A VC in Vacationland

Image via CrunchBase

Thanks to Dharmesh Shah, a serial software entrepreneur and the founder and CTO of HubSpot for these insights:

 

"If you have time to read one document on the topic of startup culture, you should read through the NetFlix “culture deck”.  If you have time for two, read through the NetFlix deck twice — it’s that good.  It is so good, in fact, that I’m surprised when I come across entrepreneurs that haven’t seen the deck yet.  These are people that read all sorts of great material on the web to help their startups. 

So, as a public service, I’m sharing with you the best presentation on startup culture I’ve ever seen (including one we’ve created ourselves at HubSpot).

Insights From The NetFlix Startup Culture Presentation

These are just some of the points that jumped out at me.  I’m sure you’ll have your favorite parts too.

1. Comes right out and says who the “freedoms and responsibilities” applies to:  In their case, salaried employees only.

2. Lots of companies have nice sounding values, but real values are defined by who gets rewarded and who gets let go.

3. You can articulate what you are, and are not trying to do.

4. You can separate what must be done well now, and what can be improved later.

5. You treat people with respect, independent of their status.

6. You accomplish amazing amounts of important work.

7. You focus on great results, rather than process.

8. You have a bias-to-action and avoid “analysis paralysis”

9. You create new ideas that prove useful.

10. You find the time to simplify so you can stay nimble.

11. You are quick to admit mistakes.

12. We’re a team, not a family.

13. A great workplace is stunning colleagues.

14. You behave like an owner of the company.

15. Prevent irrevocable disaster.

16. “There’s no clothing policy at NetFlix, but no one has come work to naked lately.”

17. Act in the company’s best interests.

18. Flexibility is more important than efficiency in the long term.

19. The best managers focus on context rather than control.

20. Titles are not very helpful.

21. Compensation should be about external market value, not internal parity.

22. In some groups, there may not be enough growth opportunity for everyone.

23. Individuals should manage their career paths — not the company."

There is no "Easy Button" one can buy at Staples to infuse culture into a company. Some say it just happens. That reminds me of the Yogi Berra "If you don't know where you are going, you'll get there" quote. Culture is something serious to work on is any size company. You may not initially need a hundred page Powerpoint on the subject, but it should be a frequent topic of conversation at team and management meetings.

 

You need a name for your business?

 One iPhone developer put the task of naming his e-reader out to the crowd through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, and $27.50 and 500 responses later came up with the name iReadFast.

That’s even cheaper than the Silicon Valley tradition of getting a few friends together with a few cases of beer before godaddy.com crushes your dreams.

Image via CrunchBase

Google has spent a lot of time and money trying to figure out why managers at Google are successful. The results are in–and they are ingeniously simple.  Be nice to people and spend a lot of time listening to your direct reports. These are good rules for any company, small or large, to follow.

Thanks to the New York Times for the summary below:

Image via Wikipedia

I'm sitting at the gate at Logan waiting for my flight to Harrisburg when the "cancelled" announcement comes over the PA…after a two hour delay.  Wonderful.  US Airways says they can book me via Philadelphia with a 1230am arrival in Harrisburg, but the Phil-Harris segment is also "delayed", meaning likely cancelled. No thanks. Why do I ever book flights with a 25% on-time percentage and a 25% cancellation rate??

On the way back to the car, I decide to get a shoe shine. The guy is my age and pretty slow, due to a few disabilities. But he is plenty smart.  Asks what I do and understands it. I don't remember how we got on the subject but he starts talking about his philosophy of life.  All this is in a 5 minute shoeshine remember…

Anyway, he say "I'm a winner every day.  Some days, I win more than others, but I am always a winner, every day". At first, I thought it was some hokey Dale Carnegie stuff ( I did see if the idea had proponents on Google-no returns), but the more he talked and the more I thought about it the more I liked the idea. He said it took him a long time to realize that being a winner every day made it possible for him to show up and be a shoe shine guy for 40 years. His parents could not afford college for him, few scholarships were available for minorities and he had to get out and support the family at 16 years old. Some days, he said, he made only a little money. Other days, he made a lot of money. But he always felt successful because he paid his bills, had no debt and no thoughts of retiring.  He liked his job too much. It was an inspiring discussion at the end of a bad day for me.

I try and live my life one day at a time, accomplishing various goals depending on the priority at hand.  But I had never thought that I was really trying to be a winner every day, like the shoe shine guy.

The "winner every day" philosophy is an interesting way of looking at running a start up. The challenges are huge and the tasks infinite.  Why not just try and be a winner every day? That could mean focusing on the highest priorities that need finishing, or doing a task that you know will yield positive results, or doing something you keep putting off, or breaking down a difficult job into manageable segments and completing one or two a day? 

What I like best about the "winner every day" philosophy is the postive optimism. No matter how little or how much you get done in a day, you can claim some accomplishments (or you better work a few more hours) and go home happy. Why not?