Startups & Business

Last week, a well known silicon valley entrepreneur, Jason Calacanis, wrote a blog post about a few tips for start up companies on how to save money. There were some good things in there. There was one thing in particular however that set the whole blogosphere on fire.

Below is what he said on one particular issue (he later went back and struck out a few things to re-word the point he was trying to make):

“Fire people who are not workaholics. don’t love their work… come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. don’t work at a startup if you’re not into it–go work at the post office or stabucks if you’re not into it or if you want balance in your life. For realz.“

It triggered responses all over the blogosphere like here, here, here and here. These responses have a lot of good points (about how to treat employees, etc) that I agree with. There’s other stuff, however, that I totally disagree with (mainly the “workaholic” concept).

Most people think Calacanis is an idiot for saying what said, believing in what he believes, and doing what he does. However, to his credit, I think he comes out with a very good follow up post about working hard and still being able to “have a life.”

Anyway….this whole storm of controversy got me thinking about how hard i’m working….why i’m doing it…..what it all means….

These last couple months (especially in recent weeks) have been more intense than ever. Intense in the sense that we have A LOT going on with the company. March Madness has kept us super busy (and will continue to keep us super busy during the next month or so). Investors and potential investors always have new questions to ask, conference calls to schedule, travel plans to arrange, and checks they’re begging to give us. Biz dev & partnership opportunities never go away and always seem to be knocking on our door (thank goodness). But above all right now for me….our product development is going 100mph. We have a bunch of big features we are releasing these next couple weeks….and it’s certainly been a lot of work to put it together in the time given. Hopefully it’ll all pay off. A lot of hours and sweat have been shed to make it happen….

I’ve found myself putting in 14 hour work-days during these last couple weeks. I see no sign of that slowing down anytime soon. I’ll usually be at the offices till around 6-7pm. When I get home, II try to exercise, spend some time with my wife, watch a few of my tivo’d shows every once in a while, and do a few personal things….but other than that it’s work for the rest of the night until 1 to 2 in the morning (all this with the only exception being Sunday). Yes, I work most of Saturday…

Yup, i’m exhausted. Doesn’t seem like a super balanced life does it?

Usually all this would imply that i’m not enjoying myself. The reality is that it’s quite the contrary. Would I like to get a few more hours of sleep each day? Certainly. Would I like to spend a few more hours chillin’ with my wife. Yup. Would i like to have a bit more “balance.” Probably.

So why am I doing what i’m doing then, putting in crazy hours? Two reasons.
1) Because I love it. I’m passionate about what we’re doing and i’m enjoying every second of it.
2) I’m perfectly willing to sacrifice (or in better terms: invest) most of my time, most of my resources and most of my brain power TODAY……so that TOMORROW I can have 10x as much of it (referring to time, resources, etc). It’s called an investment.

It’s so that I can sleep a few more hours each day (on a nicer mattress or on a nicer bed or in a nicer home) some day. It’s so that I can spend a few more hours(or a lot more hours) with my wife (perhaps backpacking through Europe or simply just playing board games at home WHENEVER we wanted). It’s so that I can spend more time doing the things I love with the people I love (golfing at Riverside with my family, playing crossfire whenever I wanted with JP, or watching cheesy movies like Enchanted with my wife). It’s so that I can be in a better position to give of myself (talents, time and resources) to those in need; to serve more and not be so stressed about paying next month’s bills. It’s so that me and my wife can get off to a sound financial start early on in our marriage, and invest invest invest….be it in our future kids’ education, future business ventures, or through “teaching men to fish” & philanthropic work.

I’ll probably be doing this (sacrificing a lot and putting in insane hours to start/grow a company) maybe 10 more times in my life. Hopefully with each go at it, i’ll be accumulating more experience, knowledge and more digits in the bank account.

Yup, i’m exhausted. No question about that. It’s fine though…cuz I see the bigger picture. Hopefully there’s a pot of you know what at the end of this rainbow. But more importantly, I love doing what i’m doing!

In my opinion, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with Calacanis’ point of view on working hard and the essential component of enjoying what you do. Nothing wrong at all. I wrote about something similar a while back about Passion.

One of the biggest things I need to improve this year is organization. I’m not horrible at being organized. I’m just not great. Organized people seem to be the most productive. They manage their time well. They prioritize their tasks well. They balance their lives well. They know what they need to get done and they do it. I have got to be better organized.

Too many times do I find myself saying “crap!” because something here or there slips through my fingers and I forget to do it (or never get around to doing). Perhaps it’s an email I forget to reply to. Perhaps it’s a phone call I forget to make. A bill I forget to pay. An idea I never get around to making a reality. A person I forget to visit. A task I forget to perform. An errand I forget to run.

Too many times.

My mission president (the man who presided over my church mission in Recife, Brasil while I was there for 2 years) was a retired Colonel from the Brazilian army. He was very experienced and very wise. He always taught us that to organize is to create. He taught us the importance of making sure things in our lives were organized, well planned out, and in order. If we did that, we would be creating space in our busy schedules to create new things.

As we organize our time we start to realize that we have more time. We find gaps in the day, holes in the schedule where we can get more done. Perhaps new goals to reach, new tasks to perform or new ideas to make real.

This newly discovered “free time” allows us to take a step back and see the bigger picture of our personal lives. It allows us to find what we can make more efficient (kinda like what I talked about a couple weeks ago), where we can improve and what we can change.

It’s this positive change that allows us to progress.

Organization leads to free time. Free time leads to creating (positive change or other things). Creating leads to progress. Progress leads to happiness. Without organization and giving ourselves the time to create, we’ll become robotic. We’ll just keep doing the same things over and over again (in a disorganized manner). And yup, we’ll keep getting the same results…whatever they may be.

To organize is to create. I need to organize my life better this year so I can create more (change, ideas, opportunities, etc). For myself. For my family. For others. For Zinch. For the world.

There’s an interesting article in the New York Times that I ran into the other day that talked about how UPS drivers have eliminated the left-hand turn from their driving routes to make their delivery process more efficient.

I think it’s fascinating. Here’s a excerpt from the article:

It seems that sitting in the left lane, engine idling, waiting for oncoming traffic to clear so you can make a left-hand turn, is minutely wasteful — of time and peace of mind, for sure, but also of gas and therefore money. Not a ton of gas and money if we’re talking about just you and your Windstar, say, but immensely wasteful if we’re talking about more than 95,000 big square brown trucks delivering packages every day. And this realization — that when you operate a gigantic fleet of vehicles, tiny improvements in the efficiency of each one will translate to huge savings overall — is what led U.P.S. to limit further the number of left-hand turns its drivers make.

I love this line: “When you operate a gigantic fleet of vehicles, tiny improvements in the efficiency of each one will translate to huge savings overall.”

Small tweaks here and tiny adjustments there do add up, and can mean a lot of dollars saved.Sometimes it’s hard to find the what, wheres and hows of streamlining different processes (believe me, I know).

But nonetheless, I definitely think there’s something that can be learned from UPS. Eliminating left-hand turns is something that seems so different and so innovative…..yet in reality is something so simple. Any child who didn’t know left from right could’ve probably come up with the idea. How many years has UPS and Fedex been delivering packages? Many decades. Yet it has taken this long to figure out that simply by eliminating left-hand turns makes the process more efficient. Wow.

Sometimes we beat ourselves up and bang our heads against the wall trying to find answers for different efficiency problems. I think the solutions are a lot closer (and simpler) than we might expect.

Just ask UPS. 28.5 million miles off delivery routes, three million gallons of gas saved and 31,000 metric tons reduced in CO2 emissions. All it took was to kill left-hand turns.

It’s so interesting to see the relationship between great design and great products/companies. So many people just don’t get it. Or should I say, so many managers/CEOs don’t get it. Design separates mediocre products from great products.

Every day I visit new websites, check out new gadgets and learn about new products. It sickens me to see some of the ugly stuff out there. Yes, people might still buy it. But usually someone else will come out with the exact same thing but prettier…..and that’s the one that will have mass appeal.

Myspace was the early front runner (and still is), but facebook is quickly gaining ground. They both do the same thing. One is just easier to use, simpler, cleaner design and more elegant. More and more people are recognizing it. Facebook’s growth rate is outpacing Myspace’s. Design is a driving factor.

Ask Steve Jobs. Apple has set themselves apart from so many others simply because of their design. People like to look at pretty things. Girls. Cars. Burgers on the drive-thru menu. It’s all the same.

Today’s marketplace is more competitive than ever, it is very tough to differentiate yourself from competitors. Your product is just like the dude’s next door. The iPod and the iPhone are just like the rest of ‘em. They all perform the same functions and can do the same thing. The difference is simply design. Not just the aesthetics of the hardware itself, but the user interface and the way people engage and interact with it. That’s the difference.

Another example is Ulrich Bez, CEO of Aston Martin. Before becoming CEO of Aston Martin, he oversaw the design and development of Porsche’s 911 Turbo, 968, 963 models. Since Bez became the CEO of Aston Martin, they have celebrated their most profitable period in the company’s 93-year history. “Under Dr Bez, the Aston Martin brand has reached unprecedented levels of global recognition, winning the UK’s prestigious CoolBrands Award for two consecutive years in 2006 and 2007.” The dude knows what looks good and it’s been emphasized from the top. It has clearly paid off.

Great managers and CEOs understand the importance of design and emphasize the critical role that aesthetics play in public appeal. They create products that are both functional and elegant.

What prompted this entry was an interesting blog post I read the other day called Deconstructing a Struggling Start-Up: MyCarpoolStation.com from the co-founder of the company. The company is clearly struggling…pretty much bound to fail. This co-founder shares his story.

…So we began recruiting friends of mine who were “good with computers”. One was a software engineer and the other was a web designer, but neither could commit full-time or buy in 110% into the vision we had. So we decided to outsource our coding to India. In our subjective experience, Indian web design shops are intelligent and cost-effective, but are not creative nor are they on the leading edge of web 2.0. Most importantly though, they are contractors by nature and therefore build websites for their clients, not for the end-user….

Looking at their site almost made me puke. However, after reading their story and learning about some of their struggles, I feel for them. Aside from all their other struggles however, their site never had a chance to thrive, or even survive, with that kinda design. It started from the top, a “non-tech-savvy CEO” who didn’t recognize the importance of design.

Ouch.

There’s a really interesting piece by Bruce Nussbaum that was in Business Week a while back called “CEOs Must Be Designers, Not Just Hire Them. Think Steve Jobs And iPhone.”

Design is popular today also because Design Thinking—the methodology of design taken out of the small industrial design context and applied to business and social process—is spreading fast. Hate me if you will, but I am a believer in Design Thinking. In the world of business, there is no value proposition left for most companies in controlling costs or even quality. All that outsourcing has leveled this playing field. Cost and quality are commoditized today, merely the price of entry to the competitive game. Design and design thinking—or innovation if you like–are the fresh, new variables that can bring advantage and fat profit margins to global corporations. In today’s global marketplace, being able to understand the consumer, prototype possible new products, services and experiences, quickly filter the good, the bad and the ugly and deliver them to people who want them—well, that is an attractive management methodology. Beats the heck out of squeezing yet one more penny out of your Chinese supply-chain, doesn’t it?

Let me emphasize this. I think managers have to BECOME designers, not just hire them. I think CEOs have to embrace design thinking, not just hire someone who gets it. I think many business schools have to merge with design schools, not just play poke and tickle with them.

That’s all I have to say.

P.S. Check this washing machine out. Sexy. Very sexy.