How to properly define a company’s culture

Company culture is a concept which, while incredibly difficult to explain or measure, is very important to a company’s well-being and employee morale. Too often, it comes in the form of vaguely written out “corporate mission statements” or never-ending lists of feel-good, mean-nothing “company values”. Oh joy, you value “teamwork” and “making money” – that was so insightful…

It was thus very refreshing for me to read the Netflix company culture document (HT: Hacking NetFlix, embedded below via SlideShare):

Slidumentation aside, I think the NetFlix presentation does three things extremely well:

1. It’s not a list of feel-good words, but  actual values and statements which can actually guide the company in its day-to-day hiring, evaluation. Most company culture statements are nothing but long lists of virtues and things non-sociopaths respect. “Teamwork” and “honesty”, for example, are usually among them. But, as the Netflix presentation points out, even Enron had a list of “values” and that wound up not amounting to much of anything. Instead, Netflix has a clear state of  things they look for in their employees, each with clear explanations for what they actually mean. For “Curiosity”, Netflix has listed four supporting statements:
   

   • You learn rapidly and eagerly
   • You seek to understand our strategy, markets, subscribers, and suppliers.
   • You are broadly knowledgeable about business, technology, and entertainment.
   • You contribute effectively outside of your specialty

   Admittedly, there is nothing particularly remarkable about these four statements. But what is remarkable is that it is immediately clear to the reader what “curiosity” means, in the context of Netflix’s culture, and how Netflix employees should be judged and evaluated. It’s oftentimes astounding to me how few companies get to this bare minimum in terms of culture documents.

2. Netflix actually gives clear value judgments.  I’ve already lamented the extent to which company culture statements are nothing more than laundry lists of “feel good” words. Netflix admirably cuts through that by not only explaining what the values mean, but also by what should happen when different “good words” conflict. And, best of all, they do it with brutal honesty. For instance, Netflix on how they won’t play the “benefits race” that other companies play:
   

   A great work place is stunning colleagues. Great workplace is not day-care, espresso, health benefits, sushi lunches, nice offices, or big compensation, and we only do those that are efficient at attracting stunning colleagues.

   Netflix on teamwork versus individual performance:

   Brilliant jerks: some companies tolerate them, [but] for us, the cost to teamwork is too high.

   Netflix on its annual compensation review policy:

   Lots of people have the title “Major League Pitcher” but they are not all equally effective. Similarly, all people with the title “Senior Marketing Manager” and “Director of Engineering” are not equally effective … So, essentially, [we are] rehiring each employee each year (and re-evaluating them based on their performance) for the purposes of compensation.

   Within each of the three examples, Netflix has done two amazing things: they’ve made a bold value judgment, which most companies fail to do, explaining just how the values should be lived, especially when they conflict (“we don’t care how smart you are, if you don’t work well with the team, you have to go”), and they’ve even given a reason(“teamwork is more important to delivering impact for our customers than one smart guy”).

3. They explain what makes their culture different from other companies and why. Most people who like their jobs will give “culture” as a reason they think their company is unique. yet, if you read the countless mission statements and “our values” documents out there, you’d never be able to see that difference. Granted, the main issue may just be that management has chosen not to live up to the lofty ideals espoused in their list of virtues, but what might help with that and make it clearer to employees about what makes a particular workplace special is explaining how and why the company’s culture is different from another’s. Contrast that with the Netflix presentation, which spends many slides explaining the tradeoffs between too many rules and too few, and why they ultimately sided with having very few rules, whereas a manufacturing company or a medical company would have very many of them. They never go so far as to say that one is better than the other, only that they are different because they are in different industries with different needs and dynamics. And, as a result of that, they have implemented changes, like a simpler expense policy (“Act in Netflix’s best interests”) and a revolutionary vacation policy (“There is no policy or tracking”) [with an awesome explanation: “There is also no clothing policy at Netflix, but no one has come to work naked lately”].

Pay attention, other companies. You would do well to learn from Netflix’s example.

What does your tag say?

From my good buddy Serena’s tumblr:

Like many other products/services in the technology value chain, my tag would read the same…

Don’t count your markets before they hatch

I was reading a very insightful analysis of the supercomputing industry over the past decade on scalability.org, when I stumbled on a chart which illustrates not only a pattern I see very often, but also a reason why you should always sandbag your forecasts if you’re betting on a new technology: your forecasts are almost always too optimistic.

Take Intel’s and HP’s huge gambit to push Itanium as the processor technology which would eventually replace all the other major processor technologies (i.e. SPARC, PowerPC, even Intel’s very own x86). Countless technology analysts and Intel/HP market researchers said Itanium would become the only game in town in computer processor technology – and with good reason. The technology that Itanium represented, in theory would’ve completely changed the processor technology game.

Yet, if we look at the progression of Itanium sales versus Itanium forecasts, we see a very different picture:

If anything, Intel/HP have now distanced themselves from Itanium – preferring to ship products based on Intel’s homegrown x86 technology, rather than the technology analysts had expected to storm the market.

Kind of embarrassing, isn’t it? The point isn’t to spit on HP and Intel’s faces (however much they deserve it), but to point out that new technologies are notoriously hard to predict, and to whatever extent is possible, companies everywhere should (a) never bet the farm on them and (b) watch what forecasts they’re making. They may come back to haunt them.

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Does an iTablet exist?

If you follow the technology industry gossip, you’ll have heard the rumors that Apple will release a next-generation tablet PC at the end of January (kind of like Moses bringing tablets with the word of God?)

Industry gossip, especially gossip about Apple, is notoriously bad as the many analysts out there oftentimes fail to understand Apple’s business and misread the things that they hear.

However, given the very precise supply chain reports out there (as well as the #2 exec at European telecom firm Orange’s announcement that they would be a partner with Apple), I am leaning towards believing this device exists.

Granted this is all speculation (and there’s a significant chance the industry is getting excited over nothing), and my good (and very intelligent) buddy Eric disagrees with me completely (for good reasons), but my thinking on the subject stems from three things:

• A rapidly growing device category exists – When I first heard of the netbook category, I scoffed. After all, what is the difference between a netbook and a very cheap, underpowered notebook or an extremely powerful smartphone? However, as time went by, I was forced to eat my own words. There seemed to be an enormous appetite for such a device (as judged by the rapid growth rate of the netbook category) which didn’t seem to cut too deeply into notebook sales at all. Intel has even come on record as saying that netbooks are rarely bought, if ever, to replace notebooks! Whereas mobile phones are likely to replace portable media players (like iPods), it seemed that people were drawn to the idea of something in between a workhorse laptop and a smartphone to be used primarily to access the internet. This is also borne out by the booming growth in eReaders like Amazon’s Kindle which provide special interfaces, like special touchscreens and displays, which are tailored for casual internet browsing and reading. If there is a place for Apple to continue its rapid growth trajectory, a device category with specific technical needs and with potential for rapid growth like this in-between-smartphone-and-notebook eReader/tablet/netbook device would be it.
• Clear room for user interface innovation – The current generations of netbooks and eReaders could use some significant improvement. Most netbooks don’t (yet) support a touchscreen interface and rarely sport a user interface that really wows. eReaders today predominantly depend on current generations of black-and-white-only e-Ink displays which suffer from a very slow page-change rate. The potential for someone with the hardware and UI design chops that Apple has to implement a new generation of display technology and provide a much needed refresh in the control scheme for these devices is enormous, and it fits with Apple’s history of changing how the industry and the consumer thought of products like the smartphone and portable media player (iPhone and iPod).
• A vertical model fits – Apple’s standard strategy is to build strong end-to-end solutions that encompass hardware, software, and services in a neatly packaged product. This helps Apple maintain the quality of product experience, as well as extract extra profit by creating  a powerful “walled garden” which prevents other companies from seizing control of Apple’s key features and sources of revenue. Take the iPhone for instance – Apple has built the phone, designed the operating system, created an application and music store, and negotiated the proper service contract with a wireless carrier. It doesn’t get more “all in one/vertical” than that! Similarly, if a tablet emerges primarily as a means to get on the internet and read books/publications/blogs, there are a number of clear ways for Apple to “go vertical” – including adding an eBook store to iTunes, charging publishers a fee to distribute their products to “iTablet” owners, building a subscription model for content access, etc. This wouldn’t be an easy battle, but given Apple’s success with mobile phone applications and digital music, there’s plenty of precedent for seeing Apple expand its “content empire” to other forms of digital content.

Of course, there are a number of good reasons why this prediction might not wind up being true:

• Apple doesn’t believe that the market opportunity is large enough. Is the growth in netbooks sustainable? Or just a product of the global recession pushing people to buy very cheap electronics? If Apple suspects its the latter, that would be a great reason to not distract management from more important tasks like maintaining or increasing its desktop/notebook market share or defending the iPhone’s market share against a growing Android threat (and potentially a resurgent Blackberry and Windows Mobile 7 threats).
• Apple fears cannibalization. While Intel might view netbooks as a chance to sell more chips without interfering with its higher-end chips, Apple may fear that Apple notebook users, many of whom don’t need all the processing power that’s in their machines as they merely use them to surf the internet or watch movies/listen to music, will simply “trade down” and be tempted completely away from buying Apple’s higher end notebook models and hence jeopardizing Apple’s long-term growth and profitability.
• Technological solutions to current problems aren’t mature enough. While the iPhone pushed the mobile phone industry, overnight, to adopt touchscreens, what is oftentimes not understood is that the touchscreen technology used by Apple has been around for quite some time (and were probably approved for use by Apple because they were mature). Many of the new display technologies to replace and/or improve on e-Ink are much less mature. If Apple has studied the problems facing current generations of tablet/netbook/ereaders and concluded that compelling solutions to them are still a year or two away, then, I believe that Apple would wait until they did come out to really storm the market.
• Apple doesn’t think it can compete with a successful vertical model. If Apple felt it couldn’t use its standard playbook of providing services/content along with software and hardware, then that would be a big reason for Apple to not consider this mode. This could be because of the presence of large book-sellers like Barnes & Noble and Amazon in the eBook space (who do not allow non-Amazon/non-Barnes & Noble approved devices to access their digital libraries) or because of a powerful third party like Google which is already pushing one universal access platform for all eBooks. In my mind, this would be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, reason for Apple to think twice about entering the tablet/eReader space.

I’m glad my personal financial well-being doesn’t depend on me making the right call on this one , but push comes to shove, given the pretty-specific-supply-chain checks and the fact that I believe the threat of cannibalization and small market opportunity to be unlikely, I believe Apple will make this plunge, and I eagerly await to see how it will shape this new emerging device category.

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Is someone at Microsoft listening?

A few weeks ago, I puzzled over why Microsoft isn’t pursuing a more integrated device strategy across its non-PC platforms. After all, if you’re on shaky ground (new device markets), you should do everything you can to steady yourself against something more firm (like your PC business or the combination of your other devices).

So, imagine my surprise when I read off of Engadget and The Register that Microsoft is looking for developers to help bring the X-Box Live experience to Windows Mobile phones. Could it be that they’re listening to me? (Rhetorical question, of course, no need to burst my bubble) Or maybe someone at Samsung (who recently announced an app store for apps across their phones, TVs, Blu-Ray players, etc) was listening?

This play is not a sure thing, by any stretch of the imagination, but it may just allow Windows Mobile to compete on a more equal standing with Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone platforms – two devices which, for all the hype as hardcore application systems, have so far turned out to be little more than email-and-game systems (although that is likely to change as the devices adopt new higher-performance ARM Cortex A9 processors).

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What it will take to get me to switch to Chrome

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Firefox. But, given Firefox’s slow start-time and Google’s Chrome browser’s recently announced support for extensions, I did a recent re-evaluation of my browser choice. Although I’ve chosen to stick with Firefox, the comparison of the two browsers is now much closer than its ever been before to the point where I think, if the pace of Chrome development continues, I could actually switch within a few months. What I would need are:

• Full browser synch – Mozilla Weave is probably the most important extension in my Firefox install. Weave provides a secure and fast method for me to have the same set of bookmarks, browser history, passwords, and preferences between every copy of Firefox that I run (i.e. on my work computer vs. on my personal computer). This has made it easier for me to not only continue research between browser sessions, but also to quickly get up to productivity on any computer with a working Firefox installation. While Chrome now supports bookmark synchronization, the lack of a history or a secure password synch makes it harder for me to have the same degree of flexibility that I have with Firefox. What’s ironic, though, is that a few years ago, I was very reliant on Google’s Browser Synch Firefox extension to do the same thing, and found Firefox to be a lot less flexible when Google stopped updating it. But, this historical precedent means I’m relatively confident it should be easy for Google to introduce a similar feature for Chrome.
• A Firebug-like web development tool – Chrome has a lot of useful web development tools but, up until now, I have yet to see a platform built into Chrome (or any other browser) which has the same level of sophistication and feature set as Firefox’s Firebug extension. For most people, this isn’t that relevant, but as someone who’s done a fair amount of web development in the past and expect to continue to do so in the future, the lack of something as versatile and easy-to-use as Firebug is a big downside to me. With the opening up of Chrome to extension developers, I’m hopeful that it will only be a matter of time until something comparable to Firebug is developed for Chrome
• Extensions to replicate the Greasemonkey hacks I use -Another Firefox extension which I’ve come to rely heavily on is Greasemonkey. It’s a bit difficult to explain how Greasemonkey works to someone who’s never used it, but what it basically does is allow you to install little scripts which can add extra functions to your Firefox browsing experience. These scripts can be found on repositories like Userscripts. Some scripts I’ve become attached to include Google Image Relinker (which lets me go straight to an image from Google Images and skip the intermediary site), LongURL Mobile Expander (which lets me see where shortened URLs, like those from TinyURL or Bit.ly, are actually pointing), and Friendfeed Force Word Wrap (which forces word wrap on improperly formatted Friendfeed entries). Because most of these are pretty minor browser modifications, I am hopeful that these functions will emerge when Chrome’s extension developer community gets large enough.
• Advanced web standard support – I think its pretty odd that despite being a major proponent of the HTML5 standard and new rich browser technologies like WebGL and Native Client, that Chrome has yet to truly distance itself from its browser peers in terms of support for these new standards. True, the technologies themselves are still under development and very few websites exist which support them, but a differentiated level of support for these new technologies would give me a whole set of reasons to pick Chrome over its browser peers, especially given the direction I expect the rich web to move.

Now, in the off chance someone from Mozilla is reading this, what could Mozilla do to keep me firmly in the Firefox camp?

• Faster release cycle – It’s difficult to maintain a constant technological edge when your software is open source, but a faster release cycle will help prolong the advantages that the Mozilla ecosystem currently have like a strong extension and theme developer community, a large user base, and a rich set of experimental projects (like Weave and JetPack and Ubiquity).
• Faster startup time – I appreciate that my startup speed issues with Firefox may be entirely due to the fact that I have hefty extensions like Greasemonkey and Weave installed, but given that my current build of Chrome has some 16 extensions (including the Chrome version of AdBlock and Google Gears) and still loads much faster than Firefox, I believe that significant opportunity for memory management and start-time improvement still exists within the Firefox code base.
• Better web app integration – The Chrome browser was clearly designed to run web applications. It makes it easy to load individual applications in their own windows and to set up web applications as default handlers for specific file types and events. While Firefox has come a long way in terms of its advanced web technology support, I don’t feel that enough attention has been dedicated to making the web application experience nearly as seamless. Whether this means an overhaul of the Prism project or a new way of handling browser events, I’m not sure, but this is a direction where the gap between Chrome and Firefox can and should be closed.
• Firefox everywhere – I have been painfully disappointed in the slow roll-out of the Fennec mobile Firefox project. In a world where Safari, Opera, and Internet Explorer all have fully functioning mobile browsers, there’s no reason Firefox should be behind in this arena. Fennec also makes the Firefox value proposition more compelling with Weave as a means of synchronizing settings and bookmarks between the two.
• More progress on experimental UI – I have been an enormous fan of the innovations in browser use which I consider to be pioneered by Mozilla – tabbed browsing, extensions, browser skinning, the “awesome bar”, etc. One way for Mozilla to stay ahead of the curve, even if they are only “on par” along other dimensions with their peers, is to continue to push on progress in the Mozilla Labs research projects like Ubiquity and JetPack, or a smarter way to integrate Yahoo Pipes!, or something akin to Cooliris’s technology (to throw out a few random ideas).
• Advanced web technology support – Ditto as with the Google Chrome comment above.

With all of this said, I’m actually fairly happy that there are so many aggressive development efforts underway by the browser makers of our era. It looks like the future of the web will be an interesting place!

(Image credit) (Image credit – Greasemonkey) (Image credit – Fennec)

Off the Market: How to Profit from Infidelity

Infidelity has major consequences. The biggest ones are (or at least should be) personal consequences (loss of trust and hurting someone you care about), but when you’re a public figure like Tiger Woods, it can also have major financial consequences (like the loss of advertisement deals and negative impact to one’s reputation).

Leave it to some enterprising significant others of professional athletes to create a company called Off the Market to find a way to profit from this (HT: CNBC). Off the Market is an invite-only event where professional athletes and their significant others, at no cost, can mingle and access information and products/services to help, as their mission statement puts it, “help athletes sustain a positive and sexy relationship with their mates”.

And how does Off the Market fund itself?

[Off the Market] will make money by signing sponsors that will have access to the power players at the parties and through the Web site’s e-commerce page.

Gift bags to Monday’s event, for example, will have a product from Tenga, which makes adult toys for men.

“It’s a perfect partnership,” Robbins said. “Our men can use this product on the road and that will help them stay straight at home.”

Other sponsors of Monday’s event include Judith Ripka jewelry, Vita Coco drink, the W Hotel in Hoboken, Modern Luxury Ventures (concierge company) and Coastal Advisors, an insurance company that writes policies for athletes.

Robbins says she hopes to spice up the sponsorship deals.

“We’d like to offer a private lesson for strip pole dancing one day or even offer to have a strip pole built in a home,” Robbins said.

Impressive way to connect delivering a valuable service addressing a distinct need to financial return.

(Image credit – Flowchart)

2010 Goals

I don’t usually do the New Year’s resolutions thing. But this year, since I’m now publishing everything  to benjamintseng.com, I think the perceived public scrutiny associated with having a public list of goals for the coming year on my own personal domain name might end up being a good motivator to achieve them.

So, without further ado:

• Finish a Rev 1 of Benchside – While I had a wild ride on Xhibitr and learned a ton, I’m hoping Benchside, the  project that I’m currently working on, will end much more successfully. Whereas Xhibitr was an online social network aimed at fashion, Benchside is a software application designed to run on your computer (not the web) which aims to help you change the way you organize the information on your hard drive. While Benchside officially started about half a year after work on Xhibitr went underway, its progress has suffered from a lack of focus on my part. Despite this, I still have strong faith in the team and the project, and I definitely want to see this through. So, by December 31, 2010, I will have a working version (even if its only barely working and cobbled together with voodoo magic and duct tape) of the core Benchside software working on my computer.
• Read Pawn in Frankincense and Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett – My girlfriend adores Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles. They were an integral part of her identity growing up, and she continues to re-read them today whenever she has extra time (and no new reading or knitting material ). They are also very meaty books full of well-researched 16th century European history and cultural idiosyncrasies. I’ve already read two (Game of Kings and Disorderly Knights – yes, there’s a chess theme in the titles) and despite priding myself in being well-educated, I found them very difficult to follow (I guess that’s why I read comic books?) So why read two more? In addition to my girlfriend wanting me to read them, she’s raved about the conclusion to this series (Checkmate) for years, and given her refined, educated taste in books (although apparently not in men ), I can’t help but want to stretch my own reading ability especially if the payoff is as grand as she has made it seem. Consequently, by December 31, 2010, I will have read both Pawn in Frankincense and Checkmate.
• Meet at least 3 new people per conference I attend – If I have one great weakness, it is that I find it painfully difficult to talk to people I’m not familiar with. On the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, I rank extremely “I” (as in introvert). But, given my upcoming job in venture capital and my desire to pursue opportunities which won’t be so forgiving of my extreme shyness, I’m going to set a goal for myself to help break that habit. At every conference/industry event I attend in 2010, I will meet and have meaningful conversation with at least 3 new people.
• Read at least 1 academic scientific paper per month – I pride myself on being a science person. In fact, with the notable exception of Xhibitr, my portfolio is full of my old scientific “adventures”.  But, as I’ve dug deeper into the technology and business world, I have unfortunately lost touch with that part of my life. Part of the reason that I still blog about science here and over at Bench Press is a desire to stay connected to those under-exercised scientific interests. This year, to help keep that connection going, and also to help me keep pace with the tech-and-science related news and innovations which give me fodder for more blog posts, in 2010, I will read at least 1 academic (as in journal) scientific paper per month.

I’m sure some of the people reading this list will think that my bar for success is set too low. And, maybe they’re right. But, hey, this is the first time I’ve done something like this, and I’m not about to set myself up for public failure .

Happy New Year to everyone! And best of luck with those resolutions!

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