1000 Flowers Bloom

Won't you just get acquired?

I admit that I have a weakness in that I check what people are saying about Aggregate Knowledge on Technorati on a fairly regular basis. Usually things are pretty quiet since most our customers are large media or retail companies that don't really blog about their experiences with us, but we do get spikes when we do conferences like SuperNova. We participated in the Connected Innovators session with 12 other companies (one of them fake). Here's a round up by Rafe Needleman and another by Sean Ammirati.

This is my long winded way of getting to a post by Jennifer Woodard Maderazo about the conference. In general her tone is pretty negative and she seems skeptical in general of what's going on. Who can blame her? The Web 2.0 hype machine has been going full blast for two years now. I can't say I disagree a lot with some of her observations.

The piece of her post that I do want to pick on though is a refrain that I have heard from not only her but from many VCs and other industry pundits.  You're a feature not a company. You're just going to get acquired. Here's a couple of paragraphs from her post:

The panel, which included Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital, entrepreneur Julie Hanna Farris, and entrepreneur and blogger Paul Kedrosky seemed to agree with my take, saying that the applications presented were “FNAC” — “features not a company” — likely to fall short of transforming the way people do things and destined to be “merely acquired” by some giant like Google.

I can’t help but think that most of the entrepreneurs in the room would be fine with that. The mass acquisitions of late seem to be fomenting not creativity but a drive to create what’s most likely to get bought.

When you're an entrepreneur you get this a lot from people. In fact, assuming that your idea passes the sniff test of having a decent market  and being executable, the most likely criticism you'll get is that you're just a feature and that you'll get acquired.

Most of the time this criticism is right.

Most companies fail, some few get bought and a very very few will make it and become great companies that transform the way people do things.

The problem with using that generalization comes when you're evaluating individual companies - you'll always miss the great ones if you assume if you apply too tight a filter.

There definitely were companies on that SuperNova stage that are aspiring to change the way that people do things. Companies that won't necessarily be thrilled to get bought. Not all of them will make it but I do salute all the other entrepreneurs for taking a shot at it. Most will fail, some few will get bought and maybe one or two of us will go on to really change the world.

One last thought - I think that all the companies up on stage were less than two years old. Would anyone have predicted that Google would be where it is now back in 1999 when they were a two year old? Weren't they just a feature that would be acquired?

Starting Aggregate Knowledge - The right environment

Yikes - it has been tough to get enough time to blog about this stuff! First post about Starting Aggregate Knowledge is here. I'm going to try and tag all my startup posts with startak.

Along with doing your homework I'd say that another important facet of starting a company is doing it in the right environment.

Paul and I had the good fortune to meet up with the folks from NetService Ventures. We had a memorable first meeting with Ethan and even though I thought he was crazy, we hit it off with them. They have a little office at the corner of Sand Hill Road and Santa Cruz where they managed to cram in a bunch of interesting startup people. They have a great consulting business that pays the bills and they also find interesting small companies to put money into. They currently have 3 venture funded companies that have come out of this little "incubator": Aggregate Knowledge, 3Jam and Zvents.

It definitely felt like we were a garage startup. We squatted in whatever conference room was free at the time and had to move whenever someone needed it. Highlights included trying to do conference calls and having Hiroshi fax things through the same at the same time. The conditions weren't exactly what you'd find in a well running office!

There were a few advantages to hanging out there a few days a week though.

It may not be the case for everyone, but I definitely appreciated having a spot where we could meet regularly that was not our homes. Getting into a regular rhythm for me helped me be very disciplined about getting things done and feeling accountable for making real progress on figuring out the business.

Of course the most important part of our NSV experience was hanging out with great people. It's a cliche because it is true but hanging out with great people elevates your thinking. The fact that the NSV folks are terrific thinkers who would challenge assumptions and occasionally call us idiots (thanks Rich!) is really important in evolving the thinking. It lets you iterate through ideas and discard ones that don't pass the smell test quickly.

Another important factor was having other entrepreneurs like Tyler & Ethan from Zvents and Andy from 3Jam who were going through the startup grind. For example - the fact that Zvents was six months older than us allowed us to observe what was working well and not well for them firsthand. It gave us insights into everything from the funding environment to the mindset of customers, to the hiring environment. I'd like to think that we contributed a little thinking to them along the way as well.

I'm always a little wistful when I think about that time - it was crazy and I was vastly underpaid, the ups and downs were totally nutty but I have to say it was a ton of fun. I wouldn't trade that experience for anything right now.

Bill Gates' Harvard Commencement Speech

Bill Gates' Harvard commencement speech is a great read and reminds me of the responsibility that people who are fortunate have towards those who are not. I've linked to the full transcript which is available here because as of this blog post Google's search results are miserable for the phrase "bill gates harvard commencement speech"

Fascinating to Learn About Businesses

This article in New York Magazine about different businesses in New York and how their economics work is totally fascinating to me. I am a total sucker for this stuff.

You can learn about everything from cab drivers, restaurants, financial firms to drug dealers.

I often ask myself how can that place possibly in business!

A great quote from the article:

With each year, another company succumbs to the strange realization that where it sits may be more valuable than what it does

I've always been tempted to put up a wiki with different business models that people could add to. Ideally it would be in more detail than what was in the article so that people could get information about a business before going and starting one. Anyone interested?