Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi Interview at Stanford GSB (video)

Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO

Stanford Graduate School of Business (gsb.stanford.edu) video above published Dec 3, 2018: “People often optimize for the role or for the company. The first thing I optimize for is who I will work with. Don’t bet on companies, bet on people,” Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, told students in this View From The Top event. Khosrowshahi discussed his departure from Expedia (expedia.com) and his approach to shifting company values at Uber (uber.com) to focus on diversity and inclusion. “An important factor in our change was setting a new culture and new norms,” he said. “We crowdsourced those norms and asked people – what kind of company do we want to be?”

Khosroshahi advised students to let go of benchmarking via titles and salaries when it comes to career goals. “Have a theme but don’t get locked in. I’m always looking around to make sure my own biases don’t prevent me from seeing something great,” he said. “When you’re lucky enough to take that risk, jump!” Khosrowshahi was interviewed by Lepi Jha Fishman, Stanford GSB MBA ’19.
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a16z VC Marc Andreessen On Tech Valuations and More (podcast)

Marc Andreessen Answers the Tech Valuation Question | Bloomberg.com: "many investors don't grasp what's changed ..."

“We make our money on the ones that work and our reputations on the ones that don’t.”

Stock returns tend to be driven by a handful of big winners; for venture investors, it’s even more lopsided. Venture-capital funds typically have a 50 percent failure rate -- half of the investments lose money, with half of those being total losses. The third quartile breaks even, or returns two or three times their money over five to 10 years. The real action is in their top quartile, which can generate return on investments of anywhere from three- to 1,000-fold.

See also:

• Tech Valuations: Nothing Like the 1990s... | ritholtz.com

• 10 Federal Agencies You Might Not Have Heard of, But That Matter for Tech – Andreessen Horowitz | a16z.com

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Anthony Scaramucci Interview, Succeeding Through Failure (BV Podcast)

Anthony Scaramucci on Succeeding Through Failure: Masters in Business radio podcast with SkyBridge Capital founder and managing partner Anthony Scaramucci, interviewed by Barry Ritholtz. Scaramucci, known as the “Mooch,” describes how he succeeded through a series of failures. Fired from the investment banking department at Goldman Sachs, he landed a new job two months later -- in the sales department at Goldman Sachs. There, he helped raise money for PC maker Dell in the early 1990s when the company ran into some trouble. When he started Skybridge as a hedge-fund seeder, it faltered. When the financial crisis hit he used the opportunity to buy the fund-of-funds business of Citigroup. The business thrived, and the firm now has about $13 billion under management. He is the author of "Goodbye Gordon Gekko: How to Find Your Fortune Without Losing Your Soul," and is co-host of the revived program "Wall Street Week," which his firm owns. Skybridge Capital also founded the influential SALT conference.

Topics: Success, Failure, Business, Investing

Domain names of companies referenced:

• skybridgecapital.com
• saltconference.com
• wallstreetweek.com
• goldmansachs.com
• citigroup.com
• bloombergview.com

See also on Domain Mondo: Investing, Trading Against Machines, Jim Chanos Shorts China (video): "Kudos to Anthony Scaramucci and SkyBridge Media LLC, an affiliate of SkyBridge Capital, for acquiring rights to use the domain name wallstreetweek.com and reinventing the iconic program originally hosted by Louis Rukeyser ..." 


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Stanford's William Barnett on Leading Innovation by Design (video)

Leading Innovation by Design -

Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor William Barnett explains how innovative companies discover new approaches to business. He highlights the key differences that make some companies more likely to deliver innovations, and shows how leaders can shape their companies to be more innovative. Published on May 15, 2015

Bill Barnett on Strategy: The Secret: ".... Right answer: Design your organization so that it develops new capabilities. We know that some companies learn much better than others. Make it your job, as a leader, to help your organization be better at learning. Structure your organization so that your people must engage with important, unsolved problems. Establish routines that allow for failure and reward those who try to discover – regardless of the ultimate outcome. Build a culture that values discovering over knowing, becoming over being. Lead by design, and don’t forget the secret: There is no secret."

www.barnetttalks.com
@BarnettTalks
#exedweb

Notes: 

A high variance system allows high rate of failures and innovative success.

Existing technology or disruptive technology?

Venture Capital: rate of failures is a key positive metric.

The fear of being a fool vs the hope of being a genius--do you want consensus or an environment safe to risk being a fool?

Upper right in graphic below is what venture capitalists and innovators want:

VCs and Innovators want to be in that non-consensus "right" position (upper right above) 

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Nancy Dubuc, A&E Networks, The Necessity of Failure (video)

Nancy Dubuc | The Necessity of Failure: "Nancy Dubuc, chief executive of A&E Networks, has made her mark on cable television by taking big risks. But for every success, Ms. Dubuc says, she has learned from important failures." source: NYTimes.com

aetv.com


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Gigaom, Venture Capital, Golden Handcuffs, And The Valley of Death

Good interview of Mathew Ingram, about the shutdown of Gigaom, in the Columbia Journalism Review (excerpt below) and the dangers of media companies, startups, and others, taking venture capital money--it's not always the smartest move--

Christopher Massie, CJR: One reason this is so strange is that Gigaom seemed like it was doing so well. What should the takeaway be for other media outlets? 

Mathew Ingram: "Everyone has their own favorite lesson. Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land talked about what this says about taking [venture capital] money when you’re a media company. And that’s part of the story. Gigaom has been VC-financed from the beginning. Other media startups were not. And when you take venture capital money they’re golden handcuffs, in a way. It’s a Faustian bargain. You make certain promises about your growth, and if that growth doesn’t materialize then VCs lose interest and your company fails... The model that Danny and others have chosen is to grow slowly and to be funded only by your cash flow. And that’s a much safer model—there’s no question about it. The only problem is it takes a lot longer. And you frequently don’t build as big a business... If you are super small and super focused and super niche you can succeed, arguably. And if you’re super huge and mass and gigantic and growing quickly, you can succeed. But in the middle, is death. The valley of death. So arguably we got caught in that valley of death...." (read more at the link above)


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Same O' ICANN: Lack of Accountability, Transparency, Failure to Protect the Public Interest

While CCWG-Accountability meets for two days starting today (Monday, January 19, 2015) in Frankfurt, Germany, trying to solve ICANN's lack of accountability--which may not even be fixable due to systemic issues, including its organizational form, Domain Mondo came across this sad reminder of how dysfunctional ICANN is, and always has been (excerpt follows, link below):

14 July 2010: "... ICANN is run too much like a large corporation and not enough like a genuine public interest organization. Besides the "corporate culture", the legal corporate governance structure of ICANN is a significant part of the problem in the organization's lack of accountability and transparency. California law requires the ICANN Board of Directors to be the ultimate decision makers for ICANN policy and governance matters. This is inherently at adds with providing an independent mechanism to check that decision making process, which is required for good public governance. Under California law, which governs ICANN, the organization's board of directors is ultimately responsible and has the final say on decisions; but the reality is that the workload required to understand all the issues is unrealistic for a volunteer board. The result is that staff "briefs" the board according to the staff's desires, ultimately managing the process that an over-extended board cannot. The problem of "staff capture" creates a significant and growing problem for ICANN's accountability and transparency (particularly given the exploding budget and overpaid staff & consultants). The staff's practice of providing secret briefing papers to the board on matters of key policy or governance dramatically undermines their claims of transparency and openness. There must also be more openness and transparency in viewing board deliberations at ICANN. Board decisions are made in secret without the community having an understanding of the reasoning behind the policy decisions and the specific positions taken by those chosen to represent them. The board should be less concerned with demonstrating a unified public front on policy decisions - a practice that encourages secretly negotiating unanimous votes with no public airing of the various views of the board. The board owes -- and community needs to witness -- a substantive dialectic at the board level on public policy issues. Each board member's individual vote should be recorded and published, as is done for legitimate public governance institutions in the interests of transparency and good governance..." (read more at: FW: Lack of Accountability to Non-Commercial Users Remains Problematic for ICANN's Promise to Protect the Public Interest by Robin Gross, IP Justice Executive Director)

For more information on the CCWG-Accountability meeting in Frankfurt, including the link to view the meeting online go to expvc.com.

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FailCon: So Your Startup Failed, It Doesn't Mean YOU Are a Failure

Welcome to the Failure Age! - NYTimes.com: "An age of constant invention naturally begets one of constant failure. The life span of an innovation, in fact, has never been shorter. An African hand ax from 285,000 years ago, for instance, was essentially identical to those made some 250,000 years later. "

The FailCon event in San Francisco was canceled this year and Ms. Phillipps reports in the New York Times that "part of the reason is that failure chatter is now so pervasive in Silicon Valley that a conference almost seems superfluous. “It’s in the lexicon that you’re going to fail.” "30 to 40 percent of venture-backed start-ups blow through most or all of their investors’ money, and 70 to 80 percent do not deliver their projected return on investment." (source)

Startup failure, although destigmatized on a cultural level in Silicon Valley, can be painful for an individual entrepreneur:

Today my startup failed: "No soft landing, no happy ending—we simply failed... Our most recent product, DrawQuest, is by all accounts a success. In the past year it’s been downloaded more than 1.4 million times, and is currently used by about 25,000 people a day, and 400,000 last month alone. Retention and engagement are great. And yet we still failed. It may seem surprising that a seemingly successful product could fail, but it happens all the time. Although we arguably found product/market fit, we couldn’t quite crack the business side of things... I’m disappointed that I couldn’t produce a better outcome for those who supported me the most—my investors and employees. Few in business will know the pain of what it means to fail as a venture-backed CEO. Not only do you fail your employees, your customers, and yourself, but you also fail your investors—partners who helped you bring your idea to life... they’ve supported me throughout the ups and downs, and especially the downs. With that said, life goes on, and the best path forward is not a wounded one, but a more learned and motivated one..." --Chris Poole, founder of 4chan

Rewriting Cheezburger Saved My Life — Backchannel — Medium: "... When my first start-up failed, in 2001, I struggled with depression and thoughts of suicide. Things may have looked bad in 2013, but I had promised myself that I would not return to that same dark, helpless place. For many entrepreneurs, life and business are the same thing—a dangerous yet alluring corruption of the ego. If you really believe that you and your business are one, business failure destroys you, and success rewards you infinitely. But no outcome warrants such sacrifice. I started to tease apart my two identities first by embracing my own failure. I discussed the layoffs publicly. A public failure is embarrassing and isolating. You become the target of an endless stream of negativity. Acquaintances and strangers alike call you a crook, a fraud, a robber baron. You become a scapegoat for all the world’s economic, moral and social wrongs. Once you publicly disclose a failure, you only really have one choice: move on...." --Ben Huh, CEO of The Cheezburger Network

Wearing Your Failures on Your Sleeve - NYTimes.com: "“We are getting a billion dollars a month of new investor money coming into the region, [Silicon Valley]” says Dr. Freeman, a co-founder of a nonprofit and a start-up. “If you fail, some investors believe that you’ve got the guts to take it to the mat. That you’re not personally going to be so damaged by adversity as to lose your persistence in business. That you’ll fight.”" (emphasis added)

Resources: failforward.org

thefailcon.com

101 Startup Failure Post-Mortems

Entrepreneurship Center | UCSF Innovation, Technology & Alliances

Episode 13: Why My Startup Failed – with Jordan Nemrow | The Startup Sessions with Michael Knouse 

Zillionears Startup FAIL Sobering chat w/ Jordan Nemrow & Dan Polaske Cup #49 Startup Show - YouTube

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How Big A Failure Are New gTLDs? One Picture Tells All

ICANN's delusional ideas about innovation, competition, and consumer choice notwithstanding, the hard, cold reality of the disastrous new gTLDs domain names program, is now becoming clear--here's one picture that tells all:

thumbnail source: Versign Study (click to go to original)

• 41 percent of all new gTLD domain names are serving up PPC websites. A PPC website contains little user-generated content and almost exclusively advertising links. 
• 17% of all new gTLD domain names fail to resolve to a website (return "error")
• 10% redirect to another website
• 10% have no content to classify
• 8% holding page
• 11% "other"
• Only 3 percent of domain names registered in new gTLDs contain business websites!

Read more about the above referenced study here.

And of course, ICANN is getting ready for a second round of new gTLDs that the world neither wants nor needs. But hey, ICANN is making $185,000 (plus renewals) for each new gTLD from which it can expand staff, pay exorbitant salaries and benefits and lavish contractor fees, and hold junkets at luxury hotels worldwide! So that's how to profit off a non-profit corporation with no membership, and a self-selected Board of Directors, with no accountability nor oversight!


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Real Innovation and Failure by John Oringer of Shutterstock.com (video)

Jon Oringer's Columbia Class Day Speech from Shutterstock on Vimeo.
Shutterstock founder and CEO Jon Oringer delivers the 2014 keynote speech at the Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science graduation, advising students to dream big, but expect to grow from failures along the way. "If you want to create value of tremendous magnitude, you have to learn to live with — and to love — the process of failing." 

This is the "real deal" -- nothing like, for instance, the cheap words thrown out by overpaid ICANN staffers or hucksters that new gTLDs are somehow, in and of themselves, "innovation," and yet wouldn't know real innovation if it hit them in the face --

Shutterstock CEO Jon Oringer's Message to the Next Generation: 'Embrace Failure' — The Shutterstock Blog: "... Even though I was nearly broke, I was living my dream of building things. But I wanted to build something lasting, something of value. So I knew what I had to do: Double down on failure. Actually, I decided to quadruple down on failure by starting four new businesses at the same time ... What does this require? The courage to experiment, knowing that you’ll probably — no, you’ll definitely — fail. If you’re not, you’re not taking big enough risks. If every annoyance is an opportunity, then every failure is a lesson, and a chance to test another hypothesis. People talk about drive as though it’s an aspirational, lofty state. It’s not. It’s about gritty persistence. It’s about resilience — when you’re tired, when it sucks, when nothing is working. It’s about doing the un-fun things: Checking and rechecking code. Spending hours in the lab. Staying in and fixing bugs when all of your friends are out having a good time. Drive is being lost, confused, overwhelmed — but picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and trying all over again. I’m not going to sugarcoat it: Building is hard, failing can be deeply painful, and the reality is some people aren’t willing to pay that price. But if you are, then, take it from me, the sky is the limit."


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