tyler knows nothing

learned the hard way

When I was in college I started this habit of writing my own advice, usually whenever I learned a lesson the hard way. I started this Word doc and just kept adding to it over the years. I went back through it recently and these are the ones that seem to fit this point in my life.

• You know nothing. It's been proven. 15 percent of the time that you feel 100 percent certain, you'll be wrong.
• Never disregard anything or anyone. No one is wrong 100 percent of the time. 
• Ask more questions and give fewer answers. When someone wants your advice, ask even more questions and give even fewer answers. 
• It’s okay to know what you like. It’s not okay to know what you don’t like.
• You are allowed to be as shallow as you are perfect.
• Luck is when something good happens when there is a 50% or greater chance it could go bad. A blessing is when the greater good gets lucky.
• A mistake is not a mistake if you learn from it. A mistake is also not a mistake until it's made.
• Don't mentally quit a hole just because you tee off into the rough. You can still get par.
• There's a reason the top piece of advice is to never ever give up. If you choose to never give up then, by definition, you will make it eventually.

bill gates on creative capitalism

Just came upon the talk Bill Gates gave at Davos 2008. He spoke on "creative capitalism," and I've distilled the 30 minute speech below:

To provide rapid improvement for the poor we need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today.

The challenge here is to design a system where market incentives like profits and recognition do more for the poor. Recognition enhances a company's reputation and appeals to customers; above all, it attracts good people to an organization. As such, recognition triggers a market-based reward for good behavior. In markets where profits are not possible, recognition is a proxy; where profits are possible, recognition is an added incentive.

Adam Smith, the very father of capitalism, opened his first book with the following lines: "However selfish a man may be, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it."

the only thing that matters

Here is the essence from a long post by Marc Anderseen about product/market fit, a concept he refers to as "the only thing that matters":

"Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.

You can always feel when product/market fit isn't happening. The customers aren't quite getting value out of the product, word of mouth isn't spreading, usage isn't growing that fast, press reviews are kind of "blah", the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close.

And you can always feel product/market fit when it's happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it -- or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account. You're hiring sales and customer support staff as fast as you can. Reporters are calling because they've heard about your hot new thing and they want to talk to you about it. You start getting entrepreneur of the year awards from Harvard Business School.

Whenever you see a successful startup, you see one that has reached product/market fit -- and usually along the way screwed up all kinds of other things, from channel model to pipeline development strategy to marketing plan to press relations to compensation policies to the CEO sleeping with the venture capitalist. And the startup is still successful.

Conversely, you see a surprising number of really well-run startups that have all aspects of operations completely buttoned down, HR policies in place, great sales model, thoroughly thought-through marketing plan, great interview processes, outstanding catered food, 30" monitors for all the programmers, top tier VCs on the board -- heading straight off a cliff due to not ever finding product/market fit."

the heart of the company

I just read a great blog post by Steve Blank called The Sharp End of the Stick. Steve explains that in any company at any time, all departments are not equal. There is a "sharp end of the stick," the point department that all other departments should support, the way most jobs in the military exist to support the front line. But for me it helps to think about this as the heart of the company, because the heart is the one thing the body can't live without for any length of time [and let's not split hairs here]. In his examples of growth companies the heart is usually sales (as distinct from marketing) because without sales the company will die. In early stage companies the heart is usually product development, because without a great product the company will die before sales has a chance to sell it.

But the real takeaway from Steve's post is that you need to make sure all your departments understand where the company's heart is at any given moment, and that the heart is the lead, and thus comes first. Ex: If sales is the heart, accounting should design the expense reporting process to be easy for sales to complete, not for accounting to manage (if it can't be both, that is).

One line from Steve's post really stuck with me: "I loved to compete against companies [that treated everyone equally].  Their own internal culture would tie them up in knots, and agile startups could run rings around them. Stay agile, stay focused."

good advice from john doerr

John Doerr is a well-known VC at Kleiner Perkins. The following is from a 2007 interview:

"Entrepreneurs should insist from the beginning that the VCs communicate clearly with them. Their time, and ours, is very valuable. When the first meeting is over the entrepreneur might say, "I'd like a yes or no right now, but I understand you may be more deliberative and will need more than one meeting or one business plan. So what's your level of interest and what's the next step?" Frankly, you'd prefer a swift no to a long, drawn-out maybe. Those are death. Unfortunately, few teams ask that."

the paradoxical commandments

I found the following piece of wisdom in a pile of papers left over from college. I don't remember ever having read it (was probably a handout from a guidance counselor) but it's going on my wall. Apparently it was originally written by a guy named Dr. Kent M. Keith when he was 19, but Mother Teresa usually gets the credit because, after hearing it, she put it on the wall of her children's home in Calcutta.

- - -

People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

eric schmidt on charlie rose: my notes

These are paraphrased quotes by Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, in his recent interview on Charlie Rose:

Social networks will discover a business model, because there is too much time being spent on them for advertisers to ignore and not come up with *some* form of entertainment, advertising, etc that works. To think otherwise is to deny the fundamental progress of innovation.

the biological roots of altruism?

The father of sociobiology, E.O. Wilson, has a new (and yet unpublished) theory on the roots of altruism, or eusociality ("good" + "social") in natural selection.

For about a half-century evolutionary biologists (including Wilson) have maintained that Darwinian evolution, natural selection, the survival of the fittest was based around the gene pool, or kin selection, rather than the individual as previously thought. This is how they explained the seemingly altruistic (yet suicidal) act of a prairie dog exposing himself from the hole and "barking" to alert his comrades when he detects danger, even though this usually spells his impending doom. Well, they said, the bugger is really just trying to protect his immediate family! He wants to ensure the survival of his offspring, his gene pool!

the future of newspapers and reporting

Tonight I had a great IM chat about the future of newspapers and reporting with a good friend of mine (and Fulbright Scholar) named Denver Nicks. I posted the full conversation, and one of the highlights is below (in italics):

Tyler Fields
i think we will see that traditional news coverage will become more like tech news today and be dominated in the future less by "CNN, ABC, etc" and more by "Joe Smith", "Julie Jones," etc.

Denver Nicks
personal brands?

Tyler Fields
yes

social entrepreneurship + social enterprise = social innovation?

Taken from the Stanford Social Innovation Review:
"Social entrepreneurship and social enterprise have become popular rallying points for those trying to improve the world. These two notions are positive ones, but neither is adequate when it comes to understanding and creating social change in all of its manifestations. The authors make the case that social innovation is a better vehicle for doing this. They also explain why most of today’s innovative social solutions cut across the traditional boundaries separating nonprofits, government, and for-profit businesses"