the CEO. In retrospect, it’s still a little hazy, but taken in concert with all the others, it should have been a bigger deal to me.
Yeah, yeah, I’m an idiot. It’s not unusual to run across a red flag or two when looking at a new venture, but when the list is long enough to enumerate, well . . . In the end, it was easy for me to dismiss each of the issues individually. I neglected to look at them as a whole. My bad.
Obviously, the sum of the issues and their meta-meaning wasn’t quite as clear to me before I made the investment. My point is, though, that it should have been, especially given the number of investments I’ve made. I feel like an moron. I suppose the only good thing about it is that I didn’t let it run its course. The company will return its remaining capital to its investors once all obligations are paid out. It’ll be a small percentage of the funds invested (less than 25% of what was invested), but at least it’s not zero. I just hope I learned something from this experience. As my good friend Brad Feld likes to say, “I’ll only make that mistake three more times.” I’ll tell you next time if I even learn that quickly.
December 20th, 2009 | 
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