NPR had a magnificent segment on the new Star Wars Family of Home Health Care Products for all you veteran Star Wars fans. The product line includes:
and many more, including the Skywalker Walker.
I heard the phrase “world class” three times today. I’ve decided to toss it on the scrap heap of “phrases that mean nothing to me anymore.” I’m finishing up Friedman’s The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (which is awesome BTW – definitely a world class book – I’ll be done on my SF to Chicago trip Thursday night.) It dawned on me that the phrase “world class” isn’t indexed against anything. No one ever says, “that’s not world class, it’s American class.” While “China class” might refer to a room full of people studying Mandarin (or how China is whipping our American butts in education and so many other things), it doesn’t link in any meaningful way to the phrase “world class.” This is yet another phrase that the PR / marketing weenies have rendered irrelevant.
“We are building a world class management team. Our development organization is world class. We have a world class sales and marketing organization. Our company aspires to be world class.” C’mon – that means nothing.
In my first company, we talked briefly (I think about 60 seconds) about creating a mission “to be the best software consulting company in the world.” After all the MIT / Brown / Wellesley people in my company laughed (“hey Brad, who gives a damn about a stupid vague unattainable mission like that?”), I / we realized that vapid phrases didn’t inspire anything (except internal contempt). It took more than 60 seconds to come up with our mission, which was “We suck less.”
Now – “we suck less” means something. Our business was hard – if you were a provider or a customer / user of custom database applications in 1990, you understand what I mean. We were usually the third or fourth company hired by our clients (our predecessors used up all the budget and then were fired because their stuff sucked) and the projects we were “starting on” were often already late and over budget before we even showed up at the party.
When we told our clients something like “we are better than the last guys”, they either groaned or laughed maniacally since they had already heard that a few times from the people that came before us. But when we told them “the thing we are doing is really hard, the guys before us sucked, but we are going to suck less and try our hardest to be successful for you” our clients usually related (at least when they laughed, it was with a smile on their face.)
We delivered more often then not. So – while we never achieved that elusive “world class” status, we definitely sucked less most of the time. And – when I wandered down the hallways saying “guys – focus on sucking less – that’s the key to our success”, people rallied a lot more than if I had shouted “we are going to be world class” from the rooftops.
I miss my wife Amy – she’s been in Paris since mid-March learning French, enjoying the Parisian lifestyle (she’s was born in Paris in another life), and wandering around one of the best spring time cities in the world. Oh – and she’s eating amazing meals – she put up a detailed post on two of them as well as her top 10 list – especially aimed at foodies and people who like to live vicariously. Yum.
Amy and I have been collecting contemporary art for a number of years. If you’ve even been to our house, my office, or The Nature Conservancy in Boulder, you’ve seen some of our collection. I attribute this vice to my mom the artist, who always had a great eye for art and surrounded me with it from a very early age.
We’re also big supporters of the Denver Art Museum and are hugely excited about the new Hamilton Building by Daniel Libeskind. So excited that when we heard from a friend of a showing at The William Havu Gallery of several paintings by Rick Dula of the museum under construction, we bought one.
There was a great article on tax day about the show and Dula’s work as it pertains to the Hamilton Building in the Rocky Mountain News article titled On the edge of hyperrealism. If you are in Denver and into (a) art, (b) the Hamilton Building, and (c) things that get you “culture points”, swing by The William Havu Gallery and check out the exhibit – tell Nick Ryan I sent you.
Mark Pincus has finally put up a blog (ok – he had one at Blogger – but it’s just his bio.) Mark’s been a successful entrepreneur for a number of years. Mark’s latest company – Tribe – is squarely in the middle of all the Web 2.0 stuff going on. Mark has a history of successful companies – we were investors in two of them (Freeloader – bought by Individual in 1996 and SupportSoft – currently public.)
Mark always has strong opinions, is super smart, tireless, and has a broad range of interests. If you are into hearing directly from successful entrepreneurs, his blog is well worth following.
I created some custom M&M’s for Amy and surprised her with them when I was in Paris a week ago. While they aren’t cheap, they were worth it (you get to choose your own colors and two different messages of two lines by eight letters.) In my continued effort to spread romance throughout the world, I highly recommend this as a gift from a chocolate lover to his/her significant other that is also a chocolate lover.
I’ve gotten plenty of humorous feedback on my post about abolishing the words traction, space, and thrilling from my vocabulary. Someone asked why I was so mean to words – although this was someone who prefaces each major point he makes with “to tell you the truth” (no, please don’t tell me the truth – lie to me.)
The best note so far was from Ryan Sabga, the CEO of RideonTime.com who donated a really cool scooter to the Boulder Philharmonic Fundraiser we had on Saturday. He said:
Why not try and introduce a new word to the VC world? I have yet to hear someone mentioned how “gruntled” they are, as in, “great work negotiating that contract, Saunders. I’m positively gruntled.” Sure, I hear “disgruntled” just about every day but what about it’s shorter, stockier antonym? That guy gets ignored more than the high school quarterback at a Back Street Boys back stage party. I think that perhaps you have a higher purpose, and that’s to introduce the world to your buddy “gruntled.”
I’m definitely gruntled by this – thanks Ryan!
Fred – I’ll see you and raise you two.
Fred Wilson had a delightful post on the word “traction” today as part of his VC Cliche of the Week series. In it, Fred suggests that he’d like to hear the word traction used less in our business. I’ll go a step further. I’ll never mention the word traction again. It has become so overused as to mean nothing (since it’s used to refer to everything and is a placeholder for “we are making progress, whatever the hell progress is.”)
There are two other words that I am abolishing from my business vocabulary effectively immediately. If you catch me using any of them, please call me on it (feel free to throw something at me, spit on me, or just break out laughing.)
The first is “space.” Like traction, the word space is used constantly by VCs and entrepreneurs. This space, that space, we play in this space, we’re going after that space, we’re looking for white space (why doesn’t anyone ever look for purple space?) Humans used to use words / phrases like market, business, customer segment, product opportunity (and plenty that are actually specific). Die you generic words. I’m banishing space to … space.
“Thrilling” is my last annoying as shit word of the day. I can’t read a press release anymore (including a bunch from my own companies) without seeing how thrilled someone is about something. Matt Blumberg sent me the draft of the Return Path / IronPort / Bonded Sender press release and voila – there is was – Matt was thrilled. Matt’s a smart dude so when I told him he should limit being thrilled to his time with his wife Mariquita he got it and appropriately modified the press release.
My grandpa Jack used to have a blast massacring words to make his point. He was never “thrilled” – he was “trilled”, and my uncle Charlie and I were “typhoons” instead of “tycoons.” I’ll take it step further – I’ll simply delete them from my vocabulary.
I’m not a golfer, but I can appreciate an amazing play / shot / race in any sport. Fred Wilson had a beautiful picture of Tiger Woods up on his site today and then I bumped into Joseph Jaffe’s homemade Nike commercial of a beautiful putt from Tiger (I think on the 16th hole).
We got 30 inches of snow at my house last night so I’m off to the treadmill room to just do it for a while.