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Internet Culture is Just Culture
On my ride to the train station this morning I was tuned into Al Jezera radio. As my mind drifted between the broadcast and my plans for the day I heard the host of the show detailing the role Facebook was playing in an upcoming election in India. A reference point that several years ago would have felt very inside baseball was dropped in passing. As if any cultural event of an significance was going to be well represented on a site that was, not that long ago, just for college kids to poke each other.
Last week while I was in NYC a friend slightly older than me noted that our respective generation was living in an interesting wrinkle in time. We were born into a world without the internet. We remember what rotary phones were. We made mixtapes on actual cassette tapes. We drove to stores to rent movies, buy cds and purchase physical books.
My kids won’t have these analog artifacts as touchstones. Or, in many cases, millstones. They will be the first of a generation born digital and will see the world and it’s possibilities through a very different lens than I will.
Anthony from Hype Machine made the following observation after a recent Skrillex show:
As the room lit up with projections of Call of Duty footage, Nyan Cat animations and sample-heavy bass, I couldn’t stop thinking that this show was among the signs that “Internet culture” is now just culture.
Watching the rise of internet culture crossover into simply culture is a powerful shift. The possibilities of a generation unencumbered by analog thinking presents a huge set of new possibilities and challenges.
Who’d have guessed that an off handed comment from a Skrillex show would capture so much of this moment in time we’re passing through.
On Becoming a Leader
I’m not a big football fan, but there was a piece written about Eli Manning that grabbed my attention in the wake of his teams’ Super Bowl victory last night (note- the article was written in August).
Apparently, Manning was asked if he was the same caliber quarterback as his competitor for the Super Bowl ring last night, Tom Brady.
“Are you in the Tom Brady class? Are you in that type of quarterback?” Kay asked.
“Yeah, I consider myself in that class and Tom Brady is a great quarterback,” Manning said.
The article then goes on to say that this is exactly the kind of chest pounding reporters and fans have been waiting for from Manning:
It would have been so easy for Manning to deliver another boring, politically correct answer to make everyone yawn. But instead, he gave us something he rarely does — a strong opinion. He publicly displayed the type of confidence and fire that an elite quarterback needs to show.
For much of his career, Manning has been criticized on everything from his body language on the field to his leadership skills to his gee-whiz persona in interviews. And now the one time Manning expresses supreme confidence in himself, shows some swagger and answers a question the way he should — like a leader would.
What I found interesting about the article is that it hangs adjectives off leaders that many of the best don’t feel comfortable with- supreme confidence, fire, swagger.
Leadership is a funny thing. Some are born with it, some grow into it and many want it and pretend to ascend to it with shortcuts like an overabundance of unearned confidence, fire or swagger.
One of the most rewarding parts of being an early stage investor is having a front row seat for the personal development of leaders. In many cases, founder’s leadership attributes are blinding obvious to us at the outset. Other times, they’re more subtle and take time to emerge. In each case, the process of becoming a leader is often imperceptible to the person going through the transformation.
Despite all of their progress and personal development, often leaders trap themselves in the mentality they started their venture with. Tho we see their development happening day after day, decision after decision, they don’t.
Then, one day something big happens. And they realize that they have become, in part, the kind of person that others look to for leadership. And that through their process of development they’ve surrounded themselves with people who’ve often believed in them more than they believed in themselves.
The article finishes with a quote from Manning I found telling:
“He (Tom Brady) is a great player. He has grown up and gotten better every year, and that is what I am trying to do.”
That’s what it means to become a leader.
It’s not supreme confidence, it’s not fire and it’s not swagger. It’s doggedly and unglamorously trying to improve day after day, year after year.
The real challenge of becoming a leader is permitting oneself to let go of the old “them” and accepting and owning the person and leader they’ve been developing into all along.
What’s In a Number?
I’ve not been able to shake a recent exchange I had with an entrepreneur.
Though very interesting, their company was quite early, hardly launched and pre-funded. As we talked, their enthusiasm began to bubble and proceeded to boil over. Our conversation soon turned to their very aggressive fundraising strategy and I began to push back on the thinking behind it. After a fair bit of back and forth an exasperated look fell on their faces. Then, in a fit of excitement, their hands hit the table dividing us as they exclaimed, “but we’re going to be a billion dollar company!”
This notion of a billion dollar company is steeped in silicon valley lore. It’s a maxim, a battle cry and a wish rolled into one and tucked under the pillow of every founder each night in hopes the startup fairy will deliver the goods.
Yet, there’s a funny thing about this number.
Quite often, the companies that state it as an early goal fail while those that end up being the wildest of successes, start out with a very different objective.
Of the many companies who have hit, or are marching towards that valuation, a significant number of them didn’t start out with such a lofty goal.
Take, for instance, Tumblr. In a recent interview with the Guardian, David recalled his early ambitions for this service many of us have come to love and rely on:
“I thought I could totally beat the system and have this cool product that I would never need to raise money for, I would never need to sell out, because [Tumblr] would bring all the attention to this [consultancy] business where people would ask us to build them a website,” he says.
Only last year, he says, he could see the computer screen of every Tumblr employee in its New York office. Now the company operates on two floors and is nearing 100 staff. “The real threshold was last year,” he says. “For a long time I did not want to be [employing] more than a dozen people.”
In the pre-funded days of Foursquare I recall a similar conversation with Dennis. As we talked of the potential impact of the service and the kind of company he aspired to build he confided that he never wanted to have more than 10 employees.
Foursquare has over 100 employees now.
This week, on the heels of filing the S1 heard ‘round the world, Eric Reis pointed to the first article written about thefacebook.com. In the article, Zuckerberg talks glowingly of his weekend project and revealed his ambition for it:
While Zuckerberg promised that thefacebook.com would boast new features by the end of the week, he said that he did not create the website with the intention of generating revenue.
“I’m not going to sell anybody’s e-mail address,” he said. “At one point I thought about making the website so that you could upload a resume too, and for a fee companies could search for Harvard job applicants. But I don’t want to touch that. It would make everything more serious and less fun.”
Say you’re going to change the world, say you’re going to disrupt an entire industry but don’t say you’re going to be a billion dollar company. Starting with that as your stated goal, chances are you never will be.
Our First Pull Request
A few weeks back we put OATV.com and it’s underlying code up on GitHub.
At the time, I thought it would serve as a repo for sharing some of the work we’d done in designing our new site. And my hope was that it would be helpful for someone looking to build a site with a similar look and feel.
Then, last week, something happened.
In the wake of our TimeHop funding announcement, Benny submitted the first official pull request from someone not on the OATV web team. The request was simple enough- add TimeHop to the portfolio section of our site. Renee was quick to merge the request.
Then Jesse submitted another pull request.
This morning I sent a note to Renee about how cool this was that people were interacting with our repo in ways I’d not anticipated. To which she responded:
If I was trying to get noticed I would totally submit a pull request adding my company to the portfolio page. I wonder how long till that happens.
Now my gears are churning.
If I were a founder looking to build a relationship with a firm, this is an entirely new outlet to do so.
I’m fascinated to see where this goes.
Companies as Communities
Last night I had the good fortune of having dinner with a great group of folks from a diverse set of backgrounds. As we went around the table making introduction, each of us were asked to share one thing we’re thinking hard about right now.
As the the intro wave made it’s way around the table it eventually crashed upon the CEO of a $40B enterprise software company. As he paused, I was prepared to hear some riff on the reinvention of the enterprise or copen source or cloud or something of the like. But then he gave an answer that surprised me.
What weighed on his mind most wasn’t his market, his competition or his customers. It was his company culture. He didn’t speak about management styles or magins, he talked about his concern for building a community of people with shared values and goals. And how to empower that community to unlock all of the potential they have on the markets and customers they were aiming to serve.
As the night went on we talked of the role technology is playing in eliminating a raft of jobs that once required human hands. The potential impact of a properly implemented Siri service alone could wipe out whole organizational functions.
But as the talk of dire straits for humans rolled on, I couldn’t help but think back to the kind of company the $40B CEO was crafting. And it struck me that perhaps as more work gets automated, we can focus this newfound energy on building companies that are more human.
This concept of companies as communities feels like an important and implementable one. I’m going to let it rattle around in my head a bit more from here on out. And I think startups would be well served to do the same.
A Thought on The Next Steve Jobs
MG has the canonical post on Apple’s first earnings report of the post Steve Jobs era. Read it and follow the links he includes. Cliff Notes version- the results were staggering.
As it turns out, these earnings were reported on the same day the State of the Union address was delivered. Steve’s widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, was in attendance and that was an unlikely coincidence given the following shout out:
You see, an economy built to last is one where we encourage the talent and ingenuity of every person in this country. That means women should earn equal pay for equal work. It means we should support everyone who’s willing to work; and every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs
Politics aside, maybe that little thought on the next Steve Jobs is true.
But, maybe what the Apple earnings tell us is not that we need the next Steve Jobs but that there are potentially 1,000s of the next Steve Jobs already among us in need of the next Tim Cook.
Our Investment in TimeHop
About a year ago, while on a trip to NYC, I had back to back to back meetings at Pastis. For those who know, this isn’t that far out of the ordinary.
What was unusual about this particular morning were the two names that kept surfacing in each of the three meetings- Wegs and Benny. Apparently these two were making waves at Techstars NYC HQ, and I was instructed to keep an eye on them.
Then I heard what they working on and lost interest in just two words- Craigslist Killer.
When we finally did connect, Techstars demo day had passed and the team of Wegs and Benny made a concious decision not to pitch at the event. Their project, Friendslist, wasn’t seeing the uptake the’d hope to see and, tho raising money for it may have been an option, they weren’t feeling it.
As we settled into sloppy bbq sandwiches on the Highline, we talked about potential pivots for friendslist, but it soon became clear they had another project that had captured their imaginations.
At a Foursquare hack event, the two had cooked up a little service that emailed Foursquare users past checkins called 4squareand7yearsago. As it turns out, I was a huge fan of the service. It was an email I looked forward to reading every morning. The email also encouraged me to engage more deeply with the supported services knowing that the trail of tweets, checkins and photos I was leaving today would be resurfaced rather than fall into oblivion at the end of some virtual wall.
As we talked on the Highline that day it became clearer and clearer to me, and to them, that there seemed to be more going on here than just an email.
We were witnessing a shift in how people were documenting their lives. It was digital, it was distributed, it was chaotic, and, in the moment, it felt ephemeral. But, when recombined at a future date, it was magical and moving in unanticipated ways.
Our lives are progressively playing out online and one single metaphor, be it a timeline, a clock, a journal or an email really can’t really do it justice. The data that ecompasess our lives holds within it the a range of product possibilities from an evocative daily newsletter to eternal life.
With our investment in TImeHop, we’re hoping to explore all of the possibilities this new form of personal time travel presents.
A Router in Every Pocket
In the early days of Microsoft, Bill Gates and Paul Allen had a shared vision for the reach and impact of this new class of devices. Their ambition was to make these new devices so accessible that there would be “a computer on every desk and in every home”.
As their vision became reality, the world changed. New companies and entire industries descended on this new platform and rose to prominence.
A similar form of ubiquity has dripped off our desks and into our pockets.
We’re familiar with the transformation that’s happening as a result of the shift to mobile computing. But there’s a second order effect that’s beginning to trickle onto the market now, but will become a torrent soon enough.
Two examples from the headlines last week.
Nike introduced their Fuel Band- Two years of development came to light last week as Nike pulled the wraps off their latest addition to the Nike+ line. The band is a very slick little device that weds the display features of the fitbit with the styling of the Jawbone Up. One important distinction the Fuel Band has, in contrast to its two competitors, is a bluetooth connection. The resulting difference in user experience is notable.
No longer will a user have to batch upload their data to a backend webservice with an added dongle or accessory. With the Fuel Band, there can be a steady stream of realtime updates, routed through a paired device. The impact of this subtle distinction is an important one from a device design perspective as well from the user experience side.
Adafruit introduced Flora- Adafruit, long a purveyor and advocate of open source hardware introduced a new wearable computing platform and set of accessories targeted at makers, designers, hackers artists and engineers. One notable feature- a bluetooth module.
Don’t get me wrong bluetooth, in and of itself, is not that innovative (it’s been around a very long time). What we’re seeing is the second order effect of these new mobile computing platforms.
In the past, if an engineer wanted to build a new device they were forced to make a difficult decision. Embed native connectivity, hello SPOT, and all of the added cost that goes along with it or rely on intermittently available, but cheap, wifi. With a device in every pocket that’s capable of routing devices and data onto the network, there is a third option.
And, I believe, last week’s news was just the tip of the iceberg for a groundswell of new devices and activity that’s to come from this new, ubiquitous, connectivity.
An Altogether New Effect
In the wake of this week’s online surge to combat SOPA and PIPA, the New York Times found Chris Dodd, the current head of The Motion Picture Association of America, in a particularly reflective mood yesterday.
Looking back on his decades as a beltway insider, he posited that this recent wave of online activism was unlike any he’d encountered. From the article:
But the startlingly speedy collapse of the antipiracy campaign by some of Washington’s savviest players — not just the motion picture association, but also the United States Chamber of Commerce and the Recording Industry Association of America — signaled deep changes in antipiracy lobbying in the future. By Mr. Dodd’s account, no Washington player can safely assume that a well-wired, heavily financed legislative program is safe from a sudden burst of Web-driven populism.
Mr. Dodd said that the entire industry was surprised by the intensity of the objections that arose in the last couple of weeks. “This was a whole new different game all of a sudden,” he said. “This thing was considered by many to be a slam dunk.”
“This is altogether a new effect.” He could not remember seeing “an effort that was moving with this degree of support change this dramatically” in the last four decades, he added.
Mr. Dodd is right, this is an altogether new effect- in Washington.
But, as with most overnight sensations, these network effects aren’t all that new to those of us who’ve been deeply engaged in their development.
We, as a community, have been making lurching, halting and, occasionally, spectacular progress in developing our understanding of these networks. At times, we’ve channeled that understanding into the silly, the stupid, the surreal, and, occasionally we’ve channeled them into the spectacular.
WIth any new tool, it takes time and practice to develop the understanding and skill necessary to wield it for maximum impact. I believe we’re finally hitting that critical inflection point of understanding and empowerment.
And that, I believe, is the new effect that Mr. Dodd has noted.
Every really good, really experienced CEO that I know shares one important characteristic: they tend to opt for the hard answer to organizational issues. If faced with giving everyone the same bonus to make things easy or sharply rewarding performance and ruffling many feathers, they’ll ruffle the feathers. If given the choice of cutting a popular project today, because it’s not in the long-term plans or you’re keeping it around for morale purposes and to appear consistent, they’ll cut it today. Why? Because they’ve paid the price of management debt and they would rather not do that again.
God knows how much money we’ve given to Obama and the Democrats and yet they’re not supporting our interests. There’s been no greater supporters of him than we’ve been from the first day and the first fundraisers continuing until he was elected. We all were pleased. And, at its heart institutionally, Hollywood supports the Democrats. Now we need the administration to support us. This is a very important time for Hollywood. The issue at hand — piracy — is a legitimate concern. But Google and those Internet guys have been swiftboating the entertainment industry by saying we’re trying to shut down the Internet just because we don’t want them to advertise pirated movies. As for other claims, we make 24. We don’t make national security problems.
or as @clayshirky says “if we don’t get to buy the laws we want, we’ll take our money and go home”.
