For the last few days, I’ve been in the fantasy world that is Disneyworld. Mashable held its first annual Mashable Connect conference at the Disney Contemporary Resort, and it was fantastic fun.
This post isn’t about the conference though (I’ll post one later). Instead, it’s about the very, very careful attention to detail that makes Disneyworld one of the planet’s most popular destinations. Disney’s attention to detail is a lesson entrepreneurs should take to heart.
Let me give you an example that struck me. After the first day of the conference on Friday night, a large group of us got a behind-the-scenes look at the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride. It wasn’t the presentation or the actual ride that actually got me, though. It was the fact that all the Disney guides and employees actually waved goodbye to our buses as we left Hollywood Studios. There was a collective “awww” that swept our entire bus.
This is a small detail compared to getting a behind-the-scenes look at Tower of Terror, but it’s definitely a moment that most of the conference attendees will remember. And that’s just one of the many details I noticed as a guest of Disney. The greeters say “Welcome back home” when you return for the night. Nobody sells gum anywhere on Disney campus because they don’t people finding any thrown away chewed gum as they walk through Adventureland. And Disney doesn’t generally allow people on the Magical Express bus ride to the airport if it’s less than three hours until their flight because they don’t want to be the ones responsible for somebody missing their flight, souring the entire magical Disney allure.
Disney isn’t trying to build just a brand; it’s trying to create an experience every time you hear Disney’s name. That’s why it is one of the world’s most popular and respected brands.
Entrepreneurs, don’t forget about the little details. Be thrifty, but don’t be cheap. Think about where to add little pieces of happiness and value to your team and to their lives. The little things often mean the difference in attracting top talent and letting them go to the competition. Happiness, morale and business can be profoundly affected the things that seem the most insignificant.
Most people assume that raising money is always a good thing, that it will make your business better 100% of the time. That’s not always true — in fact many entrepreneurs raise money before they actually need it, or raise more than they need. The result is that they give up too much of an equity stake in return for something they never needed.
Raising venture also creates additional pressure to spend it — the best entrepreneurs can resist the temptation to spend just because the money is in front of them, but most people are mere mortals, and they will start spending that money on things they don’t need.
I’ve posted my answer on Quora to this question below. Let me know what you think of it.
Short answer: when it doesn’t need it.
Long answer: Equity is one of the most valuable assets a company can sell or give away. It could potentially turn into billions of dollars and determines who is on the board and who controls the company. Of course, that equity is worthless without the company increasing in value, and venture capital is designed to do that.
If your company makes or already has enough money to achieve your growth goals though, you may not need venture capital. You need to determine what that number is, though — do you need more money to actually grow faster, do you need more cushion to protect against disaster, or are you seriously going to be fine and be able to grow off your own profits?
There are some situations where you should take equity even if you don’t truly need the money. VCs and investors tend to have connections entrepreneurs don’t have, and those are sometimes worth the sacrifice in equity.
That’s why people give a small piece of their companies to people on their advisory board; in return for equity, they are responsible for making introductions, promoting the product and providing sage advice that could change the direction of a company.
“Which makes a better leader, a person who communicates well with other people, or a person who gets the job done?”
While I think the author was hoping people would say that charismatic leaders aren’t as important as specialized professionals/strategists/work horses, the comments surprisingly went in the other direction. And I agree, which is why I added my own answer to the thread.
Below is my response to the question. Let me know what you think of the leadership debate in the comments!
A great leader absolutely needs both skills (communication & execution), but communication is slightly more important, and to explain why, I want to invoke Union Square Venture partner Fred Wilson’s post on what a CEO does (http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/08/…
A CEO does only three things. Sets the overall vision and strategy
of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Recruits, hires,
and retains the very best talent for the company. Makes sure there is
always enough cash in the bank.
All three tasks rely far more on communication than someone who “gets the job done.” Getting the job in these cases is all about communication.
For a great leader, it’s about maximum impact. It was a better use of FDR’s talents to speak to the public and galvanize them towards the war effort against the Nazi than to be in the strategy room all day planning the next military strike, esp. when he has competent generals with more expertise.
Great leaders know how to recruit talent, and they are willing to delegate to that talent. Great leaders get 100 people to be 2% more efficient, which makes a far greater impact than a CEO taking 20% more of his time developing or creating product.
I feel like this question is slightly skewed towards the belief that communication isn’t as important as execution for great leaders, when the truth is that an organization can get by with a leader who is lazy but can galvanize the troops, while an organization with a voiceless leader is destined to fail.
Of course as you’d expect, the responses were overwhelmingly, “yes, of course your can succeed outside of your 20s.” What I found interesting though were some of the examples of success. From edw519 on Hacker News:
Harland “Colonel” Sanders was 62 when he started Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Rodney Dangerfield started writing jokes when he was 15. He finally hit it big when he was 52.
Ray Kroc was 52 when he started McDonalds.
Orville Redenbacher was 58 when he founded his popcorn business.
Ronald Reagan was a B-List actor who was 56 when he became Governor of California and 70 when he became President of the United States.
Grandma Moses was 78 when she started painting.
Tina Turner was 44 when she recorded her first #1 hit.
The entire conversation got me thinking: how do we, as a society, define success? Where’s the line between mediocrity and success? Is there even one?
The truth is this: our obsession with success isn’t the healthiest human habit. I bet fulfillment isn’t possible if someone’s life is entirely motivated by the pursuit of success, rather than the pursuit of passion or pleasure.
Success comes in many forms as well. Some of the most successful people I know don’t have 100,000 Twitter followers or a movie deal, but are extremely happy as small-town parents making an honest living. Their greatest passion are their families and hometown friends.
That’s not to say the pursuit of success is a bad thing; it just shouldn’t be the focus of your life. While you may hope to someday achieve a level of success that will change the world for the better (I know I do), don’t sight of what sparks your passions. If you do that, then success — whatever shape or form it may come in — will follow.
VC and GRP Partner Mark Suster had a fantastic piece in TechCrunch on what it’s like to be an entrepreneur and how it isn’t for the feint of heart.
While I suggest reading it in its entirety, there were two parts that resonated with me. First was his list of qualities/attribute entrepreneurs should have. Here’s the list:
- Not very status oriented
- Doesn’t follow rules very well and questions authority
- Can handle high degrees of ambiguity or uncertainty
- Can handle rejection, being told “no” often and yet still have the confidence in your idea
- Very decisive. A bias toward making decisions – even when only right 70% of the time – moving forward & correcting what doesn’t work
- A high level of confidence in your own ideas and ability to execute
- Not highly susceptible to stress
- Have a high risk tolerance
- Not scared or ashamed of failure
- Can handle long hours, travel, lack of sleep and the trade-offs of having less time for hobbies & other stuff
The other part that struck me was his description of the highs and lows of the startup life, from getting that first round of funding to losing one of your top VPs and a big contract in the same week. We romanticize the startup life here in Silicon Valley, but the truth is that it’s hell, and if you aren’t prepared to walk through fire for your startup, then don’t do it.
While I spend a lot of time on entrepreneurial projects (two iPhone apps and a novel I’m trying to get picked up), I am best known as the Co-Editor of Mashable. I started writing for Mashable in 2009 before becoming Associate Editor in March 2010. Now I am the Co-Editor of a nearly 30-person company, and rapidly growing (by the way, yes, Mashable is my full-time job).
One of the most frequent questions people ask me is what do you do on a typical day? or what area do you focus on or how much of your time is spent writing?. Until now, I’ve never really answered those questions, but I thought today would be as good as any to talk about my life as a Mashable editor.
So what do I do on a typical day as the Co-Editor of Mashable? While my role has evolved considerably as we’ve grown, the short answer is this: I am the counterpart to our illustrious Editor in Chief Adam Ostrow, responsible for helping manage the newsroom, synthesizing editorial direction, finding the news, writing stories, and filling in the gaps whenever they’re needed.
Now for the long answer: I’d say that most of my activities fall under one of three categories:
- Writing: I don’t have a specific focus or “beat” at Mashable. I pretty much write about all of the subjects Mashable covers through the relationships and expertise I’ve built. You could find me writing about breaking news from Facebook or diving into a thoughtful opinion piece on the structure of the web.
- Editorial: I help Adam manage the news room, assign stories, and edit articles (though I want to take this time to say that Brenna and Lauren are amazing editors that make us all look good). I also work and manage a range of editorial projects to support the entire team’s efforts.
- Biz Dev/Strategy: Mashable has a lot of moving parts. While I leave the biz stuff to COO Adam Hirsch and the overall vision to Pete, I’m constantly helping out with events, internal projects, and figuring out our next steps.
There are many other aspects of my job (business relationships, speaking engagements, media appearances, story research, fixing bugs…), but my ultimate goal as Co-Editor is to support the team in any way I can so they can do their job of writing and publishing killer stories. That, I believe, is what being a good editor is all about.
The definition of Anecdotal Evidence, via Wikipedia:
(2) Evidence, which may itself be true and verifiable, used to deduce a conclusion which does not follow from it, usually by generalizing from an insufficient amount of evidence. For example “my grandfather smoked like a chimney and died healthy in a car crash at the age of 99″ does not disprove the proposition that “smoking markedly increases the probability of cancer and heart disease at a relatively early age”. In this case, the evidence may itself be true, but does not warrant the conclusion.
It shouldn’t surprise you that the vast majority of the world’s most successful businesses and entrepreneurs didn’t do it alone. Apple’s Steve Jobs had co-founder Steve Wozniak, Microsoft’s Bill Gates had co-founder Paul Allen, and Google was built by two men, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. And any successful startup needs a driven, flexible, intelligent, and passionate team.
What some entrepreneurs overlook though is the importance of mentorship. It’s not just about having a board of advisers, but building honest and long-lasting relationships, long before you start your own company. It’s about realizing that a good adviser is delighted to help when you give him or her a call. It’s also about realizing that, for the most part, you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. Continue reading →
Watch the first two minutes of this speech I gave at Northwestern (I’ve tagged the part of the video where I talk about it), and you’ll see how I picked the title of this article:
Jason Fried of 37Signals has once again brought down the reality check hammer, about something I keep harping about: profit.
Here’s some business 101:
Revenue – Cost = Profit.
It’s not Venture Capital + Growth = Profit, or Pageviews + Buzz = Profit. Yet in web entrepreneurship, this simple equation doesn’t always click. So Jason Fried wrote about it after an NYT article that’s more than ironic. My favorite paragraph from his article:
“If there was an airline that flew more passengers than anyone else, but lost money on each one, would we call it a success? If there was a restaurant that served more people than anyone else, but lost money on each meal served, would we call it a success? If there was a store that sold more product than anyone else, but took a loss on each one, would we call it a success? Would the business press hold these companies up as business model successes? Would anyone? Interesting, maybe. Promising, sure. But successful? Then what the hell is going on with the coverage of our industry?”
No business is a success until it has a profit. Twitter is a success as a platform, but certainly not as a business. If it can’t prove its viability, it will die just like any other high-profile business.
Tech enetrepreneurs: do yourself a favor and read the entire article, and then watch David Heinemeier Hansson’s Startup School 08 talk, which really shows you why you should care about revenue:
This summer, Mashable (where I am editor) has been part of a major charity drive: The Summer of Social Good. It’s been a huge initiative on our part to use the power of social media and social networks to do some good for the world. The money raised will go to four charities:
- Livestrong
- Oxfam America
- The Humane Society
- World Wildlife Foundation
So far, the Summer of Social Good has raised over $30,000, In two days, the closing event and conference will take place and the Summer of Social Good will end.
That’s why I am going to make the case for donating by this Friday, August 28th. I could list a million reasons why you should donate – and you can come up with a million more – but these seven reasons really call out to me, and I hope they call out to you. Please donate to the summer of social good.
1. Because We Have an Obligation to the World
We’ve taken so much from this world, it only seems natural that we’re obligated to give back to help it. There are millions of people that aren’t even fortunate enough to have a hot dinner, not to mention a computer and an Internet connection. If we don’t take care of each other and the planet we live on, we’re in for serious trouble.
2. Because It’s So Easy to Do
The web’s made it easier than ever to give back. PayPal, electronic banking, and social apps (i.e. Causes). Or, in the case of the Summer of Social Good, widgets:
Yes, all you have to do is click “donate now.” I will give you a strong thumbs-up (or a mini-party) if you do.
3. Because You’d Be Donating to Four Great Charities That Create Major Social Change
If you have never heard of LiveStrong, the Humane Society, Oxfam America, or the World Wildlife Foundation, here’s your quick charitable education. Each cause is beyond worthy of your support:
1. Livestrong: More than 12 million worldwide are diagnosed w/ cancer and 8mil will die from the disease each year. We will end the stigma of cancer and turn cancer victims into cancer survivors, build an international grassroots movement, take cancer from isolation to collaboration and ,together with world leaders, will transform cancer from obscurity to a global priority.
2. Humane Society: Established in 1954, The HSUS seeks a humane and sustainable world for all animals—a world that will also benefit people. We are America’s mainstream force against cruelty, exploitation and neglect, as well as the most trusted voice extolling the human-animal bond. Our mission statement: Celebrating Animals, Confronting Cruelty.
3. Oxfam America: One in six people worldwide now suffers from chronic hunger. More than 2.5 billion people live in poverty, struggling to survive on less than $2 a day—and the numbers are growing. But we at Oxfam believe that it doesn’t have to be this way. If we work together, we can turn the numbers in the other direction. Along with individuals and local groups in over 100 countries, we save lives, help people overcome poverty, and fight for social justice.
4. WWF: Our environment and earth’s future is in great danger. It is estimated that, over 75% of the world’s marine stocks are currently over fished, we lose 36 football fields of rainforest on the earth every minute and we will possibly lose up to 10,000 species this year. NOW is the time for action. WWF needs your help to strengthen global awareness of these issues and ensure that the best possible solutions are implemented for a sustainable future.
You’re saving the world by helping these charities. Period.
4. Because You’re Proving Social Media Can Change the World
Ever hear someone dismiss Facebook or Twitter as dumb wastes of time? This is your chance to prove them wrong.
The Social Media Smackdown and Twestival have been great demonstrations of the power of social media in changing the world. If you haven’t had the chance to show the world that social media really is a driving force in our society with these charities, then now’s your chance with a donation to the Summer of Social Good.
5. Because You Don’t Have to Even Donate Money to Help
Wait, what?! Isn’t the Summer of Social Good a charity drive? Yes, yes it is, but that does not mean you can’t help these great charities via social media in other ways. In fact, my colleague Sharon Feder highlighted 5 great ways to help the Summer of Social Good. I’m going to summarize the first four right now:
3. Watch a Video: Ford is once again displaying its generosity by donating $1 for every video view of the Ford Fiesta Movement video. Watch a video, save the planet.
4. Attend the Summer of Social Good Conference This Friday.
6. Because You Can Help Us Understand The Web’s Impact on Charitable Giving
Social media and charitable giving have been uncharted waters, and we’ve learned a lot from running this campaign. However, your input, thoughts, and donations on the Social Good survey will help improve charitable giving on the web for years to come.
7. Because We Need You
I hope you will support me and the Mashable team in our efforts to change the world for the better. I cannot even begin to explain my passion for making this world better. I hope you have a similar passion, no matter how you choose to make your mark.
I'm an entrepreneur, storyteller, scuba diver, swing dancer, romantic and a man on the move. I'm an advisor to startups (NerdsUnite Productions, Tracks.by, Women 2.0 and others), and I'm a proud alumnus of Mashable. You can learn more about me here.
Ever hear someone dismiss Facebook or Twitter as dumb wastes of time? This is your chance to prove them wrong.
