Robi Ganguly’s Big Ideas

Yesterday, Michael Arrington wrote “An Outsider’s Flawed View of Silicon Valley in response to Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman’s blog post, How Green Was My Valley.

I’m shocked at his reaction. I’d say appalled, but Michael, really, I can’t say that I’m ever appalled by anything that a CMC alum does (I went to Pomona, for the record).

Why all the venom Michael?

First of all, it seems to me that Michael’s characterization of Glenn’s post is off-base. He says that Glenn compares Silicon Valley unfavorably with Seattle. I don’t see that in Glenn’s post – what I see is a comparison of the pros and cons of the two areas.

Must everything be a conflict with a clear winner and a clear loser?

Perhaps this is the huge difference between the Silicon Valley and all other “also-ran” cities. The competitive spirit is such that in Silicon Valley you can’t sniff in the area’s general direction without raising the hackles of one of its cheerleaders.

Let’s be clear – I don’t mind the competitive spirit, I really enjoy and thrive upon it. Competition is great and it creates stronger, more resilient organizations and people. But aggressive competition has its costs as well. To steal a tactic that Michael uses, “Don’t delude yourself” into thinking that choosing to be aggressively competitive is anything but a tradeoff. You’re choosing to alienate and motivate those that might have been your best allies.

Which brings me to the 2nd of my reactions to Michael’s post:

Being collaborative, cooperative and friendly is NOT a bad thing and it just might be the ONLY thing in the future

Glenn Kelman’s post is about how he, Hadi Partovi and Rich Barton all think that Seattle is never going to be much like Silicon Valley. It’s illustrative of his very point that he chooses to collaborate with both of those executives in crafting his post while Arrington goes off on his own about the perceived attack the Valley has suffered at their hands.

As someone who grew up in Redmond, WA and currently calls San Francisco home, my observation has been that the cutthroat nature of the Valley makes it much harder to feel like you can ask for help. Of course, this is just my perception, but I’d like to extend this point to something a bit more relevant:

It appears to me that “Web 2.0″ (or whatever name you want to use for the networked technologies of today) is about collaboration, openness and most importantly, the understanding that if the other guy wins, it doesn’t necessarily mean that YOU LOSE.

It is my belief that we’re all seeing the most open, collaborative, cooperative companies make a name for themselves because they understand that competition isn’t really about crushing the other guy, it’s about competing to provide your customers with the best, most useful products and services.

Furthermore, the approach taken by many of the Seattle companies that I’ve been watching has been all about following a strategy of open collaboration. Amazon, Redfin, iLike, Zillow, Picnik and many others are leading the way to a more collaborative, hopeful, helpful business climate. This is where the bomb-throwers among you probably think, “Wait, you’re from Redmond and Microsoft is all about crushing the other guy!”

Well, no, that’s not right at all. If you look at the companies that many of us watch and are most interested in at the moment (Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Facebook, Amazon, MySpace) you’ll recognize that many of them are looking to copy the playbook of Microsoft (and some are even beating them at it..). For decades now, the company has competed fiercely but reached out even more stridently to cooperate with those who could help them (don’t make me post the infamous developers speech again). There is no company out there today that has been more responsible for supporting software development than Microsoft. There are literally hundreds of thousands of small businesses that make money by taking Microsoft software and extending it and servicing it. The very idea of a software platform begins with Microsoft and while you might argue that they haven’t done enough you certainly would sound ignorant by suggesting that their collaboration and cooperation hasn’t been hugely valuable to the company and the industry.

If companies in Seattle or New York or Mumbai or Sao Paulo are learning that it’s better to work with one another and that means they “don’t have what it takes to make it in Silicon Valley” I say Silicon Valley better start looking into the mirror a lot harder. But somehow, I don’t think that Michael speaks for everyone in the Valley on this issue..

Finally, I have one last thing to take issue with, given that Michael was willing to nitpick every part of Glenn’s post:

Ideas don’t matter worth a damn. EXECUTION matters. PRODUCTS matter. Ideas? Everyone’s got them.

Michael writes:

The truth about Silicon Valley is that ideas matter more than anything. A Stanford (or even the occasional Berkeley) student with an idea can turn it into a Yahoo. Or a Google. Or countless other success stories. They are surrounded by people who want them to succeed, who are willing to give them money to support their ideas, and then help them grow it. There is no where else in the world quite like this place.

If anything, the sheer number of successful companies in Silicon Valley proves that it’s the execution that matter. The support system that Michael references helps in EXECUTING. Ideas are everywhere. As someone who has spent his time in the halls of Yahoo!, WebEx, RealNetworks and other co’s I assure you – there’s NO shortage of ideas. If Michael wants to argue that the Valley is better at hearing ideas and supporting their execution, great. But don’t tell me that ideas matter more than anything. ESPECIALLY not in Silicon Valley.

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There, I said it, he’s impressive. Actually, more than that, he actually seems… human.

I’m exaggerating my shock a bit, of course. Did I really expect him to come act crazily, jump around the building and preach Scientology? Nope, not at all. I think I was clear on that yesterday.

To speak for myself and a few of the Yahoo’s I talked to, I think that what we saw at noon on Tuesday was something a little bit shocking (and sort of US Weeklyish..): Tom Cruise is more than a little bit like us. He came across as an endearing, passionate, driven and pretty funny guy. Someone who professes to love working, is willing to hop on a plane to CES for an old friend (Terry) and who seems to genuinely understand the importance of other people to his success. Sure, it could all be an act, but you know what? Sometimes you find yourself really wanting to believe the movie and its message and today I wanted to believe.

You’re not going to find a transcript or book report of the session here. But, here are a few things stuck out in my mind about the event:

• People really, really love Tom Cruise. People lined up very early for this event and there were more than enough cameras on hand. See for yourself on the ytomcruise Flickr tag.  (Other tags include: terrysemel, katieholmes and tomcruise)
• This was WAY better than the Guhvanator’s visit, a previous Influential Speaker series event. Whereas that felt like it was just a stump speech aimed AT Yahoo’s, this felt much more like a conversation. In fact, it seemed a bit like Tom (ok, so I’m not on a first name basis, but I’m getting tired of typing Tom Cruise out) wanted it to be less formal than it was. He managed to make the inevitable catcalls (someone really should have sold "I love you Tom!" t-shirts) part of the event, rather than interruptions.
• The event started about 90 minutes late. Why? Because he flew his plane up from L.A. and it got stuck in gnarly weather, apparently. What I appreciated though, was the fact that Terry came out on stage, apologized and explained the delay and acknowledged that this wasn’t, "the greatest way to spend Yahoo resources". But he did it in such a way as to make it clear that we should see this, it just sucked that it ate up a bunch of our time, instead of hinting that everyone should get back to work. Subtle difference, but an important one to me.
• Tom’s got a sense of humor, making fun of himself a few times, in particular his recent habit of jumping up on couches and chairs. And then he got up on a chair… (I told you to look at the pictures..)
• While the questions certainly weren’t controversial in any way, there were some good ones. Questions about his views of how media and the Internet will play together, mobile devices, what drives him etc. Personally, I found the best one to be the question about how to interact with people on a personal level, but within a business context.
  • To paraphrase his response: There are basically 2 or 3 types of people that I’ve come into contact with: 1) The open and giving person who’s willing to share and explain everything to me. If I’m curious about something, they’ll take the time to help me learn about it and if I’m dumb about something, they’ll be patient with me. 2) The person who tries to hide information, in order to maintain control. 3) The person who tries to hide information, because they ultimately don’t really know much of anything.  

On the last point, obviously he prefers working with person #1. What I find interesting is that the line seems to basically be drawn between being open and being closed. Regardless of intent, being closed and trying to hoard information is a negative. I wholeheartedly agree with that, but I’m left wondering how many people really think that way. It’s obviously not that simple, is it? Why, though, is it most people’s default reaction to be closed when they’re unsure? Wouldn’t being more open in edge cases imply to others that you’re trustworthy and giving? Maybe, from now on, when I have this debate with people, I can pull out the Tom Cruise card

On that note, I’ll work in some openness here… Both during and after the event I felt a little nervous about my previous blog post. Not because I’d said anything that I thought was truly mean, but because I feared that my sense of humor might be confused with a lack of understanding about the man’s basic humanity. Yes, it was just intended as something lighthearted and joking, directed more at the controlled nature of events like this than any specific person. But, my fear was/is that people might take it out of context and without actually asking me what I really meant, get upset about it.

When it comes down to it, this is what worries me about blogging. It’s not a fear of being open and of being myself. The problem is that it’s very hard to "be yourself" in just one post, or in one sentence. As I look across the "blogosphere" there are far too many instances where one statement was blown up into something totally unintended, just because someone chose to rant right away, without digging a little bit further. The answer, however, is not to run away and hide. My best option is to be open and let those willing to dig get to know me and trust that those intent upon ranting will look silly in the face of the sum total of my reputation (digital and otherwise). As Mr. Cruise said in Risky Business, "Sometimes you just have to say, ‘What the fuck?!?’"

Tags: tom cruise, yahoo infuential speakers program, transparency, openness

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is that I can’t write a blog to save my life. Not that I can’t write one, really, but I have a hard time writing regularly because I keep wanting to fall into the pattern of writing that I’ve practiced basically my entire life and really perfected in college: lengthy, detailed analysis. Seriously, over 4 years of time at Pomona I really practiced and refined the art of reading, thinking and then creating.. Creating multiple page critical analyses of what I had read. Multiple page ramblings about my opinions on a discussion we’d had in class. Multiple page notes, even.

But blogging, blogging’s not suited for this mentality. Blogging thrives with vitality, a buzzword used to discuss the frequency of interaction among a community. Or freshness. I heart that word, when applied to blogging and the Internet in general. Freshness?? Really? Do words become stale? Do they wilt? A black and white leaf of lettuce on the page that loses color and taste and eventually dies? Well, I suppose that yes, in a way, they can. But great writing, great opinions, great thoughts, do those ever die? I pick up a book written a hundred years ago by a guy who didn’t have a computer and you know what? His writing still impacts me, makes me think differently about the world and my own decision structure. So how important is this freshness thing? Should I be posting just to stay fresh, just to comment a tiny bit about something that’s happening today in the off chance that I’ll get a little search love or that someone will think I’m a shade smarter b/c I got to the issue before they’d read 30 other blogs that pointed to the same topic and made a few pithy remarks?

I love blogging, I love the voice that it gives people. I love that it makes the news open source and perhaps more than anything, I love that it gives anyone the ability to be influential. But seriously folks, let’s get a hold of ourselves here. You don’t need to post every day in order to be relevant. You don’t need to be posting 8 times a day to be Scoble. I’m all for those people who post prolifically, but at the same time, I’m going to take a bit of a different approach I think; I’m going to write when I’m ready to write. I’m going to make a conscious effort, to be sure, to post more often when I have stuff to say. But I don’t want to force it. If I have no opinion yet, if I haven’t worked out the kinks in my logic, well, maybe I won’t say anything at all. Or maybe I’ll just post about the process. I don’t really know. But you know what? I liked my liberal arts education and I’m damn glad that it means that sometimes I just shut up and think..

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