A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here.
Why is it that founders who start out by claiming they want to stand against evil, just connect people, give people a new way to earn, or in some way make the world a better place, so often morph, to be polite, into jerks?
Money? Power? Drinking their own media Kool-Aid?
All of the above?
Or is it that, as opposed to morphing, given the right circumstances, even if transient, they always were jerks?
People, especially in our age of self-branding, work hard creating their image, so when considering it, caveat emptor.
Because what you see ain’t necessarily what you get.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here.
I love the story of startup Be My Eyes, because it highlights an entrepreneur who really is changing the world and illustrates the good that comes from a lack of funds.
I read the story in the Lean Startup blog and thought it worth sharing.
“Be My Eyes is just a simple app that basically makes a video call between two persons (…) we have volunteers who sign up and say ‘Yes, I am available to help a blind person see something.’”
The volunteer presence adds an extra layer of independence to the visually impaired person’s life, rather than worrying that they are interrupting or imposing on someone.
All the volunteers do it look at their screen and tell the caller what they see, such as the ingredients in a recipe.
Be My Eyes boasts a global network of volunteers speaking a variety of languages and is always recruiting more.
The great thing is the volunteers can respond from wherever they are and the calls only take a few minutes. If they can’t take the call, no problem, since the system calls multiple people for each request.
Be My Eyes has a number of programs to encourage company involvement, including a way to provide product support to vision impaired/blind customers. This is a great opportunity for startups that want to give back, but have neither time or money to donate.
As to the advantage of minimal funding, it kept them from the typical tech error of over-engineering and forced them to keep the app very simple. Good move.
They had an overly long list of features they wanted to put into the app in the beginning, but which lack of funds prevented. (…) Be My Eyes hasn’t had many requests for all the “brilliant ideas” they had in the beginning. “So maybe it was a really good thing we didn’t overload the app.”
Be it as an individual or involving your family, friends or company be someone’s eyes, you’ll be amazed at the difference doing so will make in your life, as well as theirs.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here.
For years the media has been proclaiming that the great majority of young people want to be entrepreneurs or work for a startup, as opposed to a larger/older company, because startups were “cool.”
Research suggests entrepreneurial activity has declined among Millennials. The share of people under 30 who own a business has fallen to almost a quarter-century low, according to a 2015 Wall Street Journal analysis of Federal Reserve data. (…) Two years ago, EIG’s president and co-founder, John Lettieri, testified before the U.S. Senate, “Millennials are on track to be the least entrepreneurial generation in recent history.”
What changed?
Maybe they learned that wanting to and doing it are very different. That they will work far harder for themselves, even if they are well-funded, or that startups fail far more often than they succeed (90% vs 10%).
A survey of 1,200 Millennials conducted in 2016 by the Economic Innovation Group found that more Millennials believed they could have a successful career by staying at one company and attempting to climb the ladder than by founding a new one.
But maybe there is something else going on.
Maybe they have figured out that the world doesn’t need another social network / dating app / review site / etc.
Maybe investors have realized that monetizing through ads isn’t a good road to sustainable profitability, considering the push for more European-style privacy.
Or maybe, just maybe, reality has reared its ugly head and they’ve figured out they don’t have enough experience or know enough to create enterprise solutions for real-world needs.
Matt Krisiloff, the former Y Combinator executive, added that the opportunities “to start compelling start-ups,” for college students without industry-specific knowledge, “has vastly shrunk.”
What they found is that the average age of a startup founder is about 41.9 years of age among all startups that hire at least one employee, and among the top 0.1 percent of highest-growth startups, that average age moves up to 45 years old. Those ages are taken from the time of the founding of the company.
Maybe our media-inspired view of entrepreneurs is a reflection of the warped views of Silicon Valley as engendered by VCs.
VCs believe they have “pattern recognition” abilities that they simply don’t have. Instead, they rely on suppositions and stereotypes that don’t match the underlying data on startup success. The same reason why older founders are ignored by the ecosystem is the same reason why women and other minorities struggle in the Valley: It’s really not about what you build, but what you look like while building it.
Maybe the entrepreneurs of the future will look more like our real world in all its diverse, messy glory.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here.
Most founders love to talk about leadership and there’s little question that they consider themselves leaders.
But leading is a lot more than creating a vision and raising funds.
Leading means modeling the right choice and who better than Wally Bock, my favorite leadership guru, to explain what that really means.
Leadership by Example
“There is no leadership without leadership by example.”
I heard that bit of wisdom from the lips of Captain James Westley Ayers, USMC. But I only remember the quote because of the example he set.
My father said that, “You’re alive as long as they tell stories about you.” Many of us who knew Captain Ayers are still telling stories about him half a century after we experienced his leadership. The big lesson for me was: leaders care for their people.
That’s Marine doctrine. A leader has two jobs. You must accomplish the mission and you must care for the people. But this is more than “leaders eat last.” This is a way of thinking about your responsibility for the people you lead.
One set of Captain Ayers stories revolve around the “meat he couldn’t use.” Our unit had lots of young, married Marines who were living off base, trying to make it on the couple hundred bucks the Marine Corps paid us, and whatever their spouse could bring in. By the middle of the month, it was always hard times. It was time for peanut butter sandwiches and fried baloney for dinner.
And then Captain Ayers would show up at the door. He always asked, “I wonder if you can help me?”
The problem was something like “I’ve got a whole bunch of meat I can’t use, and would you take some off my hands, as a favor?” Sometimes he bought more than he could handle. Sometimes his freezer had broken. Sometimes he bought all that meat for a reunion that got cancelled. Whatever it was, he asked if you would be kind enough to take some meat, say enough for a couple of months of meals, off his hands.
By the time I encountered Captain Ayers, the Marine Corps had drilled into me the idea that a leader‘s goal is to accomplish the mission. Captain Ayers showed me what it means to care for your people. Most of that caring wasn’t dramatic. He encouraged and suggested. He told you the truth.
I experienced that when I wanted to apply for a program that required his recommendation. He spent a half hour telling me that he wouldn’t do it because I wasn’t ready and explaining why. Then he took another half hour to tell me what I had to do to be ready in a year.
I haven’t always lived up to Captain Ayers’ example, but it’s always been there as a shining standard for me. That’s what leadership by example is all about.
When I got out of the Marines, and started in business, I encountered something very different. I won’t give his name, because I hope he’s reformed since I knew him, I call him “My Worst Boss Ever.”
Worst Boss Ever’s example wasn’t so great. He was selfish, haughty, and mean. He relished catching people doing something wrong and belittling them in public.
Leadership by Example Is Like A Superpower
Leadership by example is a superpower. It influences the people you lead and affects the choices they make. Like any superpower, you can use it for good or not.
The people who lead you early in your career have a huge impact on the way you lead. My research in police agencies produced “leadership trees” of good supervisors who had learned their craft working for other good supervisors early in their career.
You’re Going to Set the Example, So Set A Good One
I was fortunate. I experienced Captain Ayers and other effective leaders before I experienced my Worst Boss Ever. When I encountered him, I knew he was a jerk, and how he acted did not model the leader I wanted to become.
You don’t have any choice about setting the example. That’s built into human nature. The only choice you have is whether you will set a good example or a bad one.
Bottom Line
There is no leadership without leadership by example. You don’t have a choice about that. Your only choice is whether you will set a good example or a bad one.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here.
The mantra of startups is “change the world.”
That slogan seems to be the one thing that startups have in common; they all claim their product/service will do it.
No matter how silly, invasive, unnecessary, or just plain creepy.
One of the creepiest (say the comments) is MobiLimb.
MobiLimb is a robotic finger attachment that plugs in through a smartphone’s Micro USB port, moves using five servo motors, and is powered by an Arduino microcontroller. It can tap the user’s hand in response to phone notifications, be used as a joystick controller, or, with the addition of a little fuzzy sheath accessory, it can turn into a cat tail.
Creativity should be celebrated and innovation can be a wonderful thing — when it isn’t just plain stupid.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here.
From the start of my career, especially as a headhunter, AKA, recruiter, I have done my best to drum the following mantra into the heads of both hiring managers and candidates.
Life is LARGE; career is but a small part of the whole. A major problem is created when the adjectives (and, therefore, the attitudes) are reversed.
My greeter walked me to one of the complex’s main arteries from Hacker Way toward Main Street. “The campus was designed to be a cross between Disneyland and downtown Palo Alto.”
If everything is at work why leave?
Maybe to have a life?
Of course, before you can leave you need to get your work done and it’s hard to be productive with all the distractions.
“It’s no wonder people are working longer, earlier, later, on weekends, and whenever they have a spare moment,” Jason Fried writes in the new book It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work, which hits the shelves in the US today (Oct. 2). “People can’t get work done at work anymore.”
Forbes recently published a Quora response to the question What People Won’t Tell You About Working At A Top Tech Company that presents both the pros and cons of working for a company with the main goal of arranging its perks and compensation so people won’t leave.
Not just won’t leave, but can’t leave.
It’s not just the perks, but the compensation. Even those willing to take a reduced package will find other companies hesitant to hire them. And when the downturn comes, as it always does, they will be in an even worse position.
A couple of weeks ago Ryan accepted a new position and I wrote his new company, Spatial Networks, up as a role model.
It’s proof companies don’t have to turn themselves into a field of poppies to attract and retain great talent. We’ll look at more examples next week.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here.
Most people don’t think of founders as being bosses, including themselves, but, of course, they are.
And as bosses they are responsible for the success of their team, as well as the company.
As well as being a boss, the vision that is the basis of the company originated with them, which frequently leads them to one or more of the behaviors that make them what Wally calls a “bossy boss.”
“Boss” has gotten a bad rap. Many people associate that term with a domineering, order-giving jerk. I think they’re confusing the term “boss” (a person responsible for the performance of a group) with “bossy.”
If you tell everybody what to do, all the time and everywhere, you’re going to wear yourself out. Great bosses know that caring for their people includes helping them develop their skills, abilities, and decision-making. They can’t do that if you’re always telling them what to do. But, if you can stand back and absorb the mistakes that go with learning, people on your team will take a lot of work right off your shoulders.
What’s the alternative? You make yourself crazy trying to do everything and know everything. Morale plummets, and so does productivity.
You Don’t Have Control Anyway
Nobody tells new managers this important truth. When you become responsible for the performance of a group, your power goes down, not up. Oh, sure, you can punish people who don’t do what you want with whatever means your organization will allow.
That’s more like revenge than like power. And, if a team member is willing to absorb the punishment, their behavior simply won’t change. Productivity and morale will plummet.
The only thing you can control is your behavior: what you say and what you do. That doesn’t seem like much, but it’s enough. Use what you say to set clear expectations and to coach, counsel, and encourage. Use what you do to reinforce what you say and set the example.
Edward Deci and Richard Ryan defined “autonomy” as one of the three key drivers of intrinsic motivation. David Burkus reviewed studies of how people respond to increased or decreased control of their life in his great book, Under New Management. He summarized them this way:
“The researchers found a significant correlation between employees’ perceptions of autonomy and their overall performance. In short, the more managers cede control over what to do and how to do it, the more employees do it well.”
People Work Better When They Have Control
Edward Deci and Richard Ryan defined “autonomy” as one of the three key drivers of intrinsic motivation. David Burkus reviewed studies of how people respond to increased or decreased control of their life in his great book, Under New Management. He summarized them this way:
“The researchers found a significant correlation between employees’ perceptions of autonomy and their overall performance. In short, the more managers cede control over what to do and how to do it, the more employees do it well.”
Bottom Line
The best bosses aren’t bossy. They know that being bossy makes them crazy, that they don’t really have control anyway, and that most people work better when they control their work.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,