Robi Ganguly’s Big Ideas

I’m spending a lot of time in Seattle and SF these days. Both feel like home to me. Not sure if I can really split my time between both cities successfully, but in the meantime, I’m with Ernie.. I don’t think I’d like to live on the moon

Thanks Kam, for the silly, yet insightful video.. and for co-authoring this blog .

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Today, I received a letter from MoveOn.org, which I’ve included below. 

Now, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you probably recall that I was an ardent supporter of Hillary Clinton. But I’ve also tried to make it clear all along that I didn’t see the Democratic primaries as an angry “I better win or I’m not supportive” type of race. In fact, I have large and growing respect for Barack Obama, as mentioned here when I wrote “This is Leadership”.

So, today, when I received this MoveOn.org email, I thought two things:

1. Obama’s campaign is super professional. Very smart, very organized and they really appear to outclass the competition when it comes to online marketing.
2. Obama is extraordinary at demonstrating leadership.

When he announced that he was turning down public financing this week, he and his team took it and walked proudly, saying that they were opting out and why. They didn’t shy away from it and they went strongly on the attack about the system and its loopholes. It’s a system that McCain partially architected.

This is very politically savvy. It goes after one of McCain’s strengths and makes it a conversation – early. This is important, because as the conversation grows and expands, digitally, it’ll be more important come election time. 

Additionally, I’m quite certain that this MoveOn.org announcement was not coincidentally timed. It was probably coordinated to demonstrate the support that Obama has from the “left”, as it were. But it also does another thing – it proves that as he grows into this role of leadership, before our eyes, he is effective at leading organizations towards a different set of choices.

I’m very impressed Mr. Obama. Keep it up.

(the text of the MoveOn letter) 

Dear MoveOn member,

For almost ten years, we’ve worked together to change American politics. Millions of us have collaborated to build a new progressive moment, catalyzed by the Internet and motivated by our belief that the country we love deserves better.

Now, in Barack Obama, we have a Presidential candidate who has based his campaign on precisely that kind of new politics—a people-driven politics focused on the outside-of-the-beltway consensus around Iraq, climate change, and health care, not the gridlock in Washington.

Using a lot of the tools and techniques developed by the progressive movement—as well as a visionary approach to leadership—Obama’s brought millions of new people into the process. And, following in the footsteps of Howard Dean, ActBlue, and other innovators, he’s adopted a new way of funding a campaign—relying on a donor base of millions rather than contributions by lobbyists and special interests.

It’s a very exciting moment. And so the time has come to answer an important question: should we make an all-in commitment, together, to this new politics?

While MoveOn Political Action has always been funded exclusively by small donors like you, we’ve held open the MoveOn.org Voter Fund—a separate “527″ organization—which can raise money from big donors. We haven’t actually taken any big-money checks since 2004, when MoveOn members matched big contributors to educate voters about George Bush’s policies. But in light of the new politics offered by Barack Obama, I’ve come to believe it’s time to close the 527 forever—and to challenge organizations on the right to do the same thing.

That means that we won’t raise any money for our election work from foundations, or even individuals who want to give over $5,000. It’s an all-in commitment to the small-donor way of doing things. But the time is right to take the leap.

Not relying on big donors means that all of us, together, have to take responsibility. So before we sign the final paperwork, we need to know that you’re in. Are you? Just click below to take the pledge and let us know:

Take the pledge!

And if you have any other thoughts or feedback for me on this decision, you can reply to epariser@moveon.org (I can’t promise that I’ll respond to all the emails, but I’ll definitely read ‘em).

We’ve come a long way together in our journey toward a new people-driven politics for America. It’s been a wonderful honor to be part of it. And this is just the beginning.

Thanks,

–Eli and the whole team

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Major props to whoever designed http://yahoorezinr.com – simple, effective, damned hilarious.

(I got this from my buddy Strauss’s Tweet by the way)

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(This is a living post. I intend to update it and revise it as you all comment and give me feedback. My goal in writing this post is to share why I am on my own and how I’ve gotten here with anyone who is interested. If you think you can help me make this post better/more interesting/more informative, please share your thoughts with me).

This post goes out to all of my friends who have had the courage to go off on their own and try their hand at entrepreneurship. In particular, this goes out to my dad, who’s been doing this ever since I was 9 years old. I still remember sitting on the floor of his office, constructing his office furniture on the weekends.

All of you inspire me and many of you have pushed me to follow the same dream and I’m really proud of you all. It’s partially because of you that I’m pursuing this path now. (Finally.. I know ).

10 Years Ago. That’s When I knew.

Do you remember this?

Or maybe this?

The RealPlayer and RealAudio. The predominant media solutions for the web, circa 1998.

And I was there.

During the summer of 1998, I interned at RealNetworks in Seattle, WA. My good friend Dorian had interned there the previous summer and his positive experience, along with the fact that RealNetworks was highly responsible for something that I believed was very important (the emergence of media delivery via the Web), convinced me to join them for the summer.

It was life changing.

Up until that point in my life, I had a pretty set path in mind for myself. As I wrote in This is what Politics in America looks like today, for a long while, I was very focused upon attending law school and then getting into politics. But my obsession with consumer technology products and my latent fascination with business and management was really ignited during my summer at Real.

The seminal moment, though, was one that my good friend Si likes to remind me about. We were at the Summer Intern dinner and Rob Glaser, the Founder and CEO, gave a speech. At the end, he asked for questions and I stood up and shared mine:

“So, streaming’s nice and all, but what about MP3s? What’s our strategy there?”

With a bit of hemming and hawing, it became obvious that he didn’t really have an answer. In fact, at that point in time the company hadn’t really thought much about MP3′s and in many ways, they’ve treated the opportunity for downloadable media as an afterthought throughout their entire corporate life. I’m unsurprised that the company that once was one of the biggest Web brands is now more of a running joke in the industry.

I’m also unsurprised that his lack of an answer pissed me off.

• I’m a competitive person.
• I love watching people, in order to better understand them.
• I think about how we all interact and communicate, with each other, with our environments and with our technology.

After that dinner, I realized something: most people don’t see the consumer technology landscape the way that I do. In fact, given my frustration that evening, I thought something exceptionally arrogant for a boy of 20:

“I can do his f’ing job. Why doesn’t he know about MP3′s and have some thoughts on the subject? Streaming’s too damned slow for most people, MP3′s make a ton of sense.”

It would appear that I was right about that. A decade later, the dynamics of Internet bandwidth and streaming costs might be changing, but I fear that it’s far too late for RealNetworks to do anything meaningful. They’re a company lacking an identity and have been for quite a while, with financial performance that reflects their mediocrity.

(For those who are curious: Closing Price on 6/22/98, about when this dinner happened: $8.57. Yesterday’s closing price: $7.60. OUCH!)

Dreams take work. A LOT of hard work, in fact.

That summer was the start of my journey to being here now – self-employed with no current plans to seek out a “boss”. That journey has never stalled or been on hold – I’ve been working towards this reality ever since 1998.

It doesn’t matter what you’re dreaming about. It could be that girl you keep seeing at the gym. Or the house you want to buy that has the perfect kitchen. Or the company you want to build to change the world.

You can’t JUST dream.

You MUST act and when your dreams are ambitious, you have to be patient and consistently work towards them, providing yourself the motivation to keep on course even when you want to quit.

Easier said than done.

In the world that I live in, patience and commitment is increasingly rare. Friends, relatives, romantic partners, bosses all demand of us: NOW NOW NOW. Faster. More immediate gratification. Less self-control. Many actually perceive patience and consistency as signs of weakness, admissions of “can’t”.

I refuse to believe these people.

It’s probably important to make a point about myself here:

I will listen to others, particularly those whom I trust, but I will not abdicate the responsibility for my own goals and actions. They are MINE.

I’ve long chosen to try and create the path that I’m on.

I believe that you should follow your passions. As I wrote in Graduate to Your Passions, I feel that it’s exceptionally important that you discover and then pursue what you’re passionate about. It’s not just an idealistic view of the world, I really believe in it. Many of my friends like to counter this point of view with what they view as a healthy dose of skepticism, or as they might argue, pragmatism.

They say, “Of course we should do what we love, BUT it’s just not that easy.”

Of course it’s not easy. But isn’t it worth the work?

If you care about something

If you’re passionate about it

If you want to see a change made in your world.

DO SOMETHING!

That summer, I knew that I had to eventually venture out on my own. I started plotting with friends; brainstorming the ideas we wanted to develop, the companies we wanted to build. In the fall, I went to D.C. and worked at C-SPAN, already regretting my decision because I knew that I wasn’t going to be heading back to Capitol Hill any time soon. I spent my mostly boring internship days reading up on the stock market, tech companies, business strategy and anything I could get my idle hands on that might help me better understand how to frame my goals and pursue them.

From that point on, I’ve been driving towards NOW. Interviewing in the fall of ’99, I stayed away from all of the dot-coms recruiting on campus and stuck to consulting and I-banking opportunities for one reason: I felt that they could teach me the most in pursuit of my dreams. In each interview, when the softball question of, “What do you want out of this?” came up, I had the same answer each time: “I can learn the most in 2 years here, then I want to go work for a tech company and at some point, I want to start something.”

Mind you, I wasn’t the only one saying things like that.

When I say that I’m committed to something, I mean it and I try really hard to stick to it. I’m that guy.

From Deutsche Bank to WebEx and finally to Yahoo!, I had one underlying motivation: I wanted to learn as much about business, leadership and technology as I possibly could, in order to become the kind of leader who attracts great people, dreams great dreams and builds great companies.

It took me 10 years to get to a place where I felt that I might be ready for this challenge. 10 years to save, plan and, most importantly, learn how to proactively change myself and my habits. 10 years to truly discover my passions and accumulate the ideas that I am excited about every morning when I wake up. Ideas that keep me energized and unable to sleep every night.

I’m going to need a lot of help along the way to achieve these ideas

This blog has been a place where I’ve been practicing for the past few years. Now it gets serious.

I intend to share more about my ideas, my plans and what I see happening in this digital world we live in. In the process, I hope that you’ll see that I’m focused on building businesses in different ways than most. I aim to be more open, more communicative and more honest than you expect.

I believe that we’re at a point in time where it’s possible to be a good person and to run a good business. I believe that it’s time for more of us to stand up and have the courage to say who we are and what we believe. Most importantly, I believe it’s the time for the companies that we do business with to understand that we’re their customers and we expect to be communicated with, rather than manipulated and bombarded. As we, the individuals, take further control of the “media” that disseminates information, I believe that we, as a society, will pursue relationships of deeper and more transparent natures. The nuance required to understand one another can be fostered by technology, rather than ignored and rendered unimportant.

I don’t know what will come in the next year or so, but I’m certainly looking forward to the failures along the way .

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Wow, my friends and I have watched this 7 times tonight. Wow.

(update: found it again on SuperDeluxe – looks like they didn’t want it on YouTube..)

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It shouldn’t come as a surprise to my regular readers that I agree a whole lot with this video:

Don’t fight it. Embrace it.

Don’t hope it won’t happen. Plan for it.

Ask yourself: “What’s my personal brand?”

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Microsoft is attempting to open up and share its technical documentation with the world, free of licensing stipulations:

Microsoft to Share More Technical Secrets – New York Times

This bears watching because if they really follow through on what they’re talking about here, the whole idea of “web services” could take another leap forward. Imagine your desktop becoming indistinguishable from the browser (yes, I realize that’s been discussed many times) because everything on your desktop is accessing both local storage and “the cloud”. This could be a huge turning point.

The new Yahoo! Media Player beta is actually super powerful and makes a ton of sense. If I can figure out how to implement it on my blog in the next few weeks, you’ll see what I mean, but feel free to go check it out in action on Ian Rogers’ blog, where he’s showing it off regularly.

Princeton is working on a plan that will enable admitted students to go abroad before starting their college careers. I’ve often thought that I would have benefited from a year off before starting college and apparently, more and more students are of the same opinion. If this were to catch on, it’d be a large shift in the way we view higher education.

Amidst all the Microsoft – Yahoo! turmoil, Yahoo! announced OneConnect at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week. It’s unclear what’s really going to launch, as the announcement didn’t come with a product release, but it looks promising. I certainly will be watching to see what comes out when the team’s ready to share.

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Last week I wrote about why I was voting for Hillary Clinton and my final point was about the disparity in media treatment between Hillary (a woman) and the rest of the candidates for President (all men).

Since then I’ve been doing some more reading and seeing some stories that talked about this issue and I thought it made sense to share a couple of them:

• In Ohio, CNN brought this issue up with a group of women voters in the context of a discussion over sexism and racism. 
• It seems to me that their conclusion is that sexism has been and continues to be acceptable in popular culture in ways that aren’t tolerable for racism.
• Nicholas Kristof writes for the New York Times that:
• “in democracies in the television age, female leaders also have to navigate public prejudices — and these make democratic politics far more challenging for a woman than for a man.”

Additionally, Paul Krugman writes much more elegantly than I did that the Obama campaign is in danger of becoming a “cult of personality”. As I wrote last week, I respect Obama. I’m not angry with him and I certainly don’t view him or his supporters as “the enemy”. The fervor that exists around his campaign is at the same time inspiring and worrisome. I wonder why so many supporters of his seem intent on saying things that imply that it’s their candidate or no one.

Additionally, he uses a phrase that I’ve been struggling to describe – Clinton Rules:

What’s particularly saddening is the way many Obama supporters seem happy with the application of “Clinton rules” — the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent.

I’d like to reach out to anyone who supports Obama and say this to you:

We’re both in favor of some very similar things. We have differing approaches, perhaps. We think that the Presidency means different things, it appears to me. But don’t, not even for a moment, forget that what we’re really talking about here is the promotion of the core Democratic values and goals. We’re not just about one candidate. Because if your candidate wins, I’m going to be by your side, frustrated with the application of “Clinton Rules” to Obama. I hope that you’d be big enough to do the same if the situation is reversed.

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Today is “Super Tuesday”. As most of you know, it’s a big day for the Presidential Primaries here in the U.S. and as an active citizen, I’m certainly going to be exercising my right to vote. I hope that the rest of you who have the opportunity do the same. In coming to a decision over who I was going to vote for, I’ve listened to and watched some of the debates, read a ton of articles and done some investigation of the candidates’ websites. For those who are interested, I thought I’d share some of my rationale in deciding to check the box next to Hillary Clinton’s name.

• I love substance: I’ve taken time to look at the meaningful issues that the candidates are discussing. I’ve thought them over and I’ve come to some conclusions. Number 1, no one is talking about education enough. This bothers me. Number 2, Obama doesn’t like to get specific. It’s proving to be a very successful tactic but it doesn’t resonate with me. Consider this quote from an excellent piece in the New Yorker:

“Obama spoke for only twenty-five minutes and took no questions; he had figured out how to leave an audience at the peak of its emotion, craving more. As he was ending, I walked outside and found five hundred people standing on the sidewalk and the front steps of the opera house, listening to his last words in silence, as if news of victory in the Pacific were coming over the loudspeakers. Within minutes, I couldn’t recall a single thing that he had said, and the speech dissolved into pure feeling, which stayed with me for days.”

I’m a fan of Bill Clinton’s because he was a natural orator, capable of inspiring and leaving people with that emotional feeling, while addressing substance as well. I watch the debates, I review the speeches, I shake my head. I’m not getting that from Obama. To those of you who believe what we need is style over substance in the Democratic Party because Kerry and Gore were “boring” I tell you that if you want style, Bill’s going to be campaigning, don’t you worry your pretty little head.

When it comes to questions of policy, I agree with Hillary over and over. For example, take a look at the debate over Health Care. Obama says, “affordable for all” and elaborates by saying that yes, some people won’t be covered, but it’ll be their choice, so it’s not an issue. Hillary says, “coverage for all” and elaborates by drawing on her 20+ years of working on this issue, telling us that if you start with a compromised goal in mind (coverage for most, not all) the lobbyists and opponents will nibble you to death. She says you have to bite the bullet on this issue, it’s just that important. I agree. 

Moreover, I fail to understand why this approach isn’t inspiring? We have a candidate pushing for Universal Health Care coverage in the U.S. and it’s the other guy who is more inspiring? Really?

• I’m a Democrat, but I’m a Democrat with a real problem with the party: I remember the 1988 election, when I decided that I was a Democrat. Largely influenced by my parents, I became a fan of Michael Dukakis and when my 5th grade class had a debate over the election, I was the only one (aside from the two friends I convinced to sit on my side) who took the Dukakis side of the debate. Those of you who know me probably aren’t surprised to know that I enjoyed fighting for my positions and the majority being in opposition provided more fuel for the fire. Over time, I’ve chosen more logical and defensible reasons as to why I’m a Dem, but it’s also brought with it a better understanding of the Democratic Party’s major weakness. The largest, in my mind, is that the “Politics of Inclusion” does not mean that your party must be the Party of Confusion. Let me explain:

1. One of the core ideals that I hold to be true is that everyone should have equal rights and opportunities. This is VERY challenging, to be sure, but it’s the right ideal. However, furthering this ideal requires discipline, tenacity and a commitment to championing the cause in a winning and clear way. The Democratic Party isn’t focused on clarity and defining what it means to be the party of equality. The interpretation I see most often out of my party is that “every cause and point of view is important and attainable.” As a result, each candidate has a different message with a new area of focus. Often, one Democrat and another sound completely different to voters. It’s no wonder that voters have a hard time understanding the Democratic Campaign Platform – there often isn’t one coherent view of it among the party leadership to begin with.
2. In contrast, the Republicans are DISCIPLINED. The party understands that its best chance to resonate with voters comes from taking a stance and then hammering their positions into the ground with the press and the public. For a populace that is already overwhelmed by media, decisions and information, this strategy is increasingly powerful. Think about the menu at your local Cheesecake Factory and then think about the one at your higher end bistro. Which one is easier to order from?

• I believe that you have to fight for what you believe in: I have great respect for Obama. As an individual, he clearly is an articulate, thoughtful, open-minded person. I believe that he sticks to his guns on principles and that’s refreshing. I think that this helps to explain a large part of why he’s being touted as the inspirational candidate, the one who can lead revolutionary change. My opinion is that if you look at the landscape of American politics, there’s a sad reality that us Democrats must accept: the Republicans fight dirty and we mostly just complain about it, rather than fighting back. We saw it in 1988 (the mocking of Dukakis ranged from his riding in a tank to the freeing of Willie Horton), we saw it in 2000 (“the environment’s not a real issue”, “Lockbox” and “Gore is a bore” are easy to recall) and it amazes me, but many people have already forgotten 2004 (Swift Boat Veterans anyone?). The Clintons stand out in their willingness to fight back.. HARD. I believe that this is some of the reason for the heartburn that many Dems feel in looking at this election – they loved the Clinton era but don’t have great feelings about the Clintons themselves. While I understand the heartburn, I challenge every Dem to ask themselves a very important question: would you rather have the candidates who sit on the sidelines, “fighting the good fight” but not leading, or would you rather have the candidates who win and lead? Bill Clinton did that for the party. No one else has, since 1980. Fight back, goddamnit! If Obama wins the nomination, I’ll be voting for him but I’m worried that in the General Election, he won’t fight back with the tenacity required. His glib responses to questions about how he’ll handle the Republican attacks make for good soundbites but by most accounts that I’ve read (see the NYT piece above, which talks quite a bit about his behavior and choices), it appears that he’s unwiling to fight fire with fire. I applaud that kind of resolve, it just doesn’t make me want him fighting for the Presidency come November. I don’t think it works.
• I really dislike the disparity in media treatment: I’ll just say it outright – Hillary’s been ridiculed and attacked for her ambition because she’s a woman ever since she campaigned with Bill in Arkansas. It’s not fair, it’s not right and it’s not in enough voters’ minds. This bothers me a lot. I look around and see a country where it’s totally ok to have a Hillary Clinton “Nutcracker” doll or to call her overly ambitious because she stayed with Bill throughout extramarital affairs and that it must have been purely motivated by the desire to be a politician. While race is an issue that can’t be touched, but sex is implicit in the very ways in which the media treats her as a candidate – the language, the specific critiques (do you remember the blow up of the “baking cookies” comment??) and the portrayals (the tough, icy personality). The treatment of Hillary exemplifies WHY women still have a long way to go in achieving equal treatment in American society and I don’t believe that fact is lost on a large number of the women who will be voting this year. I hope not.

While these are the main points, there’s more here. However, given that polls are starting to close on the East Coast, it’s probably time to wrap this up and get to the polls in SF myself. I suspect that by the time most of you read this, many of these points will seem somewhat obsolete, but feel free to comment or contact me to discuss this more. I don’t think the nomination’s going to be wrapped up for a few more months, given that the Michigan and Florida primaries are in some limbo at the moment.

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