What I love most about the newsletter format is that it encourages discussion. In response to my last post, Put The Money On The Screen, a founder emailed me with some points that I want to share and discuss.
The founder rightly pointed out that there’s nuance to the idea of putting the money on the screen. Spending and cost-cutting decisions depend on the stage of the company and the unique circumstances.
Here’s part of what the founder wrote:
The problem with cutting off-screen costs is that the results over time mainly go to investors (because the great majority of the company over time is investor owned), and proportionally less to employees and common shareholders, which are asked to bring the sacrifice. Just be mindful of what asking people to sacrifice means.
This founder was speaking from a personal experience: being asked to take a ridiculously small salary after raising a significant Series A from a top-tier firm. The founder went into debt as a result of this, and it took a long time to recover.
While I haven’t heard both sides of the story, I do think putting a founder in that situation is harsh. VC firms should make sure founders and CEOs aren’t under undue financial stress—it’s in everyone’s self-interest for the CEO to be able to focus on building the company. Additionally, some expenses that might strike VCs as superfluous may be legitimately necessary for team morale or culture. Those are best judged by the company’s leadership.
All of this depends on the stage of the company. At the later stages, the tradeoffs will change. But regardless of stage, employees bear the brunt of putting the money on the screen during tough times. I’ve seen this happen in film, where the writer/director bears the highest cost in “making it happen,” and first-time founders are often in the same situation.
While that’s the nature of the beast, it’s something worth pausing on. It is not always the right decision to cut some “off-screen” costs. The best decisions may emerge when investors and CEOs have honest conversations that recognize the impact and consequences of these decisions.
It was so jaw-dropping that I’ve thought about the concept several times. Upon investigation, I learned that termites are considered “eusocial.” Eusociality is defined by cooperative brood care, overlapping generations living within a colony of adults, and a division of labor into reproductive and non-reproductive groups. There’s a form of caste system and individual members of the group sacrifice their freedom and independence in favor of the common good.
There are different points of view on whether humans are eusocial (one example thread). Primarily, though, we can’t organize our society like termites because we care deeply about individual agency. But that doesn’t mean we don’t get into a lot of arguments about the common good.
This little science fact led me down so many paths.
It made me think about politics — it’s usually the elderly that commit the young to wars, quite the polar opposite of termites (although, old and young termites are equally effective fighters, which can’t be said for human beings).
And the climate — it is, again, the elderly who seem to be sacrificing future generations when it comes to climate change. I am clearly not talking about sacrificing lives, but we aren’t even willing to sacrifice SUVs that give us 18 miles per gallon (!) and quarter pounders that are terrible for the environment.
It is perhaps more relevant now with Covid and the controversy about what’s best for everyone during this time. It made me think about the nuclear family, which is still controversial, apparently, with David Brooks arguing that it was a mistake. At this moment in time, more people are likely to agree with him as couples are returning to cohabitate with their parents to better manage the burden of 24×7 childcare combined with 24×7 work.
Every generation seems to be dealing with Covid differently. The elderly are afraid for their lives and health, but are, generationally, sitting on wealth they were able to build during their lifetimes. Meanwhile millennials are facing unemployment having never built a solid foundation to cushion them. The fears are different, the approach is different, and we are all in conflict.
Which brings me to the question — do termites make the sacrifice because it is “their” colony, the one in which they grew up? Much like (most) grandparents would for their grandchildren? Would termites display the same behavior if they were dropped into another colony?
Termite warfare, ageism, and self-sacrifice for the greater good — it’s an idea that expands, and it’s so broad that it leads to a lot of interesting, interconnected things. The concept is also straightforward to understand, unexpected, and emotionally resonant. All the reasons why this idea stuck with me for months.
What random, yet utterly fascinating things do you find yourself thinking about?
At some point in 2002, while I was still relatively new to eBay, I found myself sitting in a room with the exec staff discussing something strategic. Many of the details of the meeting are now blurry, but one little event is still crystal clear in my mind. People were talking, discussing options with opinions flying around, and I said something. I don’t remember what I said, but I do remember the reaction to it.
One of the senior leaders—a lovely, but brutally honest and blunt man—said, “That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.”
There was a pause in the conversation. My heart stopped. And then the conversation continued, while I sat there, stunned.
I felt in my bones that I must speak again, in this meeting, to get over that comment, to move on and retain the confidence that I can contribute. I practically forced myself to speak again. Sort of like falling off a horse and getting back on.
I can guarantee you that the only person who remembers that moment now, 18 years later, is me. It’s actually a moment I’ve thought about several times as one of the key learning moments in my life.
The reality is that we will all be wrong sometimes, or at the very least, perceived to be wrong. It’s the price of speaking, the price of thinking, the price of writing. So what should we do? Never speak, think, or write unless we are certain we are right? That would erase your voice from the conversation.
I wrote a post last week about Quibi, and I purposely made a bold statement about how innovative this new film platform is. The innovation is not just the short-form content (or chapters) that Quibi uses; it is creating an interaction between the form factor of the screen (the phone) with the content for the first time in cinema.
Many (most?) people disagree. Some even wrote to me privately to tell me why I was wrong. I love the engagement.
Am I sure that Quibi will succeed? Absolutely not. But I am glad they are trying something fresh, new, and innovative, and I certainly hope they will succeed because I love the bold approach. I’ve been watching chapters for the past two nights and it’s a slick user experience.
As investors, we need to be both right and contrarian to make a return for our LPs. We will often be wrong, too, because the path to success for any company is filled with so many near-death experiences along a very winding road. But we can’t be afraid to make an investment.
Similarly, we can’t be afraid to talk or write. I will be right sometimes. I will be wrong sometimes. What matters to me is the thinking and the engagement. And I prefer to have a hopeful and optimistic view of the world, where I am rooting for success rather than failure.
Speak up. Claim your seat at the table. So what if you are wrong sometimes? We are all wrong sometimes. Shake it off and move on. I promise you that you are the only one who will remember that moment (even days later). Ultimately, your voice matters. Don’t erase yourself.
During my monthly women’s alumnae circle one of the participants raised the question on how to be an inspirational leader. Her manager was “incredibly inspirational” and she wanted to be seen that way, too.
“Inspirational” seemed to be this nebulous, possibly unattainable characteristic that was floating above us all… hard to achieve and only bestowed on the select few.
It forced me to think about inspiration. What is it? What does it mean, and is it some “secret skill” that some people are born with?
When I was young in my career, I, too, thought that inspiration was a sort of “magical power.” But the more I worked with inspirational leaders, the more I realized that it is often much simpler than that. It’s basically the same elementsevery time.
Whenever someone inspires you, this is what they’re doing:
They conceive of, and communicate, a big vision. They’re also able to articulate what the world will look like when this vision has been accomplished. Often, they are painting with a broad brush and using words that connect with you. By doing that, they show you how the world, or the company, or all of our lives will be better when this vision has been realized.
Then, they can explain why OUR team is the team that can make this happen. It may be hard, but we are the right ones, the capable ones, and goddammit, we will do it.
They break down the journey into digestible, logical chunks that will help the team execute. The BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) is broken down when they show you which stream of work YOU will own. This is where they make it clear you are valued and how your contribution is important to the goal.
Throughout the process, they motivate you to become the person who can accomplish the goal. You may hit roadblocks, because what we are trying to do is hard, but you are not alone, and they will help you become the person who can accomplish this.
Doing this well requires a base of trust. In the absence of a personal history together, they can say certain things to establish some kind of trust. Those things are basically:
We’re in this together
We may fail, but I won’t hang you out to dry if we do
You won’t be punished if we don’t get there
I’m going to help mitigate the consequences of this risk that we’re all taking
If they succeed in their effort to inspire you, you become a motivated member of their squad. You are excited about the vision. You trust this leader knows how to get shit done, and get you from point A to point B. You also feel motivated to work your ass off to do your part, and if you hit a roadblock, you trust that the leader will help you solve it and support you in your efforts.
Finally, you believe you’ll be better off in the new vision, than in the current state of the world. That’s successful inspirational leadership.
These are the tangible actions that a good leader takes to be inspirational. What’s unsaid is that at the base of all this, the person has to be a good person, who genuinely cares about the people. As Jerry Colonna says, “I believe that better humans make better leaders.”
Last weekend, I watched the Dieter Rams documentary. It’s an incredible film, full of moments that make you pause. But Rams said one thing that really stood out: “Design only works when it really seeks to achieve something for humanity.”
This struck a chord with me because I believe that startup ideas work best when they seek to achieve something for humanity. It’s the underlying thesis for Spero Ventures.
This goes beyond product and to the gestalt of the startup itself. As a founder, Dieter Rams’ principles are relevant to designing both your product and your company.
Here are some of the ways Dieter Rams’ principles apply to building companies and not just products.
Good design is innovative
“The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.”
You already know that your product should be one that advances the world with your innovation instead of being yet another me-too product in a crowded space.
The same should be true of your company. While a great product will attract great talent, a company that is innovative, that pushes the boundaries of how work and collaboration happen, that experiments with how culture evolves and permeates, is also important.
To attract the very best, your company—how you build and run it—should move us toward the world that you want to live in.
Good design is honest
“It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.”
Your product keeps its promises to your customer. It’s equally important to have that honesty as a company.
The only thing you have is your reputation, with your customers, your employees, your collaborators, and your board. Hold yourself to the highest standards. Do not do anything nefarious (like collecting data without their permission, misrepresenting facts etc.) Build the honest, exceptional company you want to see in the world.
Good design is long-lasting
“It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society.”
Values stand the test of time.
Figure out your values and let them guide your company. What is it going to take to make your company last? Build your company around a core set of values that are everlasting.
Good design is thorough down to the last detail
“Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the user.”
Be particular. You know it will show in your product. It will also show in how you build your company.
The best founders are fanatical about their culture, who they hire, how they hold their meetings. When the founders take this approach, it permeates the whole company and everyone focuses on the details that will delight1.
Good design is environmentally friendly
“Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimizes physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product.”
Climate change will be the defining problem and opportunity of our age. Even if your product doesn’t directly affect climate change and sustainability, your company should. The decisions you make should be driven by a deep care for the only planet we have. It’s a responsibility that every person has, and every leader should embrace.
These principles are design principles, sure. They are also incredibly useful leadership principles that can help with company design. Startups that think through some of these will be better equipped to deliver great product, hire the best people, and create value over the long term.
They are also life principles.
Watching the documentary was incredible because these are not just the principles Rams uses to design products, but rather principles he has used to design his own life. He lives by these principles. The documentary allows you to see into his life, his house, his desk, his garden and how he uses his time.
The style of the documentary reflects the content beautifully. The way the documentary is shot (minimal, sometimes in extreme close up, always with a locked down camera), how it is edited, and presented is very much in keeping with Dieter Rams’ design principles. It’s beautiful, minimal and captivating.
On a film set, every worker is hand-picked to be there. Usually, you get hand-picked because someone on that set knows your work. They recommend you because you are good at what you do and because you are a pleasure to work with.
The tech/startup world is not too different. As work evolves, I believe that more of the job market will shift toward this tour-of-duty model, in which people come together to solve a specific problem. Increasingly, the future of work will look much more like a film set.
To reflect this project-based work, we need a new kind of resume. This requires surfacing a different set of data—not just statements by the individual, but validation by the actions of those who work with them.
This requires two key changes to how the world of resumes works:
1. The new resume should capture the fact that great people get picked repeatedly to be on ambitious teams.
If I, as a director, choose to work with a producer or cinematographer repeatedly, it means I respect their capabilities and enjoy working with them. I am vouching for them with my actions. This data is gold1.
Similarly, in the tech world, I might hire the same engineer for multiple startups. By hiring her repeatedly, I’m vouching for her with my actions. Ideally, her resume should highlight the repeat engagements she’s earned, because the biggest validation by any work colleague is “Yes, I would choose to work with you again.”
When someone is always selected, it’s because they are great. As the world moves to project-based work, this will be the key signal.
2. The new resume needs to capture the value created, even in a short time.
While people may only participate for a short period of time (1-2 years, 2-3 months etc.), they may still have an outsized impact on value creation. So, the new resume needs to capture the value that the person created, which is weighed more highly than their tenure. (By the way, we also need a different compensation system for this, but that’s a topic for another post).
The new resume could make work better for everyone
Here’s how:
Shorter projects lower the bar in a good way: When a team is hiring for a shorter project, it makes it easier to be considered or to break into an industry. Instead of having to be vetted by dozens of people, all you have to do is convince someone to let you onto a project, knowing that if it doesn’t work, you will be let go.
Creating value is what’s valued: Fast learners, those who learn and apply those skills quickly, and hard workers who are collaborative and move things forward, will be rewarded. Impressing the people you work with will ensure you’ll be brought on again.
Flexibility increases: Teams can bring on and let go of people as needed. And people can commit to shorter-term gigs or fire clients that don’t fit what they are looking for.
Right now, I don’t see a good tech solution for this. If you are working on something like this, or spend your time thinking about this, please do get in touch.
IMDb, for example, has the data on how many times people have worked together but doesn’t do anything with it ↩
On Sunday, Carol Dysinger won the Oscar for her short documentary, Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl).
It’s a delightful film that will make you both laugh and cry, but this post isn’t a film review. It’s about a life lesson that I learned from her.
In 1977, when Dysinger was twenty-two years old, she won the coveted Student Academy Award. Frank Capra, famed director of You Can’t Take it with You and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, presented the award. It was (and is) a big deal — of all the student films made around the world, only one can win. Everyone, including Dysinger, assumed her career would take off like a rocketship from there.
Of course that stuff only happens in the movies.
Dysinger’s real story was more of a struggle. She has worked in Afghanistan for almost 20 years, making documentaries that won prizes and grants from top festivals. But nothing compared to her early win.
I met Dysinger in 2009 when I joined a grad film program where she was the editing professor. She was working on a film called One Bullet Afghanistan, which, more than twelve years later, she’s still working on.
It was during this time that Dysinger was asked to make a film about the girls of Skateistan — a school where underprivileged kids learn basic academics and how to skate. She accepted. Then this film, this side project, just took off.
Learning to Skateboard was nominated at major festivals and won at Tribeca and the BAFTAs before winning the Oscar for Documentary Short Subject.
43 years after Carol Dysinger won the student academy award, she won the grown-up version.
When I was her student, Dysinger’s favorite piece of advice was that becoming a filmmaker would take “a whole lot of not quitting” — a phrase she repeated during her acceptance speech.
A whole lot of not quitting. That’s great advice for pretty much anything. Everything takes much, much longer than we think it will. We get frustrated, upset and dejected. After six years or ten, we give up.
Sometimes quitting is the right choice. But often, those who reach the pinnacle do so not with shortcuts or luck, but because of a whole lot of not quitting. For decades.
I’m thrilled to see one of the good ones succeed — four long decades after her first taste of success.
Like many fathers, mine had a list of aphorisms he’d repeat. One of his favorites was “You come with nothing and you go with nothing.”
Last year, I got the middle of the night phone call every immigrant fears. It was too late to say goodbye. Landing in Chennai, coming home, and seeing him, so alone and still, the memory of his words resonated strongly.
This week, I’m in India again to mark the first anniversary of my father’s passing. One of the unavoidable side effects of this trip is being forced to think about life and purpose.
My father will be remembered for starting a company that focused on innovation and excellence, establishing environmental and worker safety standards much ahead of its time. More importantly, he’ll be remembered by employees for recognizing their contribution as vital to the organization. When the company was awarded the Deming Prize, my father took top management and union leaders to Japan so they could all accept the prize together.
He’ll be remembered for his creativity and love for tinkering, creating a go-kart from scratch while a student at IIT, Madras. And for taking apart the Nano, one of India’s new generation of small cars, slicing through the body and putting it back together to make it even smaller (and fully functional). More importantly, people will remember his infectious joy at solving a challenge he set for himself, his curiosity, his unwillingness to give up, and, despite his deep appreciation for the effort that created the ideal car for the country, his delight at having bettered something hundreds of engineers had worked on.
He’ll be remembered for his obsession with photography. For the incredible images that captured the scale and devotion of religious festivals of Madurai (as in the photo above), and the detailed and intricate ones that captured the delicate beauty of flowers. More importantly, he will be remembered by the people he taught to be photographers and by the people he impacted with his photography.
In a world where leaders are criticized for putting profit above all else, he will be remembered for how he lived with complete integrity.
My Father
What we leave behind are not just the things we create, but the enduring impact of how we do our work and pursue our passions.
It’s something I have thought a lot about this past year and that I will continue to think about in the years to come.
My father took nothing with him. But between the coming and the going, he left a lot behind.
A few days ago, The New York Times published an article about Usha Prabakaran — AKA the “pickle queen” of India. She wrote and self-published a niche, cult classic book with 1,000 pickle recipes from around India. I really enjoyed the article as it combined my love for pickles, my hometown of Chennai, and impressive women.
It’s also an article about an entrepreneur, and there are a number of useful lessons for those of us in the business of building businesses:
1. Bootstrapping to product-market fit is a great path to follow
But over the next two decades, “Usha’s Pickle Digest,” self-published by an unknown author, with a first print run of just 1,000, became a cult classic in India and its diaspora — praised for its precision and scope, celebrated on blogs and podcasts and hunted down in shops, where it sold out.
2. Be disciplined about product scope and get it out there; avoid feature creep.
In her book, Ms. Prabakaran limited herself to 1,000 recipes. When I finally got my own print-on-demand copy of “Usha’s Pickle Digest,” through Amazon, I was dazzled.
3. Focus on the goal. Learn what you need about other industries in order to accomplish the goal.
Ms. Prabakaran, now 64, became known as India’s “pickle queen,”but she wasn’t interested in monetizing that title. “I know nothing about publishing, and I was never interested in selling books,” she said at her home in Chennai. “My job is to keep the past alive.”
4. Sustainability is important.
A straightforward “anti-waste” chapter includes recipes for plantain skins, jackfruit seeds, ridge-gourd peels and lime leaves, which often end up in the compost heap. While restaurant chefs make headlines now for cooking less wastefully, pickling has always been about saving the scraps, developing flavor and texture with ingenious frugality.
5. Be laser focused on what actually matters. And you get to decide what matters.
Ms. Prabakaran is small-framed, with a wicked sense of humor and a big, throaty laugh. Her forehead is dimpled where the tumor was removed, close to the hairline, and she has no interest in reconstructive surgery.
“People care too much about looks,” she said with a shrug. “If I have any spare time, I want to work on my books.”
6. Don’t rest on your laurels. Move onto the next release, next product.
Ms. Prabakaran is at work on a second book, turning her attention to Indian rasam, a kind of soup.
7. Leave your customer feeling intense joy
The pickle did what all great pickles do: It revived me with a ripple of salt and acidity. The grainy oil tickled with chiles and citrus. It had the effect, with every breath, of filling my lungs with more air so I could breathe more deeply. And it made everything on the plate taste bigger, stronger, hotter, better.
“Isn’t it absolutely dynamite?” she asked. The question was rhetorical. She was grinning.
8. Founder-market fit is important. Do the work to know your space.
Ms. Prabakaran was hooked. She apprenticed herself, learning to turn jars in the sun so the fruit dried evenly, and to combine new and old tamarinds to balance out their acidity levels. She made so many pickles that she often gave jars away to friends and family, who begged her to write down a few recipes and share them. As she tried to standardize the recipes, her project became increasingly more ambitious.
9. Be unstoppable and don’t take no for an answer.
She spoke with publishers, and when none were interested in her idea, Ms. Prabakaran decided to do it herself.
10. Mission matters. Find the “why” that is bigger than yourself.
Ms. Prabakaran worried that without documentation, the gradual loss of this knowledge was inevitable — that more and more people would make fewer and fewer pickle varieties, until eventually, the expertise was lost.
“The reason for writing the book was to ensure that the vast culinary heritage of this land stays on the map,” she said.
11. Be resourceful to get what you need. 12. Focus intensely on the product your customers will see. You need to know it in extreme detail.
“My friends called me a crafty devil, because I could wriggle a pickle recipe out of anyone,” Ms. Prabakaran said. After she narrowed the recipes down from a catalog of 5,000, she tested each one in her home kitchen three times — a more thorough process than is used for many glossy cookbooks from big publishers.
13. Ignore the doubters, they may sometimes be friends or allies.
Friends who had supported her pickle book were skeptical — was there really so much variation when it came to rasam? Would she even be able to find 1,000 recipes this time around? And why devote a whole book to something so ordinary?
14. Be willing to do the hard, unglamorous work to make something great.
Ms. Prabakaran was undeterred. She sat down to write a love letter to rasam as a genre, extolling its value and declaring it worthy of celebration. Then she spent 10 years researching it, gathering and testing recipes, documenting patterns and anomalies.
15. Ignore the gatekeepers, work around them.
Ms. Prabakaran plans to self-publish the book in March. She wants to make it easy for cooks to find, right from the start, even if that means giving it away for free.
Entrepreneurs come in many forms. Ms. Prabakaran has displayed so many of the traits that make an entrepreneur successful. I recommend you read the article yourself. In addition to new lessons you may find, you will get a peek into a fascinating world.
I now own the pickle book (thanks, Amazon) and I’ll be on the lookout for the book on rasam. I’m not a great cook, but I always want to support the entrepreneurs who inspire.
David Brooks wrote about his efforts to improve social isolation with his project, Weave:
The first core idea was that social isolation is the problem underlying a lot of our other problems. The second idea was that this problem is being solved by people around the country, at the local level, who are building community and weaving the social fabric. How can we learn from their example and nationalize their effect?
Brooks found these “weavers” all across the nation. When you can connect people around shared interests, common goals and mutually-experienced problems rather than the things that separate and divide them, you build communities.
This is something we think about since one of our key investment areas is human connection. So how can we use tech to do this better? Technology scales and can cross local/geographic boundaries. And it can be used to form deep relationships (remember Twitter in the early days when you formed friendships?). How can tech recreate the feeling of presence and attention? The feeling of a small group intimacy? If we can do this, we open up such interesting ways to make people feel less alone.
The only tweak I’d make to Brooks’ article is his statement that “We precedes me.” Relationships and compassion can live side by side with the idea of self-interest and self-expression. It’s should be in my own self-interest to want my community to thrive and be healthy because I live here. One does not have to precede the other and when we realize that we are all inter-connected and have to coexist is when there will be balance.
