Corporate vs. Startup behaviors

Over dinner this week, I had an interesting conversation that highlighted for me the different types of behaviors required in a big company corporate environment vs. a startup environment.

One really big one is passive/aggressive behavior. Oddly, in a corporate environment, this is a a positive survival trait, especially for executives. You nod and smile at your boss a lot. You may not agree, but you know you damn well better appear to be agreeing. If you don't, you get shut down right there and the opportunity to go ahead and do what you believe is the right thing anyway, and then sell it later (without getting shot in the head first) goes away.

To start something up inside of a BigCo, you need to have the trust of your immediate bosses, and enough leeway to do things under the radar. After a few successes on your part, the nodding and agreeing is done with a lot of nudge nudge wink wink kind of nonverbal communication from your bosses (you go do it anyway, just don't get caught too soon).... however, the whole passive/aggressive thing remains. You act as if you're a good boy, but you go do what you know needs to be done to create a new business or grow the existing business with new approaches. If it works, everyone's a hero. If not, well, you're boss gets to reprimand you, protecting his or her reputation. If it's bad enough, or the politics get particularly sticky, they may need to fire you to save their own skin. It's part of the game if you want to do anything truly interesting and creative inside a big company.

I know.. this has to seem weird to a pure startup guy who hasn't had to do this at a high level in a fortune 500 company. It's how corporate America works though. They are, by nature, risk adverse. The initial response to everything is: Wait. Let's do more analysis. Who's already doing this? What's the CEO think/know about this. Will it make me look stupid if I take this up the chain? You get the idea...Getting something done is really hard inside a BigCo. You have to break a lot of rules and try to avoid the corporate anti-bodies long enough to be successful enough that the guys running the place (usually the CEO/CFO/COO or CTO) buy into what you're doing.

That's been my job inside of companies like Paramount, MCI, Motorola and Apple over the last 20 years. Most successful BigCo's have people like this in them and tend to nurture them (even as they occasionally kill them off). It's just the nature of the BigCo beast.

So, if you're a startup kinda guy who happens to do your thing inside of large (usually) publicly traded corporations, you learn a bunch of behaviors that are very successful at starting new ventures inside BigCo's... and everyone who does this kind of work inside of big companies learns these behaviors, but I'm learning they don't translate so well to true startup land.

Nodding and saying yes to your board of directors 'because they said so' is not a good idea. At least, not if you don't fully agree. Especially not so for an early stage startup. especially if you're new to startups and think they must know something you don't and you do exactly what they say, even when you know in your heart there is likely a better approach, or what they decide doesn't sit well with you but you agree and do it anyway.

What I've learned the last 6 months is you (mostly) take the passive part out of the behavior (you still need to be pleasant to work with), tone the aggressive part down a bit (but not alot), and stick with that. Be up front, move fast, say what's on your mind. If you disagree, say so, and talk it out until you come to agreement.

Things move too quickly and there are a million other things to worry about in a startup. You don't need to bring old BigCo survival techniques from a long lost land with you to the party island of Startup Land. Nosiree... Leave that shit on the boat.

Four Frakkin Cores = Oh My Quad

Holy Burning CPUs Batman! FOUR CORES for $1100!!!! Not just that, but an entire media center system. I picked up an HP Media Center PC m8120n at Best Buy today. It's standard config was 3GB of RAM (yea.. 3); 620GB 7200 SATA Drive; Built in TV Tuner with controls/remote; wireless keyboard and mouse, nice high end video card, Tons of USB and FireWire connections, removable media bay and four frakkin cores.

Did I mention it has 4 cores? And it was $1100? Yea... that...

Here's the task manager screen shot for proof:















This means that the power behind the tools for things like heavy duty encoding at home are now affordable for almost anyone. The age of the professional amateur for audio and especially video creation of content really is only now as far away as the tools we create to make it easy for them. The brain melting costs of SGI's and quad core Mac G5s are a thing of a the past.

This is the kind of power, and the kind of price that any semi motivated aspiring film maker can lay down. Mix that with some $1000 HD (true 1080p) Camera's (see my post on Cheap Gear) and for about $2000-2500.. you've got what Pixar was spending really big bucks on and filling up rooms with not very many years ago.

The price of the gear that anyone can use to create content.. really good content....just keeps getting lower.

That means the barrier to entry (for the bad and the good) get's lower right along with the price.

It's going to take people some time to figure this out and to learn how to use the tools, but in about 18 months or so, I'll bet you see Sin City quality 'amateur' movies popping up all over the place.

Illegal to read the Patriot Act

ohmygodohmygodohmygod......

I read this and was BELIEVING IT until 1/2 way in I thought.. hmmm.. looked a the url (The Onion!) and knew it was BS.

Revised Patriot Act Will Make It Illegal To Read Patriot Act

WASHINGTON, DC—President Bush spoke out Monday in support of a revised version of the 2001 USA Patriot Act that would make it illegal to read the USA Patriot Act. "Under current federal law, there are unreasonable obstacles to investigating and prosecuting acts of terrorism, including the public's access to information about how the federal police will investigate and prosecute acts of terrorism," Bush said at a press conference Monday. "For the sake of the American people, I call on Congress to pass this important law prohibiting access to itself." Bush also proposed extending the rights of states to impose the death penalty "in the wake of Sept. 11 and stuff."

But I thought it was real for a few seconds! I can't believe I thought that. But... I can, because it's not as bad as some of the things that have really happened the last few years and been reported with similar headlines in the New York Times, Washington Post and my local media.

It was downright surreal. I'm both laughing and, like, ya know... throwing up a little about the whole thing

The New Old Media

And so it begins. Google starts acting like a traditional TV network with it's (sort of) attack on Sicko. from The Inquirer:

Here's the recap. Michael Moore's new film, Sicko, goes on general release this week and has been widely applauded by critics, pundits and bloggers - across party lines, interestingly enough - as a well-made and powerful document of the flaws in the American health care system and the providers of that care.

Consequently, the health care industry is taking something of a beating in the popular press, and many would argue deservedly so. Not, however, Lauren Turner of the Google Advertising team - she suggested in a recent blog post to the Google Health Advertising Blog (yes, such a thing exists) that the movie was deeply flawed, and failed to show the health industry in its best light. The answer, she suggested, was for healthcare monopolies to buy ads on Google against the keywords "Michael Moore" and "Sicko", thus promoting the healthcare industry to those searching for information on Moore's film.

Where have we seen this before?

Let's give away a service, say, entertainment... and instead of charging each user for access, let's shift the payment for that service to people wanting to sell their products by pitching them during use of that service.

That's television.

Google (and Yahoo, and any other internet based service that gives away a service in exchange for the selling of advertising) are heading down the same road. And, human nature being what it is, they'll very likely look and act just like Television Networks (and radio and other advertising supported media) more and more as time goes by.

This Sicko flap happened because Google isn't very sophisticated about this (yet). You can bet they'll get sophisticated quickly enough though. In a few years you'll likely be seeing behavior's very similar to what you've seen the TV folks doing for decades. Google (and all the others) may be technology companies in how they operate, but their business is media and advertising. And that's what'll drive their day to day decisions.

It'll seem a bit slimy and evil (like this Sicko thing), but it's really just a young innocent set of companies getting older, more mature and, in the process, losing some of that naive child-like glow. And yea, it's still a little slimy and evil. It'll happen anyway.

Welcome to the new old media!

Pick your iPartner iWisely (or: How AT&T is wrecking the Apple iPhone Experience)

Yet another report of a lousy 'getting it going' experience from Brad Feld with the iPhone.

I've read about 2o of these in the last half an hour. It seems AT&T just didn't think it through very well. Apple's just as guilty. (what is it they say about being able to judge a man best by looking at how he marries?).

Goes to show how you can spend years, 10's of millions of dollars and use up lots of braincells to create an amazing product and STILL, easily, have the users first experience with that product (arguably the most important experience) destroyed by choosing an incapable, immoral or just inept (AT&T, it seems, fit's all of this and more) partner.

just say no to that subpoena

"Bush's attorney told Congress the White House would not turn over subpoenaed documents from former presidential counsel Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor. Congressional panels want the documents for their investigations of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' stewardship of the Justice Department, including complaints of undue political influence."

"Increasingly, the president and vice president feel they are above the law," said Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. He portrayed the president's actions as "Nixonian stonewalling."

His House counterpart, Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said Bush's assertion of executive privilege was "unprecedented in its breadth and scope" and displayed "an appalling disregard for the right of the people to know what is going on in their government."

Gee. Does this mean if I get a subpoena, I can just ignore it? You know.. this could be get really interesting.

Over 30 Age Meme.. this one's getting old

Dave Winer's at it again. He's baiting Fred Wilson into continuing the 'over 30 means you can't do a startup' meme.

Fred should know that Dave's a master at this (especially the baiting part) and has been doing it very successfully for years. For Dave, I suspect, it's fun. A sort of sport really.

The age meme discussion is getting too much play though. I'm gonna sum it up and pack it away:

-Yes, if you're over 30 (or 40 or 50) it's harder to do a startup than if you're under 30.
-Yes, you're harder to 'deal with' for VC's and angels because you've had time to learn up from down. They'll deal.
-Yes, it's likely you'll work less if you're still married with kids. Or married w/o kids. Or divorced with kids.
-Yes, it's only likely you'll work like a 22 year old if you're single or divorced w/o kids.
-Yes, over 30's know more and can avoid potholes under 20's cheerfully bee-line into.
-Yes, if you're willing to find us (single/divorced/healthy/withoutkidsathome) we are gems.

Any money guy who bases a decision on funding primarily on your birthday isn't a funding guy you should be dealing with anyway (even if you're under 30).

Fred knows this. Every top notch VC or angel knows this. And Dave knows it too.

And now... I'm done commenting on this one.