Is pairing impairing?

You need shareholders, for sure.
Do you really need co-founders?

Saturday was Third shooting session of The Big Project aka TBP. Out of the four originally planned, only three startups showed up. Not that I'm complaining, three stratups were far enough for my SaturdayStartup delight.

The reason one of the startups didn't show up is because the three co-founders couldn't agree on the message they wanted to present.

It made me think of entrepreneur and leadership. And what stroke me was that quite often, once entrepreneurs have their "Great Idea", they start with selecting a co-founder (sometimes several) and then eventually they build a team around them.

Probably because at the early stages of the company, entrepreneurs a rarely able to propose any salary. So they propose bits of their Great Idea, and end up with co-founders instead of shareholders.

We all agree that startups require the combination of complementing skills. And quite often it goes like "the tech genius & the sales wizard" are proud to present you...

But then, the startup has to pitch in front of VCs, customers, potential partners etc. and the need (and the demand) for THE startup representative rises and could strike hard.

Who's going to be the Startup Spokesperson?
The Tech Genius (most of the time the core idea's genitor) or the Sales Wizard (whose best friends are often the first customers/partners)?
And then eventually - hopefully - who's going to grab the laurels of success?
(I have to admit, I never saw an argument about who's endorsing failures...)

Shareholders are proud of your success and encourage it. It grants them with great ROI.
Co-founders work hard and want their share of spotlight.

I believe and have seen it several time: the success of a company, its growth and expansion, is a single-person story. The story of the founder, the leader able to build a strong team around his/her ideas, with people excelling in areas where he/she doesn't.

On the other hand, I have witnessed extremely frequently the failure of great ideas and companies, due to resentment and fights for power between founders. It's sad. And could be avoided.

Sorry guys, but there aren't that many successful "tandem-like" companies.

That's why I think pairing can actually impair your company.

What do you think?

The Big Project - Let's meet innovators and start with video games

Here's a big project of mine: over a month and a half period, I'll be interviewing and shooting videos of startupers from Paris. I call this project "The Big Project" aka TBP.

While moving forward in my geeky-2.0-life, I met those guys through my personal connections (no comment ;-)) and a couple of discussions were enough for me get fully enthusiastic about their projects and to propose them the "Big project". It somehow pleased them:-)

Now, we're just in the early stage of TBP and written impressions and videos won't be ready before a while, but I want to share my first impressions after the first round of videos.

Shooting are scheduled on Saturdays, (as I do TBP on top of my job :-)) and therefore have been baptized the SaturdayStartups.

Prepping & shooting have been... EXHAUSTINGLY FUN! First impressions so far:

• First obvious common factor is enthusiasm - Well, of course it is. Those guys (very dramatically sorry but no gals met, so far...) just want to change the world. I mean what the fuss of creating a company if you only want to duplicate something existing, duh?
  
  
• Second: innovation - The four first startups we videoed on SaturdayStartup#1 , have come up with never-seen-before ideas, products and services. Either B-to-B niche solutions or B-to-C services that will - I swear - really stun you.
  
  
• Third: diversity - Yesterday I met startups working in very different fields: B-to-B, B-to-Xpert, B-to-C in the field of finance (ThinkStraight), telco (stealth mode...), IT (Hereda Technologies), process automation (Kedeal). Their profiles are also stunningly different: from fresh-graduate to over 30-year experienced guys, each of them dropping (very) comfortable employee positions, to make their project come true. Wow.
  
  
• Richness directly linked to the diversity of those founders' profiles. Some of the entrepreneurs we met yesterday have been head of development in some of the most famous international companies, consulting / legal practices... Makes you feel humble(r) and is extremely energizing :-)
  

I knew the risk existed. But here I am: contaminated.

Keep posted to see how illness develops.

I want my iPad

Unlike most the comments I've red since THE keynote, I want my iPad!

But I remain puzzled by the quantity of moaning and bitching comments that overflowed the internet, while "mass media" such as TVs and radios were so embarrassingly enthusiastic.

Being the mother of an adorable, though noisy teenager tribe, the online world reaction really sounded to my ears as the reaction of a spoiled child.

My favorite comment remaining: it's just a big iPhone that doesn't allow you to phone.

Duh!

Anyway, I can't wait to get one! Maybe just one thing to fix before I buy it though: how to print ?


lol!

One size doesn't fit all

I've been recently discussing a lot with friends of mine launching their own startups. I love those guys: they are full of an impressive positive energy, each of them working hard to change our way of working, living, inventing new ways...

Sooner or later I'll have to present them in this blog.

For now, I want to talk about one of the (many) common issues they are facing: recruiting talented people. They find it a nightmare... at best.



Key pain points:

- Lack of the startup culture that blossoms in the Valley - particularly in Europe.
- Existing job boards misfitting their needs: overload of out-focused resumes for any open position posted and lack of internal time and resources to sort and deal with them
- The inner time of startups ticks far too fast for most applicants: the job was to be done yesterday, so how could startup afford to wait for an extra period of 1 to 3 months (common length for periods of notice) for the person to come on board
- Looking for highly skilled and experienced people while the standard startup package can't compete with the apparent security of working in a big company.

Keeping the discussion further with my enterpreneur-friends, they all confess that higher the position they want to fulfill, the bigger the nightmare.

And then eventually, they identify the right person. Most of the time she/he holds a similar job in a huge company. They must recruit this person: she/he is the "Messiah" who will solve all current issues and enable the startup to cross any chasm and eventually succeed to change the world.

The seduction game starts.

It takes them weeks, if not months - but they keep on - The Messiah MUST join. And eventually he/she joins.

Here starts the real trouble:
When you've spent many years in big companies, you're accustomed to processes, to precise job description, to structured annual planning, to deal with budget, resources and support teams. Not to mention car allowance etc. Basically everything that a startup cannot / shouldn't have.

From Day #1 the Messiah gets on board, disillusion strikes hard:
- you're now on the fastest track of your industry: little time to assess, evaluate, discuss every single decisions
- you're on your own to produce and deliver
- you must re-invent your job along with the evolution of the product and its market fit
- you get little to no support
- your budget is a joke

When everything turns that sour, there's only one solution: stop the experience and go on each one his side.

Well then the TRUE nightmare begins: it costs huge time, money and energy to get rid of a Messiah-type of co-worker. Exactly what a startup cannot afford to waste.

Listen to Hjalmar Windbladh CEO of Rebtel, while presenting his experience as serial entrepreneur at Seedcamp in 2009. It's hilarious

Seedcamp Week '09. Day 1. Navigating the Start-up Rollercoaster with Hjalmar Windblah from Seedcamp on Vimeo.

Truth is: One size doesn't fit all :-)

Survival Kit: How to be 2.0 parents in 8 steps

Along with the invasion of the 2.0 shebang in our lives, my tribe develop some ackward behaviors together with the most repetitive & cryptic yells (kids usually don't speak - they're more comfortable at yelling). Usually it goes like that

- "Muuum can you tell Doris to give me the computer - It's my turn!"
- "Muuuuuum! computer's dead: I cannot install the ultimate extension of my *IM* (replace by any - we have them all) - C'mon , Mum! How can I dare writing without the latest emoticon set?"
- "Muuuum! computer's dead again: it says I cannot access the "latest ultimate gore" site, my schools pals told me to look at"
- "Muuuum! Help! for god's sake, somebody, heeeeeeelp!"

After a while of the kind, I've come to consider that I should put together the ultimate survival kit for us, poor savvy-elders, facing when not fighting against the tide of juvenile 2.0 experience.

First let me tell you what DOESN'T work
My great experience in IT project managements, quite naturally led me to set the standard dumb-user procedure. The one that goes like :

1. Learn to categorize demand (from real disaster recovery to nice-to-have user experience enhancements)
2. Attribute tickets (from "Time to go to bed! -meaning 'gosh, that one is tricky, I have to think about it" - to "calm down, here is your math exercice", not forgetting "How on earth do you think you'd fail being a better person if I don't buy the newest WoW extension?')
3. Enrich the knowledge base - ask each ticket holder to fill in a form and only answer the repeatable bugs
4. Close tickets

And you know why it doesn't work? Well... it's far too "1.0" oriented. You cannot answer them if you don't actually learn from them and share true experience. Being 2.0 parents or just parents of 2.0 kids is the same matter as usual: protect, upbringing, set and discuss limits, keep the line open of ANY discussions.

Now, here's the 2.0 parents Survival Kit:

1. Explain and Demonstrate: take time to present how you think things actually work. "My teacher says Wikipedia's rubbish. Information isn't certified nor verified. Unreliable." Don't go nuts. No harsh word to the teacher. Take some example out of a field he/ she knows by heart and check.

1. Share: the latest blog post you've read on Swine Flu / How to be a rock star using the Internet / what's Social Media / coolest tool you've find while browsing during lunch pause at the office... Surprisingly enough, sharing good stuff usually lead to receiving, in return, good stuff they've come accross :-) and ultimately - believe me or not - to passionate discussions.
   
2. Engage vs. respect: Would you even think about opening the letters your kids receive or sneak into their diaries? Of course not. Now, how do you handle it when you're on the same social network (ie Facebook)? The most efficient solution I found is to apply the same respect you have in real life (letter, diaries etc.), while sharing as much as you do in real life: publish pictures upon common agreement only, comment anything "public" status etc. and to try to go any further. Keep the communication going :-)
   
3. Bashing management: Guess what? Kids are as nice and gross on social networks as they are in real life. Can you believe it? Yes, I'm sure you can. Now when we learned about an anti-my-beloved-daughter facebook group, the situation had to be managed right away. Good thing is there's always a real person behind things like that. We discussed a lot about it and my daughter just went and talk about it to the FB group owner, who turned to be a girl from my daughter'sclass. Let's call her "Jennifer". Actually Jennifer felt really sorry about how things had turned and amplified - out of control she said. She removed the group the following day. Interestingly enough, both girls are now friends and have turned into kind of FB sentries, trying to regulate their environment on Facebook...
   
4. Real life stalking: while we could handle bashing with discussions, actual stalking couldn't be handle like that. Twice, one of my kids has been harassed via phone texts and the bad guy was lingering in front of school, following up to the front of our house, and insulting. We tried discussion and then eventually fix it with the police.
   The tricky thing about real-life stalking based on 2.0 life is that kids don't necessarily feel at ease with mentioning it. As in real-life they feel they are responsible for it.
   2.0 parents MUST tell them, and infinitely repeat this CANNOT be admit. Give your kids any means / ways to let you know... share, engage, keep the line open :-)
   
5. e-reputation management: based on the two latest items, the e-reputation management is a logical next step to discuss and clearly establish. Don't mention their future professional life - They are teenagers, remember? Do they give a damn about their future professional life? And, do we have any clue about what it'll look like, anyway?
   As I present it in a former post of mine, 2.0 life is just a natural expansion of their real-life: just explain they should behave online the way they do offline - with the highly-acceptable exception of being a powerful bad witch on WoW :-)
   
6. Anti-spam education: the hell with chain letters! They're about to get there... harsh work, I can tell you!
   
7. Highly responsive customer service: yeah, parenthood is a full time job. Now it goes to 2.0 life as well. Don't let them down while they experience trouble with the 2.0 shebang. They won't forgive you :-) And if you can't help them straight forward, you can bet someone else had met (and hopefuly solved) this issue before: google it :-)
   

Huh well, nothing real new, just new tools, new experience, extended privacy... Just don't miss that train. They're going so fast on these tracks that you might well lose them if you don't bother assisting.

Drawing from "geek and poke" - extremely funny blog- I'm not sure I attributed correctly it's CC work - if not, my apologies, the licence was written in German.

Social media vs. Propaganda

Hey guys! You know what?

I got a great news for you!

Social Media holds social in it... and therefore relates to individuals... with (most of the time) more than one field of interest. No kidding.

(Yeah I know how you feel, no need to thank me. I'm proud to release this secret to you, to bring some light in this age of darkness).




You think I'm overstating this?
Well, I wish I was.

I recently had intense discussions with friends, who were literally sick of the non-business related tweets of some of the folks they're following on twitter which I was claiming as "salt of the info", the extra compound that makes you listen to what another person's saying.

One of the major argument was based on: on social media, one must keep a strong firewall between personal and professional life. I have to admit that I had ignited the discussion with one of my recent re-tweet of a statement of the kind, adding in my RT that I violently disagreed.

So let me explain this in two steps:

1 - Social media relates to individuals not to propaganda.
Most companies on twitter / facebook etc. do take advantage of their employees' own pages / network and followers. Aren't they?

Even though companies do have a corporate account, it is their employees who actually enrich
any announcement thanks to the comment they post on their personal accounts. Leveraging their own network to deliver the info.

Right?

In my profesional life, I follow quite a bunch of marketing, social media, Open Source and ECM experts. Those I'm really fond of are those who, on top of their area of expertise, tweet on what really matters to them.


Here's a recent example (Damien is one of Nuxeo's customers and an active community member). His initial tweet enabled me to discover about a worldwide 24-hour observation campaign simultaneously conducted by 35 radioastronomy observatories, in order get redefined, global and extremely precise space map.

(More info in French here and here in English)

2 - Imposing rules to an evolving phenomenon is at best a waste of time, at worst an incredible waste of time.

I'm not comfortable with the emerging trend that accompanies emerging social tools: declare and impose rules and code of acceptable (and non-acceptable) behaviors.

Very not comfortable with that. Going this way is missing the point of what social media is about.

Social media are new channels for individuals, allowing real-time one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-one exchanges vs. the asynchronous tools we had so far (email, "static" websites...). We shouldn't expect the former behaviors of asynchronous tools to duplicate with social media.

My feeling is it'll settle accordingly to the way each of us behave in real life: by field of interest, by geography, by gender, by music preference, by family... and if you don't actually go naked to fill in the tank of your car in real life, I doubt you'll pose in the nude on your Facebook page. And even though I deeply regret it, deviant behaviors will exist on social media the way they do in real life.

To wrap-up with my inital RT that allows such (great) discussion, let me tell you:
If my boss / company/ RH people / recruitment company (past, present and future) solely base their perception of my value as a professional on comments or pics I would have broadcast on my Facebook pages / Twitter / LinkedIn... then at least they'd get a comprehensive picture :-)

(popart pic from: http://popartmachine.com/machine/daily/092208/Lichtenstein-style-pop-art/Woman-Whispering-to-Man-pop-art.jpg)

What if good enough was actually enough?

I went lately to one of Eric Ries's leanstartup seminar, in Paris.

Very inspiring and thoughtful as expected. Some of it reminded me of Balzac's "The Unknown Masterpiece": an artist, never satisfied with what he considers his life's masterpiece, keeps on amending it during years. When half mad he finally shows it to a friend, the poor fellow has to face the lamest doodle ever.

The Unknown masterpiece is amongst the most famous novel challenging the sense and the meaning of Arts.

Now, transpose it to IT. Especially to innovative IT. You know, those products and services that have and will undoubtedly change the way we work, the way we communicate, our relationship to others etc.

- Craiglist: the most popular online classified ad site in the US ? The poorest UI and functionnalities we've ever seen = 20 million people visit the site each month, viewing and self-publishing more than 17 million ads and forum posts (check this Wired story)

- Twitter: a limited number of caracters to tell everyone non-sense all day long =
and the list goes on like that.

Now I've been recently talking to a bunch of startup-ers and, as so funnily illustrated by Ries, they're all of them more or less stuck with existential issues of the kind:
- my product/service isn't ready - I must add features
- I have to delay the launch
- How can I raise interest (not mentioning money) with semi-finished product?
- I need 10 extra genius-developers to finish it
...

Basically those guys are changing the way we will buy on the Internet, travel, manage our inbox, manage and animate our community, and obvisouly invent a new way for us to do so.

How on earth could the know how we - users- will react to it?

Well they can't.

Ries best advice remain: try, fail, ask your users, correct, try again...


As one of those happy "early adopters" of those new services I'd love to say:
1 - Don't forget that we -the users - have, first of all, to understand your product
2 - Need support to use them
3 - would love to exchange with you on our experience
4- would then, and only then, love to have more features :-)