Zero to One: Peter Thiel with Blake Masters

Peter Thiel's (with Blake Masters) Zero to One has been on my reading list for a while.

A random check on its availability at the local public library revealed it was actually available on the shelves! SO, a quick saunter to 658.11 THI, checkout, done.

At page 21 at the moment. Thus far has been a re-run of the boom-bust Internet 90's. Having been through that cycle myself, didn't learn anything new, but it was down a nostalgic road nonetheless. Including the reminder of the Mosaic browser, which I remember using back in school and building a CGI-based thing to extract metrics from any C/C++ source code you submit to the system.

ANYWAYS, back to Thiel.

So a contrarian view, of his, for startups that's resonated with me thus far:
- It is better to risk boldness than triviality
- A bad plan is better than no plan
- Competitive markets destroy profits
- Sales matters just as much as product

:: More to come ::

Should we stop comparing the current economic distress to the Great Depression?

These are tough times. Millions are out of work, and have been out of work for a long time. Business profits continue to soar, and yet, the median income continues to drop. Especially in this country, the gap between the rich and poor continues to grow. Mirroring the situation in the "old" world, including countries like India (atleast before the economic boom of the last 10 years).

There is much hand-wringing by left-leaning economists of how the only way out of this mess is to mirror policies by Hoover and FDR during the Great Depression. A core principle cited is that of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and other programs that created work for the unemployed, and helped buoy the populace past the economic crisis. The WPA was handled by a social worker by the name of Harry Hopkins, and was effective. The idea being that such a program or set of programs need to occur now too, handled by people who know a thing or two of what it takes to alleviate suffering.

Fast forward to today. Corporations, combined, have more economic clout than nations. Along these lines, was President Obama's decision to have Jeffery Immelt (CEO of GE) to lead the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness a wise one, or not? Only time will tell. But my sense is that we have to roll with the times. By shining the spotlight on a corporate icon to look beyond just increasing shareholder value, but also to the betterment of "the people", might actually work.

Netflix Culture

This is a popular set of slides from Netflix outlining their corporate philosophy. There are many timeless nuggets within those slides.

Culture

Jim Collins: How to Thrive in 2009

Jim Collins: How to Thrive in 2009, Leading Your Company Article - Inc. Article

This was an interesting interview in Inc. magazine.

Collins' basic thesis here is that large corporations are reaching the limit of their being and are instead being replaced by small organizations. Where every individual now has the potential to be their own business org. Especially with the know-how and tools at hand today.

Geoffrey Moore on the evolution of companies

Reading Geoffrey Moore's book titled "Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution"

While reading the book, I'm coming across stuff has particular bearing to my experience with the Response Point team. Response Point was an IP-PBX system built by a small team in Microsoft. (What Bill Gates once called "a small but elite team"). This team operated very much like a startup, built and shipped V1 from scratch in 2 years, and then 2 Service Packs within 6 months of each other. Then on May 5th, 2009, the entire team was eliminated as part of Layoffs 2.0 at Microsoft. The reason cited was that there wasn't a chance for business success "in the forseeable future".

Here are a few of my interpretations based off my learnings from the Response Point experience, and what Moore postulates in his book:

• There are basically 2 business architectures: complex systems and volume systems. Complex systems are low volume high touch transactions but economically expensive. Volume systems are high volume low touch, low complexity but economically inexpensive systems. Complex systems tend to be customized around a target customer. Volume systems on the other hand are targeted for the masses, optimized to meet the 3 basic values of retail markets: price, availability and selection.

  IMO, Response Point was designed to be a volume system but was marketed as a complex system.

• Volume systems require strong branding with a distribution channel that does not sell to customers, but rather allows them to buy.

  Response Point had a mixed branding issue. The units were sold under an OEM brand, with Microsoft (the stronger brand name) as a secondary brand. Also, a VAR model was used to sell the units to customers. In hindsight, one wonders if branding the units as Microsoft, and selling via channels such as Best Buy would have had a more positive impact.

IBM and Intuit working together for SMB solutions

There was an announcement today that IBM and Intuit are teaming up to provide small and medium businesses with bundled software and solutions: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/27543.wss

This is actually well timed, given that the government is pumping huge amounts of money into "the system" via the stimulus plan. And that SMBs are really hurting in the current economy and looking for cost reductions and improving efficiencies.

Also, SMB continues to be an underserved (and poorly understood, some would say) segment.

So all in all, a very smart move by both companies.