Football clubs still using Snail Mail!

Being disappointed that Arsenal is selling yet another one of our leading lights, Emanuel Adebayor, I was even more surprised by the way they expressed that communication.

Planetfootball quotes AC Milan vice president Adriano Galliani as saying

"Today Arsenal sent us a letter saying they were willing to talk to us about Adebayor," Galliani told Antenna3 television.

"The letter from Arsenal that says, 'Following our communication of 13th June, in which we informed you we were not willing to deal over Adebayor, now we are writing to tell you that we will consider a deal if it still interests you'.

Being a digital maven, sometimes it seems that writing a letter delivers a much stronger statement.  My prediction is that this is going to be the next product (email --> letter) coming from Moo. 

       Go on Richard. Make it happen ;)

The start up team balance

In a startup you need a combination of visionary people and people who aren't visonary but can understand the vision and execute against it. This is the startup team balance.

Too many visonary people = not enough gets done as everyone is dreaming about the vision all day

Too little vision = nothing big is ever achieved as no one really has a vision beyond what is going on.

One or two visionary people is enough, coupled with people known as executors. These guys/girls are steady eddies who, understand what needs to be done and just get on with it. These are probably the hardest people to find, since they have to be matched on ambition, aspiration, and productivity.

They generally seek out ambitious ventures in which they passionately believe in the vision. Their productivity is what drives turing those dreams into reality i.e. a game changing company.

Are you a visionary or an executor?

The speed of acquiring talent

Not having someone fill a role at a Company costs that Company productivity. It takes time to identify someone who could fulfill that role at maximum productivity i.e. has the right fit for the company. So the ultimate pain killer would be a service which reached as many of the right people as fast as possible and which qualified each of those for fit in the most efficient way possible.

This would make the time to productivity (t) as small as possible for companies. Companies will pay for productivity. 

I guess this is a problem we are thinking about every day. 

Jumpstarting the rollodex

Its incredible how much web services which connect people over common interest can greatly accelerate how quickly you meet like minded people offline. Before our true identities were exposed on the web the same level of connection would be impossible or much less efficient. 

Lets take a business example - with so many people blogging about themselves and their thoughts our true identity is being exposed through social media. It means that when we get connected to people, the qualification stage of whether we want to meet them happens way before we waste time in countless encounters. With twitter, tumblr, linkedin profiles, facebook - there is so much more context to taking a mutual connection. 

This means when you meet in person, you already have a good sense of why it would be worth knowing that person versus prior to when our identities were not on the web it would take a ton of meetings just to get a sense of whether you wanted to do business.

I believe this effect of having true identity on the web, and pre-qualification is giving rise to a new phenomenon in modern business: jump starting the rollodex.

With so much information out there for people - it doesn't take 5 years to get to the top of the industry. Be opportunistic, and make that networking happen more efficiently. At least i know its touched my life in unexpected ways so far. 

The power of a cause

Something i've been thinking more and more about is what happens to performance under situations of stress. Let me share with you some examples of what I'm thinking about - these all refer to entrepreneurial endeavors

1) Moving to a new city to work: So i've moved from London to San Fran. Even though i've been here for less than a day, my unfamiliarity with the local environment means that I'm trying to squeeze as much out of my waking day through work than anything else. I can't really do anything else - so that makes me want to work all the time. So situation 1: if you hire workaholic people from out of town and bring them to work then they are likely to work all day, sleep at night and then work all day again just to pass the time. Certainly this wouldn't be the case in London.

2) Having money pressure: Having less money means you need to be on a budget to survive. This means you generally have to be more creative with what you spend money on and do things which are generally free. This means that if you are workaholic generally you are likely to do everything thats fun and free. Often this involves continuing to work. All the time.

3) Having time pressure: generally mission critical things have a high time value. Move too slow you lose. I'm under time pressure to deliver certain things. It makes me want to be more efficient, find better ways to organise stuff and in general make the most of my time. Bottom line, as a workaholic it makes me want to work faster.

So there you go. Find ambitious workaholics, push them into a startup in a new city, with restricted pay and time pressure and watch their performance soar. The power of the cause makes it worth it - this sacrifice is worth something & the emotional cost is negligible to the benefit.

Now i just need to find some more ambitious workaholics to join me to ease the pain.

Plus i really got to sleep :)...

I like this quote

"If you can track the success of advertising, especially if you can follow sales leads, then marketing ceases to be just a cost-centre, with an arbitrary budget allocated to it. Instead, advertising becomes a variable cost of production that measurably results in making more profit."

I also like this derivative quote

"If you can track the success of recruitment advertising, especially if you can follow candidate leads, then marketing ceases to be just a cost-centre, with an arbitrary budget allocated to it. Instead, recruitment advertising becomes a variable cost of production that measurably results in better candidates."

The latter is what we're doing with Snaptalent.

I haven't posted for a while

I'm still alive but this time doing what i was made to do.

We just started a company out on the west coast called Snaptalent and spent jan-march doing Y Combinator. I'm a huge believer in revolution - we're reinventing a market that hasn't changed in 15 years, recruitment advertising.

Ahh, that you say - its boring. I know, thats why we're making it sexy and cool again.

If one could connect the best people and best companies in a much more efficient manner you can impact the productivity of companies, the productivity of a labour market and ultimately the productivity of local and national economies.

Thats a big vision and what keeps me going with this. We're not in it for the short ride, this one is a long term project which if we do right will impact 100s of millions of people worldwide.

We'll do it right. Expect more cool blogging from me soon.

Internships at anytime of your life

One thought which has troubled me for a long time is the idea that internships are only available to people at a certain age and certain time of your life. For example most internships targetted at Young people in the UK are either only accessible to people who are in the penultimate year of their degree. This way if you miss that deadline you've basically blown your chance to do one. This is silly. What if i've graduated? what if i'm a talented first year. What if i've already worked for a few years and want to try something else?

The value of the internship is analogous as a free trial on a website which intends to charge you on a monthly basis. Here the intention is to intice the user to find value in the thing he is intending to purchase before committing to the service. This way if there is ongoing value the user has enough evidence to purchase it. Similarly the month to month nature of the contract allows the user to back out when he or she no longer obtains value for the service.

Imagine if we applied the same principle to the recruitment market? Anyone and everyone could trial a company for three months. The company gets labour for three months at a reduced price with increased evidence that the person is suitable for the role. Also the company knows exactly when to terminate the agreement if the person is not working out. If the person wants to he can start on a month to month contract. If he or she is no longer enjoying it (usually a function of how much they are being stretched and progressing) they can back out at the month end date. They could try a three month internship at another company at anytime and not worry that they aren't eligible for this trial period.

The terminal nature of career choices has no doubt alientated many talented people working in companies right now. I believe such fluidity in the recruitment market will not only alleviate unhappiness but provide companies with a much more iterative way to identify people who will be best suited to its roles, ultimately benefiting the economy with increased productivity.

What do you think?