(really) entrepreneureal

The latest issue of Inc chronicles the meteoric rise of Tony Hsieh and his now uber-successful and well-known company, Zappos.  The gist of the story is that Hsieh has managed to create a culture that rewards independent, creative and most importantly, empathetic behavior.

I spent the first part of the article skeptical that such an open, daring and, frankly, risky, culture is even possible.  In a company where the CEO takes vodka shots with new hires to test their mettle, you’ve got to wonder how long everything will last until there’s a lawsuit, or someone who takes offense at this kind of behavior.

Once I had accepted the reality that such a fun culture indeed is possible, and helps a company and its people thrive beyond belief, I spent the rest of the piece wondering if Hsieh can do all this only because he’s successful.  He was successful (financially) before Zappos, and my assumption is that when you have a lot, losing a little isn’t a big deal so you don’t mind taking risks.  But then I realized that the more successful Hsieh becomes, the more he technically has to lose – so there goes that theory.

In the end I came away a little ashamed that I kept trying to find reasons for why Hsieh built a company the way he has.  Financial reasons, critical reasons.  The truth is that when I get down to it, I totally understand Hsieh’s approach and would definitely rather risk offending a potential employee than dread waking to a company I don’t love.

Forget the dread, a vodka shot hangover will do me fine.

I’ve noticed a trend of late in web design: a shift toward edgier, more unconvential navigation, with a distinct injection of humor, sarcasm, and playfulness.

Let’s take a look – first up is Neutron, a San Francisco branding firm:

OK, this is a branding firm (so we can expect it to be edgier), but in many ways Neutron is flouting the basic tenets of “good” web design: clear language that users expect (and understand), a standard columned layout – all of which make it clear what a user is supposed to do next (i.e. click here, scroll over this or whatever). It gets clearer when you mouse over the text, which is almost impossible not to do (and this is good):

Click on the link, and things start to look more normal.  Standard blocks of text, a more sectioned layout…

But look a little closer, and the quirkier side of the company starts to show through:

Note the non-standard language: “What is” instead of “About us”, “Where is” instead of “Contact us” (which is where we usually find the requisite google map), and best of all… Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve recently been reading a lot on tech startups – the successful ones, anyway.  Books like Founders at Work, coverage from magazines such as Inc and FastCompany, and loads of stuff from the web.  If I took all of these anecdotes to heart I certainly couldn’t be faulted for assuming that startups have an amazing growth trajectory that looks something like this:

This is what happens when A. literature focuses only on success cases and B. the cases are the likes of Google, Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, etc, etc.  The picture is definitely skewed, and I feel the pain of budding entrepreneurs the world over who feel they have to have such meteoric growth or risk being judged a failure.  Whatever happened to doing things for curiosity’s sake?  Since when did an IPO or exit strategy become the holy grail of entrepreneurship and startups?

How can we make the space for people to have fun?

I struggle with similar pressure every day.  I spend countless hours daydreaming about the millions of ideas that I want to try out, but have to fight the urge to figure out a business model, or include the words “Series A” in my thought process.

Which is precisely why the idea I’m currently pursuing has absolutely no financial purpose whatsoever; no pot at the end of the rainbow, just a (hopefully) fascinating experience.

Oh, and this is more likely what a true startup trajectory resembles: